Teacher Profile: Jazmine Langlitz, Middle School Division Director

After three years at High Meadow teaching math, Jazmine’s new role finds her diving into interdisciplinary curriculum, and leaning into the relationships at the heart of teaching and learning.

Jazmine Langlitz grew up not too far from High Meadow, in Orange County’s Minisink Valley, where her younger brother and sister still live. In her early years, she went to a Waldorf school, spending the rest of her time in public school. Then, at age 20, she moved to New Paltz for college, studying visual arts. 

Today, Jazmine lives in Gardiner with her husband, Todd, her 12-year-old daughter, Maddie, and two horses. Her son, Jayden, 22, is in his senior year at SUNY New Paltz studying digital media production. But while she hasn’t moved far, in terms of geography, it was not a straight line from there to here.

“Later in life, I wound up teaching at a business school,” Jazmine explains. “I loved it, and inspired by my son’s Montessori education, I went back to school to get my master’s degree in Montessori Integrative Learning,” which she earned at Endicott College in Beverly, MA. 

Her second teaching job was in a Montessori school, where she was responsible for all middle school academic subjects. She spent her summers as Camp Director at https://www.philliesbridge.org in New Paltz, a not-for-profit working farm with a mission to promote food justice and local sustainable agriculture. When the opportunity became available, she went full time at Phillies Bridge as the year-round Education Director. 

It was work she loved, but in 2022, any injury sustained in a horseback riding accident meant Jazmine couldn’t manage the physical demands of farm-based education. “I could no longer lift a feed bag or do gardening,” she says with regret.

So she shifted her focus back to the classroom, joining High Meadow’s middle school team in the 2022/23 school year as 7th and 8th grade math teacher. 

It turned out High Meadow’s approach had plenty in common with her work in Montessori. “[Montessori teaching] was about following the child and meeting them where they are individually,” Jazmine says, and supplementing as needed with programs like e-math, “in order to keep up with standards and let our kids leave as prepared as other schools.”

This year, Jazmine stepped into a newly defined position as Middle School Division Director, coordinating the work of the five-person middle school teaching team, elective teachers, and student support team, as well as serving as liaison for families.

“I feel like it was a good fit for me because I have taught every subject on the middle school level. I think that this role is something we’ve needed for a couple of years, someone who can be dedicated to what’s happening here, in this part of the school. And I’m still teaching accelerated math, and have direct involvement with the kids,” she adds. “That’s really important to me.”

This year, one of Jazmine’s areas of focus is implementation of an integrated curriculum developed over the past two years. “We have a really great set up with the 6th grade this year. Right now, 6th graders are learning about the human body in science at the same time that they’re learning the theory of human evolution in social studies. They’re creating skulls out of clay as an art extension, and annotating articles about Mesopotamia in ELA.”

“I love the small class size at High Meadow. I love the teacher looping, so by 8th grade our teachers know our students really well. I love our small team, and I’m super appreciative of the care and energy that the teachers give to the students and to the school. They are the glue that holds everything together and they really do an amazing job. I’m also very grateful for the senior administration and their willingness to work with us and try new things. I think that’s something a lot of people look past.”

Lately, Jazmine has been meeting with High Meadow’s two other division directors to help build out a vision of the future of our program. “A couple things I'm pushing for,” she says, “are more arts and arts integration, as well as academic electives, and really making sure we’re focusing on tailoring the learning to adolescent developmental need, including opportunities for risk-taking, deep study, and hands-on and experiential learning in the core subjects.”