Welcome to my classroom

In February, the UFT organized an essay contest in which it asked members in 500 words to tell the chancellor about the value that they add to the lives of students. What work do you do every day? What makes you so special? What do you do that often gets lost in all the talk about “reform” and “accountability”? Here are the winning essays.

Dear Chancellor:

By all measures that the media hails as important, I should have been overjoyed with my students’ progress after my first two years of teaching. Having looped with 100 students from the 6th to the 7th grade, they had progressed from 34 percent passing the state test to 84 percent passing it. And yet I knew deep down that I hadn’t given them a modicum of what they would need to survive against all odds in the worlds they had just begun to enter.

With the majority of my students coming from households below the poverty line, I know that on average only one in 10 of them will complete college. Feeling constricted by a scripted curriculum and isolating school culture, I switched to a different Title I school in hopes of finding a community from which I could learn more. What I found at PS 126 was beyond my wildest imagination.

Let me explain: All day I participate in an innovative curriculum, designed to foster student agency, autonomy and responsibility. My school transitioned to a new literacy curriculum over the past few years working with NYU Professor Cynthia McCallister. Through her model, Genre Practice, we eliminated tracking and ability grouping. As a K-8 school serving children from nearby housing projects and the corridors of Wall Street alike, abandoning divisive tracking policies was ambitious, but rising scores have justified our methods.

The cornerstone of our reform is a program called Unison Reading, in which children read aloud together in small groups for 15 minutes a day. Students take turns leading groups, and follow four simple rules: read aloud in sync; stop when you have a “huh?” or “aha!” moment; move on when everyone understands; and be positive. The students have unprecedented choice of texts, groups, topics and genres in reading and writing, but must meet high expectations and share strategies and independent writing with both small groups and the entire class. What our school has accomplished amazes me. We have brought social process to the forefront of the school experience and realigned knowledge with its social aims and cultural capital. The new curriculum embodies our hope that in a democracy, children should learn to participate in peaceful discourse despite diverse backgrounds or beliefs. I know our school’s new curriculum and the tireless commitment of our faculty have added value to my students’ lives. I see it every day — in the collaboration and knowledge sharing among all kinds of learners.

If we want our students to be prepared for the mercurial economy in which they will one day participate, we need to add value not only to test scores but also to curriculum as measured by how much it allows students to practice being agents in their own learning. To do so, we must make teachers responsible for their own teaching by inviting them to critically examine and participate in reforming the curriculum. If my students can learn to demonstrate such agency, autonomy and responsibility, I know teachers can, too.

Sincerely,

Amy Simone Piller
PS 126, Manhattan Academy of Technology

Dear Chancellor:

“Mr. Barcia,” asked one of the students in my 4th-grade class, “may I use the bathroom?”

To the casual ear, this sounds unrelated to the education of a child. It’s nothing but a request.

For me, it was a proud moment. It was a breakthrough for this student — the type not seen in any standardized test.

Usually a bathroom request is simply another interruption in my attempts to keep pace with the demands of the profession. Like many teachers I spend my days in a sprint, sprinkling in creative instructional ideas whenever I find an opportunity. Those “teachable moments” that everyone claims to want from creative teachers are lost in a sea of standardized testing, data gathering and paperwork.

This bathroom request, however, was different. You see, like many of my students, this student had come to me with no English (or formal schooling). After my mountains of hard work with him, this was his first full sentence. He had made his first major jump into the English language from his native Chinese. It was one of those “aha!” moments you crave as a teacher.

This progress would never show up on a standardized test. Unfortunately, the education power brokers have simplified teaching and learning into a single “value-added” score.

We spend our days as role model, nurse, peacemaker, disciplinarian, secretary, manager, data collector and parental figure all while trying to teach a lesson. That effort — or the effort put into this student’s growth — simply doesn’t count in testing models.

A simple bathroom request can be laden with significance for an educator. To the teacher in a crime-ridden school, it could be the first time a student with behavior problems asked for something respectfully. For the special education teacher, it could mean a student first becoming verbal. For other teachers, it could offer an opening with a student using bathroom visits as an escape.

If you truly care about education, please try to understand what teaching is really about. You are in a special position in the city’s highest educational office. Learn how the relentless focus on testing and data and other questionable policies are harming the students. Understand what teachers actually do every day before looking at a test score and placing a scarlet F on our lapels.

Clearly someone of your stature made your way with independent thought. Become an independent voice and question the dictates of the powers that be.

Because true understanding sometimes begins with an insignificant question such as, “May I use the bathroom?”

Regards,

Salvatore Barcia Jr.
PS 69, Brooklyn

Dear Chancellor:

This letter is written to give you a representation of a typical day of a New York City high school math teacher. Hopefully, after reading it, you will recognize what a high school math teacher deals with on a daily basis in New York City public schools.

When I arrive at my school, usually before 7 a.m., immediately after hanging up my coat, I begin to make photocopies for my class of work that I prepared the previous night on my computer.

I usually have at least two students who show up the first period for tutoring. These students voluntarily come for extra help. Many of our 3,000-plus students come daily for the extra help, which is offered in many of the major subjects. While tutoring students, I am also juggling other things such as returning phone calls to parents, responding to colleagues’ questions, touching base with a guidance counselor and writing letters of recommendation.

When classes begin that day, I have more than 170 students and I have to be ready to teach them all. My lessons must be written and prepared with materials to achieve my objective. The parents of my students have sent them to school with the reasonable expectation that their children will receive an excellent education and that their teachers are ready, prepared and inspired to deliver meaningful, constructive and empowering lessons.

I am teaching students from around the world, including new arrivals for whom English is totally new. These English language learners are in need of a teacher with knowledge, experience and heart who can communicate a math lesson that will open up doors in their minds. My classes also have special education students who bring their Individualized Education Programs for me to follow; it’s my responsibility to adapt my lessons to make them more suitable for these students’ their needs.

When the day ends, I am tired. I hope that my lessons have been absorbed by every one of my 170 students and that I have inspired them to do their homework or get to tutoring to be ready for the next day of class. That evening when I return home, I deal with my family and have dinner. Then shortly after that, I am back planning at my desk and on my computer for the next day.

Before I put my head on my pillow, I think of how the day went and how it could have been better and I pray for a better day tomorrow with all my students in my heart. Everyone is counting on me to do a fantastic job and the world is counting on these students with their developing brains to bring us a safer, cleaner and more loving world in the future. It is my belief that teachers are the ones who can make this happen.

That, in a nutshell, is the day of a teacher.

Very truly yours,

Nils DeVita
New Utrecht HS, Brooklyn

Dear Chancellor:

If you’ve never served the children of New York City as a teacher, you can have many misconceptions about teaching. It is all too easy in a world that is full of profits, bottom lines and accountability to negate the value of love, kindness and empathy.

As a New York City teacher for the past 12 years, I have served thousands of New York City’s kids. In my role as a teacher, I do all the things that one would normally associate with teacher duties: lesson plans, homework checks, assessments, creating a print-rich classroom, proctoring, etc. But those are not the elements of teaching that have an impact on a child’s life. It is all the “modeling” of decent, good and caring acts that a teacher performs. It is all the other “hats” that a good teacher wears, those that no teacher training program ever prepares you for. It is the human side that really makes the difference for kids.

For instance, when a child walks in and looks gray, it is my automatic response to say, “Can I feel your forehead?” and then say, “You have to go to the nurse.” When the students receive their high school admissions, there are invariably a handful of kids who have never experienced that level of rejection. It is my duty as the caring, loving adult in their daily lives to make them feel better again by consoling them and explaining that in life they will hit bumps in the road, but it is not a reason to quit the journey, simply time to devise a detour.

For the child whose home life is in upheaval, it is the teacher who provides that child with consistency, attention and structure. It is my responsibility to help every student in my care realize their dreams and know their worth as a unique and wonderful individual.

Sometimes I have to impart knowledge that is not related to the prescribed curriculum — those simple life lessons like the fact that they will cross paths with many people in this world, some of whom will believe in them and others who will not. It is my job to encourage my students to come into their own and respond to both types of people. I can best achieve this by modeling caring, empathetic behavior each and every day.

I am sure that there was a teacher in your life who did all of this for you. I am even more certain that you still fondly remember that teacher who made you a better, not just smarter person.

Do not misunderstand: The rewards, for teachers, come in overwhelming amounts. The most amazing of those rewards is when a child is able to use the tools you have given him or her to overcome each academic or nonacademic hurdle that life presents.

Respectfully,

Rachel Montagano
JHS 216, Queens