Sep 22, 2005 4:20 PM
Newcomers HS in Long Island City faced the unusual opening-day challenge of absorbing 180 teenagers new to the New York City school system and the United States.
The Queens school, which was created to ease the transition for recent immigrants not yet fluent in English, quickly divided its fresh charges into smaller groups for a three-day orientation that would include a building tour, an English placement test, and life skills such as how to read a subway map and count American money.
Kicking off the process, Dorina Cheregi, the school’s math coach, gathered basic biographical information from 35 saucer-eyed new students from a medley of countries.
She animatedly modeled how to fill in the bubbles for each section of the data form and then asked the students to complete their forms.
Making for an orderly first day, all but four of Newcomers HS’s 60 teachers returned to work this fall. Principal Mary Burke and former chapter leader James Vasquez attributed the school’s unusually low turnover to the collaborative atmosphere and a basic respect for teachers’ professionalism and autonomy.
“That type of creativity and empowerment is what has made our school so successful,” said Burke, who was a teacher on staff when the school opened 11 years ago. “If we are divided, we are not serving our students.”
Lisa Schwartz, a teacher and programmer, joked that opening day was like a Thanksgiving reunion. “Oh, the family again,” she said.
Everyone was pleased, Schwartz said, with the large number of new registrants. “Each year you don’t know how many you are going to get,” she said. “Now we are trying to get them into classes as soon as possible.”
The day’s problems were part of what Vasquez called the “organized chaos” of a typical opening day.
Three new students said they had registered, but the school didn’t have any paperwork.
Nina Kramer, an ESL teacher, worried about how to adapt her lesson plans to meet the needs of a senior class more advanced than she had expected.
“I had in my head to do newspaper articles, but maybe it won’t be appropriate for this group,” she said.
Kramer lamented that workshops had absorbed most of the two days before students arrived. “I wish we had had more time to collaborate with colleagues, look through the book room, and get our materials,” she said.
Louis Llull, the school’s athletic director and the boys’ soccer coach, was preoccupied with a problem of a different kind. He had nine days to put together a soccer team of 22 players — and hold 10 practices — before the opening game on Sept. 16.
Llull came to school early to distribute fliers in English and Spanish to the new students in the cafeteria and had enlisted his seven returning players in the effort. So far, he had recruited six students.
“Are we going to get the numbers? Yes, I think so,” he said. “But are we going to be ready to play in that first game? I can’t guarantee it.”
Vasquez, now a special representative for the UFT, said educators at Newcomers HS were angry that the mayor and the chancellor would not negotiate a contract, but they don’t let the dispute affect classroom instruction.
“If we treated students the way they treat teachers, we would be fired,” said Catherine Del Frate, an ESL teacher and teacher trainer. “There’s a lack of respect. It’s very discouraging.”