General News
Disbanding of District 79 makes for bittersweet celebration
Sep 21, 2007 10:15 AM
Wendy Thorpe, a Career Education Center (CEC) art teacher, talks about the skills students mastered when making their decorative, expressive “affirmation houses.”
It was a bittersweet day for art teachers from the Career Education Center. The annual student art show and award ceremony is a high point of the year, celebrating work by GED students from all CEC sites, many of them at-risk kids trying to beat the odds.
Last June 6, however, the end-of-year celebration came on the heels of shattering news: Under the reorganization of District 79, CEC would be closed.
The yearly event is a time for students to feel proud of learning the academic skills needed for so many of their projects, such as mastering fractions in order to design a decorative quilt. It’s a day when these District 79 teachers can celebrate their success in reaching these students.
“To learn, these kids need to see and touch and feel, otherwise they turn off to it,” said Henry Lyons of the Boys and Girls Harbor site. “You have to teach every single subject in a visual and tactile way, using whatever materials are at your disposal.”
Now these ever-improvising, seasoned, established teachers were suddenly afraid of losing their jobs. Would they have to reapply like rookies for positions they’ve held for years? Would those positions — or comparable ones — even exist?
Art teacher MLJ Johnson said that CEC teachers were steamed when a May 24 New York Times article, about the closing of schools for pregnant girls, made light of quilt projects. “They have no idea what a triumph it is to get these kids to master fractions to make a quilt. These kids don’t even know what thirds are, unless three of them are trying to split a pizza, and now they made this quilt of nine-inch squares divided by thirds in all kinds of creative ways.”
They put their fears on hold and rose to the occasion for the sake of the young award winners — then rushed off to meetings with administrators to find out what they could.
“It’s not just about kids getting the GED,” said Wendy Thorpe, helping colleagues Lyons and MLJ Johnson pack up in the gallery space at the Adam Clayton Powell Harlem State Office Building. “It’s about teaching these kids life skills. Yes, how to take the GED is important, but life isn’t a GED test.”
Thorpe was especially proud of a series of “affirmation houses” that hung in the show, wooden shrine-like boxes with doors that open onto secret worlds.
“It took an understanding of complex arithmetic and mastering a ruler for the kids to make these boxes,” she said, carefully opening the doors of a few to reveal their interiors.
Some were fanciful, some were plain, some foreboding on the outside only to reveal a peaceful oasis within, complete with little palm trees and affirmations. One box was black and urban-edgy, boldly decorated with the words “MOB: Man of Business. New Changes in Life, All is Good, All is Well, Business is Life.”
“This is by a boy who’s on a very different road now,” Thorpe said. “He’s not thinking the way he thought when he first came to us. He’s reading the business section of The New York Times every day.”
Will these kids be lost in the cracks of a refigured District 79? Show up at sites that have been closed and just give up?
That was a major concern of teachers and their union at a June 11 meeting at UFT headquarters in Manhattan.
“It’s a very difficult situation for members,” UFT Vice President Michael Mulgrew commented after the meeting. “We’re fighting hard, around the clock, to make sure our members are treated fairly like they deserve, that their rights are respected as well as the rights of these students to get the education they deserve— including having these devoted, adept, specialized veteran educators as their teachers.”
Thorpe was attending the meeting with Lyons and Johnson. All have weathered DOE reorganizations before.
“I’ve decided I’m not going to panic,” she said.
