Category Archive
Following her ‘dream of making good’Nov 20, 2008
“There’s nothing better than seeing kids respond to a teacher who cares,” says Sara Panag, special education teacher at Goldstein HS for the Sciences in Brooklyn — by way of Hong Kong.
Etched in ‘marble’Oct 23, 2008
Like all writers, HS of Applied Communication teacher Richard Phelps makes a fetish of pen and paper, finding just the right brew for attracting the muse.
Finding fulfillment at UFT charter schoolSep 25, 2008
Having a revelation, ditching his office job, going for his master’s in education and, at last, becoming a teacher! It was going to be great! It wasn’t.
Stuck in the ‘middle’ — and loving itMay 08, 2008
Part of the reason why Robert Andruskiewicz and middle school is a match made in heaven is because he’s a “kid at heart.”
Realizing a life-long dreamApr 24, 2008
When Arielle Landeck was growing up, she used to make believe she was a teacher. Now that she’s teaching for real, it’s everything she thought it would be.
After all this time ... where he wants to beApr 10, 2008
Ancient wisdom seems to come easily to a brand-new teacher.
Teacher follows her scriptMar 27, 2008
Jennifer Grunin is in love with her job at Life Academy of Film and Music, a new small high school housed in Brooklyn’s Lafayette HS building.
Re-made in JapanMar 13, 2008
A group of Queens kids are really getting into the Japanese thing, even learning how to speak it and how to read its mysterious, beautiful alphabet, all in David Bantz’s classroom at East West HS of International Studies in Flushing.
Taking the initiativeJan 31, 2008
When Anayah Barney began teaching her high school students about the history of American slavery, she knew she had her work cut out for her.
The teaching side of lifeDec 06, 2007
After 24 years as a warehouse worker and night shop steward of Teamsters Local 812, Dan Federico has traded in his handheld inventory computer for a piece of chalk and a bunch of great kids at PS 22 in Queens.
Teaching (and all that jazz)Oct 31, 2007
The kids at Bushwick Leaders HS for Academic Excellence, a small academy in its fifth year that moved into its new home a little over a year ago, are lucky enough to have a working jazz musician for a teacher.
Third career’s a charmOct 04, 2007
From the jungles and mountains of Vietnam to the well-ordered universe of a pharmaceutical corporation to the homey atmosphere of a New York City classroom. What a long, strange trip it’s been for John Monteforte.
The last time she saw Paris — she found her true callingJun 07, 2007
If it weren’t for Paris Hilton, some kids in the Bronx might never have been lucky enough to have Gina van der Vliet as a teacher.
His specialties are pistons and PlatoMay 24, 2007
Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Lao Tzu, Diogenes — pretty heady stuff to have in mind while you’re taking out an automatic transmission and replacing it with a standard.
Coming homeMay 10, 2007
In the afternoon, Tina Padilla would slip out of the posh headquarters of a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical corporation, eager to get to her destination. She was having an affair.
Magum opusApr 26, 2007
Not just the headmaster wears a tie. So do the boys and male teachers. The boys’ ties, part of the formal uniform that all students wear, are deep purple, for a specific reason.
Giving everyone a voiceApr 12, 2007
Cara Furman found her philosophical home at the Earth School/PS 364, where kids call teachers by their first names and are encouraged to learn through their own experience.
A perfect fit: Teacher from Philippines at home in Big AppleMar 15, 2007
Every morning, when Jennifer Venturina opens her bedroom curtains and sees the Empire State Building, she thinks to herself, “Oh my God, I’m really in America.”
‘Streets’ smartFeb 15, 2007
If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere, Michael Mapel kept hearing. And it wasn’t Frank Sinatra singing about New York.
Teaching adds up for former accountantJan 18, 2007
Vivian Rorro-Porcu, a second-year teacher who won a UFT Teacher Center Mini-Grant for a creative math project, sees and hears algebra wherever she goes.
His passion finds himDec 07, 2006
Teaching was a dream that Geovanti Steward had to let go of. But the universe wasn’t having any of that and sent its message loud and clear on the A train one day.
Setting a new courseNov 02, 2006
On his way to corporate America, Mike Goodwin met Desmond Tutu in South Africa — and is now counseling schoolchildren in New York City.
‘You’re going to get better and better’Mar 16, 2006
Here are some words of encouragement from a veteran educator to all new teachers.
Beyond the call of dutyDec 08, 2005
It was the end of the eighth period and Danielle Le Moine, a first-year English teacher at the HS of Graphic Communication Arts in Manhattan, was finishing her school day. All of a sudden, two girls came into her classroom and started yelling at one of her students.
This teaching fellow has found her callingApr 14, 2005
Boston native Sylvia Beevas majored in biology in college and thought of becoming a nurse or a doctor. “Then I decided that was not for me but for my family,” recalls Beevas, a first-year teaching fellow at Jane Addams Vocational HS in the Bronx.
