new teacher profiles
This teaching fellow has found her calling
Apr 14, 2005 1:39 AM
Sylvia Beevas
“My Mom hasn’t said anything negative but she still questions whether I made a career decision,” admits Sylvia Beevas, a first-year teaching fellow at Jane Addams Vocational HS in the Bronx. “She thinks it’s just a job.”
But Beevas knows otherwise.
“Teaching is my career. This is what I want to do.”
A Boston native, 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,” Beevas recalls. “I love biology and I’ve loved it since junior high school but in my junior year of college I realized I wanted to be a teacher.”
But she worried: Would her family be cool with that? Postponing the inevitable, she worked at a women’s juvenile detention center right after college. There she found herself teaching the residents, mostly young offenders.
Her fate was sealed when she saw an ad for teaching fellows on MonsterJobs.com. She had always wanted to teach and now she knew how to go about it. Beevas made up her mind, sent in her application and, in June 2004, was on her way to New York City “with all my stuff and two cats.”
“I love New York and always wanted to live here,” she chirps with youthful enthusiasm. As a newcomer to the city she still gets lost on the subway, but she found her way to Lehman College where her training began right away.
“Every day we went through scenarios, through philosophies, what works and what doesn’t,” Beevas remembers. “The preparation was good, but once we were in the classroom, it was even better because we could develop our own style.”
While Beevas found what she was looking for, not all her classmates fared as well.
“The teaching fellows were so enthusiastic in the summer but some quit after they got into the classroom,” she notes. “If you’re not 100 percent committed and motivated, you’ll drop out.”
Beevas was fortunate to have good support.
“The [teaching fellows] liaison comes by once a month to see me and find out how I’m doing, if a have any problems. I also have a mentor who sees me once a week. She comes into my classroom, observes me and gives me pointers. My AP has been very supportive and gives me time. And of course all the teachers in the science department here have been more than helpful.”
Beevas also drew on her experience working in the detention center.
“It prepared me because I was able to understand the backgrounds of at-risk youth and handle their behavior — though my students are not as bad,” she says.
She was pleasantly surprised by her school, especially when she heard from other teaching fellows what their schools and classes are like.
“Jane Addams is better than others,” she says. “The school is overcrowded, the halls are jam-packed and it takes forever to get from one place to another. Even the classrooms — my classes are all over-capacity.”
And her program was better than she expected.
“I thought I was only going to have 9th-graders, but I have a good mix,” she says. Her program includes environmental science, which is mostly 9th-graders, and living environments, which combines students from several grades. “I was lucky to have all my classes on one floor.”
Even so, things were not perfectly smooth.
“When I first started I was really nervous to be in the classroom,” she says. “I had problems at first. But I knew this is what I want to do so I had to figure it out.”
Determined to make her classroom work, Beevas began talking to parents and getting to know the families.
“I talk to parents all the time,” she says. “That’s what got me through those first months and it has made a huge turnaround. I keep calling the parents and setting up meetings. I just go through the roster and call one or two each day — or write a progress report — even if the students are doing well. Now the students who were my biggest problems know that I can call their mom on her cell phone.”
She also learned some important skills for classroom management.
“If the kids are too loud, I just stop talking until they stop. And I praise the ones who are doing the right thing — ‘I love how you did all your homework,’ or, ‘I love how you remembered to raise your hand instead of calling out.’”
Beevas also learned that every class is different and she tries to adjust her approach to its needs.
“In one class, if I’m not strict with them and loosen up one inch, I’ve lost them. In another class, I have to slow down a bit so they all understand what I’m teaching,” she says.
And she is developing a keen awareness of the need for standards.
“I love Jane Addams but I think we can expect more of the students,” she says. “We praise students just for passing, but I tell them that’s not good enough.”
So how does Sylvia Beevas sum up her teaching experiences so far?
“Every day I’m learning something new that I have to write down,” she says. “It’s a learning process, but a good one.”
And Jane Addams Chapter Leader Elliot Gloskin says it’s been a successful one.
“She’s one of our fellows who has seemed to pick things up pretty quick for a person coming into a new situation,” Gloskin said. “She’s motivated to do well; the kids and staff like her. She’s off to a great start.”
