new teacher profiles
The last time she saw Paris — she found her true calling
Jun 7, 2007 2:03 PM
Former celebrity magazine writer and editor Gina van der Vliet has found true fulfillment in her new job — as a teacher at PS 226, the Bronx.
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.
Hey, it was a great life, writing all about celebrities — wasn’t it? Really, really cool — right? It was what van der Vliet had always dreamed of. She had left the Netherlands for la-la land, writing for Billboard, the famous Los Angeles magazine about famous people.
She said goodbye to Amsterdam in 1990, leaving all those tulips and teacher-Mom and teacher-step-Dad behind, working as an au pair in Manhattan before launching her career as an entertainment journalist.
“I always told my mom I was never going to be a teacher, no matter what happened. I was interested in the entertainment industry. I wanted to write in-depth articles about music and artists,” van der Vliet said.
Ha.
She found there was not much in-depth anything in L.A.
A few years later, the up-and-coming journalist was in New York, working as a writer and articles editor for M magazine, geared to girls between the ages of 11 and 13. That was great! Wasn’t it? After all, van der Vliet had an interest in working with children, had loved being an au pair.
“The M stood for Music, Movies and More,” van der Vliet said. “It was supposed to promote healthy body image and self-esteem for girls but really winded up covering people like Eminem, 50 Cent and Paris Hilton, all the people that you would want to keep as far away as possible from your young children.”
Still, she kept at it with her pen, aiming for the high road. But it turned out that at M magazine, the “More” was less. Thousands of words later, too many of them squandered on the latest escapades of Hillary Duff, Lindsay Lohan and the like, van der Vliet had had it. She marched into the editor’s office. Then came the world’s oldest fight: the ancient antagonism between writers and editors.
The writer wanted depth.
The editor wanted photos with captions.
The writer wanted more words.
The editor wanted fewer.
The writer wanted to appeal to the intellect.
The editor wanted to sell copies.
“The world of entertainment publishing was getting more and more shallow, just tabloids about gossip, all the drama, who was dating who,” she said. “I couldn’t stand it when I had to write about Paris Hilton but I had to, who she dated, her fashion style, about the little dog and the little matching outfits and how much money she spent on the dog.
“I started to question if this was going to be my contribution to the world. I would ask my editor why were we catering to kids’ ignorance, saying that these celebrities are people they want to read about so let’s use it as an inroad to get them to really read. He said that kids weren’t interested in reading.”
Van der Vliet held her nose and soldiered on, for the sake of the “M-Girls,’ as they were called.
“I’d get e-mails from readers, which was fun, the best part of my job,” she said. “Their spelling was atrocious; that was another reason for me to think education was the key; teach these kids how to be literate. I figured what the M-Girls needed is not to read about Eminem, Lindsay Lohan and Hillary Duff. The real favor for these kids would be not to report on that silly nonsense at all. It became suddenly clear that the real service would be to educate them.”
It took a couple of years, more soul-searching after 9/11 and the discovery of the Teaching Fellows program for van der Vliet to make her move.
Now she’s in her second year at PS 226 in the Bronx, teaching 1st-graders how to read.
“I really feel that I’m in a job that’s very fulfilling,” she said. “Rather than writing about self-absorbed, narcissistic characters who have it all, now I get to service children in the Bronx who don’t really have much of anything.”
Except an enthusiastic teacher devoted to children becoming truly literate.
“The first year I didn’t dare call myself a teacher because I felt like an imposter, but now I actually feel like a teacher,” she said. “At first it’s a little like being in a plane and someone gives you the controls, hands you the manual in mid-air and says, ‘now fly the plane.’
“Every new teacher feels guilty on behalf of the kids in their first year, but I poured my heart and soul into it and I did well by my kids. I try to keep the plane in the air, and hope to make a safe landing,” van der Vliet said.
While she’s earning her wings and beginning to soar, there are a lot of trans-Atlantic phone calls going back and forth between Amsterdam and New Amsterdam. Van der Vliet talks to her esteemed mentor quite often: Mom, who taught 1st-grade in city public schools for 30 years.
“She’s thrilled that I’ve become a teacher,” van der Vliet said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Fortunately, Gina van der Vliet has not totally abandoned her pen. And she’s put her interest in reporting on the arts — the real deal, this time— to better use. For her review of Nilaja Sun’s “No Child,” a one-woman show about the perils of the No Child Left Behind Act, log on to Teacher Web Magazine at www.teacherwebmagazine.com/id59.html.
