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Union’s Green Dot ‘adventure’ begins
Sep 12, 2008 12:02 PM
Throughout the hustle and bustle of opening day, science teacher Marcus Henry kept his cool while hanging up a poster of the central nervous system.
As teachers put the finishing touches on their classrooms, the adreneline was running high at Green Dot, a unionized charter high school that opened its doors for the first time in the South Bronx on Sept. 2.
“It’s good nervous tension, the way anybody would feel going on an adventure,” said Martine Young, an English teacher who will focus on the nuts and bolts of composition.
“This is the first year I was able to wake up without nerves, but with a feeling that I’m in the right place,” said Fran Sora, the other English teacher, who focuses on the leaps and bounds of literature. “Everybody is really strong. You can feel it. There’s a different take on education — proactive, rather than reactive, and that helps you sleep at night.”
“Everyone is very excited to be able to partake in this new experiment,” said special education teacher Brienne McGuinness, lugging brand new supplies through a hallway smelling of fresh paint and decorated with college pendants.
The pendants are the visual version of Green Dot’s mantra: college, college, college. As Principal Ashish Kapadia told the first incoming class of 125 freshmen at morning assembly, the first day at Green Dot is the first day of the journey to go to college.
Based on the charter school operator’s track record, the new students, who were selected via a community lottery, have a good shot at a good future. Green Dot’s original schools in distressed Los Angeles neighborhoods graduate 98 percent of seniors, 78 percent of whom go on to four-year universities.
The partnership between the UFT and Green Dot marks the first time that a teachers union has opened a new school in collaboration with a charter school operator. Green Dot New York Charter School is the firm’s first school outside Los Angeles. Founder Steve Barr’s belief that true collaboration among students, teachers, parents and administrators is crucial to student success is “a deeply held value of the UFT,” said UFT President Randi Weingarten.
“We encouraged Green Dot to come to New York and share its good work and its commitment to professionalism, excellence and giving unionized teachers explicit say in school policy and curriculum,” she said.
In addition to supporting Green Dot, the UFT operates its own elementary and secondary charter schools in Brooklyn. Educators in seven other charter schools in New York City are also members of the UFT.
Green Dot, which will add a grade each year until it fills grades 9-12 with class sizes averaging about 25 students, is housed in IS 162 in the Hub area of the South Bronx. Today, students walk along 149th Street, where school backpacks are sold next to queen-size sheet sets for $5.99 in discount stores that flank Oscar’s Barbershop and Gem Pawnbrokers. On the corner of St. Ann’s Avenue, just as they come to the oasis of St. Mary’s Park, they arrive at Green Dot, all dressed up in their neat white-and-khaki uniforms, barely containing their excitement.
“If you have smaller classes, you won’t get disrupted,” said Shaqueena, who wants to go to college.
“There’s no violence,” said Akeba, who wants to be a teacher.
“In a small school there’s not too much trouble,” said Jaleela. “I want to be a doctor and I believe this school will help me achieve that.”
“Here you learn like a family, you feel comfortable,” said Jacob, who wants to be a French chef.
Small classes, one of the six tenets of Green Dot, are a big draw for all. The other tenets are high expectations for students, school-based control with extensive professional development and accountability, high levels of parent participation, more dollars for the classroom and for a significant increase in teacher pay, and a commitment to stay open beyond the school day for community use.
The New York Post tried to pit member against member by mischaracterizing the parameters under which Green Dot teachers work. But as Weingarten pointed out in a letter to the editor that ran in the newspaper on Sept. 6, Green Dot teachers have lower class size, a higher salary and a just-cause dismissal standard (which is what tenure should be based upon) from the moment they start teaching.
“This strong commitment to a fair and respectful workplace has been instrumental in Green Dot’s success in California in recruiting, retaining and developing great educators,” Weingarten wrote. “It is also the foundation of the UFT’s partnership with Green Dot.”
“I liked the Green Dot model after researching it,” said McGuinness, the special ed teacher, “and interviewing I felt even stronger about it.”
Spanish teacher Dee-Ann Martell thinks the school “is great, with extended days and college prep. If I were a student, I’d want to go here.”
Math teacher Lauren Inzelbuch sees “an opportunity to effect change in ways I hadn’t seen possible before.”
Literature teacher Sora, who stapled a copy of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” on her Poet-of-the-Month bulletin board, said, “I hope the road they take is one of understanding the choice they make, and that they can see the consequences, whatever choice or road that may be.”
