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‘She’s my rock’

by Ellie Spielberg

Jun 5, 2008 3:31 PM

They were tiny, excited, clamoring for their teacher’s attention, and shy and eager all at once. New teacher Ilene Silverman thought they were adorable. But she wasn’t sure how to talk to them.

Learning the language and mindset of the youngest kids in the school system was a big challenge for Silverman when told to switch midyear from her 4th-grade class to the new kindergarten classroom that opened up at Manhattan’s PS 126. Silverman rose to the occasion when she took over the kindergarten created when the union won a class-size grievance at the school.

On top of that, Silverman had been at the head of a classroom only since September. She was still acclimating to the culture of the Lower East Side school that’s nestled in the burgeoning immigrant neighborhood she found fascinating in a city she now called home. She was determined to put down roots at the school on Catherine Street.

“It was completely new to me,” Silverman said.

Her only prior teaching experience was working part time at an Upper East Side public elementary school with a class of students who already knew their ABCs before they enrolled in kindergarten.

“I found that I really liked working on the Lower East Side,” said Silverman, who had planned to become a social worker before deciding to become a teacher.

Silverman noted that her new students have different experiences and knowledge from those the kids at the other school had and she was used to working at the 4th-grade level she was trained for.

“The older kids have a certain independence and level of understanding,” she said. But now she was facing a roomful of 19 little ones, all of whom were English language learners. “The language I used when talking with the older kids wasn’t working with the younger ones.”

Providing mentors to help teachers meet challenges Silverman found herself in used to be the responsibility of the Department of Education, but it has often fallen through the cracks since the DOE transferred that responsibility to principals.

Enter UFT District 2 Representative Evelyn DeJesus, who also teaches at PS 126.

“Evelyn was assigned as the mentor in a different class when the school opened the new kindergarten,” Silverman said. “She just basically came up and introduced herself to me as my new official mentor.”

Silverman grew up in the “burbs”; DeJesus in the neighborhood. Silverman was fresh out of college and new to the school system; DeJesus had seen it all. Silverman felt she had lost her tongue, and here was DeJesus conversing easily in English and Spanish with the Latino kindergarteners and getting the Chinese kids responding to her as well in their fledgling English.

It was a match made in mentoring heaven.

And if that weren’t enough, Silverman was happy to learn that DeJesus, a skilled teacher experienced in Reading Recovery, a highly effective literacy program as well as other content areas, had Nuyorican roots that went deep in that very neighborhood. DeJesus went to school there as a child and was a teacher in the community for many years.

“I had taught many of the mothers when they were kids and now I was teaching their children,” DeJesus said.

DeJesus has been the mentor of record for six teachers at PS 126.

“I walk in there and I feel like I have six daughters,” DeJesus said. “That school is a goldmine, with its diversity, the respect it has for the union, and for me it’s an extension of my family; it’s like home”

“We’re friends,” Silverman said. “On that first day she said she’d be there for anything I needed and she has been, oh my God, yes. She’s empowered me in so many ways. She’s my rock.”

Together Silverman and DeJesus set up the classroom from scratch and established reading and learning centers for small group instruction. They worked on a variety of reading strategies — dialoging, modeling, phonemic awareness and comprehension. Together they planned differentiated instruction according to the children’s needs and paired up kids according to their reading levels so students could help one another.

“Ilene wanted to learn how to use specific language for the little ones,” DeJesus said, “how to prompt them, which could be as simple as saying, ‘I need you to get in front of or behind of’ — language that we take for granted, that her 4th-graders knew but the kindergartners didn’t. We worked together and practiced the detailed, direct language students needed and how to vary the tone we use when talking to them.”

Silverman said: “It helps me become a better teacher because I have to think so much more about what I need to do to reach this population. I don’t know what I would’ve done without Evelyn.”

Now, at the end of the school year, all the children are reading at grade level and some are already reading on the 1st-grade level. According to DeJesus, Silverman is also skilled at “teaching the children to be good classroom citizens, and giving them a sense of autonomy and assurance and of safety.”

And Silverman is feeling more and more that PS 126 is her home turf.

“Being a mentor is not only about helping a teacher with content instruction and classroom management,” DeJesus said. “It’s about going into a classroom with two lenses, seeing through both the eyes of a teacher and the needs of the students and the school community.”

UFT Vice President Aminda Gentile couldn’t agree more.

“Mentoring, which is the most crucial piece of new teacher induction, is not just a matter of helping a teacher master lesson plans,” Gentile said. “The key — and ultimately the key to student success — is helping a teacher adapt to a school’s unique culture and to a vast school system that can feel overwhelming for any new teacher, especially one who is new to the city.”

Gentile said this can only be done with a colleague who lives in the complex work of classroom teaching on a daily basis. A mentor is a skilled, experienced teacher who knows the system and can support the new teacher in a collegial, nonjudgmental relationship — someone who can be a guide as the new teacher enhances her skills and becomes a member of the school community. Where mentoring is done the right way, teachers are staying, children are getting the instruction they need and mentors are respected for the years of experience and knowledge they can share with their newest colleagues.”

She views the mentoring relationship between Silverman and DeJesus as an example of mentoring at its best. As Silverman put it, “I got very, very lucky to have Evelyn as a mentor.”

But Gentile is adamant that it shouldn’t be left to luck; that every new teacher is entitled to an experienced and supportive mentor.

“Unfortunately, since the reorganization of the school system under Chancellor Joel Klein, when the Department of Education shifted the responsibility of mentoring programs onto the shoulders of principals, many principals put it on the back burner. We have to keep the crucial peer-to-peer mentor teacher program from becoming an endangered species,” she said.

Gentile pointed out an effective mentoring experience, like that of Silverman-DeJesus, impacts student achievement and the school community, in addition to supporting retention of highly qualified teachers in New York City.

With solid, ongoing mentoring, Ilene Silverman has become confident and skilled in her classroom, her school, her new city and her new profession.