Two things define Phylicia Stone, a third-year teacher at IS 364 in Starrett City, Brooklyn. First, she can’t sit still. “I don’t waste a minute,” she says. Second, she is self-reliant. “If I want to do something, I sit down and figure it out.”

Jerry Kane says he's had the three best jobs anyone could have. "I coached basketball, I was a sports reporter and now I'm a phys ed teacher," says Kane, a second-year educator at PS 38 on Staten Island.

Victoria Love was the executive pastry chef at The Water Club, a world-renowned Manhattan restaurant. Now, she bakes delicacies like maple apple pandowdy and tropical coconut cheesecake with her special needs students at Manhattan School for Career Development.

Anthony Chin Kee Hee, a third-year high school English teacher at the Bronx Latin School, has learned how to become an effective educator by building relationships with his students.

Patricia Belluscio left a career in the fashion industry to work with infants and toddlers in the LYFE program.

Maritza Vasquez, a teacher at the Academy for Language and Technology in the Bronx, sees a lot of herself in her 9th-grade immigrant students. She said she’s able to relate “to everything they are feeling” because at one time she felt the same way. “I tell them I was a newcomer myself.”