Chalkbeat

‘My school still stands’: What Katrina took from New Orleans educators, and what it couldn’t

2025-08-28T16:34:33+00:00

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Every August, Jamar McKneely feels the pain of what was lost. This year has been harder than most.

It’s been 20 years since Hurricane Katrina submerged his city — and upended life and learning in New Orleans, where McKneely now leads the InspireNOLA charter school network.

Before Hurricane Katrina, McKneely taught math and entrepreneurship and coached football at Edna Karr High School in the city’s Algiers neighborhood. He was one of about 7,000 school district employees fired in the months after Hurricane Katrina. The teacher workforce comprised mostly Black women in the majority Black city, and many educators received their pink slips while they were still evacuated.

Water had breached the New Orleans’ levees on Aug. 29, 2005, flooding about 80% of the city. Nearly 1,400 people died due to the storm, the subsequent deluge, and the flawed federal response to the disaster.

Katrina pummeled New Orleans at the very beginning of the 2005-06 school year — leaving most of the city’s public school buildings damaged, some of them beyond repair. A few city schools reopened within months, but it would take years for others to welcome back students. By that point, the school system looked very different.

Water surrounds homes in the devastated Ninth Ward in this aerial view of damage from Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

State lawmakers repurposed the Recovery School District, formed before the storm to turn around low-performing schools statewide, and allowed it to take over more than 100 New Orleans public schools, including ones that had previously met the state’s performance standards. The Recovery School District incentivized charter operators to reopen campuses, and only a few high-performing schools remained under district control.

With these newly minted charter schools came an influx of teachers recruited by organizations like Teach For America and TeachNOLA. Many of them were white and from out of town, with limited training or classroom experience.

Today, the New Orleans school system serves a much smaller student population. Enrollment now stands at about 42,000, down from about 65,000 before Hurricane Katrina. In 2019, after the last remaining district high school was handed over to a charter operator, New Orleans became an all-charter district. Just last year, though, the local school board opened the Leah Chase School, its first traditional public school in nearly two decades.

Today, New Orleans’ high school graduation rates and state test scores are way up, and a higher percentage of city students are college-bound.

What this transformation means remains highly contested. Charter advocates tout New Orleans as a poster child for education reform. Others lament the number of veteran educators who lost their jobs and seniority, and argue that the charter system promotes competition rather than collaboration between schools.

For his part, McKneely said he’s proud of New Orleans’ transformed school system, but loss will always be part of the story.

“As much as we’ve been working to gain an educational system that is promising, that has unique growth, I revert back to the pain,” McKneely said. “I still revert back to being terminated. I still remember how many homes were lost, how many individuals lost their lives, how many educators are no longer in this space.”

Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina, Chalkbeat spoke with five New Orleans educators about surviving the storm, teaching in Katrina’s wake, and how they understand the seismic changes to the city’s school system. Their comments have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The football players at Edna Karr High School were already in their uniforms when Jamar McKneely told them that Jamboree — the tournament marking the start of the season — was being postponed. It was Aug. 28, 2005, and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin had just issued a citywide mandatory evacuation order. McKneeley gave the disappointed players a pep talk before driving 80 miles to his parents’ home in Baton Rouge.

Jamar McKneely is the CEO of InspireNOLA Charter Schools.

We told the students to be safe, be careful, listen to their parents, and hopefully, we’ll return within the next two to three days, after the storm has passed.

When I saw how flooded the city was, when I saw how many people were displaced on roofs, the realization hit me that we would not be returning to New Orleans as normal. Even though that was happening, what was on my mind was: When could we return? How would we help rebuild? What was happening with my students?

I started receiving phone calls from my students saying they were displaced, they were on buses, they were going to Texas, they were going to multiple different people and places. That was the most important thing, providing assurance to them as we try to get through this. But for myself, I didn’t know how I would pick up life. And then, before I even started looking for another opportunity to work, I received a termination letter. I didn’t know how I would survive.

McKneely spent the rest of the school year teaching in the Baton Rouge district, where some of his former students had enrolled. In the spring, Edna Karr’s principal invited him back. Before the storm, Edna Karr was a district-run selective admissions school; after the storm, it became an open-enrollment charter school. He accepted the position, commuting from Baton Rouge for months before securing a FEMA trailer in New Orleans.

I wanted to come back to show them a sense of normalcy. I didn’t care what it looked like. I didn’t care what it sounded like. I just wanted to be back with my students that I had been educating before, those who returned gradually, or those who were there for Day 1. At first, it was, like, we survived. You made it, I made it, we’re back. We tried to do a lot around the social-emotional space to understand together what we had experienced.

The week leading up to Hurricane Katrina, Alicia Harris was working off the clock to set up classrooms and computer labs at Fisk-Howard Elementary School, where she was a paraprofessional. She had been so focused on the start of the school year that she hadn’t known a storm was coming until her brother asked her if she was evacuating. She decided to ride out Katrina at the Hilton where her brother worked, and she ended up at the epicenter of the botched federal response.

Alicia Harris has been a paraprofessional in New Orleans for 26 years. She's working toward her degree in education.

I was inside the Hilton hotel, but you could say I was on the street because you had no lights, no water, no nothing. They ran out of food. People dead on the street and you see them floating in water. I was stuck in New Orleans until Sept. 7. That’s when I made it to Virginia, and when I was able to take my first real bath and find something real to eat.

Before the storm, Harris was enrolled in a district-sponsored program to train paraprofessionals to become teachers. After Katrina, the program was eliminated. Harris is now in her 26th year as a paraprofessional in New Orleans.

A few years ago, Harris began pursuing a degree in elementary education. An aspiring school principal, she was also accepted into a union-run teacher leadership program. She still works full-time with fourth, fifth, and sixth graders with disabilities at Leah Chase, the city’s only district-run school.

Katrina set me back 20 years, for real. … It set me back a lot because I lost — well, everybody lost — everything. I was in a situation as a para educator, struggling in school, and when Katrina hit, it just made everything worse.

I didn’t get any assistance from FEMA — that was the first thing that really hurt me. You hear people talking about, I got this from FEMA, I got that from FEMA. Hard as I worked for the city, child, I didn’t get nothing. So I have been struggling from that moment that Katrina hit, up until now. Even now, with me being a full-time student, it’s a struggle. I’m carrying 19 [credit] hours, just trying to finish so I can make the money doing what I love, and that’s teaching.

What I really want to do is become a principal because I have all these years of experience in school. I know how to run it now. Let me show you how to run it!

I will be graduating, probably, this time next year, and I’m so excited. I can’t wait. Someone said to me, “Miss Harris, you’re going to be a great principal.” I said, “I know I will.” I said, “Things take time.” I know I can do it.

Dave Cash wanted to help rebuild his adopted hometown post-Katrina, so the web developer decided to become a teacher. Today, he teaches career and technical education at L.B. Landry High School and serves as president of the United Teachers of New Orleans union. His first teaching job, though, was at George Washington Carver High School, which reopened in August 2007. Classrooms were set up in trailers on the city’s sprawling Ninth Ward campus. Humvees were a frequent sight in the area, as the Louisiana National Guard continued to patrol the city.

Dave Cash, right, is the president of United Teachers of New Orleans.

A lot of students, when they evacuated to Houston or Atlanta or other places, were bullied or called refugees, so they wanted to come back to New Orleans. There was a significant number of young people who came back without their parents.

So that was an interesting thing as a teacher: If a kid is acting up in class and I call home, sometimes their girlfriend answers, because that’s who they live with. And their girlfriend is obviously not going to have a conversation with them about their behavior in class. Everything was not normal.

In the first 12 years I taught, I was at two different schools, each for six years, and I had 11 different principals. That’s an instant way to explain how tumultuous it was and how difficult it was as a new teacher to grow when your leadership is constantly changing over.

Cash credits veteran New Orleans educators, many of them Black women who had been fired following Hurricane Katrina, for helping him through those chaotic first few years in the classroom. After school, he would often hang out at the teachers union office, where many of the veteran educators congregated and volunteered.

There was this tension, because there was this really strong narrative that the reason why New Orleans needed charter schools was because the teachers were the problem and had been ruinous for the city beforehand. I think there were people that were teaching that maybe didn’t respect the veteran Black educators, but I wanted to learn from them. … They would just talk to me about my day and help me find the courage and the energy to go on.

For as long as she could remember, Brittany Smith wanted to be a teacher, like her father. She attended a teaching academy program at New Orleans’ Benjamin Franklin High School. She was a sophomore education student at the University of New Orleans when Katrina hit. Her family evacuated to Texas, and then moved temporarily to Georgia while their house was rebuilt. Returning to New Orleans a year later, Smith completed her degree and became an elementary school teacher. She is now the principal at the Edward Hynes Charter School — UNO.

Brittany Smith teaches a class in May 2003 as part of the teaching academy program at Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans.

A photo of Brittany Smith's family home after the devastation Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

In New Orleans, whenever you ask people what school they went to, they’ll always say their high school. The pride was always there, but now to see it thriving after such devastation in New Orleans, I think it brings about a stronger pride in our resilience, in our ability to say: Even though we felt like [the city] was completely wiped out after the storm, here, my school still stands. They still have kids in the building, and they’re thriving.

Brittany Smith, pictured here as a first-year teacher during the 2008-09 school year.

I feel like everyone came back with the purpose of providing a place of structure and high expectations for learning with input for everyone. So I feel like the charter school system [served us] well.

Smith teared up reflecting on what she wants her students, all of them born after the storm, to know about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

Brittany Smith is the principal of UNO campus of Edward Hynes Charter School.

In education, it was a loss of connection, a loss of stability for some kids, a loss of continuity. I would want them to know how strong the people of New Orleans were. To go through that, and still have the desire to come back and rebuild takes a lot of strength. And to let them know that they are coming out of people who are very strong, which makes them, therefore, a very strong student. And letting them know that there was this huge challenge that students who were once their age overcame. To know that whatever you may face, you can overcome that — I think that’s the biggest thing I want my kids to walk away with.

On her Teach For America application, Stevona Elem-Rogers said she would “teach anywhere.” TFA placed the recent college graduate in post-Katrina New Orleans. The Alabama native taught high school English before getting a job at the Teach For America organization. She now serves as chief of community programs and partnerships at BE NOLA, a nonprofit supporting Black-led efforts to improve education in New Orleans. The organization’s Black Is Brilliant Summit in October will feature sessions reflecting on the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

BE NOLA hosts the Black is Brilliant Summit annually. Above, a scene from the event.

I came in 2007, and I had no context that the Black teachers had been fired. All the teachers had been fired, but specifically, that they were majority Black, and majority Black women. The choice to join this context wasn’t given to teachers on either end — to me, who is coming from college, and to Black veteran educators. Many of them wanted their jobs back and were told, “No, we can’t give you your job back,” and then you find out that somebody has your job who never taught, and you taught for 15 years.

That first year in the classroom, Elem-Rogers said she leaned heavily on the Black veteran teachers at what was then O. Perry Walker High School. They helped her pass her math licensing exam, which she initially struggled with, and encouraged her to enroll in a traditional teacher training program, through which she eventually earned a master’s degree.

Stevona Elem-Rogers speaks at BE NOLA's Black Is Brilliant Summit.

They’re trying to help kids who went through one of the most traumatic natural and unnatural disasters of our time, and they are also helping me, a first-year teacher, have context for where I am and also how to teach. They had the added labor of helping me be a good teacher, on top of trying to rebuild their homes, on top of trying to make sure that the kids who experienced the greatest trauma are taken care of.

They didn’t have a choice in that either, and they don’t get credit, the ones who did get their jobs back, for helping mold a whole generation of teachers.

Gabrielle Birkner is Chalkbeat’s features editor and fellowship director. Email her at gbirkner@chalkbeat.org.

Trump plans to revive the Presidential Fitness Test. Here’s what 3 P.E. teachers say.

2025-08-08T19:03:07+00:00

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Ask just about any American 30 or older about the Presidential Fitness Test, and they are likely to have feelings. A lot of feelings.

Pride among the top performers, who managed to make pull-ups look easy; determination among those in the middle of the pack, as they huffed and puffed their way to a 10-minute mile; and, for many, embarrassment or worse because they could not sustain a flexed-arm hang or reach past their toes in a seated position. Students with disabilities were often left out altogether.

Now, those with memories of taking the Presidential Fitness Test have a new reason to share them: President Donald Trump said he is bringing the test back.

In reviving the test through a July 31 executive order, Trump invoked America’s upcoming 250th anniversary and the Make America Healthy Again Commission, chaired by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The president’s order said declining health hurts national morale and military readiness, and the order establishes a council to devise new versions of the Presidential Fitness Test and the Presidential Fitness Award for exemplary achievement.

A precursor to the Presidential Fitness Test was developed during the Eisenhower administration to ensure that young people were in fighting shape during the Cold War. An early version of the test included a softball throw that mimicked the motion of throwing a grenade.

Shortly before his inauguration, President John F. Kennedy unleashed something of a moral panic when, arguing in Sports Illustrated for national fitness standards, he wrote that American “softness” was tantamount to a national security threat. Trump cited that article in his executive order.

The test and award were phased out during the Obama administration in favor of a more inclusive and holistic program that stressed healthy fitness zones and personal goal-setting. It commonly included the PACER test, an aerobic capacity drill that involves running 20-meter laps at an increasingly fast pace.

Chalkbeat asked three public school P.E. teachers to share their thoughts on the likely return of the Presidential Fitness Test, what should be on it now, and the pros and cons of turning fitness testing into a national competition.

The teachers’ responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Tom Filline, who teaches P.E. to elementary school students in Melrose Park, Illinois, said returning to the Presidential Fitness Test is “a step backward” from the current iteration. Felline, known as The Angry Gym Teacher on TikTok, said he prefers the PACER test to the timed mile, which he struggled with as a kid.

In middle school, we did the mile run, and that’s what I have the most vivid memories of. I was always one of the last, if not the last. I think I ran a 12- or 13-minute mile in middle school. It was humiliating. It’s hard to build up your own confidence when you’re just thinking about that spotlight on you.

If students are constantly being pitted against each other and told they need to get strong so they can fight in a war someday, then what they are going to remember is the trauma, the pressure, the intensity of the moment, instead of, “I scored 20 laps on the PACER test last year, and this year I was able to get 25 or 30 laps.”

These days, kids go through a ton of standardized tests in the classroom, and imagine what it would be like if everyone could see each other’s reading and math scores. It would be a nightmare, and that’s how it is with fitness testing, so you have to be extra sensitive. The Presidential Fitness Test was not sensitive. It was more like a bootcamp experience.

It doesn’t surprise me that this is the approach the Trump administration is taking. Almost every policy decision they’ve made is based on “we need to toughen up.” The message it sends to individual boys and girls is, “you’re not good enough, you’re not strong enough,” when the focus should be on teaching kids to intrinsically value having a good level of fitness so they can live a long life and dream big and do whatever they want to do.

Even when presidents go after education, they usually leave us P.E. teachers alone. Now it’s come for me, and I’m in the position of having to defend the future generation against this whole macho B.S.

Gilbert Schuerch teaches high school P.E. in Harlem. Schuerch, who writes the Substack Fit to Teach, said he’s not convinced that reinstating the Presidential Fitness Test will curb America’s obesity epidemic, but if it “sheds a bit more spotlight on kids working hard on their fitness, I’m not opposed to it.”

It would not surprise me if this administration was looking to create this as a massive national competition again, and there are pluses and minuses to that.

Gilbert Schuerch

If you’re celebrating a kid who runs the fastest mile, that’s great. We recognize valedictorians and salutatorians in our schools all the time. You just have to acknowledge that this kid isn’t any better or more worthy than anybody else because of that. It’s your job as a teacher to emphasize, “Hey, did you improve?” That’s a huge deal, too.

I think people have such a visceral reaction to the Presidential Fitness Test because it may have been their first true introduction to pain. It’s not like failing a math test, where you’re sitting there helplessly and just don’t know what to do. This test is the opposite. You know exactly what to do, and your body is showing you why you may not be able to run as fast as you’d like to.

Maybe you do a pretest. Have them run half a mile, time it, and double it, and that’s their pre-score for the mile. Then you prepare for a month, and see if you can beat your time. And then, even if you’re in the bottom 50% but you improved on your test from a month ago, you can say, “You guys trained, you had a biological response to it, and you improved.” Much like any learning.

If I was going to design the Presidential Fitness Test [for my students], I think the PACER test is a great test. I also think it’s important for kids to learn how to move their body in a really safe way to pick up some weights. There would be some basic standards, like you’re healthy if you can lift your body weight off the ground in a trap bar deadlift. And then on test day, you celebrate the kids who can lift double, triple their body weight, because those are incredible feats of strength. That’s cool stuff.

Alicia Mannino will begin teaching at a K-8 school in Philadelphia this fall, marking her 16th year as a P.E. instructor. She worries that reinstating the Presidential Fitness Test will mean a return to a “one size fits all approach” to fitness that doesn’t work for everyone and could leave students feeling discouraged.

Over my whole career, I never had a coworker be like, “We’ve got to do the Presidential Fitness Test.” I don’t really know any gym teacher that thinks that’s a good idea.

I do kind of make my own fitness test, with push-ups and sit-ups. I work on different varieties of these exercises. There are wider push-ups. There are CrossFit push-ups — it’s not just one size fits all. I don’t like any of the mile runs because some people are born runners, and some people just aren’t. I do the [PACER] beep test, which is also not the best, but these tests don’t count for any type of grade.

Alicia Mannino

I love putting music on for them to relate to, that’s appropriate for them to dance to. If they’re breaking a sweat and doing the right things with the activity or game we’re doing, who am I to say what anyone else’s fitness is like? I like to lift weights. Some people like to dance. Some people like to walk. Gym is supposed to be that place where you go, you have fun, you let loose. So, standardizing a fitness test — we’re setting ourselves up for failure. I think it’s a publicity stunt, honestly.

It’s literally drawing out the athletes, and it’s going to create a line of who can do this the most, who can do it the best, and who can do it the worst. It’s just going to lead to bullying, to body dysmorphia, to low self-esteem.

You tell kids not to bring their phones to class, but they sneak them in no matter what. People take pictures if a kid wears the wrong thing. Now, imagine, on top of everything else, you have someone taking pictures of people in their gym uniforms, on the track, sweating and feeling vulnerable.

Gabrielle Birkner is Chalkbeat’s features editor and fellowship director. Email her at gbirkner@chalkbeat.org.

Border agents detained this Vermont superintendent. This is his story.

2025-07-29T10:00:00+00:00

Wilmer Chavarria was 5 when he began selling bread with his mom on the streets of Ocotal, Nicaragua, in the country’s northern mountains.

“We tried to do whatever we could do to survive,” said Chavarria, whose family had been displaced during Nicaragua’s bloody civil conflict. “That’s how I grew up. So when I think about the communities we are trying to protect now, to me, they’re not hypothetical.”

Chavarria, now 36, leads the Winooski School District in Winooski, Vermont, near Burlington. The district serves about 800 students, including many immigrant families who fled war, persecution, and poverty in their countries of origin.

Last week, Chavarria, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was traveling back from visiting his family in Nicaragua when he says federal agents detained him without explanation for hours at Houston’s international airport. Officials separated Chavarria from his husband and demanded access to his personal and district-issued devices.

Chavarria granted them permission to review his personal data — emails, texts, and photos — but explained that federal law prohibits him from releasing student information without a judicial order or a guardian’s consent. He also cited Winooski’s new sanctuary district policy, which limits federal agents’ access to school buildings and student data.

To gain entry to his devices, “They threatened me with sending me to the FBI, with making me lose my job, with tainting my record, so I would never get another job. They threatened me with extended detention,” he said.

Chavarria said he did not grant agents permission to review district files, but he fears student information may have been compromised while they searched his devices.

A spokesperson with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, did not respond to questions about why Chavarria was detained and whether or not agents agreed not to access student data on his devices. In an emailed statement, the spokesperson said that inspections at ports of entry help combat serious crimes and that travelers are treated with dignity.

“All travelers entering the United States are subject to inspection, a process that can take time depending on the circumstances,” he said. “These essential inspections safeguard national security. CBP cannot disclose information that could compromise law enforcement intelligence.”

In an interview, Chavarria told Chalkbeat about his recent ordeal, why he pushed for Winooski’s sanctuary district declaration earlier this year, and how his detention will change his advice for immigrant families.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why was it important to you to make Winooski a sanctuary school district?

It only made sense for a school district that is the most diverse in the state to also be the one advancing policies that tell our families that we got their backs. And we’re not going to break the law by any means, but we’re not going to willingly compromise their information and their rights.

Not everyone in the community was on board, though. What kinds of pushback did you hear?

There were multiple things, the first one being, “Why are you calling attention to yourself? You’re just going to get Trump angry, and he’s going to take away funding from you.” Our response was, “He’s going to take funding away from us anyway.” So we’re not going to comply in advance. We’re not going to be cowards just because we want to keep the money.

The second argument was that this was not really a problem, that there’s already a law that protects student privacy. They said talking about this only causes more fear.

The whole point of being a different school district is to affirm how our students are unique and make policy and create practices based on that uniqueness. There are things we have to say out loud. And when you say, “You’re just going to create fear,” I’m like, “The people I’m talking to right here in my office are already terrified,” and the least we can do is send a message that we are with you.

You travel to Nicaragua to see your family regularly. What was different this time around?

I usually go through the Global Entry line because for years I’ve had Global Entry. You go for interviews and submit documentation, so I’ve always been a low-risk traveler and have never had to spend more than a few seconds at a port of entry. I didn’t expect anything different, especially being a U.S. citizen and doing this trip multiple times a year.

But this time, they stopped me in the line and called for someone to escort me into an interrogation area. [It seemed] clear that I was in the system before I even got there, but they didn’t disclose the reason.

They start separating me from my spouse, and my husband is saying, “We are married; we should not be separated unless he is being charged with something.” And the officer looks at us like he doesn’t believe us, like with a face of disgust.

I was sent into detention with no access to a phone call, no access to lawyers, no access to communications with anyone, and no access to any of my electronic devices. My husband was sent outside the airport, and every time he tried to come back to look for answers, he was met with extreme verbal aggression and intimidation. He just waited in the baggage claim area for four to five hours with no communication from me, no idea what was going on. That is the definition of psychological terror.

What were your worst fears in that moment?

My family has survived war, survived the worst that humans can do to other people. So being disappeared is not a new thought to me. And so I was less afraid about my physical safety and being disappeared than I was about what would happen to my family and to my spouse, who is outside, terrified, not knowing what’s happening to me. I was afraid of what this would mean for my mother. And I was afraid of what this would mean for the families and the students whose information might be compromised.

You said the officers who detained you tried to access your personal and district-issued devices with protected information on them. What did you tell them?

I continued to say, “I am consenting for you to search through my personal data, from texts to pictures to files to emails. You may not do that for our district data. You may not look through family or student information.”

Did they end up looking through your devices?

They did get access to the devices. They were the ones who finally said, “We promise you we’re not going to look through district files.” So I thought they were going to look through my devices, and I was going to see what they were looking through, but no. They took the devices away, and when they came back, maybe an hour later, I just had to take their word for it. … I’m not going to assume that they didn’t look through district data.

Did you tell your school community about a possible exposure?

After I was released, that same night, I wrote a lengthy letter to the school board, letting them know what had just happened, that the district information may have been tampered with. As soon as I arrived back to Vermont, I began to change my passwords.

The community has been informed … and is rightly very much concerned. The school district is calling on the different authorities to investigate this and to take very seriously the fact that student and family information may have been compromised and accessed illegally, when there was at no point consent for that to be the case.

Will your detention change what you tell your students?

I’m now finding out that my high school students knew better than I did because before this happened to me, I would have students in my office saying, “My family or myself, we’re thinking of traveling, but not sure. What do you advise us?” They saw me as someone who knows about immigration things, because I am an immigrant.

I would say, “Do you have a U.S. passport?” If they said yes, I would tell them, “You have nothing to worry about. You have constitutional rights, and you may not be denied entry into the United States, so please don’t worry so much.” My advice to students is definitely going to have to change because I have nothing but conviction now that having a U.S. passport and being a U.S. citizen doesn’t guarantee you rights.

Can you tell me about what brought many of your immigrant students and their families to Winooki?

We do have a high percentage of immigrant communities who are refugees from areas of conflict, who have gone through political situations that make it no longer safe for them to be in their home country. We have students from multiple African countries that have been or are going through terrible things. We have families from Syria. We have families from Nepal or Bhutan, who may be stateless. We have people from Latin America, fleeing persecution or extreme poverty. We also have people of privilege in their home countries who decided they want to immigrate to the United States and now live in Winooski. So it’s as diverse as it comes.

I know many school districts are doing Know Your Rights workshops for immigrant families. Are you planning anything like that this coming school year?

We’ve done multiple Know Your Rights workshops. We have an education station in the lobby of the district [office] with Know Your Rights materials in all the languages we serve. We have a home visiting program where we send a liaison who knows about rights to people’s homes to have conversations with them. There’s so much that we’ve been doing the past eight months or so that other districts, both in the state and across the nation, reach out to us for advice.

Last month [before I was detained], we were already preparing the agenda for the staff convocation for the opening of the school year. And the main thing, instead of bringing in a speaker, what we are doing is bringing students from different migrant communities to talk about the background of our communities and what geopolitical dynamics brought them here. Every staff member will be asked to rotate through two different language communities and learn about the history of those communities here in Winooski.

As someone who chose to immigrate to the U.S., to make your life here, to make your career here, how are you processing what happened to you last week?

I feel sad because I do not feel safe here. Every chance some people get to tell me that I don’t belong here and that I’m not wanted, they use it. But I feel even more saddened for the country as a whole, even people who are not immigrants, because we’re already in new territory where the character of the nation has been compromised, and where this country is almost unrecognizable. I think it’s not going to be too long until it’s too late to fix.

Gabrielle Birkner is the features editor and fellowship director at Chalkbeat. Email her at gbirkner@chalkbeat.org.

ICE raids, National Guard deployment ‘could not have happened at a worse time’ for L.A. students

2025-06-10T19:55:27+00:00

Speaking from the graduation stage, Kimberly Hernandez told the crowd in Los Angeles’ historic Wilshire Ebell Theatre how honored she was to stand before them “not just as a graduate but as the proud child of immigrant parents.”

It was an honor she shared with many of her classmates at Los Angeles High School’s commencement ceremony Monday afternoon. Some 84% of the students at the city’s oldest public high school identify as Hispanic or Latino, and many are first-generation Americans who learned English as a second language.

A few miles away, their fellow Angelenos had just mounted some of the fiercest resistance to date to President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda. In response, Trump had called in the National Guard against the wishes of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and local officials, and ordered U.S. Marines to the city.

As thousands of L.A. students celebrated their high school graduation in recent days, school officials lamented the timing of the tumult and the Trump administration’s actions. And inside the theater, the graduates wanted to tell a different story about immigrants.

Hernandez’s parents emigrated from Mexico before she was born. “They came to this country with hope in their hearts, sacrifice in their hands, and a determination that no long work hours, discrimination, and no financial hardship could shake,” the senior class vice president told the standing-room only crowd.

She then addressed her mom and dad directly, thanking them in Spanish for always encouraging her to pursue her dreams.

Los Angeles High School graduate Kimberly Hernandez poses for a portrait on a sunny day on Mon., June 9, 2025 in Los Angeles.

Her parents were cheering her on from the audience. But other graduates said that their family members had stayed home, fearing that even commencement ceremonies could be vulnerable to federal immigration enforcement.

Rumors that federal agents had targeted a Los Angeles elementary school’s culmination ceremony on Friday, while false, may have contributed to the fear. So did an immigration raid Monday in a Home Depot parking lot that unfolded within sight of a high school that was hosting a different elementary school ceremony.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has dramatically ramped up immigrant arrests, taking people into custody at routine court hearings and increasing workplace raids. The White House reportedly has set a quota of 3,000 arrests per day as officials seek to carry out the president’s mass deportation agenda.

These tactics are increasingly affecting school communities. In New York City, a high school student from Venezuela was arrested at a court hearing. In Massachusetts, a student born in Brazil was detained on his way to volleyball practice. And in Michigan, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, arrested a high school junior after a traffic stop.

In late May, a Los Angeles-area fourth grade student was detained when he accompanied his father to an immigration hearing. The father and son were separated and taken to Texas. Both are scheduled to be deported to Honduras.

At a Monday morning press conference, Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho said the district is providing legal assistance to at least six district families affected by immigration detentions.

Los Angeles High’s graduation ceremony took place about six miles west of the downtown Los Angeles neighborhood where thousands of area residents have been protesting workplace raids targeting undocumented immigrants. It’s about 20 miles north of Paramount, California, where the presence of federal agents Friday sparked some of the most chaotic confrontations between law enforcement and local protesters in the predominantly Latino suburb.

Trump has ordered 4,000 National Guard members deployed to Los Angeles in a move that Newsom said further inflames the situation. California is suing the Trump administration in an effort to have the National Guard stand down. On Monday, Trump ordered 700 U.S. Marines to Los Angeles and said they would protect federal buildings and personnel.

All of that “could not have happened at a worse time,” Carvalho said at the press conference. More than 100 graduation ceremonies were taking place Monday and Tuesday in the nation’s second-largest school district.

“I’ve spoken with parents who’ve told me that their daughter would be the first in their family to graduate high school, and they’re not going to be there to witness it, because they have a fear of the place of graduation being targeted,” he said. “What nation are we becoming? Who in their right mind would accept that reality?”

Pride, fear, and a call for unity

More than a third of Los Angeles residents are foreign-born, and 1 in 5 residents is either undocumented or lives with an undocumented family member. More than 40% of Los Angeles Unified students are English learners or started their school careers as English learners, an indication that they come from immigrant families.

Carvalho said he had ordered school district police officers to create safe zones around graduation sites and principals to ensure families could enter quickly so that they wouldn’t be exposed while waiting in line. Three district patrol cars were stationed outside the Wilshire Ebell on Monday.

In the theater, Eugenia Lopez acknowledged feeling scared, given the recent immigration raids, but said her love for her college-bound granddaughter was more powerful than her fear. Her granddaughter’s father, however, opted to stay home because “he has no papers, and he is afraid,” she said.

Lopez immigrated to the U.S. about 30 years ago and has worked as a nanny, specializing in infant care. She told Chalkbeat that even if she were forced to return to her native Guatemala one day, seeing her American-born grandchildren achieve makes her own sacrifices worth it.

“I’m so proud to see her graduate, and I hope to see her graduate again,” from college, she said.

Mexican sarapes — or graduation sashes — and colorful leis hang on a moveable cart outside the Los Angeles High School graduation ceremony on Monday, June 9, 2025 in California.

Los Angeles High School’s commencement was one of several graduation ceremonies that Carvalho attended. In a speech, he reflected on his own experience as a formerly undocumented Portuguese immigrant who experienced homelessness and went on to become the first in his family to graduate from high school.

Carvalho said that Los Angeles is “stronger and more unified” because of its diversity. He also apologized to graduates on behalf of those who make their journey ahead more difficult, telling the crowd, “I will never accept anyone trampling on your rights.”

It felt great to hear that a lot of people do care, even if a lot of people discriminate against us.
Jesse Cardoza

Janey Yea Ji Park, the school’s student body president, told the audience what it was like to emigrate from Korea four years ago, knowing little English. “I was terrified to speak,” she said, recalling how she would cry in the school bathroom every day, until she got up the courage to try things she couldn’t yet do.

“Four years later, I’m giving my speech in front of you,” she said. “In English.” Park, who is headed to Vanderbilt University in Tennessee this fall, then thanked her mother, in English and Korean, calling her the “most brave and selfless person I know in the world.”

After each of the roughly 250 graduates had crossed the stage, diploma in hand, the students and their families filtered out of the historic theater and into the afternoon sun. The graduates, holding balloons and bouquets, took photos with family, friends, and teachers.

“It felt great to hear that a lot of people do care, even if a lot of people discriminate against us,” new graduate Jesse Cardoza said.

Like many of his classmates, he said that he owed a lot to his parents, who immigrated to the U.S from Mexico. “They gave me the opportunity to make something better of my life,” he said.

In the fall, he’s going to California State University, Northridge, where he plans to study computer science.

National editor Erica Meltzer contributed reporting.

Gabrielle Birkner is Chalkbeat’s features editor and fellowship director. Email her at gbirkner@chalkbeat.org.

‘Pandemic, politics, parents’: She loved teaching, but after COVID lockdowns, she broke up with it

2025-03-27T12:00:00+00:00

During the pandemic, Chalkbeat published dozens of essays that spoke to the tumult of COVID-era teaching. Lindsay Klemas wrote about teaching on Zoom while caring for a toddler. Canwen Xu recounted what it was like to be a first-year educator at the height of COVID. Walt Stallings wrote about the particular vulnerability of substitutes during school closures, and George Farmer discussed the challenge of building parent-teacher relationships from a distance.

In one memorable Chalkbeat essay, Katie Kraushaar, now Katie Hicks, wrote that the pandemic revealed that “to teach is to martyr.” When educators returned to classrooms after lockdowns, many of them struggled, Hicks said. “Schools are relying on the mental well-being of teachers,” she wrote, “and there’s not enough to go around.”

Two months later, Hicks — then a middle school English teacher in St. Louis — announced on Twitter, now X, that she had reached a tipping point. Her exit after 12 years in the field was part of a broader exodus of teachers following COVID school closures. Several states experienced record teacher turnover, and some schools reported unprecedented mid-year exits.

Hicks said while she still loved her students and her colleagues, she hated what school had become. “I could blame the pandemic, politics, parents or some other word that starts with the letter P,” she wrote on Twitter. “But it doesn’t really matter. I needed to break up with teaching.”

These days, Hicks lives in Florida and works in health care advocacy. Despite her career change, “who I am as an educator shows up every single day: in how I am raising my son, in my current profession outside of education, in how I treat and interact with other people,” she told Chalkbeat. In an interview coinciding with the fifth anniversary of the COVID school closures, Hicks reflected on what communities have come to expect from teachers, how educators showed up for each other during pandemic schooling, and what school leaders can do to support teachers who are facing burnout.

Why did you become a teacher, and what kept you in the classroom for 12 years?

When I was in high school, I took an advanced literature course. A lot of my classmates came to me for help understanding some of the pieces we read, as well as feedback on their writing. I realized I really enjoyed breaking apart literature and explaining it in ways that people understood, so I decided to pursue education as my major.

Love kept me in the classroom for a dozen years. I loved my subject — English Language Arts — and I loved working with middle schoolers. I also loved the unpredictability and everythingness of teaching: No two days were the same. Teaching allowed me to reinvent myself and try new things, as well as the freedom to put my own personal spin on how I taught standard information. It was an avenue of self-expression for me.

How did COVID change what was expected of teachers?

Teachers have always had to wear many different hats: graphic designer, therapist, childhood development expert, etc. COVID increased those hats tenfold. I was responsible for checking on children who had ghosted and hadn’t logged in for weeks to our virtual classes, and I was left to worry whether their absence was due to simply not wanting to attend or if something more traumatic had happened to them or their family.

I had to quickly learn how to make online learning engaging — and it’s very different from in-person teaching. I couldn’t rely on body language, movement, or any other shared experiences to capture my students’ attention. I had to use memes and videos and pray that my persona translated across Zoom. When the 2020-2021 school year started, I had never met my students in person. They only knew me as a two-dimensional video of a person surrounded by the tiny Zoom box. Building rapport required a whole new playbook, but true relationships felt impossible.

How did those changing expectations affect your daily reality?

At the beginning of the pivot to virtual school, teachers showed up. We’re scrappy by nature, innovators who can make a lesson plan out of a few pieces of paper, glue, and a little magic. The pandemic was a challenge: How can we make school feel like a safe space? How can we create community without being together physically?

At first, I, like most of my fellow educators, rose to the challenge. When I realized that independent reading goals were all but moot for students who didn’t have access to fresh, engaging books, I organized a fundraiser to buy a book for each child in my English classroom. I worked with a local bookstore and surveyed my students so that I could efficiently play book matchmaker.

When our school hosted a drive-thru school supplies pick-up, I was able to meet some of my students in real life. I remember lowering my mask briefly to flash a smile as I handed their specially chosen book to them. The smiles I received back were definitely a high point. Things felt manageable then.

But it didn’t last. As we transitioned back to in-person learning, my morale — along with many of my colleagues — began to deteriorate. Our immense efforts during virtual school were quickly forgotten by the public, replaced with scathing criticism. We weren’t being stringent enough on the mask mandates. Or we were reprimanding them for not wearing their masks. We were juggling how to make in-person learning with social distancing rules work while simultaneously preparing engaging lessons for our students who chose to stay virtual for the duration of the 2020-2021 school year.

Every day, I got home from school and lay in my bed to rest my eyes and try to turn my brain off. But the laundry list of what I felt like I should be doing kept growing longer and longer, and the media’s portrayal of teachers didn’t help.

In 2022, you wrote in Chalkbeat that “schools are relying on the mental well-being of teachers, and there’s not enough to go around.” Why do you think the COVID era was so detrimental to teachers’ mental health?

I think COVID showed the cracks in our educational system in a big way.

There was a lot of surface-level support for teachers at the beginning of the pandemic — lots of social media graphics shouting their love for educators and discounts from fast food chains. Very similar to the “normal times” Teacher Appreciation Week, which is typically a lackluster affair for teachers where we’re reminded that we’re about as valuable as a coupon for an ice cream cone.

The best way I can put it: Imagine putting on a performance every single day for a room that is supposedly full of people, but you can’t see them at all. They’re shadowed. You can’t hear their reactions. You have no idea if what you’re saying makes any sense or resonates. That’s what teaching felt like during the pandemic, performing for a black sea of Zoom boxes with their cameras turned off. And it still felt that way when we were back in person: No one was truly “turning their camera on.”

How did teachers show up for each other during this time?

We took turns bearing the load for each other. We shared our snazzy slide decks with each other. When we found a new online tool that worked with virtual teaching, we didn’t gatekeep and instead shared our logins. Though it was easy to forget that teachers also were navigating the impacts of COVID on their personal lives, we recognized the struggle in each other and worked to take things off of the plate of someone who had to quarantine for 14 days due to a family member testing positive. We reminded each other to take breaks, take deep breaths, and take our time trying to figure it all out.

Was there a moment when you realized that it was time to break up with teaching? What emotions came with that decision?

When I first became a teacher, I swore up and down I would not be one of those tired, burned-out teachers who popped in a movie, kicked back, and checked out. I’m proud to say I never got even close to that point, but post-pandemic, there were moments when I understood how and why teachers ended up there. And it wasn’t because they were bad teachers. They were tired.

It felt wiser and better to me to leave before I became truly jaded and disconnected from my why, the reason I stayed in teaching so long. I believed that I made a difference. I believed that what I was doing mattered.

The last day before I left my school for good, my students and fellow teachers threw me a goodbye luau. I wore a silk lei, a grass skirt, and a silly hat. I took pictures with my students and hugged them goodbye. They wished me luck “on the island.” (I was moving to the U.S. Virgin Islands at the time.) I felt that glimmer of making a difference in that last moment before I hung up my teaching hat, and for a second, I wondered if I was making a mistake.

What advice would you give to school leaders who want to support the stretched-thin teachers in their schools?

My best advice is to think big. Look at the systemic issues and seek systemic change, not band-aid fixes that temporarily buoy teachers.

Know that this is much, much harder than putting chocolate on our desks or hiring a massage therapist to sit in the staff room for a day. Self-care is not the answer. I would argue that championing ways for teachers to practice self-care puts the onus back on us to fix a broken system by reducing the real, systemic issues down to simply needing to take a few deep breaths.

We need leaders who are committed to change, even when it’s hard and unpopular. And we need leaders who have been teachers and who understand the unique challenges associated with standing in front of a classroom.

Gabrielle Birkner is the features editor and fellowship director at Chalkbeat. Email her at gbirkner@chalkbeat.org.

Being a first-year teacher is famously difficult. Miss MacNulty gets real about it in this podcast.

2025-03-17T11:00:00+00:00

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Jenna MacNulty woke up at 3:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning with a 102-degree fever and chills. She’d need to take her first sick day as a teacher, but it wasn’t just a matter of sending a quick email and crawling back into bed. So MacNulty, then a third grade teacher at Hamilton Heights Elementary School in Arcadia, got up and typed out detailed instructions for a substitute.

“As an elementary school teacher, your sub plans are, like, seven pages long, because you’re teaching eight subjects and also you’re with the same kids all day. So you know exactly how those kids work, who’s in charge of what, and who does what when,” she told Year One, a podcast documenting MacNulty’s first year in the classroom in Indiana.

Each episode explores a different issue MacNulty encountered during the 2023-24 school year, her first year on the job. In addition to sick days and substitutes, Year One tackles budgeting on a teacher’s salary, supporting students with IEPs, and managing challenging classroom behaviors.

When the curriculum and ed tech company Carnegie Learning, which produces Year One, approached MacNulty about podcasting through her first year, she was nervous. She decided to share her story anyway to help other new educators through their own challenging firsts. “I hope that they take away that it is okay to not be a perfect teacher,” she told Chalkbeat. “In fact, there is no such thing as a perfect teacher. As much as your students are learning year after year, you are learning year after year, too.”

This school year is MacNulty’s second in the classroom, and she’s teaching fifth grade math at Zionsville West Middle School in Whitestown.

The Year One podcast premiered in August, and new episodes, which MacNulty recorded in real-time last school year, drop every few weeks. The next one, on spring challenges, comes out on April 8. MacNulty’s experiences are the focus of the entire season, but the podcast, which is hosted by the journalist Kanika Chadda-Gupta, also features topical interviews with other educators.

MacNulty spoke recently with Chalkbeat about how COVID restrictions affected her teacher training, classroom learning curves that were steep and surprising, and how podcast listeners are responding to Year One.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How and when did you decide to become a teacher?

I’ve wanted to teach for as long as I can remember. I was the kid who would beg to go to school. When I was at home, I would “play school” with my stuffed animals and print out worksheets for them to do. My mom was an educator, and she played a big role in sparking that interest in me.

Majoring in education in college was tough because it was during COVID. A lot of my student teaching and observation opportunities were stripped because of COVID, when my peers and I were not allowed to enter schools or schools were shut down in the first place. Luckily, by the time I was a senior, ready for my official student teaching placement, I was able to experience the full classroom in all its glory. While that showed me what being a teacher was really going to be like — which scared me a little, I won’t lie — it also affirmed my lifelong passion for teaching.

Why did you agree to document your first year in the classroom in a podcast?

I wanted to share my journey as a first-year teacher to document not only the rewarding moments of my first year in the classroom but also the challenges. I felt compelled to break the facade that I saw so much on social media that teaching is just colorful classroom decor and perfectly curated lesson plans. I hope to showcase the realities of being a teacher so educators like me can feel less alone.

Last school year, Jenna MacNulty taught third grade at Hamilton Heights Elementary School in Arcadia, Indiana.

What proved to be your biggest learning curve during your first year in the classroom? What was the most unexpected learning curve?

Behavior challenges. Learning what management strategies work for various groups of students feels like endless trial and error and can be exhausting at times! The most unexpected learning curve, though, was learning how to teach using my school’s curriculum. You really only feel comfortable using whatever your student teaching placement had you use, so to learn a whole new curriculum was an unexpected hurdle. I had to take extra unplanned time to understand how they wanted me to teach it.

The podcast tackles so many of your firsts. How did you choose what topics to cover?

As I was recording the podcast in real-time throughout my first year, certain milestones and topics kept coming up that would raise alarm bells to me as something I wasn’t necessarily fully prepared for coming into teaching. I knew that other new teachers would want to know how a real teacher tackled those things.

For example, I talked about state testing a lot on the podcast — helping students feel prepared while also providing social-emotional support. If the school you’re at emphasizes state testing, then especially as a third grade teacher, it’s going to take up a lot of your time and brain space.

What has been the audience response so far?

I knew it would resonate because it’s what I would’ve wanted as a first-year teacher. It lets new teachers take a peek into my diary, essentially, and so many new teachers are reaching out to me telling me how much the podcast has helped them feel prepared to enter the field. What did surprise me is how many veteran teachers have also been loving the podcast. Many told me that it has taken them back to their early years of teaching and reignited their spark for teaching.

I felt compelled to break the facade that I saw so much on social media...

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?

This year, my favorite lesson to teach has been how to find common denominators while working with fractions. I was able to use storytelling as a teaching strategy, so the idea of making the denominators match really stuck with them. The story I told was about going out on a dinner date and not matching outfits with the person you are going with. Think of denominators as the pants you are wearing, and think of numerators as the shirts. You’re not ready to go out to dinner if you’re wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt and your date is wearing a ski suit! You both need to change to match your fancy restaurant’s dress code.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

The best advice I’ve ever received for teaching is that it’s still going to be there tomorrow. That huge stack of papers to grade, that parent email, that extra data form you need to fill out — it all will be there tomorrow. It is OK if your to-do list isn’t all the way completed by the time you leave school at the end of the day. There are literally only seven hours in your school day. You are human and can only do so much! It took me a couple of months of teaching to understand this advice and truly let myself live it out, but boy has it changed my perception of teaching and the workload it brings!

Gabrielle Birkner is the features editor and fellowship director at Chalkbeat. Email her at gbirkner@chalkbeat.org.

Correction: A previous version of this piece spelled MacNulty’s last name incorrectly. It is MacNulty, not McNulty.

Teacher, bestselling author, and social media star: It’s all in a day’s work for this Utah educator.

2025-01-24T00:09:47+00:00

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A husband, father, and middle school teacher, Marc J. Gregson had a lot on his plate even before adding a second career into the mix. He has taught English language arts at Eastmont Middle School in Sandy, Utah, for the past seven years. In 2024, his dark, dystopian debut novel “Sky’s End” was published to wide acclaim. “Sky’s End,” about a teen named Conrad who lives on an island floating above toxic clouds and under constant threat from sky serpents, made the New York Times Best Sellers list, and a film adaptation of the book is in the works.

Gregson’s second novel “Among Serpents” — part of his young adult trilogy “Above the Black” — hit bookstores this month. The educator and author recently spoke with Chalkbeat about balancing teaching and writing on deadline, the tearful moment that made him something of a social media star, and how he teaches students to find their voice and write without anxiety.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The cover of the fantasy novel "Among Serpents" by Marc J. Gregson

How and when did you decide to become a teacher?

In college, I planned on going into video game design, but I took some adolescent literature courses because I enjoyed them. The professor made us do a lot of public speaking. I was terrified of public speaking, but after I started presenting before the class, my professor pulled me aside and said, “You’re going to make an excellent teacher.” That perplexed me because, for one, I wasn’t taking the class to become a teacher, and, for two, I hated public speaking. However, her encouraging words put a spark in my head that only grew and grew.

And what compelled you to start writing fiction?

When I was in junior high, I was assigned a spooky Halloween short story project. I started writing a story about a killer squirrel that ripped people’s throats out and started the zombie apocalypse. Ha!

Surprisingly, I found myself getting excited about the class because, back then, I didn’t like writing — especially essays — but something about creative writing left me squirming with excitement. Every day, I hurried to class so we could go to the computer lab and I could continue working on the world I was creating. I discovered that writing was incredibly empowering, and my love for writing and fiction blossomed from there.

How do you teach writing to your students?

This year, we’re practicing generative writing, meaning that we do four-minute “quick writes” to start class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. These generative writing sessions are not about quality, but quantity. I tell my students not to worry about grammar or punctuation. This takes the pressure off of them. Each quick write day, I give my students a variety of prompts, from finishing a story, their reaction to an image, or teaching me about something. I’ve found the more students get to practice writing without the pressure of being perfect, the more it helps them find their writer voice.

We also practice learning how to organize essays, including writing thesis statements, topic sentences, and how to elaborate on evidence. One of my favorite projects is our argumentative take-a-stand essays. Students get the freedom to self-select their topic and then create a six-paragraph essay including a counterargument. The topics they choose are always fascinating. I even received one essay where a student argued about which was the best airline!

You went viral when the cover art for your first book was unveiled in front of your students. It was an emotional moment — as the kids cheered, and you teared up. What were you feeling standing up there?

Honestly, it was really terrifying, and I was running on just a few hours of sleep because I was so anxious. When I went onto the stage and the whole school started the countdown, my heart really started hammering. What if I hated the cover?

When I saw the cover and Conrad with his harpoon launcher, everything became real. My book was real. I just lost it. The art was so dang cool! [Artist] Amir Zand did a tremendous job of creating “a living sky,” which is something I asked for, but he also created an image that showed just how big Conrad’s obstacles were in the book.

I’ve always been fascinated with dystopian stories. I’m intrigued by what happens when humanity must rebuild after a disaster.

Your books are dark and dystopian. What inspires these stories?

I’ve always been fascinated with dystopian stories. I’m intrigued by what happens when humanity must rebuild after a disaster. With “Sky’s End” and “Among Serpents,” I was inspired by the idea of an isolated sky. A world of floating islands, but I didn’t want a big mass of land visible beneath them. Only sky. So, I set out to discover why the islands were floating, why there were black clouds below them, and why there were giant monsters. I was also very interested to explore what kind of society would exist under the threat of these giant monsters and above toxic, black clouds.

Let’s talk logistics. How do you balance teaching and writing fiction? Any tips for writers who work a full-time job in another field?

This is tough. I’ve had to really be stringent with my scheduling because now as a published author with contracts, I have deadlines to meet. Plus, I never want to let anyone down with a poorly written book, so I need to dedicate as much time as I can to make my books the best I can.

Last school year, I worked full-time while being a husband and father and also launching my debut novel. I was teaching during the day, often doing author events on the weekends, and writing during the morning and evening. I was exhausted! Creating a routine really helped. I’d wake up at about 5:30 a.m., I’d write for an hour, then head to school at 6:30 a.m I’d try to get grading or lesson plans done before school started so I wouldn’t have to stay late in the building after school. Then, I’d eat an early dinner, and write until 7 or 8 p.m. This schedule was intense, but it let me spend some time with my children before they went to bed. This year, I went part-time teaching, so I come in during the afternoons. This has really helped me have a better work/life balance.

Here’s some advice for anyone pursuing traditional publishing: Set some soft deadlines for yourself, just to see how you handle working under those pressures, because once you’ve signed a contract, those deadlines get serious!

What lessons do you want your students to take from your publishing journey?

When I was getting close to landing an agent, I started telling my students about my journey as a writer trying to get published. I told my students about my rejections because I wanted to show them the power of perseverance. After I landed an agent, I got an email that changed my life while I was teaching seventh period. It was the offer for “Sky’s End.” I started crying, and my students were worried someone said something mean to me.

When I told them that “Sky’s End” was going to be published, the class erupted in cheers. Since then, I’ve visited the high school where many of those students are and they still remember the moment vividly. I hope that moment continues to stick with them while they’re chasing their own dreams.

What’s your vision for the movie adaptation of “Sky’s End,” which is now in the works?

I’m hopeful the film can capture the youthful toughness of Conrad, his duality of being caught between his parents, the horrific roars of the gorgantauns, and the robust personalities of the side characters. The book really played out like a movie in my head as I wrote it, and there are certain scenes in particular that stand out so vividly to me, so I cannot wait to see what the filmmakers cook up!

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

I try to follow the advice that you can’t please everyone. This is true in everything for me, from writing to teaching. For example, in my classroom, we have a fun testing review game I created called the Whiteboard Wars. It’s a huge hit, and kids are always excited to play it. My former students still talk about it. But there are always one or one or two students who groan. I’m pretty sure the only thing that would make them happy is if I had Minecraft loaded up for them! When it comes to writing, it helps me to look up the reviews of my favorite books by other authors. All of my favorite books have their fair share of one-star reviews. Those are great books, but again, you can’t please everyone.

Gabrielle Birkner is the features editor and fellowship director at Chalkbeat. Email her at gbirkner@chalkbeat.org.

Renacer tras la tragedia: la comunidad escolar de Altadena se pregunta cuál es el siguiente paso

2025-01-21T21:27:39+00:00

Read in English

Carlos García Saldaña condujo a través de las calles donde las casas, las tiendas y las iglesias habían sido “borradas del mapa”. El responsable de la red de escuelas charter necesitaba conocer la magnitud de los daños producidos en sus escuelas. Mientras tanto, el incendio del Eaton que había destruído gran parte de Altadena, continuaba extendiéndose por las montañas de San Gabriel.

Cuando García Saldaña llegó a la escuela Odyssey Charter School South, la fachada y la entrada principal parecían intactas. Sin embargo, al mirar hacia la izquierda y hacia la colina, se encontró con una pila de metal retorcido y escombros quemados. Ese era el lugar donde, apenas dos días antes, se encontraban las aulas, oficinas, mesas de almuerzo, juegos para niños y un club para actividades extracurriculares. Los tocones de los árboles, que eran el sitio donde los estudiantes solían sentarse a comer y soñar, continuaban humeando.

“Es simplemente estremecedor y desgarrador”, expresó García Saldaña.

Durante una semana de enero, los incendios forestales avivados por fuertes vientos alteraron grandes áreas de Los Ángeles, provocando la muerte de al menos 25 personas y arrasando con más de 12,000 estructuras. Una docena de escuelas han sido afectadas o destruidas. El peligro no ha pasado, ya que los incendios están solo parcialmente controlados y se espera que ocurran vientos intensos hasta el miércoles.

Cientos de miles de estudiantes se quedaron sin clases. Más de 1,000 escuelas en 19 distritos anunciaron cierres temporales. Esto ocurrió debido a la alta contaminación del aire, las órdenes de evacuación cambiantes y las numerosas familias de estudiantes y personal que habían perdido sus hogares.

El martes 14 de enero, el gobernador Gavin Newsom de California emitió una orden ejecutiva suspendiendo muchas reglas que rigen a las escuelas. El objetivo es que las escuelas puedan funcionar en instalaciones temporales y permitir que los estudiantes se inscriban en otros distritos. Otra medida fue eliminar la obligación de cumplir con los días de clase establecidos por la ley.

En el Distrito Escolar Unificado de Los Ángeles, varias escuelas ubicadas en zonas aún bajo órdenes de evacuación, incluidas tres que fueron consumidas por las llamas en el vecindario de Pacific Palisades, permanecieron cerradas durante la segunda semana del incendio.

Mientras el incendio de Palisades seguía amenazando la región, el Distrito Escolar Unificado de Santa Mónica-Malibú retomó actividades en Santa Mónica el 14 de enero. Sin embargo, las escuelas en Malibú permanecieron cerradas un día más por cortes en las carreteras y en el suministro de electricidad y gas. Con el incendio de Palisades tan cerca, muchas familias locales se vieron obligadas a evacuar. El distrito publicó una guía de recursos para las familias que se enfrentan a esta situación y confirmó que monitorea la calidad del aire de las instalaciones gracias a sus sistemas de filtración de aire.

Carlos García Saldaña, director ejecutivo de Odyssey Charter Schools, a la derecha, saluda a una familia en el Boys & Girls Club de Pasadena, California.

El incendio de Eaton, que inició el 7 de enero, golpeó con fuerza al Distrito Escolar Unificado de Pasadena, dejando serios daños en cinco de sus escuelas en Altadena. Entre ellos se encontraban un Middle School del distrito, un Elementary School cerrado y tres escuelas charter, incluida Odyssey South, conocida como OCS South. El distrito anunció que sus escuelas permanecerán cerradas esta semana, pero ofrecerán aprendizaje en línea autodirigido y un programa de comida para llevar.

Una comunidad muy unida se enfrenta a múltiples pérdidas

La rutina de García Saldaña está ahora marcada por apoyar a las familias y al personal que quedaron sin hogar, mientras busca un espacio para que los estudiantes puedan regresar a la escuela lo más pronto posible.

Odyssey cuenta con dos escuelas charter en Altadena: OCS South y Odyssey Charter, la escuela original de la red, que apenas sufrió daños, limitados a algunos árboles caídos y residuos de humo. La red charter, fundada en 1999, actualmente educa a 830 alumnos desde el kindergarten hasta el octavo grado.

En 2018, OCS South abrió sus puertas y, hace tres años, se trasladó a su ubicación actual, en los terrenos de la que fuera Edison Elementary School. Desde entonces, la comunidad de Odyssey ha estado trabajando arduamente para convertir el campus en su propio hogar: pintando murales, creando jardines y renovando los juegos infantiles antiguos.

Durante el fin de semana, García Saldaña envió un video a las familias en el que describió los daños en los edificios de las dos escuelas. La escuela Odyssey Charter necesitará una limpieza a fondo, mientras que la sede de OCS South sufrió una pérdida casi total. Sin embargo, en el video, resaltó que lo que realmente importa en Odyssey no son las instalaciones, sino “la comunidad que hace que sea un lugar tan especial y único, que todos amamos profundamente”.

Emmanuel Barragán, quien tiene tres hijos estudiando en OCS South, coincidió con lo expresado en el video al dejar a su hija y sus dos hijos en el Boys & Girls Club de Pasadena. “[Garcia Saldaña] sabe el nombre de cada niño y entiende sus necesidades”, afirmó. “En ocasiones, da la impresión de que la escuela actúa como un padre más”.

Odyssey se asoció con el Boys & Girls Club para ofrecer cuidado infantil gratuito mientras siguen cerradas las escuelas. Además, el club notificó a otras escuelas de la comunidad que sus puertas estarían abiertas para cualquier niño en edad escolar que necesite un lugar seguro. Las instalaciones ofrecieron programación durante todo el día: actividades artísticas y manualidades, deportes y juegos educativos. Además, no cobró la tarifa habitual de ingreso.

Para la media mañana del lunes 13 de enero, más de 200 estudiantes ya habían llegado. García Saldaña, conocido entre los estudiantes como “Doctor Carlos”, estaba en la puerta recibiendo a las familias de Odyssey. Mientras los estudiantes ingresaban, les daba abrazos y conversaba con los cuidadores sobre el estado de sus viviendas.

Imagen del campus de la escuela Odyssey Charter School South, afectado por el incendio.

De una encuesta dirigida a 650 familias de Odyssey, se obtuvieron más de 300 respuestas. Entre ellas, 83 hogares de estudiantes reportaron una “pérdida total de su vivienda y pertenencias”. Otros mencionaron que todavía no sabían cuál era la condición de su hogar. Cuatro empleados de Odyssey, incluido el director de la escuela Charter, también perdieron sus viviendas debido al incendio.

El 8 de enero, alrededor de las 3:45 a.m., Marcellus Nunley, oriundo de Altadena, evacuó con su familia. Solo unas horas después, su hogar ya no existía. “Todo se derritió”, comentó su hijo de 5 años, quien cursa kínder en Odyssey Charter. Nunley dejó a su hijo en el Boys & Girls Club para tener tiempo de gestionar las complicaciones de haber perdido su casa en el incendio. Debía contactar a la compañía hipotecaria, comunicarse con el tasador fiscal del condado y adquirir esas pequeñas cosas esenciales en las que nunca había tenido que pensar, hasta que el fuego las consumió.

El impacto de las pérdidas se intensifica por el cariño que los residentes de Altadena sienten por su comunidad, famosa por sus acogedores bungalows, senderos para caminatas pintorescos y tiendas locales muy apreciadas. “Altadena es una comunidad diversa, y eso es fantástico. Es un lugar donde se puede caminar, pasear a los perros, es una combinación de lo urbano con lo rural”, expresó Nunley. “Es un gran crisol de culturas”.

Antes del incendio del Eaton, Altadena tenía una población de aproximadamente 42,000 habitantes. A partir de la década de 1960, muchas familias negras que no podían comprar casas en otros barrios de Los Ángeles encontraron en Altadena un lugar para establecerse. Actualmente, los residentes negros constituyen cerca del 18% de la población. Alrededor de un tercio de los residentes son hispanos, un 40% son blancos, y también hay una presencia significativa de familias asiático-americanas y de origen multirracial.

El cuerpo estudiantil de Odyssey es un reflejo de la diversidad racial de la comunidad. Además, cuenta con una diversidad económica, con aproximadamente 30% de los estudiantes calificados para almuerzos gratuitos o a bajo costo, según García Saldaña.

Caitlin Reilly tiene dos hijos, Townes, de 10 años, y Ellar, de 8, que asisten a OCS South. Cuando el incendio del Eaton obligó a otra familia de Odyssey a evacuar en la madrugada del 8 de enero, fueron a la casa que Reilly comparte con su pareja y sus hijos, situada en una parte de Pasadena fuera de la zona de evacuación.

Los restos humeantes de la escuela Odyssey Charter School South en Altadena, California.

Durante cuatro días, ocho personas —cuatro adultos y cuatro niños— compartieron el espacio de una casa con dos habitaciones y un baño. Los niños disfrutaron de una gran pijamada, mientras los padres revisaban constantemente sus dispositivos en busca de noticias sobre los incendios que arrasaban Los Ángeles.

Según cuenta Reilly, las familias de Odyssey se conectaron mediante redes sociales y cadenas de mensajes de texto, para ofrecer ayuda y solicitar apoyo según sus necesidades. Organizaron encuentros en interiores para que los niños pudieran jugar sin exponerse al aire contaminado por el humo. También reemplazaron los bates y guantes de béisbol de los jugadores de la liga infantil afectados por el incendio y coordinaron colectas de mochilas y útiles escolares. La escuela, por su parte, puso en marcha una campaña en GoFundMe para respaldar los esfuerzos de recuperación.

La devastación del incendio deja incertidumbre sobre los próximos pasos

La casa de la familia evacuada en Altadena aún se mantiene en pie, pero el vecindario está seriamente afectado y aún bajo órdenes de evacuación esta semana. Han conseguido un alquiler temporal, pero Reilly teme que muchas familias de la zona que perdieron sus hogares tendrán dificultades para encontrar alojamiento.

“El temor es que pase algo similar a lo de Katrina”, dijo. El huracán de 2005 arrasó con Nueva Orleans, destruyó o dañó gran parte de las escuelas y muchos residentes tuvieron que abandonar la ciudad. “Nos preocupa que tantas familias que son parte de nuestra comunidad se vean obligadas a irse porque no hay dónde puedan vivir”.

Esto afectaría gravemente a Odyssey, dado que su comunidad es muy unida y su financiamiento está vinculado a la cantidad de estudiantes matriculados.

“Se ha hablado con entusiasmo sobre limpiar y reconstruir, pero en términos logísticos de lo que viene después, no creo que nadie lo tenga claro todavía”, comentó Reilly, miembro de la Junta de Gobierno de las Escuelas Charter Odyssey.

Mary Scott, madre de Charlie, un estudiante de 10 años en OCS South, comparte el temor de una posible disminución en los estudiantes matrículados de las Escuelas Odyssey. “La realidad es que no todas estas familias tienen una buena situación económica, y ahora deben encontrar un lugar donde rentar, reconstruir y, al mismo tiempo, pagar sus hipotecas”, explicó. “Me preocupa las familias que tienen que mudarse. Sería una pérdida enorme”.

Los líderes de Odyssey reconocen que aún hay muchas incógnitas: la fecha de reapertura de las escuelas de manera presencial, los lugares donde se impartirán las clases, cuántas familias se quedarán en la zona y cuántas decidirán mudarse. Además, queda por definir hasta qué punto será necesario depender del aprendizaje remoto.

Scott dijo que espera no tener que recurrir al aprendizaje remoto, pues lo encontró muy complicado durante los cierres escolares por COVID, cuando su hijo cursaba el kínder y el primer grado. No obstante, si tuviera que decidir entre la educación en línea y dejar OCS South, probablemente se quedaría, porque “no quiero abandonar nuestra comunidad”.

Según García Saldaña, los años de la pandemia de COVID le dejaron importantes lecciones sobre el aprendizaje en línea. Por ejemplo, funcionan las lecciones más cortas y las pausas para moverse, pero no funciona pedir a los niños que permanezcan sentados por dos o tres horas seguidas. Aún así, su prioridad actual es encontrar una ubicación temporal donde los estudiantes puedan volver a las clases presenciales lo antes posible.

A la vez, intenta determinar la disponibilidad de los 115 empleados de Odyssey, ya que muchos aún están desplazados. En cuanto a los estudiantes, ha solicitado a los maestros que contacten a cada uno ya que, “es importante que haya una voz conocida al otro lado del teléfono que pregunte: ¿Qué necesitas? ¿Cómo está tu familia?”, señaló. “Ante todo, todos somos humanos”.

Traducido por Flavia Melisa Franco

Gabrielle Birkner es editora de reportajes y directora de becas en Chalkbeat. Puedes contactarla por correo electrónico a gbirkner@chalkbeat.org.

An Altadena school community digs out from the ashes and wonders what’s next

2025-01-15T03:02:26+00:00

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Carlos Garcia Saldaña drove past block after block of homes, businesses, and churches “wiped off the face of the earth.” The Eaton fire that had consumed large parts of Altadena was still burning in the San Gabriel Mountains. The charter network leader needed to see what remained of his schools.

As Garcia Saldaña approached Odyssey Charter School South, the facade and main entrance appeared intact. But as he looked left and up the hill, he saw a heap of twisted metal and charred rubble where, two days earlier, there had been classrooms, offices, lunch tables, play structures, and an after-school clubhouse. The tree stumps where students used to sit and eat and dream were still smoldering.

“It’s just jarring and heartbreaking,” Garcia Saldaña said.

Over the past week, wind-whipped wildfires reshaped wide swaths of Los Angeles, claiming at least 25 lives and destroying more than 12,000 structures. A dozen or more schools have been damaged or destroyed. The danger is not yet past, with fires only partially contained and high winds forecast through Wednesday.

Hundreds of thousands of students were out of school last week as more than 1,000 schools across 19 districts announced temporary closures due to poor air quality, shifting evacuation orders, and the many educators, school staff, and student families who had lost their homes.

On Tuesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order suspending many state rules governing schools to make it easier for schools to operate in temporary buildings and for students to enroll across district lines, as well as waiving requirements about instructional days.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest, a handful of schools in areas still under evacuation orders, including three that were burnt in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, remained closed early this week. The district announced that students from two ravaged Palisades elementary schools would resume classes Wednesday from other district buildings on the city’s west side.

Santa Monica-Malibu Unified opened its Santa Monica campuses on Tuesday but kept schools in Malibu closed through Wednesday due to road closures and power and gas outages. Many local families have had to evacuate because of the proximity to the Palisades Fire, and the district published a resource guide for affected families. Santa Monica-Malibu Unified also said it was monitoring air quality and that its facilities had air filtration systems in place.

Odyssey Charter Schools Executive Director Carlos Garcia Saldaña, right, greets a family at the Pasadena Boys & Girls Club on East Del Mar Boulevard in Pasadena, California, Jan. 13, 2025.

In Pasadena Unified, the Eaton Fire, which started on Jan. 7, badly damaged five of its Altadena campuses, which housed a district middle school (whose student-led relief efforts went viral), a defunct elementary school, and three charters, including Odyssey South, known as OCS South. Pasadena Unified said its schools will remain closed through this week but that it will offer self-directed online learning and grab-and-go meal service.

Close-knit community faces widespread losses

Now Garcia Saldaña’s days are consumed with checking on the many families and staff who lost their homes and looking for a space where students could return to school as soon as possible.

Odyssey operates two Altadena charter schools, OCS South and Odyssey Charter, the network’s original school, which sustained minimal damage — some downed trees and smoke residue. The charter network, founded in 1999, now serves a total of 830 students in transitional kindergarten through 8th grade.

OCS South opened its doors in 2018 and relocated to its current location, on the grounds of the former Edison Elementary School, three years ago. Since then, the Odyssey community has set out to make the campus its own — painting murals, planting gardens, and replacing old play structures.

Over the weekend, Garcia Saldaña sent a video message to families describing the damage to buildings at the two campuses. Odyssey Charter will require a major clean-up; the OCS South location was a near-total loss. But Odyssey isn’t about buildings, he said in the video, but about “the community that makes us such a special and unique place that we all love so much.”

Emmanuel Barragan, a father of three OCS South students, echoed that point as he dropped off his daughter and two sons at the Boys & Girls Club of Pasadena on Monday. School leaders know the name of every single child and what they need, he said, noting, “Sometimes, it almost feels like the school is a co-parent.”

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Odyssey partnered with the Boys & Girls Club to offer free child care this week. The club also alerted other local schools that its doors would be open this week to any school-age child in need of a safe place to be. The clubhouse was providing all-day programming, including arts and crafts, sports, and educational games, and waiving its drop-in fee.

More than 200 students had arrived by mid-morning on Monday. Garcia Saldaña, better known to students as Dr. Carlos, was at the door to greet Odyssey families. He offered hugs as students made their way inside, and he checked in with caregivers about their housing status.

A view of the fire-damaged Odyssey Charter School South campus, Jan. 9, 2025, in Altadena, California.

A survey of Odyssey’s roughly 650 families had yielded more than 300 responses, with 83 student households reporting “full loss of home & belongings.” Others said they didn’t yet know the condition of their home. Four Odyssey employees, including the Odyssey Charter principal, also lost homes in the fire, Garcia Saldaña said.

Altadena native Marcellus Nunley evacuated with his family around 3:45 a.m. on Jan. 8. Within hours, their home was gone. “Everything melted” was how his 5-year-old son, an Odyssey Charter kindergartener, put it. Nunley dropped off his son at the Boys & Girls Club so he could spend the day managing the logistics of a family displaced by fire: calling the mortgage company, reaching out to the county tax assessor, and procuring all of the little life necessities he hadn’t given much thought to until they went up in flames.

The losses are exacerbated by Altadena residents’ love for their neighborhood, with its charming bungalows and craftsman homes, picturesque hiking trails, and beloved local businesses. “Altadena is a diverse community, which is wonderful. It’s a walking community, it’s a dog walking community, it’s town and country,” Nunley said. “It’s a great melting pot of society.”

Before the Eaton Fire, about 42,000 people resided in Altadena. Many Black families who faced housing discrimination in other Los Angeles neighborhoods purchased properties in Altadena in the 1960s. Today, Black residents make up about 18% of the population. Roughly a third of Altadena residents are Hispanic, about 40% are white, and there are many Asian American and biracial families.

The Odyssey student body reflects the community’s racial diversity. It’s also economically diverse, with about 30% qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch, according to Garcia Saldaña.

Caitlin Reilly’s two sons, 10-year-old Townes and 8-year-old Ellar, are students at OCS South. When the Eaton Fire forced another Odyssey family to evacuate early on Jan. 8, they drove to the house Reilly shares with her partner and kids, located in a section of Pasadena outside of an evacuation zone.

The smoldering remains of Odyssey Charter School South, on Jan. 9, 2025, in Altadena, California.

For the next four days, the four adults and four children huddled together in the two-bedroom, one-bathroom home. The kids had an epic sleepover, and the parents stared at their devices, searching for the latest news about the fires engulfing Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, Odyssey families connected on social media and text chains, offering up what they could and asking for what they needed, Reilly said. They arranged indoor playdates so kids could be together without breathing the smoke-filled air. They replaced baseball bats and gloves for Little League players who had lost theirs to fire, and they organized backpack and supply drives. The school launched a GoFundMe campaign to support recovery efforts.

Fire’s devastation leaves uncertainty about next steps

The evacuated family’s Altadena house is still standing, but their badly damaged neighborhood remained under evacuation orders this week. They secured a temporary rental, but Reilly fears that many local families who lost homes will have a hard time finding a place to stay.

“The fear is that it will be like Katrina,” she said. The 2005 hurricane devastated New Orleans, damaged or destroyed most of its school buildings, and scattered many of its residents. “We’re worried that we’ll lose so many families that are part of the community because there is nowhere to house them.”

That would hit Odyssey hard, given the closeness of its community and the fact that its funding is tied to its enrollment numbers.

“There’s been cheerleading about cleaning up and rebuilding, but as far as logistically what comes next, I don’t think anyone knows yet,” said Reilly, who serves on the Odyssey Charter Schools board.

Mary Scott, whose 10-year-old son, Charlie, attends OCS South, also fears dwindling enrollment at Odyssey. “The reality is, these aren’t all well-off families, and now they have to find a place to rent and rebuild while also having to pay their mortgages,” she said. “I do worry about the families that have to relocate. It would be a tremendous loss.”

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Odyssey leadership acknowledges how much remains unknown: when schools will reopen in person, where classes will be held, how many families will stay local and how many will resettle elsewhere, and the extent to which the network will need to rely on remote learning.

Scott, for one, said she’s hoping to avoid remote learning because it was so difficult during COVID school closures when her son was in kindergarten and first grade. But if she had to choose between online schooling and leaving OCS South, she said would likely stay put because “I don’t want to abandon our community.”

Garcia Saldaña said the COVID years taught him a lot about what works for online learning (shorter lessons, movement breaks) and what doesn’t (asking kids to sit still for two to three hours at a time). But he’s mostly focused on finding a temporary physical location so students can return in person as soon as possible.

At the same time, he’s still figuring out the availability of Odyssey’s 115 employees, many of whom remain displaced, and asking teachers to reach out to each of their students.

“It’s about having a familiar voice on the other end of the line saying, ‘What do you need? How is your family?’” he said. “We are all human, first and foremost.”

Gabrielle Birkner is Chalkbeat’s features editor and fellowship director. Email her at gbirkner@chalkbeat.org.

What election issues matter most to young first-time voters? The economy, Gaza, book bans, and more

2024-11-05T19:41:34+00:00

This story was published in collaboration with Headway, a new initiative at The New York Times. Chalkbeat and Headway have been posing questions about the presidential election to educators and high school students since February. We have heard from nearly 1,000 students and 200 teachers across the nation.

When Chalkbeat teamed up with Headway at The New York Times to ask young people how they are thinking about the upcoming presidential election, we received hundreds of responses. First-time voters told us about the issues that will be top of mind when they cast their ballots. What we heard was all over the map, literally — gun violence and housing affordability in their communities, statewide restrictions on abortion access and what books they can read in school, and, at the national level, immigration policy and the future of democracy. Other respondents prioritized global issues, including climate change and the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

In the historically close matchup between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump, the youth vote and the extent to which young people turn out on Nov. 5 could help determine the election’s outcome. When the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School polled eligible voters ages 18 to 29, 56% said they “definitely” plan to cast their ballot. Four years ago, according to a Tufts University analysis, 50% of Americans in that age bracket voted, the third-highest turnout since the voting age was lowered to 18, in 1971.

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We wanted to better understand the issues driving young people to the polls this year. So we asked six first-time voters to tell us what issues they’ll be thinking about as they fill out their ballots. Here’s what they told us, edited for length and clarity.

Will you be a first-time voter this year? We want to hear from you at community@chalkbeat.org and DearHeadway@nytimes.com. Tell us the issue most influencing your ballot.

The issue driving my vote: Gun violence

Anabelle Sanchez, 18, graduated from Jones College Prep in Chicago and now attends Michigan State University in East Lansing. She plans to study political theory, constitutional democracy, and economics and hopes to pursue a career in politics, spurred on by her experiences growing up as a Latina. “As a minority, I often felt I didn’t have leadership that looked like me. That’s why I want to go into politics,” Anabelle said. For now, though, she’s “ thankful to have the power to vote.”

Anabelle Sanchez graduated from Jones College Prep in Chicago and now attends Michigan State University in East Lansing. Gun violence is top of mind for her this election season.

My junior year of high school, I went to a mall. I was looking through the clothing racks, and all of a sudden, I saw a store manager quickly run to the front to shut the doors.

I had never experienced something like this, but I instantly knew what was happening. Because I live in America. People started yelling to just run to the back of the store. There were dozens of us packed in a back room, like sardines. It was the most horrific 30 minutes of my life because we knew someone out there had a gun.

Thankfully, no one was harmed. A SWAT team evacuated us, but just the idea of facing death was very frightening. It hit me even more because not long before, there was a [deadly] shooting at a mall in Allen, Texas.

Now, at Michigan State, I have two classes in the building where the campus shooting occurred last year, and three students lost their lives. In one of my classes, I have to walk right past the area of the shooting.

Whether you live in a neighborhood where hearing gunshots is common or, quite frankly, whether you leave your house and just go shopping or go to school, we’re forced to think about gun violence and how the issue impacts us and others.

The issue driving my vote: The economy

Owen Riesenberg, 18, is a recent graduate of Woods Cross High School near Salt Lake City and an automotive technician at a Ford dealership. Owen plans to vote in next month’s presidential election “even though there’s an almost guaranteed outcome here,” since Utah has thrown its support behind the Republican candidate for president in every election for more than 50 years. “I still want to make my voice heard,” he said.

Owen Riesenberg is a recent graduate of Woods Cross High School near Salt Lake City and an automotive technician. His No. 1 election issue is the economy.

If you watch Fox News or Newsmax, they’ll talk about how Kamala is going to destroy the economy. In left-wing media, they talk about how Trump is a monster going to destroy democracy. I think most of what has America polarized is just how fervently the media on both sides of the aisle are fighting each other.

I like to stick to podcasts and more long-form news. I usually have one earbud in and listen to the radio as I’m working on my vehicles for the day. My routine, every morning, is to listen to something like Joe Rogan’s podcast, and then, later in the day, to listen to Ben Shapiro on The Daily Wire.

The No. 1 issue for me is definitely the economy. I pay so much for gas. I pay so much for food. I can’t move out of my parents’ house because rent here is a minimum of $1,500, typically.

I’d like the tax on gas heavily reduced. I’d like regulations for small businesses just starting up to be less hefty. I think that interest rates should be brought down.

I want the government to be as uninvolved in my life as possible. I don’t want any handouts. I don’t want checks for disasters. I don’t want a widespread government health care plan. I want to be able to work for myself and not be taxed so much to pay for government programs that somehow benefit me. I’d rather just keep that money and decide where it goes.

The issue driving my vote: Book bans

Emily Muñoz, 18, graduated from Harry S. Truman High School in the Bronx and is a first-year student at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. She’s always loved to read and, growing up, enjoyed books in which she felt represented and those in which she got to learn about different cultures, backgrounds, and gender identities. “I genuinely believe that reading is how you discover more about the world and yourself,” she said.

Emily Muñoz graduated from Harry S. Truman High School in the Bronx and is now a student at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. This year's election has her thinking about book bans.

Something that’s really personal for me as a Black woman is book banning, the banning of African-American courses, and just this erasure of Black history. AP African-American Studies classes have already been banned in Florida, and that’s deeply concerning.

I have it a lot easier because, in New York City, banned books are celebrated. I’m grateful that I’ve been able to grow up like this. But then, I worked as a teen reading ambassador at the New York Public Library. We held a Freedom to Read contest, and as I was scoring the submissions, I heard from a lot of students in conservative states where they can’t read certain books in their classes. Most of the books were about race or LGBTQ issues. That’s when it really became clear to me.

One banned book that comes to mind is “All American Boys” by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. It’s this story about a young Black boy who gets assaulted by the police. It’s told from the boy’s perspective and also from the perspective of a white boy who [witnesses the beating]. Reading it, I was wondering: Why would someone want to ban this book? It is a genuinely good book.

Honestly, teachers don’t get paid enough to deal with all of this. I think they should have the opportunity to teach freely and without as much restriction.

The issue driving my vote: the Israel-Hamas War

Samantha Sandhaus, 18, graduated from Central High School in Philadelphia and attends Lehigh University, where she is pursuing an integrated degree in engineering, arts, and sciences. In high school, she led a nonprofit called Feeding Philly that fights food insecurity, an experience that “was important in making malnutrition a vital issue to me.”

Samantha Sandhaus, third from left, graduated from Central High School in Philadelphia and attends Lehigh University. What is happening in Gaza is driving her vote this election.

In high school, I got to help with work addressing food insecurity in Philadelphia. I’ve seen the effect of malnutrition, especially on young children, and it made me want to do all I can to get involved civically and make sure we have policies that center on social justice.

This past year, I’ve seen a lot on social media on global health inequities, especially around nutrition, and the photos of children in Gaza who are hungry and hurting due to the Israel-Hamas war have really affected me. That’s motivating me to research the presidential candidates’ stances on the issues and whether or not they are putting forth ideas that could actually help bring the conflict to an end and provide for families in the horrors of war.

I know this is a very contentious issue for Americans to speak about, but I’ve been to a fair amount of different peaceful protests and marches, and a lot of young people I hear speak are saying that this is an issue that weighs heavily on their minds and will affect their votes.

In a swing state like the one I’m in, I know how much my vote matters. And I feel like America’s role in the Middle East is going to continue to be crucial. I really want to hear the candidates talk about this as something they will prioritize, that they have a path toward ending this conflict, saving lives, and aiding the humanitarian crisis that is happening right now.

The issue driving my vote: Abortion access

Torrance Johnson, 18, graduated from Clarenceville High School in Livonia, Michigan, and is a first-year student at Wayne State University in Detroit. As a child, he dreamed of growing up to become president of the United States. These days, he’s more interested in pursuing a career in music production. He’s casting his first vote in part to affirm his belief in abortion rights. “I always tell people: If that’s what you’re against, you don’t have to do it,” Torrance said. “The choice should be left up to the person it directly affects.”

Torrance Johnson graduated from Clarenceville High School in Livonia, Michigan, and is now a student at Wayne State University in Detroit. Abortion access is an important election issue to him.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it got me thinking: If this is what our government is doing, do I want new people in government or not?

I’m very pro-choice, but it’s not just about pro-life, pro-choice, or about abortion, no abortion. It’s about having options. I’m pro having options. It has to do directly with my disability and not always having options.

I’ve been using a wheelchair for 14 or 15 years. And throughout my life, I’ve found struggles getting into some places because they only have stairs. If it’s on the second floor, I can’t go. One time, my school had a field trip, and because I couldn’t participate in the activities they were doing, they excluded me — rather than saying, you can join, but since you can’t do this, maybe you can do that instead.

The thing about America that people try to copy or mimic is the idea that it’s the land of opportunity. Do we want more opportunities or less opportunities, more options or less options? It all starts with Roe v. Wade.

Let the people have their choices — it’s none of my business.

Ever since I was a child, I couldn’t wait to turn 18 so I could vote. My American government professor recently took a poll, and in a class of about 50 people, nearly everyone said they were voting in the upcoming election. If that’s any sign of what 18-24-year-olds will be doing, it will be a good turnout. We have to be the change we wish to see, and we do that by voting.

The issue driving my vote: U.S. foreign policy

Alexander Cisneros, 18, a Colorado native, graduated from Denver East High School and attends the University of Colorado Boulder, where he is studying history. His family would often spend time visiting relatives abroad when he was growing up, and he credits that travel with widening his view of the world and his place in it. Alexander said that people often assume that younger people like him “only care about the issues at home that clearly impact our daily lives,” but it’s foreign policy that “I’ll most have in mind in November.”

I have family all over the world — in Greece, Mexico, and Canada. I grew up experiencing those different cultures, and when I was at home a lot during COVID, I got really into watching history documentaries.

That led me to love learning about World War II and the Cold War. One of the big things with World War II was that the United States wasn’t involved in international affairs as much as it should have been. If it had been more involved, then perhaps we wouldn’t have had as devastating a conflict during that time. So, I think anything to try and prevent another conflict or end conflicts more quickly while making sure that autocratic countries don’t continue to expand is something pretty important to me.

I want to see the U.S. stay a part of the United Nations and NATO. I think it is really important that the United States continues to support Ukraine. If we were to abandon Ukraine, then that would send a signal to the world that, yes, autocratic powers can expand, which would be particularly worrying when it comes to China and Iran.

Caroline Bauman is the deputy managing editor for engagement at Chalkbeat. Reach her at cbauman@chalkbeat.org.

Gabrielle Birkner is Chalkbeat’s features editor and fellowship director. Reach her at gbirkner@chalkbeat.org.

Student Voices 2024-25: Meet Chalkbeat’s teen fellows

2024-10-01T18:33:55+00:00

Chalkbeat is thrilled to announce our new Student Voices Fellowship class. During the 2024-25 academic year, we’re welcoming high school students from New York City and, for the first time, from Detroit. The fellows, whose impressive bios are below, will participate in journalism and writing workshops and share their original essays on Chalkbeat. Be sure to look out for their bylines in the coming months.

Fall Fellows

Bryan Campbell, Detroit

Bryan Campbell (he/him/his) is a junior at Cass Technical High School in Detroit. He is a founder and secretary of his school’s Black Student Union, a board member of Cass Tech’s Future Changemakers of America club, and a conservation intern with the Detroit Zoological Society. Over the summer, Bryan studied Blackness, oppression, and race at the Telluride Association Summer Seminar in Maryland. In his free time, Bryan enjoys playing guitar and writing about politics through an intersectional lens.

Ocean Lin, New York City

Ocean (he/him/his) is a junior at Staten Island Technical High School. He lived in Fujian, China, for five years before moving to Brooklyn. In school, he is the co-president of the handwriting club and an editor of the student newspaper, The Tech Times. Outside of school, he volunteers for RBH, a non-profit organization that supports immigrant students. Ocean also started the Instagram poetry account Tide Tales to give marginalized groups, such as LGBT Asian Americans, a platform for creative self-expression. He wants to pursue a career in chemistry and make a difference in the world. At Chalkbeat, he hopes to share authentic stories despite living in a society that expects conformity.

Awa Sangare, New York City

Awa (she/her) is a junior at Columbia Secondary School in Manhattan. She is passionate about writing and her school’s debate club. In her free time, she enjoys learning about other cultures and watching movies, her favorite being “The Princess Diaries.” In the future, Awa aspires to make a positive impact on the world through her work. At Chalkbeat, she hopes to improve her writing and wants others to learn from her experiences.

Spring Fellows

Charisma Holly, Detroit

Charisma is a senior at the Detroit Edison Public School Academy High School. She is a spoken word artist, public speaker, and advocate for after-school programs. Charisma was an opening speaker, alongside Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, during the Uniroyal Promenade Grand Opening in 2023. In addition, she performed an original spoken word poem, entitled “Outreach,” at Michigan’s 2024 Afterschool Day at the state capitol. Charisma also spends her time working in theater design and tech, volunteering with academic and holistic enrichment programs for students, and advocating for funding for art programs. Charisma writes to inspire, share her voice, and make a difference in the world around her.

Anika Merkin, New York City

Anika (she/her/hers) is a junior at Brooklyn Prospect High School. She is passionate about issues that impact young women, such as mental health, reproductive rights, and menstrual equity. She is a founding member of a youth group that trained teens to advocate for menstrual equity. Anika participated in a leadership program at a sleepaway camp in the Adirondacks for two summers, and this past summer was selected to join The Moth Story Lab, a storytelling workshop for high school students. In her free time, she enjoys designing and creating pottery, watching and analyzing films, and spending time with friends and her cat, Lily. Inspired by her own experience with school refusal, Anika wants to shed light on the challenges teens struggling with anxiety and OCD face.

Ginger Roger Ceballos, New York City

Ginger (she/her) is a junior at Manhattan Early College for Advertising. During high school, she is eager to find her “spark” and explore different opportunities. She embraces the principle that “rejection is redirection,” which has helped her navigate the ups and downs of her teenage years. Growing up in New York City has fueled her desire to travel around the world and meet people from different cultures. She spent this past summer working at Clarify News, the youth journalism program of City Limits, where she wrote about some of the struggles that New Yorkers face. Ginger can’t wait to see what the future holds. Still, she loves to live in the moment — and hopes her writing and photography will motivate others to do the same.

More information on Chalkbeat’s Student Voices Fellowship program is available here. You can read the work of our past fellows here.

In Tim Walz, many teachers see themselves — and an opportunity

2024-08-10T00:59:13+00:00

Teachers see something in Tim Walz.

They notice how plainly he speaks so that everyone can follow along. They watch as he ad-libs to comedic effect on the stump. They say he exudes empathy, and not just in the “I feel your pain” way of many politicians.

In the newly minted vice presidential candidate — a former high school history teacher and varsity football coach — they see themselves. Many of them also see an opportunity.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy against former President Donald Trump is groundbreaking in many ways. But her selection of Walz as a running mate is momentous in its own, more nuanced way. It’s been more than 50 years since a K-12 teacher has appeared on a major party ticket (Former President Lyndon Johnson taught high school before entering politics.)

Chalkbeat asked teachers around the country what Walz’s candidacy means to them. Some said it is a chance to show that teachers are leaders with valuable skills, like being adaptable and able to multitask. Others said Walz could help people better understand what teachers do, in contrast to those who disparage public educators. Others still see his entrance into the race as a moment to get serious about education policy issues, such as teacher pay, class sizes, and curriculum.

Here is what they told us, in their own words, edited for length and clarity.

A teacher who ‘knows what needs to be said’

Ashley A. Kannan teaches history and coaches girls’ basketball at Percy Julian Middle School in Oak Park, Illinois. He is the faculty sponsor for Rainbow Tribe, the school’s LGBTQIA+ safe space.

Ashley A. Kannan

When Walz was introduced at the Philadelphia rally, a former student messaged me, “In the best way possible: Tim Walz reminds me a bit of you.”

I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, and then I just watched him, and she was right. It struck me to see a history teacher, a coach. In 1999, he founded his school’s first LGBTQ safe space. In 2016, I did that at our school. There are just these weird parallels.

One thing he’s representing quite well is the idea of teachers as leaders. We don’t see ourselves as leaders. We’ll lead children. We’ll lead content, but then we default back to “I’m just a teacher.” He doesn’t. He leans into it.

I heard that when he was vetted [by the Harris campaign], one of the questions they asked was how skilled is he at using a teleprompter, and he said: I don’t use a teleprompter. You’re going to have to teach me how to do that. This is a teacher who knows what needs to be said, whether it’s on the field or in the classroom. He doesn’t need it written out on cue cards or teleprompters because it’s coming from the heart, it’s coming from the mind, and it’s coming from the soul.

There’s ‘symbolism’ in choosing Walz

Dr. Geneva Mayne is a teacher and a speech and language pathologist who works with students in the special education program at New Rochelle High School in New Rochelle, New York.

Geneva Mayne

What’s happening in public education now, unfortunately, is that many people feel trapped in a profession that has gone through a lot of negative backlash. A lot of teachers feel the skills they have are non-transferable to another profession. And here’s a person who successfully took his skills to run for political office multiple times and is now being selected as a vice presidential nominee. That was really good for educators to see because our skills are valuable.

I think the one thing that stood out to me was when people were commenting on how plainly he spoke because politicians, who are typically lawyers, might speak in a way that’s more academic than the average person can consume. Tim Walz is like, These guys are just weird. It was so direct and to the point and clear. [As a teacher], you have to take concepts that are hard for students and transfer it to them in a way that they can understand.

I watched while Kamala Harris was introducing him, and she was speaking about how he was the faculty advisor of the gay-straight alliance at his school decades ago before gay marriage was even legalized, so it was still very stigmatized. That’s empathy. As a teacher you have to have empathy and social-emotional skills, to realize when students are struggling socially and to help them in their development.

For a lot of teachers, myself included, it’s the symbolism as well. Just like [First Lady] Jill Biden, who continues to teach, is showing that teachers are professionals who should be respected, Tim Walz can do the same. Teachers have valuable skill sets, they have a lot to offer, they’re civil servants, they’re national heroes. Those are all symbols that need to be reinforced instead of the nasty tone that has been directed toward teachers over the last several years.

Could this move the needle on teacher pay?

Kathryn Vaughn teaches art at Brighton Elementary School in Brighton, Tennessee.

Kathryn Vaughn

Walz wasn’t really on my radar until a few weeks ago, when he started kind of petitioning to be vice president. I was at home in between my two jobs, teaching summer school and managing my town’s pool. I was mopping the kitchen floor, and I just stopped dead and walked into the living room because there was this voice coming from my television talking about paid leave, about IVF, talking about vouchers and funding our public schools and raising teacher pay. I was like, “Oh my gosh, who is this person who is saying these things that are of utmost importance to the life I’m having here in Tennessee as a teacher?”

When he was explaining his hair and how he looks older, he says something like: Well, have you done cafeteria duty for 20 years? It definitely speaks to teachers. Any teacher, regardless of your political affiliation, knows and loathes cafeteria duty. It’s just such a visceral experience. You’re dealing with kids who have been cooped up all day and are coming into the cafeteria to socialize. You have kids who are fighting and messes and opening things and microwaving stuff.

All of my [teacher] friends are just really excited about the Walz pick. They’re like, maybe this could do something nationally about teacher pay. I’ve been involved in the Teacher Salary Project, advocating to raise the minimum federal teacher salary to $60,000. We need to make teaching a desirable, worthwhile field again. When I started teaching in 2006, almost no one had a second job. Now, 18 years later, I don’t know a single teacher in my district who doesn’t have a second job or three side hustles.

‘They are going to know what we go through’

Sonia White taught at public elementary schools in New York City for about 30 years. In retirement, she works as a substitute teacher in the Bronx.

Sonia White

There’s a lot that affects teacher burnout. People don’t respect teachers because we’re not out there earning giant paychecks. We’re not CEOs, but we taught CEOs. We taught the presidents. We taught the vice presidents. We taught Beyoncé. I think Tim Walz is going to let us be recognized more because he knows what it is to be a teacher.

You know what I said: ‘At last, they know what we’re going through. Someone went through it already, and they are going to know what we go through.’ The class sizes, the parents coming in — and the parents, they want help, too — and you have to know how to communicate with them, and, apparently, he did.

I think people don’t understand that we’re not in it for the money. We’re in it to help. I fell in love with teaching when I was in the third grade. I saw someone who looked like me, and she was teaching. I never forgot her name, Mrs. Van Dyke.

I’m happy that Tim Walz is there, and he’s still a teacher standing up there. He’s teaching people to inspire and to do something you believe in. And I believe in him. I hope I get to see him in person, and I will yell out, ‘I’m a teacher, too — I’m so happy.’

Now, let’s talk ‘specifics’

Sean Muggivan teaches math to high school seniors at New Harmony High School in New Orleans.

Sean Muggivan, left, with his wife and twins.

As a teacher, you get kind of tired of everyone feeling sorry for you. Just the way people always talk about teachers, ‘Oh you’re doing a thankless job, it’s so rough, you’re not appreciated, you’re underpaid.’ The best thing you can do is push that stuff out of your head, and just focus on doing your job, setting up your little world in your classroom, and finding your own sense of accomplishment in your career.

Over the past nine years, I’ve seen a lot of teachers tossing in the towel — saying I can’t do this job anymore. It’s too hard. I’m not sleeping. The classes are too big. It’s an exhausting job. But the idea that there could be someone possibly in the White House who did the job seriously for so long, who is not just sitting at the table, but holding a great deal of power at that table is just mind-boggling, to be honest.

I hope Tim Walz will talk specifics about what a class needs to be successful when you have diverse learning needs, exceptionalities, and language barriers. Can one adult professional in the classroom wear all those hats, or do there need to be other supports in there? What does a curriculum look like? What curriculum is going to move students who are many, many years behind? And to ask these questions in a way that starts to get solutions-focused — not just saying, oh, it’s hopeless.

Gabrielle Birkner is Chalkbeat’s features editor and fellowship director. Contact her at gbirkner@chalkbeat.org.

Educators: What do you think about former teacher Tim Walz joining the presidential ticket?

2024-08-06T22:09:26+00:00

Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday selected Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor and a former high school history teacher and football coach, as her running mate on the Democratic ticket. Unlike many past vice presidential candidates, Walz did not attend law school and instead earned two education degrees and for a decade taught at a Minnesota high school. Following this historic selection, Chalkbeat wants to hear from teachers: How do you feel about Walz joining the presidential ticket, and what education issues do you hope he’ll raise on the campaign trail?

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Chalkbeat’s 2024-25 Student Voices Fellowship applications are live. Apply here.

2024-08-02T18:46:13+00:00

Calling all public high school juniors and seniors in New York City and Detroit!

Chalkbeat is thrilled to launch applications for its 2024-25 Student Voices Fellowship. This school year, we will be running our teen essay-writing program in New York City and, for the first time, in Detroit.

We launched the paid fellowship three years ago to hear from teens, in their own words, about their lives and schools. Since then, fellows have explored the immigrant student experience from multiple angles, opened up about facing racism and Islamophobia, told us about the joys of embracing who they are, and described what it’s like to navigate grief and loss while still in high school.

You can read all of our past fellows’ essays here.

During the 2024-25 school year, Chalkbeat will select six Student Voices fellows. We will choose four fellows (two per semester) in New York City and two in Detroit (one per semester). We are offering the fellowship in the fall and again in the spring. Applicants can indicate which semester they prefer. The fellowship will be virtual, with opportunities to meet in person with staff members in our New York City and Detroit bureaus.

Fellows will receive a $1,000 stipend.

If you are interested in applying, meet the eligibility criteria, and can commit to the required work outlined in our FAQ section, please fill out the application below.

Applications are due Friday, August 30, 2024, at 11:59 p.m. ET.

FAQ

Am I eligible for the Student Voices Fellowship?

The 2024-25 fellowship is open to 11th and 12th graders attending public or charter high schools within the city limits of New York City or Detroit.

What do Student Voices fellows do?

Fellows will publish two personal essays on Chalkbeat, workshopping those pieces alongside Chalkbeat journalists and writing coaches. (We encourage applicants to read the work of our previous fellows, as that’s the best way to understand what Chalkbeat fellows do.) Program participants will also attend occasional Zoom workshops with Chalkbeat staff, journalism educators, and guest speakers.

How do I know if this opportunity is right for me?

We look for candidates who are interested in journalism and storytelling, who are collaborative, and who are eager for feedback on their writing. Applicants should have compelling personal stories to share and be willing and able to publish them under their byline. We do not run anonymous or pseudonymous pieces.

Do I need journalism experience to apply?

No previous experience is required.

Since this fellowship marks the first time many teens are publishing their work, Chalkbeat offers guidance and support throughout the writing and editing process.

What’s the time commitment?

Fellows are expected to commit 1-2 hours a week to this extracurricular fellowship during the fall or spring semester. Program participants should be able to manage their own time and meet writing deadlines.

If you have questions not answered here, please email gbirkner@chalkbeat.org.

About Chalkbeat

Chalkbeat is the nonprofit news organization committed to covering one of America’s most important stories: the effort to improve schools for all children, especially those who have historically lacked access to quality education. We are mission-driven journalists who believe that an independent local press is vital to ensuring that education improves. Currently in eight locations and growing, we seek to provide deep local coverage of education policy and practice that informs decisions and actions, leading to better schools. Read more about our mission and values. We are committed to a diverse newsroom. Read our antiracism statement.

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Student Voices: All about our teen fellowship

2024-02-14T22:36:57+00:00

In an essay for Chalkbeat, Chicago Student Voices fellow Ajibola Junaid took on common misconceptions about where she lives and learns. “Think my South Side high school is a ‘bad school’?” she challenged readers. “Think again.”

Dashawn Sheffield, another fellow, wrote about how his struggles with grief and depression during COVID inspired him to create a class about mental health at his Newark, New Jersey, high school. “I wanted to develop something that would help me feel better and empower others,” he wrote.

Since Chalkbeat launched its paid essay-writing fellowship in 2021, participants have also explored the immigrant student experience from multiple angles, opened up about facing racism and Islamophobia at school, and told us about the joys of embracing who they are.

Their perceptive, poignant, and profoundly hopeful essays show readers what it means to be a teenager today. These pieces expose inequities, challenge ideas about students and schools, foster empathy and understanding, and celebrate the power of community.

Student perspectives should inform debates about schools and education policy, and Chalkbeat is committed to showcasing them on our site. (Our student essays have also appeared in The New York Daily News, The Chicago Sun-Times, El Diario, Crain’s New York, and the Newark Star-Ledger, among other publications.)

Since this fellowship marks the first time many teens are publishing their work, Chalkbeat provides guidance and support throughout the writing and editing process. Student fellows participate in workshops to learn journalism fundamentals and hear from guest speakers.

Student fellows receive a $1,000 stipend.

You can read much more student work here.

You can apply for the 2024-25 fellowship here.

You can learn more about our student fellows, past and present, below:

2023-24 fellows (NYC and Newark)

2022-23 fellows (NYC and Newark)

2021-22 fellows (Chicago, Newark, and Philadelphia)

If you or someone you know is interested in becoming a Student Voices Fellow, our next round of applications opens in August.

This program has been made possible by a generous grant from the Pinkerton Foundation. If you are interested in bringing Student Voices to your community or have any questions not answered here, please email gbirkner@chalkbeat.org.

2024-25 Fellowship requirements:

You attend a public or charter high school in New York City or Detroit.
You are interested in journalism and storytelling.
You have compelling personal stories to share and are willing and able to publish them on Chalkbeat under your byline. (We do not run anonymous or pseudonymous pieces.)
You can manage your time, meet deadlines, and commit 1-2 hours a week to this extracurricular fellowship during the fall or spring semester.
You are collaborative and eager for feedback on your writing.

Here’s the 2024-25 application. The deadline is Aug. 30, 2024, at 11:59 p.m.

Student Voices fellows will:

Publish two personal essays on Chalkbeat.
Workshop your pieces alongside Chalkbeat journalists and writing coaches.
Attend Zoom sessions with Chalkbeat staff, journalism educators, and guest speakers about the craft of reporting and writing, among other topics.
Learn to improve your storytelling ability across formats and platforms, including audio.

About Chalkbeat:

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization committed to covering one of America’s most important stories: the effort to improve schools for all children, especially those who have historically lacked access to a quality education. We are mission-driven journalists who believe that an independent press is vital to ensuring that education improves. Currently in eight locations and growing, we seek to provide deep local coverage of education policy and practice that informs decisions and actions, leading to better schools. Read more about our mission and values here. We are committed to a diverse newsroom. Read our antiracism statement here.

Teen stories: What our student fellows shared in 2023

2023-12-27T13:00:00+00:00

This year, Chalkbeat’s Student Voices fellows continued to impress us with their resonant real-life stories about what it means to be a high school student today. Our essay-writing fellowship, now in its third year and open to public school students in New York City and Newark, New Jersey, aims to amplify the voices of teens, who have written powerfully about everything from immigrating to America to facing down bigotry in school to benefiting from restorative justice programs. Here’s a sampling of their recent work:

The pandemic defined my high school class in painful and precious ways

The COVID lockdown came midway through Jasmine Harris’ freshman year, and it kept her home all of sophomore year. When she and her classmates returned to campus as juniors, “conversations were short and awkward,” as teens readjusted to in-person learning and socializing, Jasmine explained in this Chalkbeat New York essay about how the pandemic affected her high school career. By senior year, though, Jasmine and her classmates were determined to make up for lost time. She wrote that they often reflect on how “even though it is sad that this is our last year together, it feels like we’re just getting started. That feeling has also bonded us and made us more appreciative of our time together.”

Losing my Spanish feels like losing part of myself

Ashally De La Cruz was born in the Dominican Republic and spoke only Spanish until she started kindergarten in New York City. Once in school, she quickly picked up English and began using her Spanish less frequently. Her hardworking mother, however, never had the chance to learn much English — and that created a language barrier between mother and daughter. “After 12 years in the U.S., I’m always forgetting Spanish words,” Ashally wrote in Chalkbeat New York, explaining that she sometimes relies on Google Translate to communicate with her mom. “In these moments, it can feel like I’m losing an important part of myself — the Dominican part.”

The racist bullying at school was unbearable, so I decided to speak out

Facing racist bullying, David Malakai Allen worked to change the reality for Black students at his high school. In this Chalkbeat Newark essay, he opened up about his efforts — founding the Black Student Union and advocating for change at the district level. Despite being an ambivalent public speaker, David offered searing testimony before the Newark Board of Education. He wrote: “When it was time to decide if I was going to speak up or remain silent, I remembered a quote by the incomparable writer Zora Neale Hurston: ‘If you are silent about your pain, they will kill you and say you enjoyed it.’”

What a cultural exchange program taught me about responding to racism

New York City native Vanessa Chen recently took part in a cultural exchange alongside students from across the U.S. and Europe. She was the only young woman of Chinese descent in the program — something she didn’t think much about until she found herself on the receiving end of racist remarks. These incidents left her so filled with emotion that, at first, she struggled with how to respond. “I had always imagined that I’d demand an apology … ,” she wrote in this Chalkbeat New York essay. “The fact that I stayed silent and laughed still feels disappointing.” Eventually, Vanessa learned how to push back against the racism in her midst.

Here’s what it was like for me to transition from ESL to mainstream classes

2022-23 Student Voices Fellow Karen Otavalo

After moving to the United States from Ecuador, Karen Otavalo was placed in ESL classes for students learning English. But when it came time to transfer to mainstream courses alongside fluent English speakers, Karen found herself newly afraid to speak aloud. She wrote about the rocky transition in this Chalkbeat Newark essay, explaining, “Language acquisition is rarely a linear path. More effort doesn’t always translate into more progress. Instead, I had to learn to be patient, and that isn’t an overnight transformation either.”

Gabrielle Birkner is the features editor and fellowship director at Chalkbeat. Contact her at gbirkner@chalkbeat.org.

This Bronx teacher launched a filmmaking program. His students just helped produce a feature film.

2023-12-04T10:00:00+00:00

Benjamin Ducoff’s students often come into his filmmaking class thinking only about the actors in front of the camera and the director calling the shots. They haven’t necessarily considered who is operating the cameras, who is holding the boom microphones, and who is transforming an empty space into a believable set.

By the time the class wraps, though, they’ve learned about everyone and everything involved in filmmaking. That’s because Ducoff’s lessons aren’t just theoretical; he and his students are making actual movies.

“I have a rule for my students: If they write a script that’s five pages or less, I’ll produce it,” said Ducoff, who teaches at Health, Education and Research Occupations High School, better known as HERO, in the Bronx. “That’s the source of most of our content.”

Recently, the teens in his classes were involved with an even more ambitious project. They worked on a feature film set. The finished product, “Yaniv,” premiered at the Cleveland Jewish Film Festival in October, with additional screenings scheduled around the country in the coming months.

Ducoff stars in the comedy-thriller hybrid about a high school teacher who needs to raise $10,000 to produce the school’s spring musical. To make some quick cash, he and a colleague join a secret gaming ring run by a group of Hasidic Jews in Queens. Their card game of choice is called Yaniv, and the two teachers hatch a plan to stack the odds in their favor.

Ducoff’s students worked on the set, earning money as they operated equipment, assisted talent, and even acted in minor roles.

“Yaniv” marks Ducoff’s first feature film, which he wrote and produced with his film director friend Amnon Carmi.

Ducoff said he knew the experience of working on a film set would be life-changing for his students.

But “I never would have guessed how obsessed they became with the project’s success,” said Ducoff, who spoke recently to Chalkbeat about how he got HERO’s filmmaking program off the ground, the technical and life lessons teens learned while making “Yaniv,” and the power of asking for what you want — even if it sounds a little ridiculous.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How did you decide to become a teacher?

I was a struggling artist in New York City, landing writing and acting gigs here and there but mainly working in restaurants. One day, I saw an ad for a part-time tutoring position at a Huntington Learning Center and was hired on the spot. I hated the job, but I instantly connected with the students, who were hilarious and insanely creative. From there, I became a New York City Teaching Fellow, and I’m still teaching at the same school I started at.

Why did you start teaching high school students about filmmaking — and what’s involved?

Filmmaking, and production in general, is the ultimate educational tool. It requires collaboration, a strong vision, sweat equity, and commitment. And at the end of the process, there is a tangible product worth celebrating. My greatest memories as a teenager come from my experiences doing theater, where my peers and I put all of ourselves into the productions of plays and musicals.

In 2021, when I was working as a history teacher, I pitched the idea of a filmmaking program to my principal, who enthusiastically facilitated its creation and helped me partner with the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development to get students paid for their work and training on set. Over the course of two and a half years, I guided my students through the production of a movie, from a half-baked idea to a final cut.

My biggest challenge lies in finding the right place on set for each student, based on their interests and skill sets. Most come in with the notion that filmmaking is simply acting and directing, and are surprised to discover all of the different jobs and skills that are necessary for a project to get off the ground. Then, we have to find a workflow that can keep us on schedule and under budget. As a producer, I do everything to get film projects completed, and I know that I have passed this obsessive nature onto my students, for better or worse.

HERO high school student and assistant director Zack Robles, left, with teacher Ben Ducoff on the set of another student film, "BurgerFake."

Tell me about the premise of “Yaniv,” and about what role your students played in bringing it to life.

“Yaniv” is the story of a high school teacher in the Bronx who, after learning that the budget for his spring musical has been slashed, resolves to earn the money by infiltrating an underground card game run by Orthodox Jews. I wrote the script with my best friend and creative partner, Amnon Carmi, who is an accomplished director and has taught production to my students at HERO.

As we began pre-production of the film, we knew that we wanted to involve our students. What better experience is there than working on the set of a feature film?

Spread out across the art, camera, and sound departments, these students were instrumental in bringing “Yaniv” to life. We had students operating the boom mic, assisting our camera operators, dressing sets, and helping talent get where they needed to go. They helped our production designer decorate the school building we were filming in. It was the middle of summer, so when we arrived most walls were bare, and the building looked like more of a storage facility than a public high school. Our students immediately got to work, creating posters, ads, graffiti, and homework assignments. They even littered trash in all the right places.

When we needed to shoot scenes in crowded spaces, they recruited their friends to come play background [characters], and a few of them were even cast as students in the film. In fact, four of our students are now Screen Actors Guild, or SAG, eligible.

What life and work skills did your students learn while making “Yaniv”?

They learned so much! Alongside the hard skills of audio mixing, camera setup and operation, and production design, students also became proficient in the areas of teamwork, organization, creative problem-solving, and conflict resolution. I will say the biggest difference between my students and students who don’t take film is that my students know how to use spreadsheets to communicate and track progress.

What surprised you about working alongside your students to create this film?

The biggest surprise for me was students’ enthusiasm. There were so many instances where I had to remove students from the set because it was getting too late, and they were working too many hours! They were having so much fun and showed a level of professionalism that I never would have expected from a high school student. By the time we wrapped production, I was not surprised when a few of our graduating students were offered jobs on other shoots.

What’s something happening in the community that affects what goes on inside your classroom?

This is actually the basis for a course, an after-school offering, and a summer internship program that I currently teach at HERO, called Filmmaking for Social Justice. Students examine issues that face the community and then we pick up the camera and document how it affects life at school. Some topics that are currently being developed include smartphones in schools, bullying, dollar stores, community assets, and public housing.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

The best advice I ever received came from my great-grandmother: “No one ever died from asking.” All these projects were pipe dreams until I asked for help. If you have a crazy idea, ask around. Somebody will be down to help you. Honestly, that’s really the theme of “Yaniv.”

Gabrielle Birkner is the features editor and fellowship director at Chalkbeat. You can reach her at gbirkner@chalkbeat.org.

Student Voices 2023-24: Meet Chalkbeat’s newest fellows

2023-10-12T12:00:00+00:00

As Chalkbeat’s Student Voices program enters its third year, we are thrilled to welcome our 2023-24 fellowship class.

In the coming months, these six high school students will publish essays on Chalkbeat about their lives and schools. This year’s Student Voices fellows — all public school students in New York City and Newark, New Jersey — will also be learning about journalism and taking part in writing workshops.

The published work of all previous fellows is compiled here.

Readers can expect to see the bylines of Chalkbeat’s new fellows on our pages soon. In the meantime, meet these impressive teens and hear what they hope to accomplish at Chalkbeat.

Fall Fellows

David Malakai Allen, Newark

David (he/him/his) is a senior at University High School in Newark. He is a social justice advocate, a public speaker, a proud member of the Newark Anti-Violence Coalition, and the founder of the Black Student Union at his former high school. David recently attended the international politics program at Harvard Summer School, and he aspires to one day become a criminal defense and civil rights attorney. James Baldwin’s nonfiction masterpiece “The Fire Next Time” inspired David to write, and he loves to read the works of Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Audre Lorde. “I write because the plight of a Muslim is to stand up for those who are not able to stand up for themselves,” David said. “My words are a medium for accomplishing that.”

Alexander Calafiura, New York City

Alex (he/him/his) is a senior at East Side Community High School in Manhattan. He spent the first 10 years of his life in Shanghai, China, before moving to the United States in 2017. Alex is the co-founder of his school’s mock trial team and intends to use his voice to bridge inequalities in the criminal justice system. To learn more about the law, he has interned at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Alex also loves writing and is co-editor-in-chief of his school’s newspaper, the East Sider. In his free time, Alex enjoys folding origami, teaching himself math, and reading nonfiction. At Chalkbeat, he hopes to hone his writing skills and use his voice as a tool to empower and inspire others.

Emily Munoz, New York City

Emily (she/her) is a senior in the law program at Harry S. Truman High School in the Bronx. She’s a staunch intersectional racial and gender equity advocate and a published and award-winning artivist poet. Emily is the co-chair of the 2023-24 Youth ACT! cohort of A Call to Men and a 2023 Young Scholar at the African American Policy Forum. After high school, she plans to major in political science with a concentration in African American studies and to one day work for the U.S. government. In her free time, Emily enjoys hosting the student politics podcast “The Round Table,” eating soul food and seafood boils, and listening to Ice Spice and Nicki Minaj. At Chalkbeat, she hopes to bring awareness to intersectionality and help readers understand what it means to be a Black girl in an inequitable school system.

Spring Fellows

Shamima Ahmed, New York City

Shamima (she/her/hers) is a senior at Central Park East High School in Manhattan. She is a secretary of her school’s National Honor Society, a member of the volunteer organization Glamour Girls, and a current OppNet Fellow. Shamima studied coding and product management through America on Tech, and she did a case study on Doc Martens during a summer program at the private equity firm Permira. A mental health advocate, she loves to journal, walk, reflect, and spend time with the people she loves most.

Alexa Brown-Hill, Newark

Alexa is a junior and taking her first year of college courses at Bard High School Early College in Newark. She is driven by a powerful sense of social responsibility and advocates for such issues as curbing bullying, fostering body positivity, and encouraging self-care. Alexa has held positions with a local chapter of the NAACP, is a member of the National Society of High School Scholars, and founded her school’s step team. In addition, she is a makeup artist and finds peace in faith and music. Alexa has a passion for literature and hopes to become a published author, sharing her personal stories with the world. At Chalkbeat, she wants to write about how students’ home lives can affect their education and show schools how to support children facing adversity.

Miriam Galicia, New York City

Miriam (she/her/hers) is a senior at the Institute For Collaborative Education in Manhattan. When she graduates in June, she will go on to become a first-generation Mexican American college student. She comes from a family of hard workers who never say her dreams are impossible. Miriam is the co-president of her school’s student council and works to ensure that school can be a welcoming experience for all. She loves to find ways to improve the community and herself. Over the summer, Miriam honed her leadership skills at the Sadie Nash Summer Institute. At Chalkbeat, Miriam hopes to strengthen her writing and learn from her fellow writers, mentors, and educators.

She teaches recent immigrants. Here’s how she makes her NYC classroom a safe space to learn English.

2023-09-21T15:22:16+00:00

It was in the days and weeks after 9/11 that Elana Rabinowitz, then working in advertising, decided to become a teacher. “When the towers collapsed and the tone of the city changed, I did, too,” she said. “I wanted to help people, desperately.”

Rabinowitz had worked abroad and already had a certificate in teaching English to speakers of other languages, so she put her skills to work in the classroom. More than two decades on, she is an ESL teacher and coordinator at Middle School 113 The Ronald Edmonds Learning Center in Brooklyn.

In recent years, many of her students have been recent arrivals to the United States — children from asylum-seeking families who fled violence and economic hardship. Some of them had been out of school for months or years as they made their way to the U.S.

Rabinowitz wants them to feel comfortable sharing their stories and identities. As soon as a new student is placed in her class, Rabinowitz buys a flag from their country of origin. But she wants them to feel at home in New York City, too, so she decorates her classroom with cozy secondhand furniture she finds at stoop sales.

When New York City Public Schools started earlier this month, an estimated 21,000 new migrant children had enrolled. As a longtime teacher of new arrivals, Rabinowitz spoke to Chalkbeat New York about how educators and families can help support English learners in their school communities.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Elana Rabinowitz with some of her students.

What drew you to teaching English learners?

I was already on an international path. I had been in the Peace Corps in Sri Lanka. I had run a language school in Ecuador. I had become proficient in both Sinhala and Spanish. I knew that learning the local language was the key to connecting with people. I wanted to do that for someone else.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why?

Anything that involves writing, even if it is just a picture and a word. I love when the students at every level can express themselves in prose. I find that poetry is often the universal form of communication, and anything from an acrostic poem about their ancestors to a sensory poem about their homeland always gives me the chills. It is giving students a voice who may not feel that they have one in another class, and their work is often spectacular.

Back in 2019, a student of ours was one of only 33 Latino students accepted to Stuyvesant that year, amid the controversy around specialized high school testing. I immediately wanted to know how he felt about it and was able to work with him to get his first op-ed published. He even got paid! Now that was a great day.

What’s something happening in the community that affects what goes on inside your classroom?

The recent arrival of asylum seekers. The most recent arrivals have banded together to become fast friends. It’s funny how many teachers and staff suddenly know Spanish now and use it to make our students feel comfortable. When new arrivals are placed in my classroom, I immediately order flags from their countries.

Last year, two of the girls grabbed their flags and started singing Ecuadorian and Venezuelan pledges of allegiance in Spanish. It was beautiful. I try to incorporate aspects of their cultures in my classroom whenever possible. Many of my students are fantastic artists, so they paint scenery from their countries, and we display it in my room to remind them of their homes. I also add pictures of activities we do together to let them know that this is their home, too.

What new issues arose at your school or classroom last school year, and how did you address them?

Having such a large group of newcomers arriving at once. We now had students who spoke little to no English sitting in classes. Many had missed months, if not years, of school and came with so many needs. A group of us banded together to make sure they had appropriate clothing, school supplies, and emotional support. It was the heart of winter, and kids were coming to school without socks or jackets!

This support is ongoing. Once funding was established, we were able to create morning, after-school, and Saturday academies specifically to assist our newcomers in their transition. The students would learn English by doing — making waffles, playing soccer and basketball, painting pictures, and doing neighborhood walks, which ended in ordering pizza from a local pizzeria. They particularly liked learning how to order pizza!

Elana Rabinowitz enjoys pizza with a group of her students.

How do you think schools and educators can better meet the needs of immigrant and refugee students?

First off, stop with the ridiculous Spanish LAB, which is used to measure English-language proficiency. The test they have me administering is from 1982, the same year Michael Jackson sang “Thriller.” We need updated assessments in their native languages that can be scored before a child enters a school.

Also, newcomers need more English than the 360 minutes a week. At minimum, their first six months should be spent with intensive English courses. They can attend gym, math, lunch, and one other elective with their English-speaking peers, but the idea of having a child with no English sit in an ELA class is preposterous. Many teachers just put them on a computer all day or hand them translated text with no instruction. It is demeaning and staggers learning. These students have already been through enough to get here; we should be making them feel more comfortable — not lost or different.

What can families do to support migrant families in their school community?

Families and the local community can help by assisting with translating, donating basic supplies, and making the children feel welcome. A school in our building had parents volunteer on the weekends, and we coached the kids in soccer. We all had a blast! Some of the students would run into the parents in the neighborhood, and they greeted each other fondly.

How do you build rapport with the families of your students who have recently arrived in the U.S.?

I conduct meetings with the parents when the children arrive and try to offer a special welcome breakfast to make them feel comfortable. Last year, we had flags from all their countries and special food that we thought they would enjoy. I also work with dual-language teachers to stay in contact and help families find language classes, tutoring, and basic supplies.

What’s one thing you’ve read that has made you a better educator?

Reading about the concept of the affective filter, which is an imaginary filter that becomes an impediment to learning another language. If the filter is high, students are stressed and self-conscious, and language learning is delayed. If it is low, they feel safe and take more risks, which helps with language acquisition.

So many adults tell me they hated learning Spanish or French in school, probably because they were so self-conscious. I constantly write grants to buy supplies and use secondhand chairs, lamps, and cabinets to ensure that my classroom has a cozy feel similar to a home. I make sure that students are comfortable and respect each other so that they learn with ease.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

Seek out the educators who inspire you, watch them, sit in on their classes, and adjust.

Gabrielle Birkner is Chalkbeat’s features editor and fellowship director. Contact her at gbirkner@chalkbeat.org.

Interested in becoming a Student Voices Fellow? Apply here.

2023-08-16T20:02:21+00:00

UPDATE: Applications for the 2023-24 Chalkbeat Student Voices Fellowship are now closed.

Chalkbeat launched its Student Voices Fellowship two years ago to hear from teens — in their own words — about the issues shaping their lives and education. We’re thrilled to offer this paid essay-writing fellowship to public school students in New York City and Newark, New Jersey during the 2023-24 academic year.

I encourage applicants to read the published pieces by our previous fellows. That’s the best way to understand what Chalkbeat fellows do.

This past year, for example, Karen opened up about learning English as a new language, and Ashally told us what it’s like to feel her native Spanish slipping away. Dashawn recounted struggling during COVID lockdowns and then creating a course focused on teen mental health, and Jasmine explained the painful and precious ways the pandemic affected her high school class. Enoch discussed his early and ongoing experience with code-switching, and Vanessa told us what it’s really like to attend her famous New York City high school.

You can read more student work here.

This coming school year, we will select a total of six fellows, four from New York City and two from Newark. We are offering the fellowship in the fall and again in the spring. Applicants can indicate which semester they prefer. The fellowship will be virtual, with opportunities to meet in person with staff members of our New York City and Newark bureaus.

Fellows will receive a $1,000 stipend.

Fellowship requirements:

You are a rising 11th or 12th grader in New York City or Newark, New Jersey, and attend a public school or a charter school.
You are interested in journalism and storytelling.
You can manage your time, meet deadlines, and are willing and able to commit 1-2 hours a week to this extracurricular fellowship for about three months.
You have compelling personal stories to share and are willing and able to share them on Chalkbeat under your byline. (First Person does not publish anonymous or pseudonymous pieces.)
You are collaborative and eager for feedback on your writing.

Student Voices fellows will:

Pitch, write, edit, and publish personal essays.
Brainstorm, outline, and workshop your pieces alongside Chalkbeat journalists and writing coaches.
Attend Zoom sessions with journalism educators and Chalkbeat staff about the craft of reporting and writing. You will also have access to a library of recorded journalism lessons from reporters and editors.
Improve your storytelling ability across formats and platforms.

UPDATE: Applications for the 2022-23 Chalkbeat Student Voices Fellowship are now closed.

If you have questions not answered here, please email gbirkner@chalkbeat.org.

About Chalkbeat:

Parents scramble, and voice support, as strike disrupts school in Los Angeles

2023-03-22T17:16:34+00:00

On day one of a labor strike that closed hundreds of Los Angeles-area public schools, Eric Calhoun polled the roughly 45 children in his care. How did they feel about having the day off?

“We want to be in school,” the students told Calhoun, director of the Pan Pacific Park Recreation Center. Los Angeles Unified shuttered its campuses for more than a year at the height of COVID, and the students didn’t want to go back to virtual learning or be apart from their classmates.

This time around, school closures are expected to last just three days, as the union representing school bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria staff, classroom aides, and others, demands higher wages for its 30,000 members, some of whom are among the district’s lowest-paid staffers. Los Angeles public school teachers joined the walkout in a show of solidarity.

As the strike began, the complicated logistics of child care and food distribution underway across Los Angeles County underscored the crucial role schools play in keeping a community running. Parents who spoke with Chalkbeat voiced support for the education workers who keep schools clean and students fed, but they acknowledged the challenges of closing the nation’s second-largest school system.

During a labor strike that closed schools, LA Unified students participate in activities at Pan Pacific Park Recreation Center on March 21, 2023.

Will Lee, who lives in View Park, said child care was top of mind when he received a robocall over the weekend letting him know that a strike was imminent. “We knew we needed to figure it out because we wanted to support the teachers and others who work at the school,” said Lee. He took the day off from his job at a car dealership to care for his daughter, Zippora, 7, and help her with the schoolwork-turned-homework that her teacher had assigned.

For those families who couldn’t wrangle last-minute child care, some campuses offered supervision, and city agencies stepped up. On the eve of the walkout, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announced that 30 recreation centers would have free child care for children in first through fifth grade, and many of those locations would have grab-and-go meals. (The Los Angeles mayor does not control LA Unified, which serves the City of Los Angeles and dozens of smaller municipalities nearby. Bass is not a party to the labor negotiations between Local 99 and district leaders, including Superintendent Alberto Carvalho.)

On Tuesday morning, cars lined up at Pan Pacific Park, where recreation center staff stood in the pouring rain, handing out more than 500 meal packages with enough food for three days.

Carol Alvarado, a senior at Hollywood High School, said she supports raises for the education workers seeking them — pointing out their contributions on campus. “Security aides make school a more friendly environment. Cafeteria workers provide lunch to students who have it,” said Alvarado, 17, noting that most students at her school rely on cafeteria food at least once a day, and some of them get breakfast, lunch, and dinner there.

Alvarado worked as a counselor Tuesday at the Pan Pacific Park Recreation Center. The free “Strike Camp,” with its sports, games, and arts and crafts, will run from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. while schools remain closed.

Pan Pacific Park Recreation Center held a “Strike Camp,” beginning March 21, 2023, as education workers walked off the job.

For more than a year during the pandemic, the center served as a temporary homeless shelter — its sports facilities transformed into makeshift dormitories. “We went out of our way to host them during COVID, and now we need to go out of our way to help our families,” said Floyd Thweatt, a coordinator there. “Our parents go to work, and they need a safe place for their kids to be, so they are not just at home, on the couch, watching TV.”

This week’s walkout comes about four years after the union representing Los Angeles Unified teachers, nurses, counselors, and mental health professionals spent six school days on the picket line — demanding higher wages, smaller class sizes, and campuses staffed with nurses and librarians.

LA Unified, which enrolls about 420,000 K-12 students at more than 750 schools, is scheduled to reopen its campuses on Friday.

For now, many parents are relying on the rec centers for support. At the Poinsettia Recreation Center in Hollywood, about three dozen elementary school children raced around the gym, which served as another pop-up child care location.

Picking up her 6-year-old son for the day, Tina Ger said she supported the striking staffers. A native of Berlin, Germany, she noted that labor strikes, more common in Europe than in America, can move the needle for workers. “If it would be a full month off, we’d still support them,” she said of the education workers of Local 99. “It’s really not a good way of treating people so important to education.”

Gabrielle Birkner is Chalkbeat’s features editor and fellowship director.

Student Voices: Meet Chalkbeat’s new fellows

2022-10-06T19:39:09+00:00

Prepare to see some new bylines on these pages, as Chalkbeat welcomes its new class of Student Voices Fellows. These teens, all of them public high school students in New York City and Newark, New Jersey, will write personal essays in Chalkbeat about their lives and schools.

Our newsroom piloted this fellowship last school year, and the six students who participated produced powerful, openhearted work. (You can read their essays here.) This year, we were thrilled to see such broad interest in this program. Hundreds of accomplished teens from across more than 70 New York City and Newark schools applied for a handful of spots.

Chalkbeat is proud to welcome these six students as our 2022-23 Student Voices Fellows. We can’t wait for you to read their work.

Fall Fellows

From left: Ashally De La Cruz, Enoch Naklen, and Dashawn Sheffield

Ashally De La Cruz, New York City

Ashally (she/her/hers) is a senior at Central Park East High School. She was born in the Dominican Republic and moved to the United States when she was 5. A native Spanish speaker, she went from taking ESL classes in elementary school to enrolling in Honors and AP courses in high school. Ashally has taken part in Peer Group Connection, supporting freshmen during the transition to high school, and in CARA’s Youth Leadership program, helping other students navigate the college application process. At Central Park East, she works on the yearbook and participates in the liberation program, which focuses on social activism. Through this fellowship, Ashally hopes to inspire and show others they’re not alone in their experiences.

Enoch Naklen, New York City

Enoch (he/him/his) is a senior at the Brooklyn Latin School. He is a published writer and current youth leader for the advisory board on culturally responsive education at Youth Communication. Enoch also enjoys print and digital journalism; this past summer, he attended JCamp, a journalism training program. Naklen also plays basketball for his high school, helping to found and recruit members of a basketball club. Although it is challenging to share personal stories, Enoch said he writes to “provide a voice for those who may not have found theirs” and to “bring to life stories that otherwise would not have been recognized.”

Dashawn Sheffield, Newark

Dashawn (he/him/his) is a senior at North Star Academy Washington Park High School. He is a mental health advocate and is the founder and president of a student wellness council that educates students and faculty on the symptoms of mental health issues and promotes school-based mental health support; the council is active at three New Jersey high schools and a Georgia middle school. As an AmeriCorps volunteer, Dashawn works with local partners to organize community service events. He plans to double major in finance and political science in college and become an investment portfolio manager or a senator; he recently completed an internship with BlackRock. In his spare time, he enjoys reading classic literature, especially novels by Jane Austen and Herman Melville, and listening to Mariah Carey and Britney Spears. At Chalkbeat, he hopes to share stories promoting student wellness in underrepresented communities and expand his impact.

Spring Fellows

From left, Vanessa Chen, Jasmine Harris, and Karen Otavalo.

Vanessa Chen, New York City

Vanessa (she/her) is a junior at Stuyvesant High School. She is a podcast editor and conversationalist at the Round Table, a Next Generation Politics Podcast dedicated to bridging the divides in our country through cross-partisan discussions. She has also organized multiple community events, including gatherings where Chinatown youth can bond, and protests against neighborhood displacement. Beyond her interests in social activism, Vanessa is the executive producer for her school’s theater community and is currently producing the fall musical, “Matilda.” As a Student Voices Fellow, she hopes to share her stories and bring awareness to a larger audience.

Jasmine Harris, New York City

Jasmine (she/her/hers) is a senior at Bronxdale High School at the Christopher Columbus campus in the Bronx. She is the daughter of immigrants, a mother from Cambodia and a father from Jamaica. Jasmine is a member of her school’s student council. She’s also an advocate with Youth Court, helping students who break the rules resolve issues safely in school. Jasmine has a passion for medical science, interns at Columbia University doing neuroscience lab research, and wants to become a dermatologist. During the summer of 2022, she studied abroad in Seoul, South Korea. In her spare time, she loves to bake (especially cinnamon rolls) and do nails. At Chalkbeat, she hopes to improve her writing and connect with like-minded peers to share stories and grow as a community.

Karen Otavalo, Newark

Karen (she/her) is a sophomore at Science Park High School. Originally from Ecuador, she moved to the U.S. when she was 11, and ever since then, she hasn’t stopped dreaming big. Karen serves as a youth board member for National Crittenton, an organization that helps girls, young women, and gender-expansive youth to overcome barriers. She also volunteers in the mentorship program at her high school. In her spare time, Karen likes to animate, draw, and read. In her writing for Chalkbeat, she hopes to give voice to marginalized women and share personal narratives related to opportunity, sexism, and education.

Interested in becoming a Chalkbeat Student Voices Fellow? Here’s how to apply.

2022-08-04T12:00:00+00:00

A year ago, Chalkbeat launched our Student Voices Fellowship because we wanted to hear directly from teens about how their school journeys shaped them.

Our first class of fellows wrote powerful essays that challenged ideas about city schools, explored the immigrant student experience from multiple angles, revealed how they found passion and purpose in their studies and extracurricular pursuits, and looked ahead with hope. You can read all of their published essays here.

Chalkbeat is thrilled to offer this paid fellowship opportunity again during the 2022-23 school year. We’re seeking applicants who attend public high schools in New York City and Newark, New Jersey, and are eager to publish personal essays on Chalkbeat.

During this extracurricular program, fellows will become a part of Chalkbeat’s dynamic and diverse newsroom. They’ll learn from professional journalists and writing coaches about what makes a strong personal narrative and how to turn their experiences into publication-ready pieces. Fellows will also learn some journalism basics and best practices. Over the course of a semester, participants will work toward publishing two original essays on Chalkbeat.

Fellows will receive a $1,000 stipend.

We will select a total of six fellows during the 2022-23 school year, four from New York City and two from Newark. We are offering the fellowship in the fall and again in the spring. Applicants should state their semester preference if they have one.

More information and the application are below. If you have any additional questions, please email me at gbirkner@chalkbeat.org.

Fellowship requirements:

You are a high school student in New York City or Newark interested in journalism and storytelling.
You can manage your time, meet deadlines, and are willing to commit at least an hour a week to the fellowship for about three months.
You have compelling personal stories to share and are willing and able to share them on Chalkbeat under your byline. (First Person does not publish anonymous or pseudonymous pieces.)
You are collaborative and eager for feedback on your writing.

Student Voices fellows will:

Pitch, write, edit, publish, and promote personal essays.
Brainstorm, outline, and workshop your pieces alongside Chalkbeat journalists.
Attend Zoom sessions with journalism educators and Chalkbeat staff about the craft of reporting and writing. You will also have access to a library of recorded journalism lessons from reporters and editors.
Improve your storytelling ability across formats and platforms.

The fellowship will be virtual, with opportunities to meet in person with staff members of our New York City and Newark bureaus.

Applications are due Friday, August 26 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

About Chalkbeat:

Student voices on Uvalde: Our leaders ‘are just not going to protect us’

2022-06-07T12:00:00+00:00

Today’s high school students were born after the mass shooting at Columbine and were in elementary school when a gunman murdered 20 first graders and six adults at Sandy Hook. These teens are old enough to remember the massacre in Parkland, but most of them were too young to join the protests that followed.

They grew up with routine active shooter drills at school and with the perfunctory “thoughts and prayers” politicians offered when tragedy struck.

Following last month’s school shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the supermarket shooting in Buffalo, New York, 10 days earlier, and a year that saw rising homicides in many major American cities, Chalkbeat invited teens around the country to tell us how gun violence affects their lives and education.

In their lifetime, there have been thousands of mass shootings, including those in Philadelphia and Chattanooga, Tennessee this past weekend. There have been hundreds of school shootings, too, but no new and significant federal gun control laws. (Bipartisan talks on firearm restrictions are again underway.) Because of pervasive gun violence, students say they have learned to scan every classroom for places to hide from an active shooter, plan out escape routes, and contemplate whether and how they might help stop a shooter in their school.

Some teens say they have become desensitized to news of mass shootings because there’s no time to process one massacre before another occurs. Other students say the American gun violence epidemic keeps them in a constant state of high alert and that they are traumatized and exhausted.

They fear more than mass shootings and shots fired inside school buildings. Everyday gun violence has them considering how they get to school, where they sit in public spaces, and whether or not they’ll see their families at the end of the day. One student talked to Chalkbeat about Kyhara Tay, the 11-year-old girl struck by a stray bullet last month in the Bronx. Another remembered her schoolmate Jimari Williams, an 18-year-old Chicagoan killed by gunfire just two months before he would have graduated from high school.

The students who opened up to Chalkbeat shared a range of emotions, from numbness to fear, from anger to despair. Although they want more from their leaders, they don’t believe elected officials will take meaningful action to curb gun violence any time soon.

Their stories have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Pragnya Kaginele: Walking into a classroom, I think about hiding places

Jeremiah Griffith: It can’t get much worse

Amaya Turner: Kids are not pieces on a chessboard

Radiah Jamil: Schools should focus on student mental health and teach self-care

Meleena Salgado: Since third grade, I’ve worried about being shot at school

Anjali Darji: I’m in that crisis state of mind

Bryan Bastidas: America is normalizing gun violence on every scale

Ajibola Junaid: Elected officials must stop fighting the wrong battles

A view of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the site of the deadly May 24 mass shooting.

Walking into a classroom, I think about hiding places

Pragnya Kaginele, 15

Freshman, Carroll High School in Southlake, Texas

Pragnya Kaginele

It almost feels hopeless sometimes. I can’t think of a good solution other than good gun control. But it’s not like I can say “There should be gun control,” and magically there’s gun control. The people who are supposed to be protecting us are just not going to protect us, and they have so much more power than all of us. I’d like to think it would happen when our generation becomes eligible to run [for office], but we can’t wait 15 years.

It’s so strange that people just have guns and can carry them into schools and cause this kind of destruction. What happened in Buffalo wasn’t a school shooting, but it was a hate crime, and it was about a week before. In the span of 10 days, there’s been a racially motivated shooting, and then there’s been a shooting where 19 little kids died. For those to happen back to back, it’s like you don’t finish processing the fact that one happened before the next tragedy. It just keeps coming at you, and I guess your brain starts to think, this is just normal.

Just because it’s been happening so much doesn’t make this loss of life normal. Just because the Founding Fathers wrote in the Constitution 200 years ago that Americans have the right we have the right to have guns — just because people are so obsessed with not making any change to [the status quo] — students are forced to live their lives in fear. (The Second Amendment states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”)

When I first go into a classroom, I think about hiding places. If I’m in a hallway, I think, if something happened, what bathroom would I go into? And there are these weird moral questions, like, would I throw myself in front of someone, or would I jump behind them? It feels weird to think about that because I’m 15 years old.

A small memorial sits outside a Chicago liquor store where 58-year-old community activist Willie Cooper was shot and killed on July 17, 2017.

It can’t get much worse

Jeremiah Griffith, 16

Junior, Noble Academy in Chicago

Jeremiah Griffith

I am a student journalist and was covering the Chicago Sky ring ceremony on May 24. The WNBA commissioner was talking about the mass shootings in the past month. She mentioned Buffalo and Texas, and I was confused because I hadn’t heard what had happened in Texas. There was a moment of silence, and the whole arena was silent.

I found out more about it during the post-game interview. When I went home, as I was finishing up the recap of the game and the article, I looked up what happened. It’s sad because, on the one hand, it’s like, oh, another mass shooting — same old, same old. But on the other hand, we have to change something.

The next day, in my AP language class, we talked about the mass shooting in Uvalde. My teacher let us have a Harkness, which is a kind of group discussion. We were talking about how we could possibly change the Second Amendment of the Constitution, but we know that might not happen. We’re being held back by the government and the lobbyists who control the NRA.

Here in Chicago, there are shootings every day. I remember when it first started getting warmer a few weeks ago, there were at least 28 people shot over the weekend , and all it got was local news reporting, and that was about it.

The Buffalo shooter literally used a live stream app, Twitch. All my friends use that app, and a lot of people saw the video (before the stream was removed). We’ve become desensitized to mass shootings, but there’s not much we can do unless there is a drastic change to the entire system. Otherwise, these things are going to keep happening. It can’t get much worse. We’re already witnessing murders on camera, and it’s normal.

This candlelight vigil, held on Feb. 14, 2019, in Orlando, Florida, commemorated the one-year anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Kids are not pieces on a chessboard

Amaya Turner, 17

Junior, Abington High School in Abington, Massachusetts

Amaya Turner

School shootings affect me more than I think they should. No matter how often they happen — and happen often, they do — I can never quite manage to feel desensitized. I suppose that’s good. I do not want to become desensitized, but the familiar fear and grief they stir up are beyond exhausting.

Every time a new school shooting occurs, I cannot stop picturing the hundreds of people who were close to the victims and will be forever changed. I cannot help but think about the surviving students who will live forever with the memories. Have we really come to a place in our country where lifelong trauma after a shooting qualifies someone as “one of the lucky ones” because at least they survived?

In 2018, when the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting happened in Parkland, Florida, I remember being terrified to go to school for weeks. In every classroom I sat in, I would try to figure out where I would run or hide if there was a shooter. I was 13. I already knew about Sandy Hook and had internalized the idea that school shootings were a part of life I might as well accept.

But it is difficult to feel safe when watching your teacher cover the narrow floor-to-ceiling window pane with a cabinet because she is afraid a would-be shooter could break the glass. It’s difficult to feel safe when you’ve grown up practicing how to huddle together with the lights off, staying as quiet as possible, and then going through ALICE training (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate). Many adults did not grow up with active shooter drills because they were mostly implemented after the Columbine shooting in 1999. So the majority of our government officials don’t know what it is like to hear kids joke nervously about who would jump in front of a shooter to buy time.

After each tragedy, there are desperate pleas for change but no real change, and then we end up repeating the tragic cycle. It is absolutely soul-crushing.

Student safety is a human right, and children, teens, and their teachers should be able to go to school without fearing the worst. I worry less for my own safety and school — Massachusetts, where I live, has some of the country’s most restrictive gun laws — and more for all the school communities bound to be impacted by mass shootings unless something changes. I worry about the parents planning funerals for their children. I worry about the surviving students who face a lifetime of traumatic memories. I worry about mental health professionals trying to help students who are suffering. I worry about innocent people who have the same mental conditions as past shooters and are now being unfairly stigmatized. Mostly, I worry about how many more children will die before change is finally enacted.

I feel so powerless hearing another shooting being politicized and debated. Kids are not pieces on a chessboard. For now, I can only hope that there will be a generation of children who never know the ever-present anxiety of school shootings or have to watch the death count slowly rise over a series of days. I can only hope my peers and I are granted the time and resources necessary to bring about the changes we deserve.

A girl visits a makeshift memorial for the shooting victims outside the Uvalde County Courthouse in Uvalde, Texas, on May 29, 2022.

Schools should focus on student mental health and teach self-care

Radiah Jamil, 18

Senior, Brooklyn Latin School in New York City

Radiah Jamil

I found out about the school shooting in Uvalde on social media — Instagram specifically. That’s where I get most of my news. It was just an infographic that said the number of people who were dead in Texas.

After mass shootings, a common thing people say is: Make it stricter to get guns or even abolish them completely. But I’m a big-picture person. Mental health is the primary thing that schools can focus on fixing. Mental health affects your thoughts, your decisions, your actions, and your interactions with everyone. It really impacts every aspect of your life, so that’s why I think it’s the primary thing to tackle.

Mental health has long been a crisis that has not gotten enough recognition. There has been a lot of stigma. I think we’re getting a bit better at reducing the stigma with technology, but technology can also make people’s mental health worse. It makes you more prone to cyberbullying, and online, you can be exposed to a lot of negative stuff.

When we were isolated during remote learning, we turned to Instagram and Snapchat to feel more connected. But that might not have been great for our mental health because there was a lot of stuff going on. The country was in such a tough space, and it definitely trickled down to have a negative effect on the mental health of many students.

Like most people, I was in my room for a year and a half and not socializing much. It took a toll on many of my friendships. I was diagnosed with depression. Coming back to school, it’s been so hard transitioning for both teachers and students. I feel like everyone is getting burnt out a lot more. There are many schools that don’t have access to a social worker on a daily basis, and a social worker is someone students can turn to when they’re having a hard time.

Last year, after winning money in a “Shark Tank”-style contest, I founded Mentalligence, a peer-to-peer mental health support organization to teach New York City high school students about different therapies, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy and existential therapy, and self-care techniques. Our peer support gives students a comfortable place to talk about their mental health, especially if they can’t afford a therapist or don’t have a reliable person at home to talk to.

If schools focused on mental health and self-care, it would really go a long way because, at school, we don’t talk about any of that stuff. Even little things like carving out 15 minutes to meditate and do gratitude journaling — teaching these self-care activities so that students can form these habits — could have a greater impact on students’ mental health in the long term.

People mourn at a makeshift memorial for the victims of the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 31, 2022.

Since third grade, I’ve worried about being shot up at school

Meleena Salgado, 17

Junior, John Hancock College Preparatory High School in Chicago

I was feeding my dogs, and my dad rushed in and said a school had been shot up. My heart just sank. I was frustrated that there was another one. I hate to use that term because there were people who were lost. But I was just like, come on. No matter how many are hurt, [politicians] are just going to say, “Oh wow, what a tragedy,” and then we’ll find out about the next one.

I’ve been worried about a school shooting since I was little. The oldest fear I have about being shot up at school is when I was, maybe, in third grade. I was in the bathroom alone and heard this really loud bang, and I thought, “Oh, God, maybe this is it.” (That bang turned out to be someone dropping a textbook in the hallway.)

A few weeks ago, my friends and I were discussing where we’d hide if there was a shooting. My friend was saying that there are a lot of windows in this building, and I said that’s unfortunate because what if someone gunned down the windows? Then we said we could try the library, but there are windows there, too. They said, “Well, we could try the theater,” but we realized that is right where the doors are to get into school, so maybe that would be the first place that would be attacked.

Later, when I talked about hiding places with my brother, my mom was looking at us in horror.

A Senate staff member prepares for a press conference on Capitol Hill on January 24, 2013. House and Senate Democrats were joined by law enforcement officials to introduce legislation to ban assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines.

I’m in that crisis state of mind

Anjali Darji, 17

Junior, Rancocas Valley Regional High School in Mount Holly, New Jersey

Anjali Darji

When I walked into class on Wednesday, my history teacher had the last four mass shootings and the death tolls on the board.

We’re currently learning about the George W. Bush administration, and my teacher went off about the 1994 assault weapons ban that President Bill Clinton signed into law and how the weapons used in the recent mass shootings would have been banned under that law. He told us how the ban ended during the George W. Bush administration and was never renewed.

Then, we had a conversation about how we go forward as America. Do we continue to be proud of America despite this? Or what do we do to change? Or do we just condemn America? He was asking that and no one answered because, honestly, I don’t know how I feel about this. I’m in that crisis state of mind.

On social media, people have been posting the number of U.S. shootings compared to other countries and how high America’s toll has been. And what I proposed in class is that we analyze other countries’ policies on gun control and related policies because they must be doing something right if they have significantly fewer shootings.

When someone brought up what happened in Uvalde, we either had to stop talking about it because someone was gonna cry, or there was just this resigned feeling.

I have plans for what to do in case of a shooting. In one plan, I’m running to save myself. I have another plan in which I’m trying to evade the gunman and help people get out of the building because my school has over 2,000 kids, and it employs hundreds of people. I’m numb to the idea that I do this kind of planning now. It’s just a thing that I do for self-preservation.

Local residents pay their respects at a memorial for Kyhara Tay, an 11-year-old girl shot to death by a stray bullet, May 19, 2022 in the Bronx.

America is normalizing gun violence on every scale

Bryan Bastidas, 17

Senior, International High School for Health Sciences in New York City

Bryan Bastidas

In the middle of a beautiful Tuesday in New York City, after watching “Better Call Saul,” I found myself scrolling through Twitter, bombarded with the news of another mass shooting in Texas. This time it happened in an elementary school.

I was shocked and confused about how a person could do this to small kids. I watched my little brother smiling as he played and watched videos; I was thinking about how someone could take those beautiful smiles from their mouths. I felt disgusted.

The worst part of it is that we are normalizing gun violence on every scale. Not only in Texas but also in New York, where I live. Two weeks before this, a little girl named Kyhara Tay was killed by a stray bullet in the Bronx.

Walking on the streets of New York City does not feel safe, especially for me, a student who always takes trains and buses and uses public spaces to socialize or take a break. Every day, I fear not seeing my father or mother coming back alive from work or my siblings from school. I fear dying on the bus or the train. It’s absurd that an 18-year-old can get a weapon and carry it into public spaces like it’s a cellphone or a toy.

Many people think that banning guns will fix the problem — and yes, it would reduce violence significantly — but we do not think as much about the person who used the weapon. He was only 18. What kind of life did he have? What kind of problems? Sometimes, we see symptoms and signs, but we do not do anything until everything explodes.

I think there should be more and stricter regulations on who and when to carry a gun. Firearms are not toys and should be difficult to get. One great example is Switzerland, which, like the U.S., has a high rate of gun ownership. But, unlike the U.S., which has had more than 200 mass shootings just this year, there have been no mass shootings in Switzerland in 21 years. That country issues licenses for firearms and carefully vets would-be gun owners before issuing these licenses (sometimes talking to mental health professionals in the process).

I think schools should also have more security to prevent these kinds of actions. We can use metal detectors and give police more tools to prevent these events. It is complicated to talk about this problem, but it is worth letting people know that this problem should be fixed. I want my family and friends to have a future where they do not have to fear for their lives in any situation, from walking in the city to being in school.

A memorial dedicated to the 19 children and two adults killed on May 24 during the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School is seen on June 1, 2022 in Uvalde, Texas.

Elected officials must stop fighting the wrong battles

Ajibola Junaid, 18

Senior, Wendell Phillips Academy High School in Chicago

Ajibola Junaid

Gun violence means I don’t know how to ride a bike or have friends in my neighborhood because I don’t feel safe going out. The summertime is the worst because there are gunshots all the time. It’s hot inside, and it’s too risky outside.

Several students at my school have died of gun violence, including, last year, a senior named Jimari Williams, just two months before graduation. This year, a shooting outside my school injured a student and a security guard. It’s sickening. Nowhere feels safe.

We need gun control. We need politicians to stop fighting the wrong battles. Why are so many of them willing to do anything to make abortions illegal but not willing to take the necessary steps to protect the children who are here? Children like the 19 gunned down, along with two of their teachers, in Uvalde, Texas.

My heart bleeds for their families. I send my sincere condolences to all those who are grieving.

The saddest part of all this is that you’d think that massacre after massacre would bring about gun control. But nothing ever happens. The outrage will last only a few weeks, and everything will calm down until some other group of people dies. There have been at least 27 school shootings in the U.S. this year — and it’s only May. Hopefully, this time, government officials will listen to our cries for help. I hope the deaths of these innocent kids bring positive change to our society.

Stories from Anjali Darji, Jeremiah Griffith, Radiah Jamil, Pragnya Kaginele, and Meleena Salgado were told to Gabrielle Birkner.

If you are interested in speaking to Chalkbeat about how gun violence impacts your life and education, please reach out to us at community@chalkbeat.org.

Meet Chalkbeat’s Student Voices fellows

2021-11-16T11:00:00+00:00

This school year, Chalkbeat is thrilled to pilot our Student Voices writing fellowship in three of our bureaus: Chicago, Newark, and Philadelphia. The fall and spring fellows — all high school students in communities Chalkbeat covers — will be writing First Person essays about their lives and journeys through public school. (You can read about the fellowship program here.)

You’ll be learning more about these impressive and accomplished students in the weeks and months ahead. In the meantime, please join me in welcoming the inaugural class of Student Voices fellows. Their bios and photos are below.

Chicago

Chicago fellows Ajibola Junaid, left, and Jeremiah Griffith

Ajibola Junaid (Fall semester):

Ajibola Elizabeth Junaid (she/her/hers) is a senior at Wendell Phillips Academy High School. She moved from Nigeria to the United States when she was 13. She has taken part in the University of Chicago’s Equitable Learning and Development Project, which works to improve public schools for all students, and in the dance education project Forward Momentum. Ajibola plans to study biology in college and go on to medical school to become an OB-GYN. In her spare time, she enjoys listening to music and dancing.

Jeremiah Griffith (Spring semester):

Jeremiah Griffith (he/him/his) is a junior at Noble Academy. He writes about sports for TrueStar magazine and manages his own sports blog, The Ball Talk. Jeremiah is a TrueStar Youth Violence Prevention Ambassador and a volunteer at Rush University Medical Center. He is a member of the National Honors Society and his school’s basketball team. During the fall semester, he is interning at Vega Partners and Chicago House AC.

Newark

Newark fellows Chimdindu Okafor, left, and Daniela Palacios.

Chimdindu Okafor (Fall semester):

Chimdindu Okafor (she/her/hers) is a senior at North Star Academy Lincoln Park High School. She is a social justice activist and organizer currently serving as a youth board member for the Sadie Nash Leadership Project and on the steering committee of the National Agenda for Black Girls. Chimdindu is “inspired by stories from urban youth whose experiences often parallel mine.”

Daniela Palacios (Spring semester):

Daniela Palacios (she/her/hers) is a senior at Science Park High School. Daniela is also the creator of Para KIDS!, a media company that publishes bilingual children’s stories with immigrant characters. She is the author of a forthcoming Spanish bilingual children’s book, “Sara’s New Country and New Friend/ El nuevo país y la nueva amiga de Sara.”

Philadelphia

Philadelphia fellows Lin Lin, left, and Umme Orthy.

Lin Lin (Fall semester):

Lin Lin (they/them) is a senior at Central High School. They are the co-president of the student-run newspaper Bullhorn News, where their goal is to make student journalism more accessible by increasing the number of BIPOC journalists and translating articles into multiple languages. Lin was previously a reporter for the paper, covering the School District of Philadelphia, where they enjoyed writing about racial consciousness and curriculum. In addition, they have done community organizing with such groups as Asian Americans United and VietLead. In their spare time, Lin enjoys reading and hiking.

Umme Orthy (Spring semester):

Umme Orthy (she/her) is a senior at Science Leadership Academy at Beeber. She is passionate about biology and wants to become a doctor. Umme is originally from Chittagong, Bangladesh, and hopes to provide free medical services to people in her hometown one day. She likes to write about her own experiences and express herself through writing, including poetry. “As an immigrant student, there are so many untold stories I want to share,” she said. In her spare time, Umme enjoys painting, cooking, and watching K-dramas.

We also take student submissions on a rolling basis. Have a pitch or a piece that’s a good fit for First Person? Read our submission guidelines, and email us at firstperson@chalkbeat.org.

This NYC counselor is helping students work through COVID-era trauma

2021-09-07T12:00:00+00:00

After Randy Bowen lost three family members to COVID-19, he knew he needed to prioritize the activities that center him, such as meditating and riding his bike, so that he could show up for his students at Community Health Academy of the Heights.

Bowen, a school counselor of 14 years and a certified practitioner of a trauma therapy known as EMDR, started an evening meditation group to help his students deal with pandemic-era stresses ranging from social isolation to food insecurity. “I think the biggest hurdle to meditation for people is just taking 3-5 minutes out of the day to disconnect,” said Bowen, who began his career in finance before finding his professional calling as a school counselor.

Randy Bowen

Community Health Academy in Upper Manhattan provides wraparound social services for the whole family. “While we were able to leverage our relationships with families and conduct constant outreach, technological and mental health support [during the pandemic], I think that students are ready to get back to school.”

Bowen is ready for the new school year, too. He spoke recently to Chalkbeat.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What led you to become a school counselor?

I started out in finance and worked at a financial investment firm for about two years but became despondent with the lack of passion I had for my role as a licensing analyst. I visited St. Joseph’s College and met with an academic advisor in the school counseling program at Long Island University in Brooklyn. She told me to take two classes, and all I had to lose was money and time. It was the best decision I made. It was the first time in my academic career that what I was learning in school felt like an extension of my personality, strengths, interests, and who I was at my core. I share this story with my students to let them know that even counselors need to be counseled!

How did your students fare during the prolonged stretch of remote learning and social isolation?

Our school culture promotes getting to know students on a deep level as we are a 6-12 school, and the lack of physical interaction made this extremely difficult. Many of our students are first-generation Americans and come from low-income families in the Bronx and Washington Heights areas. Many of them also come from multigenerational households. As someone who lost three family members, including my grandmother, to COVID, I know first-hand the anxiety, depression, and isolation that comes with being away from a place of stability, care, and attention.

I’m so sorry to hear about the losses you’ve endured. You have a job that centers on caring for others. How did you take care of yourself through it all?

I have always counseled from a place of do as I say and as I do. When the pandemic started, I reminded my students that although education is an important step toward financial freedom and generational wealth, mental stability comes first. I shared with my students the anxiety and uncertainty I felt as an adult about the pandemic and the things I did to make me feel stable: meditation, riding my bike, and communicating with family and friends. I even started an evening meditation workshop for students to wind down after a tough day. Initially, students believed that you had to spend an hour in the gym or dedicate the same time every day to meditate. Showing them that we all struggle and equipping them with techniques to alleviate stress will be extremely vital going forward. This also held me accountable for daily meditation. It was a win-win!

Tell me about your evening meditation group. How do you teach young people to meditate?

Prior to the pandemic, I became certified in EMDR, which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Processing, to support students who suffered through trauma that traditional talk therapy alone would not help mediate. One of the components of EMDR is grounding or mindfulness — ensuring that the client or student is aware of the present moment, as processing past trauma can be intense. During the session, we start by thanking ourselves for taking time out of our day to prioritize our bodies while finding a quiet space. I then walk students through deep breathing (in through the nose, out through the mouth) and talk through what they are aware of using the five senses, awareness of any pain or stress in the body while allowing distractions and thoughts to be a part of the session.

What student needs have you seen arise or grow during the COVID era?

COVID has exacerbated many of our students’ needs, including food insecurity, home displacements, inadequate living areas, technology and internet access, language barriers, and financial hardships. The lack of basic needs contributes to a rise in mental health crises felt by the entire family.

That’s a lot to endure, especially as a young person. How can schools best support their students’ needs this coming school year?

I think that all schools should start with a general wellness assessment that inquires about a child’s food, technology, housing, mental health, and financial situation within the household. Our high school social worker created a Google Form that was sent out to all our students. This data was then used by the high school guidance/social work department to provide support, such as at-risk counseling, referrals to our school-based health clinic, outside mental health organizations, and affiliated programs of our school’s community-based organization, CLOTH, or the Community League of the Heights. Our school also has an advisory system where teachers are matched with a group of kids. Daily meetings in these groups can also provide us with anecdotal information that can bridge any gaps students may be challenged with.

Last year, you wrote for Chalkbeat about how many of your students were traumatized by George Floyd’s murder. Since then, your school has created the Committee on Racial Equity. What are the committee’s goals, and how is it changing the culture and policies at Community Health Academy?

This year, the committee’s focus is on our instructional practices and how they align with Gholdy Muhammad’s five pursuits for teaching and learning. We believe that the student voice needs to be amplified in our community, but that can’t happen unless students are intrinsically motivated and invested in their education. The hope is that if students see themselves in the curriculum, it will spark their interest while connecting why they are in education to what they want out of education.

Tell us how you collaborate with teachers, parents, and others to ensure students have what they need to thrive.

My role as the chair of the Committee on Racial Equity has required collaboration among all parties to ensure that our students are not only seeing themselves in our curriculum but that their voices are valued. Last school year, I was in charge of coordinating our various subcommittees — assessing our instruction to ensure that it was aligned with culturally responsive practices, training students on topics such as race, equity, and microaggressions, and conducting monthly group meetings with our staff. I meet with teachers weekly in our grade team meetings to discuss students who may be at risk or struggling with a death in the family, illness, financial issues, etc. As a community school, we pride ourselves on not only supporting students but also the community. Parents talk to me about their students' progress, but also about services like burial assistance, housing, employment referrals, and more.

What was your own experience with school, and how does it affect your work today?

As a first-generation, low-income student from Guyanese descent, I was fortunate to attend a private school from K-6 and then New York City public schools after that. I benefited from small class sizes and a focus on mathematics in elementary school. In middle and high school, I was also enrolled in the Honors programs. I understand the generational trauma associated with those expectations of being successful for one’s culture. There were numerous people in my academic career, like my middle school dean, my AP U.S. History teacher, and my Spanish teacher, who helped me along the way. I hope that I am making the same impact on my students.

On 9/11, they were at school. Here’s what happened inside their classrooms.

2021-09-06T10:00:00+00:00

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It was the beginning of the school day at the beginning of the school year at the beginning of the millennium. Millions of American children were in classrooms on the morning of September 11, 2001, when hijackers flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Then-President George W. Bush was in the classroom, too — reading with young Florida students until his chief of staff whispered in his ear: “America is under attack.”

Across the country that morning, there were hushed conversations among teachers and attempts to explain to students what was happening — or shield them from it. Students remember pained looks on their teachers’ faces. Some said it was the reaction of the adults around them, rather than the images of burning buildings and pulverized steel, that conveyed the life-changing nature of the attacks.

News back then moved slowly by today’s standards. The world was still largely without smartphones or social media. Teachers and students watched the news on boxy TVs strapped to rolling carts that moved between classrooms. Across the country that day, lesson plans were futile. Then, one by one, students were called out of class as parents arrived early to bring them home.

U.S. President George W. Bush (center) makes a telephone call as White House Director of Communications Dan Bartlett points to video footage of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center from Emma Booker Elementary School on September 11, 2001 in Sarasota, Florida.

In New York City, things were even more dramatic — the day’s horrific events were playing out nearby. At P.S. 1, in Lower Manhattan, one teacher remembers another lowering the shades so kindergartners wouldn’t see the burning towers out the window. At P.S. 124, a few blocks away, another teacher watched as crowds covered in ash walked toward Brooklyn. New York City educators did their best to provide students a steady hand even as some feared for loved ones who worked in the towers, or struggled to get through to friends and family on jammed phone lines. There were harrowing evacuations, long walks home, and eerily silent subway rides.

As for the aftermath of 9/11, some teachers and students recalled with nostalgia how Americans came together, and they wondered if such shows of unity would be possible today. Others saw the attacks as having the opposite effect, citing the rise in Islamophobia, and long, costly, and polarizing wars that are only now ending.

With the 20th anniversary of 9/11 approaching, Chalkbeat asked those in school on that day to share what they remember and what they think K-12 students growing up today should know about the generation-defining terror attacks.

These are their words, edited for length and clarity.

Paula McDonel was teaching a World Geography class at Collierville High School in Collierville, Tennessee, when a colleague, looking somber, entered her classroom.

She asked me where my husband, a FedEx pilot, was that morning. I said he was home. Only then did she tell me that a commercial plane had struck the World Trade Center. I asked my students if anyone had a parent that was flying on a plane that morning. Our community had many pilots and others who may have been flying. No one in my class did. We had finished our lesson, so I turned on CNN, thinking this would be part of the current events we covered in class that week. We didn’t understand how radically our day was changing.

McDonel is retired and lives in Rosharon, Texas.

Debbie Castellani, seen here c. 2001, was teaching alongside her mentor in Cambridge, Massachusetts when the news broke.

Debbie Castellani, then a student-teacher at Cambridge Rindge and Latin high school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was teaching a World History class alongside her mentor teacher.

Suddenly, another teacher burst into the room and yelled: “Oh my goodness, the World Trade Center was just bombed!” The students started to chatter, and we tried to calm them, frustrated that this teacher thought it appropriate to share this publicly in front of the students, but also concerned about this news.

Between periods, my mentor teacher and I were able to slip into a workroom where a science teacher had a television. This was all pre-smartphone. The news featured the first World Trade tower with smoke billowing from the side, and the newscasters were sharing that a plane had crashed into the building. Then, suddenly, we saw the second plane flying into the south tower.

Castellani is now a high school history teacher in Highland Park, Illinois.

Yvette Ho taught kindergarten at P.S. 1 Alfred Smith School in Lower Manhattan. On the morning of 9/11, she remembers hearing a crash, followed by sirens.

I was a new teacher at the school and was so unaware of the events that were taking place just blocks away. I kept teaching. I even brought the class to their scheduled art class. When we arrived at the art room, the class of older children was buzzing with a nervous energy, and the teacher had a look of shock on her face as she lowered the window shades. The fifth-floor room had a direct view of the towers, and the students were witnessing people jumping out of windows.

Ho is an early childhood administrator in New York City.

Katie Lootens, seen here c. 2001, was on the school bus when a classmate told her peers that something “bad” happened.

Katie Lootens, a seventh grader at Northview Middle School in Indianapolis, was on the school bus just before 9 a.m. Eastern that day.

The last girl to get on told us something “bad” had happened but didn’t know exactly what. When we got to school, half of the students were worried about the attacks, and the other half were worried about a rumor that a kid had brought a gun on the bus. Once we got to homeroom, my teacher had the news on, and we just watched.

The second plane hit during first period, French. Most kids didn’t fully understand what was going on or the gravity of the situation, but we were worried because we had never seen our teachers this worried. Later in the day, my English language arts teacher had us journal our feelings and then share. By social studies that afternoon, I remember my teacher pulling out the map and showing us where Afghanistan was. I remember my math teacher trying to teach us math, but nobody was paying attention, and eventually, he gave up and put the news back on. In band and PE, we had the option to participate in the normal day if we wanted some normalcy, or we could sit out if we wanted.

Lootens now teaches English learners in Washington, D.C.

Mike Brown was teaching sixth grade in Williamsburg, Virginia, and many of his students’ parents were members of the military.

Mike Brown, a sixth grade teacher at Berkeley Middle School in Williamsburg, Virginia, was reviewing the day’s agenda with the students in his homeroom when he heard a commotion outside his classroom.

Middle school teachers very quickly are able to decipher kids running in the hallway. This was not that. I heard an “oh my God,” at which point I walked quickly to look out into the hallway. One of my teacher teammates was approaching the room as I was opening the door. She had a startled look on her face and asked if I was watching TV. When I turned it on, we were immediately heartbroken for the people that were on the plane as well as those in the building that was just hit. But we still thought it was a tragic accident. That only lasted for a minute as the news camera focused on the burning building caught a glimpse of a second plane hitting the second tower. Immediately we knew our country was under attack, and we were sitting in the middle of a military town. A number of my students’ parents were living in the neighborhood solely because they were enlisted in the military.

Brown is the director of new school development at New Schools for Alabama. He lives in Memphis.

A military helicopter flies in front of the Pentagon on September 14, 2001 in Arlington, Virginia at the impact site where a hijacked airliner crashed into the building.

Eric Nordstrom was a student at Battle Mountain High School in Edwards, Colorado. When the news first broke, Nordstrom’s English teacher, Mr. Loetscher, took the class down to the cafeteria, where there were TVs with cable.

Prior to the second plane hitting, it seemed like there was confusion over what was happening. The second strike made it clear that it was an attack, which made things more terrifying and confusing, especially to a high school student.

Now, looking back, I mostly think about all of the terrible things that have emanated from that terrible day. Whether it’s the lives lost, the money squandered that we could have done actual good with, the many stupid policies that came out of the aftermath that do nothing to keep us safe, or how it caused so many people to abandon their moral compasses and embrace hate. I think about the anti-Islam hate that spiked overnight.

Nordstrom lives in Vail, Colorado.

Alex Tronolone, a junior at Curtis High School in Staten Island, was the photographer for his school’s yearbook and newspaper. After the first plane crashed into the north tower, he was called out of class to snap some pictures. As he made his way up to the roof, where the janitors were looking out at the towers, Tronolone was imagining a small passenger plane.

When I finally got to the roof, you could tell it was more than that. While I was up there, the first tower fell. At first, it looked like water was being used to put out the fires, but as the smoke spread and cleared, it became obvious that the tower fell. After that, I returned to class, incredulous. I remember looking at my watch to note the date because I knew it would be something that would be remembered.

Tronolone is an educator from Staten Island.

Rashid Johnson taught fourth grade at Bruce-Monroe Elementary School in Washington, D.C. The principal there began evacuating the school after a third plane hit the Pentagon. (A fourth hijacked plane crashed into a Pennsylvania field soon after.)

I was paralyzed, and my students were terrified and asking me if we were going to die. It felt like an alien invasion.

Johnson is a senior director of school support in New York City.

Barbara Gottschalk continued to teach, as school leaders wanted students of Warren Consolidated Schools to find out from their parents.

Barbara Gottschalk was a teacher at Flynn Middle School in Michigan’s Warren Consolidated Schools district. As events unfolded that morning, school leaders told teachers to turn off their TVs and keep teaching.

The message was to continue on and not let the students know. At the end of the school day, the principal came on the intercom to announce after-school activities had been canceled. One of my students said, “I wonder why they’re canceling everything.” That’s how protected we’d managed to keep our students. Our principal wanted the students to learn about this from their family members. To this day, I admire how my principal handled this.

Gottschalk is retired and lives in North Carolina.

Gloria Turner, a teacher at Southside Middle School in Florence, South Carolina, remembers the principal coming over the loudspeaker to say that we could not watch the news on TV or the computer.

We turned on the radio instead. I spent the day calming the fears of young teenagers while trying to control my own. All these years later, the unity of our nation is what comes to mind. We had prayer services in the park, and people from all walks of life attended. This is unusual in our town. We held hands and prayed and hugged. American flags were everywhere.

Turner teaches media arts and theatre in Florence, South Carolina.

Alyson Starks (center) watched the news unfold in her fifth grade classroom at Mt. Juliet Elementary School. She is seen here with classmates at their fifth grade graduation.

Alyson Starks was in her fifth grade math class at Mt. Juliet Elementary School in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, when the science teacher, Ms. Jeffries, rushed into the room without knocking.

Ms. Jeffries told Mrs. Hahn something behind the piece of paper as if to tell her a secret. Mrs. Hahn rolled in the TV — those big ones, strapped to a rolling cart with the VHS that never worked — and turned on the news. Later that day, I remember getting off the bus and my parents being home. They were never home when my brother and I got home from school. The TV was on, and I’ll remember my mom’s face as she turned to notice us walk in for the rest of my life.

Starks is a senior graphic designer in Nashville.

Crowds swarm over the Manhattan Bridge to leave Manhattan the morning of the 9/11 attack.

Suzanne Werner was an educator at P.S. 124, which backs up to the Manhattan Bridge. That morning she was asked to cover for a fifth grade teacher whose husband worked at the World Trade Center.

At first, there was a steady stream of sirens, then silence and a steady stream of people covered in ash walking [toward Brooklyn]. By noon most of the children had been picked up, and the teachers were sent home. I stayed with a small group and the principal till 4 or 4:30 p.m., when the last child was collected. By then, the F train was running, and I was able to get back home to Brooklyn. The train was packed and completely silent.

It was so hard to get back to teaching that fall. There were so many distractions. Chinatown was impacted in so many ways. Businesses closed. There was no phone service for many, many months. The stench of the cloud hung over the neighborhood. The number of boxes of letters and boxes of teddy bears from school kids all over the country was overwhelming.

Werner is retired and lives in New York City.

Latasha Fields-Frisco was the dean of students at Bronx School for Law, and her daughter had just started kindergarten before 9/11.

Latasha Fields-Frisco, who on 9/11 was the dean of students at Bronx School for Law, Government & Justice. Her own daughter had just started kindergarten.

It was a regular morning that ended with a bomb threat to our school. We evacuated and ensured all of our students were safe. I lived in Harlem at the time and was unable to drive home. The bridges were closed off. I walked from the Bronx to 122nd Street in Harlem. It seemed like the longest walk ever. I was happy to reach home safely to see my family and just broke down in tears.

Fields-Frisco is an assistant principal in the Bronx.

Sonia Algarin was a school counselor at Health Opportunities High School in the Bronx when the NYPD ordered an evacuation of the school. The city had shut down mass transit temporarily.

How could we dismiss students who now had to walk home during a crisis situation? When would their parents get home if they had to walk from their jobs? Was it safer to keep them at the school? Our school was across the street from a highway, the Major Deegan. The police said we needed to seek shelter at Hostos Community College three blocks away. We had to walk all 500 students through the busy streets. Some were scared there could be another bombing or another airplane crashing into Yankee Stadium 10 blocks away.

Algarin is a school counselor in the Bronx.

Smoke billows toward the harbor in Lower Manhattan after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

Sunny Asra, a fifth grader at P.S. 220 Edward Mandel School in Queens, thinks about the repercussions of 9/11 for America’s South Asian community.

[On Sept. 13], schools had a two-hour delayed opening. Still having not processed the events, it started to hit us when the kids met each other and our parents hugged one another, and we kind of did the same. In the following weeks, major hate was thrown at the South Asian community due to a lack of knowledge about religion and race. Being that I had a turban, I was even more fearful. Many innocent South Asians were killed, stabbed, and beaten.

Asra is an operations manager for the New York City Department of Education. He lives on Long Island.

Elvis Santana, seen here c. 2000, was at P.S. 66 in the Bronx during the attack, and classmates worried about the safety of their parents.

Elvis Santana, a student at P.S. 66 in the Bronx, remembers listening to the radio that morning from under his desk at school. Many of his classmates wondered aloud if their parents were OK and tried to call them.

It was and still is the most devastating storyline of my life. One moment you’re in class learning, and the next, you’re thinking about death, violence, religion, war, and safety all at once. As a Bronx native, by the age of 8, you have already previewed violence and discrimination. The incident of 9/11 broadened that violence and triggered something we weren’t prepared to deal with. To anyone born after 2001, it was a testament to how America handled hatred and violence. In the end, we failed in achieving our objective, and today we see that in places like Afghanistan.

Santana is an education outreach director in the Bronx.

Dale Chu, a third grade teacher in East Palo Alto, California, heard about the terror attack from a local Spanish-language radio station on his drive to work. He had no idea of the scale of the disaster until he walked into the teachers lounge and saw the images on TV.

For the most part, we decided not to address it with our students at the time because of their age and because the feelings were all so visceral. I also vividly remember my brother in Los Angeles calling me that morning, and me stepping out of my classroom to take it. He told me that America was now at war.

9/11 is one of those rare life-defining moments. I can’t believe it’s been 20 years. The recent image of the Afghan boy falling from the U.S. Air Force jet over Kabul brought back for me — in stark relief — this picture of a falling man from the World Trade Center. Most of all, I remember how I felt in the following weeks. The sense of national pride and unity, like when George W. Bush threw out the first pitch at the World Series game in New York City. Given today’s raging culture wars and swirling currents of polarization, we could use a little bit of that now.

Chu is an education consultant in Parker, Colorado.

Chalkbeat is launching a Student Voices essay-writing fellowship

2021-08-23T19:33:59+00:00

Applications for the 2021-22 Chalkbeat Student Voices Fellowship are now closed.

In a First Person essay published last school year, Samantha Charles, then a 10th grader in New York City, described walking through metal detectors every day at school. In another piece, Brianna Moore, of Gary, Indiana, wrote about how she managed to graduate high school this spring with an associate degree.

Recent student pieces have also detailed what it’s like to be in high school when you’re in foster care. Or when you’re homeless and trying to hide that fact from your friends. Or as a Black Lives Matter organizer on the day of the Capitol insurrection. Or as a Vietnamese-American student during a surge in anti-Asian hate. These are students saying: This is who I am. This is what it looks like from where I sit, and this is what it feels like. This is why it matters.

Chalkbeat’s First Person essay series is thrilled to expand its paid writing opportunities for students. This school year, we’re launching the Student Voices fellowship program for high school students who want to write and publish essays about their own educational journey. We’re piloting the semester-long fellowships in three communities where we have bureaus: Chicago, Newark, and Philadelphia.

We know student stories have a lot to teach us.

These stories matter because, in the words of the contemporary poet Sean Thomas Dougherty, “right now there is someone/Out there with a wound in the exact shape of your words.” They matter, the writers tell us, because metal detectors make even middle schoolers “feel like criminals when we were just headed to school.” Because earning college credits while in high school puts low-income students on the path to a bachelor’s degree. Because children in foster care can thrive with the right academic support.

In their telling, those who can relate to the writers’ experiences may feel a little less alone. Those who cannot relate may develop new empathy and understanding.

Personal stories connect us to one another, and they push us to grow.

If you attend a public high school or a public charter high school in Chicago, Newark, or Philadelphia, here’s more information about the fellowship opportunity, how to know if it’s right for you, and the online application.

UPDATE: Applications for the 2021-22 Chalkbeat Student Voices Fellowship are now closed.

Fellows will receive a $1,000 stipend.

Fellowship requirements:

You are a high school student in Chicago, Newark, or Philadelphia with interests in journalism and storytelling. (Please note: In Philadelphia, fellowships are limited to members of The Bullhorn News, a citywide student-run newspaper.)
You have strong writing ability, an interest in education, and the ability to manage your time and meet deadlines. (Student journalism and previous publication experience are a plus.)
You have compelling personal stories to share and are willing and able to share them on Chalkbeat under your byline. (First Person does not publish anonymous or pseudonymous pieces.)
You are collaborative and eager for feedback on your writing.

What you’ll do:

Pitch, write, edit, publish and promote First Person essays.
Learn from experienced storytellers what makes a strong personal narrative and how to turn your own experiences into publication-ready pieces.
Work closely with experienced journalists, and become an integral part of a dynamic, diverse newsroom.
Improve your storytelling ability across formats and platforms.

The fellowship will be virtual, with opportunities to meet with staff members in the respective bureau depending on COVID guidance.

Again, applications are due Friday, September 17 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

About Chalkbeat:

About First Person:

Chalkbeat’s First Person series highlights the voices of those inside American public schools or working to shape them. In addition to these fellowship opportunities, we will continue to publish essays by teachers, counselors, school leaders and staff, parents, and students across the country. We pay $100 per published piece. Please read our submission guidelines, and then send your pitch or draft essay to firstperson@chalkbeat.org.

If you’re having trouble viewing the application on a mobile device, go here.

This singing principal of viral video fame wants students to know they are loved. A call from Oprah would be nice, too.

2021-07-22T11:30:00+00:00

Every day during morning announcements, Marcus Gause, principal of T. Wingate Andrews High School in High Point, N.C., reminds his students that they are loved. On graduation day last month, he reiterated that message.

The graduates heard it, and they weren’t the only ones.

Gause’s rendition of “I Will Always Love You” — a ballad made famous by the likes of Dolly Parton and Whitney Houston — sent chills, cheers, and tears through the crowd. A video of his pitch-perfect performance went viral, with millions of views on social media, and praise from hip-hop artists, including Diddy.

Gause had serenaded students at talent shows and senior banquets, but only now is he getting worldwide recognition. Lately, he’s been asked to sing at professional sporting events and pageants. And he dreams of performing one day alongside his musical idols, such as Fantasia or John Legend, or getting a call from Oprah.

“My kids would be so impressed,” said Gause, who spoke recently with Chalkbeat about leading a high school through COVID, teaching his students to believe in themselves, and why he thinks his graduation performance resonated so widely.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What has this past year looked like for you? How have you supported your students and staff during these unprecedented times?

I believe there is a sixth sense to educating that comes to light from our interactions with students. Not being in their presence took away our ability to impact them as we did previously. For example, we would know when a student was having a difficult morning by their body language or facial expression when they first entered the building. The pandemic made that extremely challenging to do. To get through it, we had several “Fun Fridays” where we logged on to our learning management system and went live on our social media platforms to have dance parties and competitions, virtual awards ceremonies, games, exercise, and wellness check-ins. We facilitated food drop-offs and pickups for students and families experiencing food insecurities. My staff and I also conducted porch conferences where we went to the home and held social distanced meetings for students who were not logging on to their classes regularly.

Why did you decide to sing to your students — and how did you choose that particular song? What do you hope the lyrics conveyed to graduates?

Four years ago, I heard so many negative things about Andrews High School. I met with the entire school and was very transparent about what I had heard and challenged them to believe that we were better than that. The word “believe” became our motto and helped us to transform the school culture. My personal belief was that love is the answer to all situations, so every day, I would end announcements with: “Guys, if no one has told you that they love you today, it is indeed my privilege and my pleasure to be the first to let you know that someone loves you in Red Raider Country and that somebody is me!”

During my first year as principal, a student asked me what they needed to do to become valedictorian, and I explained to her that she was ranked No. 10 and would need to keep working hard. She believed she could, and so she did. She became our Class of 2021 valedictorian. When it came down to choosing the song for graduation, I wanted it to encompass our beliefs, the love we have for one another, and after having lost so much due to the pandemic, a song that would express how I wanted their future to go. When I couldn’t decide on the song, I allowed the valedictorian to choose because she was the evidence and an example of what happens if you simply believe!

Why do you think the video resonated with so many people?

I think the pandemic took a lot from people, but I think it also allowed us time to reprioritize things of importance. One of those was love — both giving it and receiving it. I think that it was so well received because it was expressing authentic love that keeps us all going!

You have quite a voice. Did you ever consider becoming a professional vocalist?

I have thought about it but never really pursued it. I actually tried out for “Sunday Best” in Chicago years ago but only made it to the second round. Now, it looks like I might still have a chance to live out that dream.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

I have attention deficit disorder and was not diagnosed until college, which I barely had the grades for. While I wanted to perform well, I lacked focus. Personally, my parents were divorcing during my middle and high school years, so that was hard. In school, I was always doing things I had no business doing, but I had one teacher that loved me enough not to take any junk. She was tough, but it was obvious that she cared about me. Her name is Mrs. Jeanette Mintz, and I try to be that type of love I needed and received from her during that time. My goal before instruction is to make sure that every student and staff member feels loved and appreciated every day!

What’s the best advice you ever received — and how have you put it into action?

My father once told me that sometimes you have to take the step even when you don’t see the staircase. That means there are times in life where it doesn’t make sense, but you have to have the faith to give it a try. Sometimes the obstacles in education seem insurmountable, but if I sit back and do nothing, I know what the outcome will be. However, if I take the proverbial step of faith and try something, the possibilities are limitless. I try to love without limits, and I set out every day to achieve what may seem impossible!

What’s one thing you’ve read that has made you a better educator?

I think that becoming a better educator involves becoming a better you! I recently read a book titled “Do It Again” by Cammie J. Cummings. The book reminded me that I was made for this and not to get defeated but rather to embrace the challenge of dreaming again — this time bigger and better than before! While I love what I do, it’s not void of challenging days and situations. On my worst days, I only have to simply believe again! A changed mind changes outcomes and destinations.

Any summer plans that you’re willing to share?

This summer has already been extremely eventful. I have been honored to perform at a national dance competition, High Point Rockers baseball game, and the Miss North Carolina pageant! I will be doing a PBS interview in August and hope to be finalizing some out-of-state performances in the next few weeks. I would love to sing with some of my favorites, like Fantasia, John Legend, Chris Stapleton, and Kirk Franklin. This summer would be even more amazing if I got a call from Tyler Perry, Kelly Clarkson, Oprah! My kids would be so impressed!

I love four-wheeling, so my family and I plan to do a lot of that this summer.

This NYC teacher scrolls with care and reminds students that empathy is a ‘radical’ act

2021-06-29T21:47:09+00:00

Social media has the power to inspire in ways big and small. But engaging online also means resisting comparisons.

That goes for young people who have grown up with social platforms and for their teachers who have learned to embrace them, too. “Especially now with social media, where everyone is posting their classrooms and teaching practices online, it’s so easy for educators to fall into imposter syndrome and to doubt our talents,” said Islah Tauheed, who teaches fifth grade English Language Arts at P.S. 567 Linden Tree Elementary School in the Bronx.

Which is why she takes comfort in the words of the feminist writer Audre Lorde about defining herself for herself, rather than according to others’ expectations. If that means her classroom is a bit louder or messier or more musical than that of her colleagues, that’s more than OK. “I don’t teach for likes or for followers or to post pretty pictures on Instagram,” Tauheed said. “I teach for the children in front of me, so they feel safe and loved and affirmed in this classroom space.”

Tauheed spoke recently with Chalkbeat New York.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What led you to a career in education?

I truly believe I was born to teach. My mother was a special education teacher. Other kids would skip school to go to the mall. I would skip and come to my mother’s class. Her colleagues were my “aunties.” Like other kids, I played school as a child, but by the time I was 9, I went to my mother in distress because I was worried I wouldn’t have enough credits to graduate and become a teacher. She laughed and assured me I had plenty of time. A career in education also continues the legacy of my grandparents, who were denied access to equal education. As a result, many of my grandparents had trouble reading and writing. When they had children, they were strong and vocal advocates in my hometown for public education. My grandmother was often featured in my hometown’s newspaper for comments she made at city meetings. I very consciously carry my grandparents’ mission as I walk in my mother’s footsteps while simultaneously forging my own path as an educational leader.

I read something you wrote about radical empathy. Why is empathy a radical act, and how do you teach students to be empathic?

I read this quote from the writer Isabel Wilkerson:

“Empathy is not pity or sympathy in which you are — pity, you’re looking down on someone and feeling sorry for them. Sympathy, you may be looking across at someone and feeling bad for them. Empathy means getting inside of them, and understanding their reality, and looking at their situation and saying not, ‘What would I do if I were in their position?’ but, ‘What are they doing? Why are they doing what they’re doing from the perspective of what they have endured?’ And that is an additional step. There are multiple steps that a person has to take to really be open to that.”

Empathy is not passive like pity. Empathy requires questioning oneself. Empathy takes a willingness to shift your mind into perspectives that aren’t your own. Empathy is an action, and I think all actions that you take that lead you out of your comfort zone are radical.

When I taught first and second grade, I assumed teaching empathy would be easy because I thought little children were naturally empathetic. However, they are very much still in their ego phase. A lot of the teaching is centered on actively listening. We practiced on picture book characters. We practiced identifying how the character was feeling and how we could tell. Last, we wrote and role-played words we could say or actions we could take to support that character.

How do you approach current events in the classroom?

Since going remote in 2020, there have been so many big events that came up, like the Breonna Taylor verdict or the presidential election. This year, I have used Sara K. Ahmed’s “What’s in Your News” lesson from her book “Being The Change.” I love the framing because students have a chance to show us exactly what’s on their minds instead of us making assumptions. Reading through their responses gives me a starting point for the conversation.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

Fun fact about me: I never went to public school! I went to a private Muslim school from preschool to 12th grade. I went to school in my hometown of Newark. My mother was one of the founders of my elementary school. All of my teachers were Black, the nurses were Black, the principal was Black. There was a large focus on celebrating Black history.

It shaped me in ways I didn’t realize until I was an adult and realized that most Black people don’t have this experience. I never had to question who I was at school. I never had to question whether I was being treated differently because of my race. I never experienced tokenism. As a result, at a young age, I was very confident in who I was and that my skills and accomplishments were earned of my own merit. I didn’t limit my dreams because I had representation right in front of me.

As a result, I am adamant about creating classroom spaces where students can thrive while being themselves. Even more than instruction, building that safe, loving classroom culture is my priority. I want students to have that strong sense of confidence and belonging that I had.

What’s one thing you’ve read that has made you a better educator?

Honestly, tweets and texts. Tweets from Lorena German, Aeriale Johnson, and Akiea Gross have been especially influential this year. Lorena and Aeriale remind me that “learning loss” is a myth and that our students are learning in so many ways this year. Educators just have to give students the freedom to show what they know beyond the constraints of state exams or curriculum essays. Akiea has pushed me to be more inclusive in my speech by using non-gendered language and checking my resources to make sure I’m not leaving out contributions of queer people of color from the narratives I’m sharing.

What’s the best advice you ever received — and how have you put it into action?

”If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” — Audre Lorde.

Especially now with social media, where everyone is posting their classrooms and teaching practices online, it’s so easy for educators to fall into imposter syndrome and to doubt our talents. While I will never diminish the voices and needs of the students and families I serve, I have to define my style as a teacher for myself. I have to teach in the style that is authentically me. I have to be myself and teach like myself, knowing that the things I carry with me are my assets. This includes using African American Vernacular English, or AAVE, in my instruction. This includes playing my grandfather’s jazz music as children complete classwork. This includes having a classroom that’s a little noisier and a little less put together than people may expect an elementary classroom to look. I have to constantly reflect on why I teach. I don’t teach for likes or for followers or to post pretty pictures on Instagram. I teach for the children in front of me, so they feel safe and loved and affirmed in this classroom space.

What do you want people to know about your students?

They are brilliant, thoughtful, inspiring, and hopeful. When I asked them what they were most proud of this year, they replied that when the pandemic began, they were so nervous to learn from home because they are used to being in a room with a teacher at their side to call on whenever they need help. However, they got through the year with levels of independence they weren’t aware of. They are very proud of that. I also asked them about their hopes for next school year, and each student wished for a teacher who is kind and “sweet” and understands that they’ve spent the entire year remote. They want their teachers to be patient as they re-enter the buildings and understand if they do things more slowly.

This NYC bilingual educator shares what it means to teach for ‘equity, not equality’

2021-03-18T16:56:56+00:00

So much of teaching a new language happens in the small moments: in the chatter among peers, in asking to use the bathroom.

This year, with New York City public schools shuttered so frequently due to coronavirus cases, students had far fewer opportunities for these casual conversations and questions, said Rebecca Quiñones, a second grade dual-language teacher at P.S. 139 in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn.

“Teaching students literacy in English and Spanish takes consistent day-to-day work,” she said, but there have been weeks when she saw her students only once or twice.

For now, Quiñones is using her limited face time to make sure those who struggle the most have what they need — ”whether it means swapping out one book for another or planning to work with specific children in small groups with more frequency than others,” she said. “I teach for equity, not equality.”

Quiñones, who was named to the International Literacy Association’s 30 Under 30 list, spoke recently with Chalkbeat about seeing herself in her students, what it takes to master a new language, and how she puts the needs of her English learners first.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Was there a moment when you decided to become a teacher?

As a child, I enjoyed the performing arts as well as the academic part of the school. There is a performance aspect to teaching, especially when we read children’s books. I felt as though the career was a blend of my two passions. When I found out about bilingual education, I was sold. I always knew how to speak Spanish but didn’t know how to read or write it until college. Realizing I could teach other children who grew up like me, that aspect of being bilingual was crucial to me.

What does a typical day look like for you now?

If I am teaching in person that day, I work with part of my class — anywhere from three to 10 students that day. We wear masks and strive to socially distance all day. I still split up the languages of instruction. I’ll either teach English in the mornings and Spanish in the afternoons or vice versa. When I go home, I check on my remote students’ work with their “blended remote” teacher, who works with them on the days they are learning remotely. I then plan for my next day in the classroom based on what the students didn’t learn at home. On remote days, I teach all 28 of the students in my class at once.

What challenges do you face teaching bilingual education this year?

Due to the current model the New York City Department of Education has put in place, there are times when I only see children once or twice a week, whether it’s virtually or in person. Teaching students literacy in English and Spanish takes consistent day-to-day work. A lot of the language work we do also takes place in the little moments in the classroom. Moments when they share stories, ask to use the bathroom, and participate are all opportunities to practice language. Due to the inconsistencies with hybrid/remote learning, these moments are not as common.

Tell us about the recent International Literacy Association honor you received, and what the award means to you.

I was awarded the ILA 30 Under 30 award, highlighting young people advocating for literacy for all children. I was acknowledged for my approach to teaching and researching bilingual education. My views are that bilingual programs should add value to children’s home language. I strive for children to be proficient in both their native language and in English. Although the award is a real honor, I want to make it clear that I am not the only one doing this work. There are bilingual educators across the country that have been doing this for years.

What’s something happening in the community that affects what goes on inside your class (or your school)?

My school is in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, a mixed community recently impacted by gentrification. The neighborhood is historically an Arab, Black, and Latino community. With gentrification, there are many more affluent families in the neighborhood who are attracted to the benefits of bilingual education. It takes a conscious effort on my and the school’s part to make sure that our dual-language classrooms serve our Latinx families and put their language needs first.

What does putting their needs first look like?

On a school level, we strive to make sure that information is given to families in a way they can access easily. We learned during the pandemic that our ways of communicating to families did not cater to all of the populations. Not all families are digitally fluent.

Latinx children are diverse and have varying needs, therefore, I don’t have a blanket answer for this. But basically, I pay attention to the areas of the curriculum that may be difficult for my Latinx children to access. This can be a book, a skill, or content. The first thing I do when I plan for a school day is I make a plan for how I am going to address this — whether it means swapping out one book for another or planning to work with specific children in small groups with more frequency than others. I teach for equity, not equality.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

When I was in school in Brooklyn during the late 1990s and the early 2000s, the classrooms were actually very diverse. I was surrounded by children of all ethnicities, with white children only being the slight majority. Therefore, I had a lot of exposure and natural acceptance toward cultures different from mine. My current classroom is similar, with Latinx children having the slight majority. Because of this, I am continually looking for ways to celebrate diversity in the classroom — from the projects I do to the books I read to the decorations in the class.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

“We learn by doing.” Children can read as many books and watch as many shows in Spanish, but they don’t truly grasp the language unless they are put in situations where students must apply what they know. This year, I strive to put my students in these situations, and I have seen growth in their English and Spanish abilities. It is similar for teachers. We can attend 100 hours of professional development, but what ultimately makes you a better teacher are the years you spend in the classroom, virtually or in person.

For blind students, accessibility makes all the difference, this NYC teacher says

2021-02-16T22:39:08+00:00

Online classes have meant a learning curve for all children, but they pose a particular challenge for Jonathan Hooper’s students, who are blind or visually impaired. Many of them rely on tactile learning materials for which there are no digital substitutes.

Because with the right accommodations blind students can learn and thrive alongside their seeing classmates, Hooper has spent the past year making sure his students have what they need to do their work remotely. “One of my primary roles is to be the bridge between inaccessible content and accessible content,” said Hooper, who works with students across age groups at multiple New York City public schools. “Basically, my day looks like: creating accessible materials, seeing students remotely, creating accessible materials, communicating with parents, communicating with teachers, making sure things are accessible. You get the idea.”

The Braille Institute recently named Hooper its Teacher of the Year for his work with visually impaired children over the past eight years in New York, and especially during distance learning. Hooper also coordinates the NYC Braille Challenge, an academic competition for visually impaired students, and teaches Braille at Hunter College. He spoke recently with Chalkbeat about what drew him to the field, and the challenges and rewards of what he calls “the grooviest job ever.”

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How did you come to be a teacher of blind and visually impaired students?

I started teaching as a general education reading teacher in Tennessee. One of my students had a visual impairment. He was a struggling reader who had poor attendance and disliked school. I had no experience with students with visual impairment, so I looked up ways to help him. After making adjustments to the material I gave him, he started coming to school more. By the end of the year, he was at grade level in reading. This showed me how small accommodations can greatly impact the educational experience of a student with a visual impairment. The next year, I moved 100 miles to go back to school to learn how to work with students with visual impairments.

What challenges do you face teaching visually impaired students during the pandemic?

Whoa! The very nature of distance learning has created a variety of barriers for students with sensory impairments. This year my students are mostly under the age of 9, and many of them are Braille users. This means their primary way to access learning and literacy is tactile. Before distance learning, my students used a variety of tools, like tactile graphics and paper Braille. Transitioning from a physical model of materials to a 100% digital model was a steep learning curve for many of my students.

Additionally, some materials have to be physical. For instance, one of my students learned about how to read a map this year. The students learned about the concept of North, South, East, West, and how to find parts of a map. This could not be done digitally, so I created tactile maps and mailed them to the student. This requires a partnership with the classroom teachers and lots of advanced planning. And to be honest, classroom teachers are stretched very thin this year.

Tell us about the NYC Braille Challenge and your role in it.

The NYC Braille Challenge is my favorite day of the entire year! I am the coordinator, but the NYC Braille Challenge is organized by a team of my colleagues who are equally as dedicated to our event and Braille literacy as a whole.

The Braille Challenge is a national program of the Braille Institute. Each year, regional events happen around the U.S. and Canada to identify national finalists. The Braille Challenge is the only national Braille literacy competition of its kind in the country, and it is specifically designed to challenge and reward students who are blind for their study of Braille. The categories of the competition include reading comprehension, writing speed and accuracy, proofreading, spelling, and interpreting tactile charts and graphs.

Our event is special in that it includes far more than the academic challenge. We bring in more than 20 community agencies that serve students with visual impairments to meet with parents. We have parent learning sessions focused on a variety of topics from blindfold experience to panels of blind adults. We facilitate unique tactile learning experiences for our students. Last year, we coordinated with the MTA to bring a city bus so students could touch all the parts of a bus. This is meaningful because the knowledge and understanding of a bus they learned by touching the bus is wildly different from getting on a bus in service on any given day.

Most importantly, our competitors have fun! We partner with Camp Abilities each year to bring movement and a love of sports to our event. This also empowers them to advocate for access to recreation and leisure when they are back in their community schools.

Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn’t say that last year we sent two students to nationals who placed. Woo-hoo.

What do you want people to know about your students?

First, my students are the coolest.

Second, do not underestimate students with visual impairments. Given accommodations, students with visual impairments can succeed alongside their typically sighted peers. Maybe it’s a ball with a bell in it for PE. Maybe it’s a large print worksheet for math. Maybe it’s a tactile map for social studies. The important thing is that students with visual impairments have access to the same activities that their sighted classmates have access to.

Third, we need dedicated educators to join our community. There is a shortage of teachers of students with visual impairment nationwide. Join us in having the grooviest job ever.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

Like Ms. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus says, “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy.”

I put that into practice by giving my students the space to take chances. To be comfortable making mistakes and using those moments to grow. And to explore the world tactilely, even if that sometimes gets your fingers messy.

‘This is something I can do now’: What Kamala Harris’ ascension means for girls of color

2021-01-19T23:26:42+00:00

As Kamala Harris becomes the first woman, the first African American, and the first person of South Asian descent to become U.S. vice president, many girls of color will be celebrating the multiple historic barriers coming down with a single oath.

In the days leading up to the inauguration of Joe Biden and Harris, Chalkbeat spoke with Black, brown, and Asian teenagers about the significance of this moment. They discussed the importance of having elected officials who look like them, wondered why it took so long to get here, and told us how they plan to hold the new administration accountable. These young women also shared their wide-ranging policy priorities, including COVID relief, combatting climate change, increasing the minimum wage, and defunding the police.

Their stories are interspersed with poetry by younger girls, and a performance of “Represent” by 16-year-old spoken-word artist Ife Martin of Detroit. “Do you feel that?” she asks. “The roar of change rumbling under our feet, under our All Star Chucks and church shoes. It’s hard to find but long overdue.”

Kellen Zeng, 17, Staten Island, NY

Senior, Staten Island Technical High School

I saw something on Twitter about all the vice presidents throughout the years. It’s all white men and then, all of the sudden, you see Kamala. I find that really inspiring.

I want to follow in her footsteps in a way. I’ve always had an interest in policy and advocacy and activism but I told myself: “No, you have to play it safe. You have to reach financial security.” And then there’s the whole idea that as a woman of color, you have to work twice as hard. But now, having a female vice president and seeing BIPOC women in office, I want to be able to pursue that path, too. I’d love to see the day that having a woman in office isn’t something to celebrate. It’s not a success story; it’s just a norm.

Kellen Zeng is a member of the nonprofit civic engagement organization YVote.

For now, there’s a lot of pressure on Biden and Harris during their first 100 days. What are they going to do about the pandemic? How are they going to help Americans who are currently unemployed? The economy is not doing the best right now, and that should be one of the priorities. Both of my parents were unemployed at the beginning of the pandemic. My dad helps out in his friends’ restaurants, and my mom has a beauty salon that wasn’t open for a long time. They are immigrants from China, and I had to help them apply for unemployment.

The most pressing thing right now is rolling back some of the damage done during the Trump presidency. A lot of LGBTQ rights were violated. I know that the fight isn’t over. Just because Biden and Harris won the election, it doesn’t mean America is great again.

Ife Martin, 16, Detroit, Michigan

Junior, West Bloomfield High School in West Bloomfield, Michigan

Ife Martin performs an original poem titled “Represent,” reflecting on Harris’ historic role. Ife is a member of InsideOut Literary Arts and the Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit. She is the winner of the 2021 National YoungArts Award in spoken word.

Ashton Mayo-Beavers, 18, Chattanooga, Tennessee

Freshman, Mercer University in Macon, Georgia

When I moved from Tennessee to Georgia to start college last fall, I was expecting, well, another version of Tennessee.

Growing up in Knoxville and Chattanooga, I saw policies that impact women’s health designed by men. I saw a lack of representation of Black women in government. I saw police brutality and inequitable justice systems.

Ashton Mayo-Beavers started college during the pandemic.

I still see many of those things in Georgia from my dorm room. But now, I also see Stacey Abrams. I see Kamala Harris. I see the importance of local elections, and that every single vote really does matter.

Fall of 2020 was a crazy time to start college. The COVID-19 pandemic meant that some of my classes were online and some were in person, and I had to navigate the tension of trying to focus on friends and classes while staying safe. As we were trying to prepare for our first final exams — and on top of the pandemic — there was this election. One of my professors called it the most important election of our time. For me, it was the first election I ever voted in.

On Election Day, which was more of an election month, we were told by older African American students that we shouldn’t go out. Even though Kamala Harris, a Black woman, was on the path to one of the most powerful positions in our nation, I, as a Black student, didn’t feel comfortable going to all-campus debate watch parties. I worried that the color of my skin would make me a target if tensions escalated.

Even now, I’m not sure I have processed how big it is that Kamala Harris is going to be so many firsts. For so long, I was waiting for the results to be official. I was waiting for the carpet to be dragged out from under us. It’s happened before.

No one is fully processing how big it is or how long it took. There already are so many great local leaders that are women of color, and that’s amazing. But the fact is, we will have a woman vice president who is a person of color that’s going to open the doors for so many people to envision themselves as our nation’s future.

Kimora Guy, Memphis, Tennessee

First grade, Power Center Academy Elementary School in Memphis

I can
I can do what she can do…
She went to a Black college.
I can too.

She wrote a book.
I can too.
Look! She’s running to be Vice President for the United States.
Can she do that?

Not only can she do it, but she has done it!!
So I can too!

Munaja Mehzabin, 17, Queens, New York

Senior, Academy of American Studies in Queens

Growing up South Asian, I saw brown actors and actresses while watching Bollywood movies with my parents. When it came to Hollywood films, Jasmine from “Aladdin” was the closest it came. Of course, when I was younger I didn’t think about representation, about not seeing people like me in TVs or movies. (The exceptions were side characters in stereotypical roles — a math whiz, or an owner of a gas station store.)

Munaja Mehzabin has critiqued Harris’ record as a prosecutor.

These days, there are more and varied roles for South Asians, and I’m extremely glad. But representation is about more than entertainment. Representation also matters when it comes to who is representing us in government.

Kamala Harris will be the first-ever South Asian vice president, even though that tends to go over people’s heads, and the first-ever African American vice president. She will also be the first-ever woman to be vice president. In this role, she is changing things for women of color. It is so important to see people who look like you make a change because it can push people to be “the next first.” Young girls can look to Kamala Harris and feel like it’s possible to have a seat in the White House. Sure, there will always be men who don’t think a woman is capable of an important job, but we must prove them wrong.

Even though Kamala Harris has accomplished something so extraordinary, she’s far from perfect when it comes to racial justice. She was previously a prosecutor, and has sometimes sided with the police. As California’s attorney general, her office fought to keep a man named George Gage behind bars even though there was evidence that he had been wrongly convicted. She also opposed a state bill that would have regulated the use of police body cameras.

As citizens, we have to hold our leaders accountable. We have to make sure they hear us. Vice President Kamala Harris will inspire others and hold open doors. I am extremely grateful for that. At the same time, I will not glorify her.

Brooklyn Cauley, 16, Rockwall, Texas

Sophomore, Rockwall High School

I live in a predominantly white community and attend a predominantly white school, where I’m a National Honor Society student and participate in several clubs. I’m the only Black girl and the only Black person on my robotics team. I used to mentor a younger robotics team, and I felt like I was showing others that Black girls — and girls in general — can excel in STEM. That’s a big, progressive step.

Brooklyn Cauley has mentored younger students who are interested in robotics.

In a political office, where there is not that much diversity, Kamala Harris’ win is a big thing. It shows that people are moving forward. It’s making a change. Our voices are being heard.

Biden talks about raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15. This increase would bring so many people out of poverty in the U.S. This could help make so many Black communities better.

I also hope they get more vaccines out, and they actually focus on the coronavirus. [President Trump] made a joke out of it. I know a lot of kids at school don’t believe that the virus is dangerous. I’m also in the agriculture program at school, and a lot of the students tend to be big Trump supporters, which is fine. I’m not judging anyone based on their political views. We are required to wear masks to school, but a lot of students don’t keep it up over their nose. Some won’t even wear them at all when school staff is not around.

Biden’s message at the inauguration should be something like: I know the country hasn’t been the greatest this past year. I know we have had a lot of racial issues, but we can persevere. A lot of people are struggling financially with job losses, and some are struggling mentally. We can’t just break away and say, we hate this person or that person. We have to come together to fix these issues. They are not going to be resolved by violence or fighting with our neighbor. I believe we need to pray more.

Sharona Nagamuthu, 17, Queens, New York

Junior, Scholars Academy in Queens

When the election was called for Biden and Harris, I was sleeping because [since Election Day] I was staying up until ridiculous hours of the night, glued to my TV. I checked my phone at about 11 a.m., and all of my friends were texting me: “Oh my God. They won.” It was an instant sense of relief. It had been this whole week; it was this whole long process. I’d be in my classes online, and I’d have another tab with the news open just so I could keep myself updated. After I heard, I actually went back to sleep — that’s how relieved I was, that I could finally sleep.

Sharona Nagamuthu said the new administration comes as “a relief.”

It was a relief because it showed me that this state that we’re in right now hopefully won’t always continue to exist, and we can ultimately improve on our lives and — especially, as a person of color — that new policies can be enacted that will help me and many others.

I’m an immigrant from Guyana. My family immigrated to the U.S. when I was 2. [Through YVote], I’ve done a lot of research on immigration policies, and we know the Trump administration has enacted a lot of policies that have impacted immigrants negatively — the travel ban from some Middle Eastern countries and countries in Africa and also the construction of the southern border wall. I know the border wall has done a lot of environmental damage. To add onto that, I’d also like to see policies that combat climate change. I think it’s kind of ridiculous that you have people who don’t recognize that climate change is real when scientists are literally proving it, and you can see the impacts in our life.

Megan Davis, Memphis, Tennessee

Fourth grade, Power Center Academy Elementary School in Memphis

A Little Girl's Dream
Roses are red and violets are blue
The next Vice President is Black and she's a woman, too!
2020 has been hard, but also great.

I can't believe a woman is part of the Head of State.
This changes everything, history too.
Madam Kamala Harris, I want to be just like you.
The path you've set out for me and others means we can do anything,
if we help one another.

I'm proud to be Black and a young girl, too, so I can grow up and be just like you.

Melanie Gonzalez Castillo, 19, Newark, New Jersey

Freshman, Villanova University in Villanova, Pennsylvania

As a feminist, I am happy a woman is becoming vice president in the U.S. for the first time. This inspires me. Kamala Harris’ parents were immigrants to this country. I moved to New Jersey from Mexico when I was 14 years old. This gives me hope for me and for my future children.

Melanie Gonzalez Castillo says Kamala Harris’ rise gives her hope.

I have been watching old interviews with Kamala, and she said that DACA recipients — undocumented young people, brought to the U.S. as children — come here believing in the democracy of the United States, and it’s beautiful to see them trust in this democracy.

A lot of people don’t trust in this country right now.

With everything that happened in the Capitol this month, I’ve been thinking more about what it means to believe in democracy. Throughout history, a lot of negative things have happened in this country, but it is my second home and has given me much. Yet people from this nation are the ones tearing it apart.

It’s so disturbing to see what this has come to, but I do have a lot of hope for the future. I have hope because of my dad, who came to this country and works hard every day. He taught me how important the work ethic is when paired with honesty and positivity. I have hope when I think about my sister, who is about to graduate college with a psychology degree.

Even though there’s still a lot to be done, and many things we must change, I have hope when I think about the generations that will come after me. They won’t think of it as revolutionary to have a woman in the White House. I hope the new generation grows up in a world where they can see equality and opportunity as something normal — not something they have to tirelessly fight for. It is up to each of us to create that change.

Ama Russell, 17, Detroit

Senior, Cass Technical High School

When I heard Biden and Harris had won, I was with my 92-year-old grandma, so it was a really big deal. She didn’t think we’d have Barack Obama [in her lifetime], so it was special to share the moment with her.

Later that day, organizers in Detroit held a Count Every Vote action, celebrating that we got Trump out and gearing up to hold the Biden-Harris administration accountable. We were very excited because Detroit, and most importantly its Black voters, carried Michigan [for Biden].

Ama Russell says representation is important, but it’s not enough.

Holding the Biden-Harris administration accountable means they are centering Black people in their policy, making sure that people don’t think that just because we got Trump out that injustices are solved. We will put pressure on them to do more for environmental issues and more for social justice, that we are pushing them to defund the police and to push the envelope to liberate Black people. Representation is important, but it’s not enough.

Before Biden chose Kamala Harris, there was talk that he was going to pick a Black woman as his running mate. When my father announced it was Kamala, I was like, “Oh, yay,” even though I really wanted it to be my girl Stacey Abrams. It was Stacey Abrams who ultimately made it possible for Democrats to win back the Senate. I think it’s important to honor her and all of the Black organizers who made space for Kamala.

For young girls, like myself, Kamala will make them see themselves in American politics. It will make them feel like they belong, in some sense, and see that they can do this. This isn’t a “when pigs fly” kind of thing. This is something achievable, it’s attainable, and it’s not something that has to happen in the next century. This is something I can do now.

‘Focus on the issue at hand’: How a leader representing school boards has handled a pandemic transition

2021-01-05T20:30:00+00:00

When the coronavirus crisis closed campuses in the spring, school boards across the country found themselves faced with decisions they never anticipated making: how to move schools online overnight, how to engage with children without computers or reliable internet, how to reopen buildings and ensure social distancing in once-cramped classrooms, and how to pay for the technology that schooling in the age of COVID-19 demands.

As boards mulled these weighty questions, the national organization representing them got a new leader: Anna Maria Chávez, a former Girl Scouts CEO. She became the chief executive of the National School Boards Association, which lobbies on behalf of school boards representing 13,000 districts, in June.

The association has been pushing for additional coronavirus relief, more federal funding for special education, and a pathway to citizenship for immigrant students. And amid a pandemic that brought educational disparities into sharp relief, NSBA is calling for the creation of a presidential task force on equity in education and for Dr. Jill Biden, a veteran educator and the next first lady, to lead it.

“The move to remote learning has shown us that our educators are incredibly innovative and resourceful in how they teach our students,” Chavez said. “But when you’re neurodiverse, disabled, or don’t have access to the internet, the move online can be devastating.”

Chávez spoke recently with Chalkbeat as part of our How I Lead feature. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What unexpected issues have come up for school boards and their members amid the coronavirus crisis?

COVID-19 has made very clear that many communities across the U.S. rely on our schools for much more than education. Schools have shouldered the burden of a lot of inequality in our society – providing students with meals and internet access.

Every problem facing our communities makes its way through the schools’ front doors, and COVID is a wake-up call that we need support from the community at large and the federal government so that we can focus on our primary mission: helping our future generations succeed.

Are you seeing boards and their members rise to the occasion? If so, how so?

We have watched in awe as our school boards work creatively and tirelessly to protect our students’ access to the institution that is the greatest equalizer in our society – our public education system. We’ve seen buses repurposed as portable broadband hotspots; we’ve also seen front-line staff go knock on doors to ensure students have what they need to succeed in school — whether that is a device or a meal.

It’s humbling, but, to be honest, it’s also very frustrating, because at the same time our school boards are doing everything they can do to defend our students’ right to an education, the federal government isn’t stepping up with the funding and support that boards and 50 million American public school children need.

When did you know that COVID would change this nation’s educational landscape? Do you think any of the COVID-era changes to districts and schools will outlast the pandemic?

The moment even one school closed its doors and went virtual, we knew that we were going to have to fight hard for each and every one of our students because they are all different — with different needs, different resources, and different home lives.

The move to remote learning has shown us that our educators are incredibly innovative and resourceful in how they teach our students. But when you’re neurodiverse, disabled, or don’t have access to the internet, the move online can be devastating. Not to mention the strain on families and parents who are trying to help their children at the same time they may be juggling other children, their jobs, and the stress of an unrelenting pandemic.

I hope that we find ways to bring the innovation in educational technology that we’ve seen during the pandemic to end the digital divide once and for all.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

I grew up in rural Arizona with a grandmother who taught me to never take for granted my access to education because she hadn’t received her own and a mother who served as a local elected official during a time when you didn’t see a lot of women of color in these positions. So although I didn’t really have that many resources available to me, what I did have was mentors who kicked down barriers for me.

I realized very early on that we’re not all given the same things to help us succeed, which is perhaps what drew me to tackling educational inequity. But I also realized something else: When we act as role models, when we step up as leaders and we say to the kids around us that we know they can be leaders, too, it makes all the difference.

What does a typical day look like for you now?

The biggest change is that I don’t have a typical day anymore. I was a night person, but throughout the pandemic I’ve become an early morning person, too. So much has changed in the last six months: I have lived in two different states, moved my son into college, and started a new leadership role in an industry that has transformed overnight.

My day usually consists of virtual meetings with staff who I haven’t had the chance yet to meet in person due to COVID. Each day is different, but the common thread is that I get to talk to so many people around the country who are passionate about providing an excellent education to America’s 50 million public school students.

Any New Year’s resolutions you’re willing to share?

To meet my staff in person and to thank them for their hard work during this historic moment! This pandemic made me appreciate the little things and calibrate my focus on the things that are important.

What’s the best advice you ever received — and how have you put it into action?

My grandmother gave me the best advice when she told me not to take everything personally — to focus on the issue at hand. When you’re beginning your career in your 20s and 30s, there’s a tendency to take feedback personally.

As I’ve moved further along professionally, I really grasped what she meant. It doesn’t mean not taking your work seriously or that it’s less important, but that there’s only so much within your control. And as a leader you have to figure out what are the most critical issues to focus on and where you can have the most impact. Feedback is a gift, but you have to take it from people who want you to succeed.

No instruments, no problem: Amid the pandemic, this Bronx teacher is embracing new ways of making music

2020-12-02T23:06:17+00:00

School looks a lot different during the pandemic. It feels different, too, and even the youngest children can sense the fear and uncertainty of the moment, said Alfredo Hernandez, a Bronx music teacher.

“You can tell by their eyes,” said Hernandez, who teaches pre-K to fourth grade at P.S. 3 Raul Julia Micro Society. “I wish that school could shield them from the reality of the outside world, but it can’t. And the fatigue is something we battle every day and is visible on their faces.”

But he sees something else on his students’ faces, too: They are engaged, motivated, and challenged.

While teaching remotely in the spring, Hernandez developed a series of lessons on rap music, culminating in students writing and performing their own raps. Back on campus this fall, he transformed his classroom into a space where students can make music even if they can no longer share instruments.

Hernandez embraces the change. He sees it as part of the job, coronavirus or no.

“There’s always something more to learn, a new way to approach a lesson, a new strategy to try,” he said. “This is a profession where your bag of tricks has an expiration date.”

He spoke recently with Chalkbeat.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Was there a moment when you decided to become a teacher?

I had a history teacher in middle school who made learning feel so natural that I wouldn’t even notice I was learning. She created an environment that just felt good for the soul. We could laugh and talk, all while learning. Realizing that was possible inspired me to recreate that feeling for my students.

I don’t often hear teachers being called selfish, but there is a selfish element to the profession. There’s a definite feeling I chase whenever I’m in front of the classroom. There are times when a lesson is going well, where you can see students’ eyes light up because they realize they know the answer. When I see that, I have accomplished creating that feeling I felt all those years ago in history class.

What challenges do you face teaching music this year?

I had to throw out the old playbook and start from scratch.

The task was daunting, but from the beginning, I have been so fortunate to be a part of Education Through Music, a nonprofit organization that places music educators like me in under-resourced New York City schools. This year, the focus is on remote-learning strategies. We’ve had tutorials on video editing, recording, on how to implement a number of different online platforms. They’ve given us packages containing all the equipment needed to be an effective teacher from home.

When we’re on campus, a lot of the lessons and activities I planned before the pandemic began were designed with a large class in mind. And now my biggest class consists of eight students in person. I also sensed a lot of timidness from my in-person classes. This ties directly into class size. Before, a shy student could hide in the crowd during a sing-along. Now, with only seven other students socially distanced around them, they may feel more exposed.

Sharing was also a big part of music: We’d share instruments, we’d link arms. But now that’s not an option. I’ve had to get creative, by transforming the class into a performance. We’ll take a song and sing it a dozen times, each time performing it a different way chosen by the class — maybe a different tempo or maybe we change who leads the song. This show-like atmosphere has helped students feel more comfortable in a smaller class, as well as kept them engaged and excited. They end class feeling like performers rather than students.

What has been your favorite lesson to teach remotely, and what about it works well?

In the spring, I did a unit on rapping. I set it up so that students developed their skills each week. We started by just rhyming words to a beat, and eventually, students wrote and performed their own verses. It was a blast! It worked well as a remote lesson because it offered students a comfortable environment to work from: any shyness went out the window when they realized there was no live audience. It was like singing into the mirror, and that energy really showed throughout the unit.

What’s something happening in the community that affects what goes on inside your class?

The effects of COVID-19 are apparent in my students’ community. From the rise of homelessness to schools closing at a moment’s notice. You can tell that students feel different. You can tell by their eyes. I wish that school could shield them from the reality of the outside world, but it can’t. And the fatigue is something we battle every day and is visible on their faces.

At my school, the faculty realizes its role in the community is crucial during these times. The school has made sure communication is streamlined — something that sounds small but is actually an important foundation for students’ success. With this streamlined communication, my students are always prepared and ready to learn, which is something that I just can’t take for granted these days.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

I went to school in Flatbush, Brooklyn, and later attended high school in Manhattan. Both schools served an extreme majority of lower-income students. There was often a general idea that the goal was to “get by” and never to overachieve.

As a student, I didn’t have music until I was in high school. This was because the arts were simply not a priority. With the help of my very dedicated music teacher, I would eventually learn how to play the electric bass.

Realizing a “get by” attitude wasn’t normal really pushed me to raise the expectations for students who come from lower-income families. I want my students to want more, to know what a quality education feels like, and to go on and demand it!

Any New Year’s resolutions you’re willing to share?

I am expecting my first child any day now, so I want to prioritize health this coming year. I don’t want anything to get in the way of me being a great and fun dad. So this coming year I will be stressing the importance of a healthy diet and exercise, as well as practicing ways to maintain good mental health.

What’s the best advice you ever received, and how have you put it into action?

My high school music teacher told me on my graduation day: “Never get complacent when it comes to learning.” He was referring to practicing my electric bass, but now that I’m a teacher it’s advice that means a lot to me now more than ever.

There’s always something more to learn, a new way to approach a lesson, a new strategy to try. This is a profession where your bag of tricks has an expiration date. Seeking out feedback is a cornerstone of my teaching style. As for my students, I encourage them to seek challenges, test their skills, and most importantly keep an open mind.

For these teens, election season has been a political awakening

2020-11-03T03:34:53+00:00

They aren’t all old enough to cast their ballots, but the teenagers Chalkbeat spoke with are clear on what’s at stake for them this Election Day. The response to COVID-19, voter suppression, police violence, and LGBTQ rights are driving their work to get their parents, old-enough friends, and other New Yorkers to vote.

“If you go on TikTok or you go on Twitter or you go on Instagram, you see these comments. ‘You can’t even vote. Why do you care?’ We have to erase that notion, ” said Leonel Ramirez, 17, of Brooklyn.

Ramirez, who is a senior at Food and Finance High School in Manhattan, is active in YVote, a nonprofit that gives students opportunities to talk politics and learn how they can make a difference, regardless of their age or immigration status. (YVote’s founder, Sanda Balaban, is a member of Chalkbeat’s reader advisory board.)

In recent months, YVote participants have made scorecards for assessing candidates on issues such as racial and climate justice, created public service announcements, and reached out to voters.

“For people I can get through to, I kind of just walk them through the process: how to register, how easy it is,” said Kenisha Mahajan, a 15-year-old who lives in Queens and is a sophomore at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. “I just try to get them as involved as possible. I tell them: You can become a poll worker or do phone banking.”

What follows are excerpts from our interviews with New York City teenagers about their political awakenings and why this election matters to them.

These interview excerpts have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Born a day late

Karla Sterrett, 17, Bronx, New York
Freshman, City College of New York, Manhattan

Karla Sterrett

I’m 17 right now, and Nov. 4, literally the day after Election Day, is my 18th birthday. I went with my mom to vote and was looking over the ballot, and I was just like: Isn’t there some way [for me to vote]? Then I read it and was like, yeah, I’m not going to jail! Don’t want to do that!

During the 2016 election, I was a freshman. Seeing everyone’s faces and just viewing everyone’s energy — the election felt so vital and important. I didn’t really grasp it. I thought: It doesn’t really involve me, I’m so young, this doesn’t matter.

But since I joined YVote in 2017, I’ve been on this crazy train of wanting to try to educate others about voting rights, Black people’s rights. Learning about voter suppression definitely altered my mindset.

Throughout history, Black people had to take extremely hard tests just to prove we should be able to vote. There are still so many barriers, especially for Black people, people who are incarcerated, people who are immigrants. It’s an ongoing fight to show we are citizens of the U.S. There needs to be more talk around this.

On Election Day, I’m going to be spreading resources to people who are voting on Nov. 3 and trying to rush to the polls. We’re not going to know [the election results] on Nov. 3 because of all of the absentee and mail-in ballots. Whether it’s a Trump rally or Biden supporters, there’s going to be friction, so I’m just advising people to be careful.

‘It’s pretty tough to be a conservative’

Isaiah Taylor, 17, Queens, New York
Senior, Benjamin Franklin High School for Finance and Information Technology, Queens

Isaiah Taylor

This will be my first election season remotely politically involved. Before this, I had a natural interest in politics and already considered myself conservative.

Right now [the issues driving me] are voter integrity, voter suppression, COVID response, and domestic policy toward inequality. It’s a good first step that both of our presidential candidates are speaking toward racial injustice issues and proposing different policy changes.

I have a strong, strong passion for foreign policy. I just wrote a paper for my AP government class about how imperative it is that everybody knows what’s going on outside of the United States. I’m pretty sure the general American public doesn’t know the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty that was originally instated by President Ronald Reagan was recently suspended. People don’t know about the [clashes between] Armenia and Azerbaijan.

At school, it’s pretty tough to be a conservative. People say, ‘Oh my God, you are conservative — do you support this candidate?’ I’m like, ‘No — just because I’m in a certain party doesn’t mean I support a specific candidate.’ People will attack you and say you’re racist or you’re sexist. I say to them: It’s really stupid to generalize all of Republicans or conservatives because you were making the argument that certain minorities should not be generalized. So why were you generalizing me and the rest of the people in my party?

Even my family members are taken aback that I am a Republican. My mother identifies as independent and my dad is a Democrat. It was really tough to develop that individuality, instead of saying I’m a Democrat because everybody else is.

Immigrants: our voices matter

Kenisha Mahajan, 15, Queens
Sophomore, Stuyvesant High School, Manhattan

Kenisha Mahajan

I grew up in India and moved here around third grade. Obviously, as young people, we feel really limited because we can’t vote yet. Even though my family can’t vote, I try to encourage people we know to vote.

I know a lot of family members or friends who are just over 18 or in college, and they don’t know much about voting. A lot of them weren’t really exposed to that, or they come from immigrant families. And one thing I’ve seen in immigrant families is there’s kind of this belief that your voice doesn’t really belong and that voting isn’t going to make a difference.

For people I can get through to, I kind of just walk them through the process: how to register, how easy it is. I just try to get them as involved as possible. I tell them: You can become a poll worker or do phone banking. There are quick and easy ways to get involved.

What they’re saying on TikTok

Leonel Ramirez, 17, Brooklyn
Senior, Food and Finance High School, Manhattan

Leonel Ramirez

Four years ago, when the Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton election was happening, I actually ran for my school presidency that same week. I had lost the presidency and no one wanted Donald Trump to win, regardless of how young we were. Especially coming from a first-generation family — my mom is Mexican-American and my dad is from El Salvador — it was not a fun time. I remember the next day, in homeroom, no one was happy with the results. Teachers are supposed to be very neutral. They aren’t supposed to tell you their politics, but you could see where they stood. It was a very gray ambiance.

In the past, if I’m being totally honest, elections have never been a priority for me. I kind of watched it from afar, whether it be through YouTube or through my friends or what my parents were saying, but it didn’t seem like something that concerned me. Within the LGBTQ community, you think, I’m still young; I’m part of Generation Z; this has nothing to do with me.

If you go on TikTok or you go on Twitter or you go on Instagram, you see these comments. ‘You can’t even vote. Why do you care?’ We have to erase that notion.

Looking back on it now, it does affect me. The majority of my friends are queer identified, so I’m taking that into account. Can I walk down the street without being called a slur? Can my friends choose the bathroom they want to use? Are my transgender friends going to have the acknowledgment they deserve? Just because marriage isn’t a prospect for us right now, doesn’t mean that six years from now we’re not going to want to. It’s not enough to say. ‘I’m an ally’ or to stay in the range of ‘I have gay friends.’ You have to be anti-homophobia. You have to be anti-hate crime. Just like in the Black Lives Matter Movement, you can’t remain complicit because the voices in the room are not always reflective of the voices in America.

George Floyd inspired me to get involved

Kiara Green, 17, Brooklyn
Junior, Achievement First Brooklyn High School

Kiara Green

I was never interested in politics. During coronavirus, when we were in quarantine, when George Floyd [was killed], my school gave us a day off if you wanted to make a change or voice how you’re feeling.

I wanted to be engaged in politics. There are always people saying: Oh these youths don’t do anything. They’re always on the streets. Gangs and everything. I don’t want to be in that stereotype category. I wanted to get out of my comfort zone.

Right now, I’m in the process of becoming a poll worker, though they’re taking so long to email me the link to train. I’m confused whether I’m in it or not, so I’m crossing my fingers. My mom says I’m a workaholic. I have no time to rest.

Helping my parents navigate the news

Michelle Del Villar, 18, Bronx
Freshman, City College of New York, Manhattan

Michelle Del Villar

I came to the U.S. from Spain five years ago, so I’m a first-generation immigrant. I can’t personally vote. By being involved and spreading information, I can make my voice count and allow people to understand what’s happening.

My family members, they barely speak English. Most of them speak Spanish. There are a lot of limitations and obstacles for them. They rely on two main channels on TV that are in Spanish, and they are really biased. When my parents are watching the news, they’ll say: I saw this. And I have to explain. On Election Day, I’ll be trying to convince my family members who can vote to vote.

Also, something really important during this election is mental health. These are really uncertain times due to the pandemic and the election, and [some] people don’t have access to mental health services or don’t have people to talk about it. Establishing that safe space with someone who seems to be really worried about the election, just to talk about it with them, is really important.

‘Are you registered to vote?’

Bianca Peterkin, 16, Bronx
Junior, Bronx Early College Academy For Teaching and Learning

Bianca Peterkin

I saw this video by [the rapper] YelloPain called, “My Vote Don’t Count.” He says, a lot of people say, “My vote doesn’t count,” but they don’t really know about the election. I realized, I need to know what I can do.

I’ve been learning more. In our racial justice group, we talk about education, health care, affordable housing, police brutality, COVID-19. We only focus on the presidential elections, but we don’t realize the Senate and all these other elections are also important.

YVote linked me to the New York Immigration Coalition. They do text banking and phone banking. I joined in the beginning of October. We text and ask people: Are you registered to vote? If they’re not registered, you can send them the link.

Another member and I also worked on a racial justice scorecard. You can check it off if candidates meet the criteria. We focus on the issues that touch on racial justice: education, health care. Police brutality is another issue, still occurring after all these years.

Now, my mom and my sister come to me, asking: Where do I go for my early poll site? They both voted early.

At a Manhattan school where half the students are homeless, this teacher aims to ‘make the shame and sadness scatter’

2020-10-15T02:04:29+00:00

They may be children, but the students at the Island School on Manhattan’s Lower East Side are already social entrepreneurs. Inside their campus laboratory, called Makerspace, they develop art and technology to take on adult-sized challenges.

“One thing we don’t do in our Makerspace is hide from issues affecting our lives,” said Lou Lahana, who has taught at the school for 20 years and is the lab’s coordinator.

Using high- and low-tech materials, students have sewn pillows for people who are homeless and designed t-shirts to raise disability awareness. They have recorded public service announcements about domestic abuse and filmed a documentary about Islamophobia. The goal of these projects is to “shine a light on the dark places to make the shame and sadness scatter away,” said Lahana, this year’s winner of the FLAG Award for Teaching Excellence.

The arts-oriented FLAG Foundation gives $25,000 to the grand prize-winning teacher. Their school receives an additional $100,000.

What Lahana’s students do in the lab is not theoretical. At the PS/MS 188, the Island School, nearly half of students are homeless, and many of them live in domestic violence shelters. As a result, families have come to rely on the elementary and middle school not only to educate their children, but also as a place to do their laundry, get their meals, and connect with legal aid. The school is now ramping up its community outreach after months of coronavirus closures.

Lahana has been teaching virtually since the spring, and he has brought Makerspace online. The Island School will use some of its prize money to build “Maker Kits,” containing paint, beads, modeling clay, and even microphones for recording music and podcasts.

“Many of my students don’t have access to these kinds of maker tools, so this will be a huge boost to creativity, engagement, and their ability to do social activism,” he said.

Lahana spoke recently with Chalkbeat.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

We’re living in unusual times. What does a typical school day look like for you now?

It looks very different! Rather than running my Makerspace, I am the virtual teacher for seventh grade English Language Arts and math. I come to school each morning and conference with these subject specialists — planning lessons to maximize engagement and student-centered work. At 8:30 a.m., we launch our Zoom and the fun begins! During these first few weeks, I’ve been doing my best to establish routines to give students a sense of stability and predictability — but in a fun, not boring, way. I break out my guitar each morning and freestyle a song in reaction to what the students are doing. It might be about a student eating Cap’n Crunch on camera or another whose last writing piece told the story of a roller coaster ride gone wrong. During math class — something I struggled with as a middle schooler — I make sure to express the concepts using everyday examples to get students involved by sharing their thinking on Zoom Whiteboards and engaging in small-group work using breakout rooms.

ELA comes next and, like math class, I try to inject plenty of playfulness and creativity into it. For example, our charismatic lead teacher Mr. Farley has been showing us the difference between character emotions and traits, so I worked with my daughter to record silly scenarios illustrating some of them. In one scene, I showed off “embarrassment” by not wanting to leave my room because I forgot to wear deodorant. Students used a quiz application called Kahoot! to weigh in on the emotions and traits being displayed. Next week, they’ll be creating their own scenarios.

What led to the creation of Makerspace?

As a Teach for America corps member, I found myself randomly chosen to run a school library in the South Bronx. I quickly grew to love matching students with the resources they needed to spark and fuel their passions. A few years later, after moving to the Island School, I was asked to run the newly built Tech Café. I took the same idea of sparking and fueling students’ passions and applied it to using physical and digital materials instead of books. But I continued to be concerned with equity and social activism, so the Tech Café became our Social Action Makerspace. Here, students self-select a social issue that concerns them and use a variety of low- and high-tech tools to raise awareness and help solve the problems.

Tell us about some of your students’ most memorable creations?

Some highlights include hand-crafted soaps in the shape of fish with single-use plastic embedded in their stomachs. One of the most impactful projects was a student’s documentary about Islamophobia, in which she filmed classmates trying on hijabs to alter their perspectives. The wildest project, by far, was our edible insect stand, with the goal of combating climate change and animal cruelty. We set it up on Houston Street, near our school, and handed out chocolate covered crickets and Adobo-flavored mealworms. All these projects can be seen on our Vimeo page.

I understand that about half of the students at the Island School do not have stable housing. How does that impact the work you do and the problems you attempt to solve in the Makerspace?

One thing we don’t do in our Makerspace is hide from issues affecting our lives. From homelessness and drug abuse, to domestic violence and racism, we shine a light on the dark places to make the shame and sadness scatter away. In its place, we share projects with the world that show what we are fighting against and the power and beauty that emerges from standing up for what you believe in. Those projects take many forms, including: hand-sewn pillows for homeless people, jewelry for domestic violence survivors, and a middle school project designed to connect homeless people with messages of hope written by first graders.

How have you adapted this innovative work during the pandemic?

Last March, when my Makerspace went virtual, I knew I had to figure out how to bring student voice and choice to the online classroom. My students struggle with food and housing insecurity, plus they often lack the resources to create projects. I wanted them to feel motivated to log on and engage despite these struggles. So, just as I did in the in-person Makerspace, I anchored lessons in their lived experiences with issues surrounding COVID-19 and racism. I created a menu of hands-on and digital creation options. These included poetry, podcasting, drawings, comics, collages, and song creation. The results exceeded my expectations — heartbreaking, hopeful, and brimming with creativity.

After months of isolation — and in some cases grief and trauma — schools recently reopened, in person and virtually. Are you doing anything differently this year to account for what so many families have been through?

The Island School is quite literally a second home for many of our students and their families. We are open six days a week, offering three meals a day, washers and dryers, health services, continuing education, and much more. The pandemic limited our reach, and we are in a ramp-up state right now to quickly and effectively bring back that sense of embrace so that our families feel loved and supported by us. As a community school, our mission has not changed, nor our sense of urgency.

This NYC science teacher says remote learning is here to stay

2020-07-20T12:00:00+00:00

When it comes to remote teaching, Brian Nagy had a head start.

By the time COVID-19 shuttered school buildings in March, Nagy — one of a handful of educators in New York City’s remote teaching pilot program — had been giving real-time lessons online for months. Beginning in the fall of 2019, the high school science and forensics teacher worked from an education department office in Queens, while his students logged on from their schools around the city. The goal of the experiment: to give students access to courses that their own high schools don’t offer.

Brian Nagy

Then came the pandemic, bringing online education to most of the city’s 75,000 teachers and its more than 1 million public school students. All told, students learned remotely for about a third of this past school year, and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has said the fall will bring a hybrid of in-person and virtual learning to allow for social distancing.

Nagy, however, doesn’t see distance learning as a mere stop-gap measure until students can return to school five days a week. “I don’t think this cat goes back in the bag,” he said. “With a nationwide roll-out, were there struggles and stumbles? Sure. But I think remote learning can improve with real reflection and discussion about what worked and what didn’t.”

Nagy spoke recently with Chalkbeat about why remote learning suits some children, how he teaches students to analyze fingerprints (on Zoom), and why it’s important to seize opportunities — even when they seem improbable.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Since you’ve been teaching remotely for longer than most of your colleagues, what are some lessons you have learned in the course of this work?

I know that, especially with everyone being at home for the last few months, the availability of a device and having reliable connections, which even I struggled with, was challenging. But as one of my ed professors once said: “Good pedagogy is good pedagogy.” Lively discussion and developing connections with your students is important, and it’s totally achievable. The key is synchronous meetings. That allows you to show off your personality, to bounce ideas off of students in the moment, and to take those serendipitous answers that allow for deeper discussion of concepts and ideas. Later on [in the school year], when getting everyone together at once became a challenge, I started making sure my classes got to see my face and/or hear my voice regardless of when they signed in to work. I created lots of screen casts, demonstrations, and video lessons.

Other than that? I started keeping a list of assignments so my classes knew what to work on and in which order and that all of the assignments, reading, activities had links. There’s no better way to lose a student than to get them frustrated!

Now that most city teachers and students have tried it out, do you think remote learning is here to stay?

I don’t think this cat goes back in the bag. With a nationwide roll-out, were there struggles and stumbles? Sure. But I think remote learning can improve with real reflection and discussion about what worked and what didn’t.

Some students, for any number of reasons, really didn’t thrive learning from home, but I have more than a handful that did better than they did during in-person learning and that needs to be examined. Even though my content has always been available 24 hours a day, I think some students who have responsibilities at home or other distractions during the day learned that they can do the work even if it’s not at a prescribed time. One student, in particular, showed up to class one-third of the time when his school was open, but was there daily for over a month and then several times a week when everything was remote. He failed the first marking period of the term, but his grades reached the 80s by the end.

Why do you think remote learning suits some students?

It’s a lot easier to tailor assignments for students with certain settings, and since it’s specific to what each student sees, there’s no embarrassment. But you also had the kids who didn’t make it to school on time because they had to see their younger siblings to the bus or take care of other family members. Having content and work available at all times allowed students to work on their schedule and at their pace. It wasn’t about trying to get as much done in 45 minutes, but more about letting them really connect with the content and work at their speed.

What has been your favorite lesson to teach remotely — and what about it works well?

I think the one I enjoyed the most was when we were learning about fingerprints. Zoom has a great feature called Annotations. It allows me and the students to write over a shared screen. Students were given a reference sheet of different fingerprint patterns and I shared an enlarged image of a fingerprint. I started by calling out a few of the patterns — called minutiae — and asking students to find an example on the print, which they’d circle from their own computers. Then they used pencils and tape to take their own prints, which they took pictures of and we repeated the procedure with their own prints, which made it more meaningful. They enjoyed it, and I fed off their energy.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it impacts your work today.

I was a nerdy, geeky, loudmouth in high school. I think about how to keep someone like me from checking out and spinning on a lab stool in the back of the room. But I also think about what got everyone else in my classes interested.

I reflect on my instructors from middle school through college and there’s a lot of people to hold up as shining examples and a number of what-not-to-dos. But I always think back to Dr. Steve Brown, my Comparative Chordate Anatomy professor in college. I don’t even remember the lesson, but one day, he stopped after a really long, intense run of diagrams on the board and he looked at us, looked at the board, gave a top-line summary and just smiled and he said, “Isn’t that just so cool?” And it was. I learned two things in that moment: Even when the content is granular, take a moment to look at the big picture; and be passionate about what you’re teaching because if you’re bored, you better believe your class is too!

What’s the best advice you ever received — and how have you put it into action?

It’s cheesy, but “It can’t hurt to try.”

An email went out towards the end of the 2018-2019 school year asking for applicants for the new Remote Teacher Program. I bookmarked the email, but didn’t send everything in until the last day when I figured it couldn’t hurt to try. I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in now, enjoying my career, after a few tough years that really started taking their toll on me, if I didn’t bother sending in my resume and cover letter. I never would have picked up new tools and methods if I didn’t stop and say “how can this be better?” and then test it out.

I was trained in science. You’ll never know if a hypothesis pans out if you don’t test it. You’ll never learn to run if you don’t take the first few steps. I’ve learned to be brave enough to click around to figure out new tools, knowing I can fix a mistake with the back button.

Even before George Floyd’s death, this Minneapolis teacher was showing students ‘the power of their voices’

2020-06-15T22:13:26+00:00

Alexis Mann’s life story is a case study in beating the odds. She grew up poor, dropped out of school, had a baby at 16, and ran away from home.

“I was determined to turn the stereotypical fate of teen moms on its face,” said Mann, who went on to graduate from high school and college and earn her master’s degree in special education.

Today, she teaches at Harrison Education Center, a Minneapolis high school for students with emotional and behavioral challenges, many of whom have experienced trauma. Mann’s story of emerging from desperate circumstances and thriving “provides students with hope, and helps them not give up on themselves.”

Her job can be challenging in the best of times. The work is even more demanding now, in light of the coronavirus, which has forced classes online, and the recent police killing of George Floyd, which happened just a few miles from the high school. In recent weeks, Mann has had to facilitate some difficult conversations, like when her 8-year-old grandson asked her if what happened to Floyd was going to happen to him.

“We say we don’t don’t know,” she said, “that we hope not.”

Mann spoke recently with Chalkbeat.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Minneapolis has garnered international attention in recent weeks, following the police killing there of George Floyd and the protest movement that followed. How are your students processing the tragedy?

Most or all of my students have had encounters with the police. Many of them are on probation, and some have served time. They have a genuine lack of trust with the so-called criminal justice system. This is a time when students are asking themselves: What are my priorities? What are my needs? And for some of them school has not been a priority right now. With the protests, they are wanting to be part of that and showing up in large numbers to have their voices heard.

The biggest takeaway for them is to rise up and use their voices, to practice their civic participation and to vote, and to show up in spaces where policies are being made and decisions are affecting them. We do a lot of community engagement work in class; I take them to the state capitol to teach them about the power of their voices and the importance of fighting for equal protection, as is promised under the law.

Were you surprised by what happened to George Floyd?

What took me by surprise was the grim smirk on [the officer’s] face. He had this look like so what. It reminds me of how teachers sometimes treat their students, knowing that they’ll be protected regardless of job performance. Some teachers create a racist environment, a hostile learning environment, where some students get preferential treatment and others are over-punished. If Johnny asks to go to the bathroom, fine; if Tyrone asks, they don’t believe him.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it impacts your work today.

I grew up in the Rondo neighborhood, a historically black community of St. Paul. When I was in elementary school, my parents bused us out to St. Anthony Park, which was a primarily white school. I remember Miss Buttler, the only black teacher in the school. I always hoped I would be lucky enough to be assigned to her classroom, but I got another teacher. Looking back, having teachers who I did not connect with caused me to lose interest in school.

I started high school in a suburb outside of Atlanta. I skipped class, refused to do my work, flunked, and ran away — back to Minnesota. I decided that my only way out was to become a teen mom, and three months after my daughter was born I struck out on my own at the age of 16, and I never looked back. I was determined to turn the stereotypical fate of teen moms on its face. Ultimately, I graduated from Central High School in St. Paul with my class in 1993, and went on to college and graduate school.

My story gives me a heightened ability to relate to my students and puts me in a place where I can be more considerate of their needs. I did not grow up with opportunities for success readily available, but through all that — what I encountered coming out of poverty — I’m able to provide students with a blueprint.

What’s one thing you’ve read that’s helped you become a better educator?

“Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them” by Dr. Ross W. Greene. The author does a really eloquent job categorizing [challenging] behaviors as being the result of either a lagging skill or an unmet need, rather than disobedience or disrespect.

In recent months, you’ve been teaching your classes remotely and also facilitating at-home learning for your children and grandchildren. What advice would you give to parents who are trying to help their own children during the pandemic?

Try to keep your kids on a consistent schedule, and make sure they are going to bed and waking up at a reasonable time. Create a distance learning space (or spaces) where your kids can focus and work quietly. It may also be a good idea to establish agreements with your children. For example, no pajamas in the distance learning space or no video games during the distance learning day. Lastly, create incentives for meeting milestones that you establish.

Speaking of advice, what’s the best advice you ever received — and how have you put it into action?

My dad once told me, “The ones who know the most say the least, so hear more than you say and think before you speak.” Being a good listener is paramount to establishing respect, building rapport, and cultivating healthy relationships, which has been extremely helpful in building strong connections with my students and preventing and de-escalating behaviors.

What gives you hope at this moment?

Distance learning is giving our students access to learning 21st-century technology skills that they were not getting before, and they will need these skills to compete in the future job market. I hope that we can continue to provide distance learning as an option for students who are uncomfortable in the classroom environment, or who skip school because of safety reasons, or who need to earn extra credit to graduate. I support using distance learning to create more equitable access to education and technology skills.

Ideas to power next school year in NYC: How to confront trauma and foster healing

2020-06-12T20:10:24+00:00

Trauma: the word will hang over school communities when teachers and students return next school year, whether to campus, to remote classrooms, or to some hybrid of the two.

The coronavirus pandemic has torn apart the very fabric of the city, closing school buildings, ravaging neighborhoods — disproportionately low-income ones — and forcing some 1.1 million New York City students to spend most of their days indoors, attempting to learn from home. With New York state’s coronavirus death toll at about 25,000, some students will return to school having experienced the illness or death of someone close to them. Recent weeks have added another layer of trauma, following the police killing of George Floyd, and the resulting protests, where law enforcement have sometimes used violence to disrupt demonstrators.

“We understand that September is going to be a challenge in terms of mental health for our kids that’s absolutely unprecedented,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in April, “and we’re going to have to do a lot in every school to support kids who have honestly been traumatized.”

Since then, de Blasio convened a 45-member task force to consider next steps. Meanwhile, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to “reimagine education” alongside a 19-member task force that doesn’t include any current New York City education department officials. (The Gates Foundation is a funder of Chalkbeat.)

Trauma-informed approaches will be a major focus of restart plans, according to a letter Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza sent to principals this week.

Chalkbeat spoke with educators, students, and other experts about how schools can help their communities begin to process what they’ve lost and begin to heal. Recurring themes include the need to help teachers understand trauma and the importance of prioritizing student well-being over academic benchmarks.

This is part of an ongoing series featuring the voices of educators, parents, students, and other experts to help understand what ideas should power the 2020-21 school year.

The responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Develop trauma-informed curriculum and care

Lesley Koplow — Founding Director, Center for Emotionally Responsive Practice, Bank Street College

Whenever schools open, it will be crucial for staff to acknowledge the traumatic context that we have been living through, and the losses that children have suffered. There has been a continuum of loss in the lives of New York City’s schoolchildren. That includes loss of daily routine, peer group, participation in sports, dance and music, classroom life, parental job loss, food sources, feeling of well-being, contact with neighbors and friends, contact with their own family members in quarantine, as well as loss of neighbors and family members who succumbed to COVID-19. In addition, the death of George Floyd and its aftermath will weigh heavily, especially on Black and brown children when they come back to school.

Thousands of our children will re-enter school carrying loss and trauma “in their backpacks” and will not be able to fully participate unless these very real experiences are addressed. Trauma-informed routines, interactions, and curriculum will be an essential practice in support of educational equity as well as protecting children’s emotional health.

Consider the example of teacher absence, an occasional occurrence in the best of times, but considerably more likely in the fall. Children who have suffered recent traumatic losses may be hyper-alert to the absence of a trusted adult. The absence may evoke overwhelming fear, sadness, and anger connected to the prior loss. Schools committed to responding to children with trauma-informed knowledge and empathy can help provide reassurance and clarity around teacher absences, and help children differentiate between past and present. Trauma-informed schools resist re-traumatizing children by shaming them or having “zero tolerance” for moments of regressed behavior.

Protective changes in the school environment can be presented within the context of teachers and school leaders working hard to keep children and staff safe from the virus. Booklets and videos can be made to help children understand the changes. However, it will be crucial to make sure that the recommended shifts are realistic for all of the age groups for which they are intended. Young children will still need contact with their teachers and crave contact with their peers. Children readily pick up on anxiety levels in the adults around them, and will know if those adults are feeling afraid to be present with them in the classroom.

Redefine what it means to ‘fall behind’

Christopher Emdin — Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, Science and Technology, Teachers College, and Founder, #HipHopEd

In any situation where a sense of normalcy has been disrupted, it is the responsibility of the school and the educators to adjust the curricular expectations to reflect for young people’s needs. Pursuing knowledge at the expense of teaching about dealing with loss, self-care, creating a sense of balance, and finding joy in the midst of challenge is, at best, irresponsible.

Traditionally, schools have defined “falling behind” only in terms of academics. But students can also fall behind emotionally. Schools and educators must work even harder to ensure young people and their families have the resources to overcome their challenges. They must use mail, phone and social media, and pre-recorded video content. They must use any means necessary.

In the midst of disaster, if children and teens find themselves flailing, stories of hope are healing for those telling them and also for those hearing them. Have students create video blogs about their moments of joy and success and share them with each other. Celebrate teachers, and share stories of their efforts that have paid off. For every story about dysfunction, ensure that you tell two about victories and progress.

And as the nation engages in protest about the value of Black lives, educators must work to elevate Black voices, stories, and experiences across subject areas. The chief form of protest for educators is their teaching. Through it, they can create space for students to share their feelings and their voices, and offer a path towards healing and transformation.

School needs to feel like a safe place. That means no police.

Eliza Seki — eighth-grader, M.S. 839, Kensington, Brooklyn

I really hope that school starts in-person in the fall. For students like myself who will be entering a new school next year — I will be starting high school — the transition back to school will be even harder if we are still learning remotely.

Because of what we’ve been through — with COVID-19 and the aftermath of recent killings of Black Americans, including George Floyd, I feel like school administrators and teachers will need to make a lot of room for students to process it all. Schools will need to ease the academic pressure on students and provide emotional support for those who need it. They will also need to be very clear about what is expected of students because this past semester has been very confusing for a lot of us.

Coming back to school after such a long time, it will be especially important that school feels like a safe place. That’s why we need two basic things this fall: 1) smaller class sizes so we are able to socially distance and 2) getting the police presence out of our schools.

It is unacceptable for students to feel criminalized by metal detectors and police in their schools, especially when police presence will disproportionately impact Black and Latinx students. Getting the NYPD out of schools has needed to happen for years, and after Floyd’s killing, it has become all the more urgent for the emotional and physical well-being of students.

Reduce class size and alleviate academic pressures

Dorothy Siegel — Co-founder of the ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) Nest program, a collaboration between NYU Steinhardt and the NYC education department

When school buildings finally reopen, our students’ academic skills and knowledge will be very uneven. Their social-emotional needs will be sky high. Many have experienced trauma. All have had their lives upended. Students who needed help learning English will still need help, and students with disabilities will still struggle — even more so.

We must not try to go back to “normal.” Normal no longer exists and won’t work for many students anyway. NYC must make school a place where the individual needs of all students are understood and met.

In the youngest grades, I would limit classes to 18 students, each with a general education teacher and a special education teacher who would have the time and space to identify the academic needs of every student. A social worker or guidance counselor would be assigned to three classes, conducting small-group discussions about the traumatic things our kids have experienced, and working 1:1 with the many children who need it.

If children go into school only two or three days a week to allow for smaller classes and less crowding, the homework that’s assigned should not cover new material, but should reinforce what they learned at school. Parents should not be asked to teach anything.

In the beginning, forget about meeting academic benchmarks and remove as much academic stress as possible from the classroom. Teachers should incorporate as many fun activities as possible — lots of hands-on science, art, music, and movement — along with core academic work. The primary task of the first couple of months is to help our children feel more secure, confident, resilient, and happy. Only then can they begin catching up.

Don’t forget the plight of the city’s undocumented students

Vanessa Luna — Co-Founder and Chief Program Officer, ImmSchools

During this critical moment, schools must prioritize the social-emotional needs of students, given that many of them are grappling with severe uncertainty, anxiety, and grief. The pandemic has exacerbated all of the systemic inequities’ students were experiencing across New York City and the movement for Black Lives has highlighted the deep systemic racism that impacts New York City students and families in and beyond our schools.

Before any academic push happens, the trauma of this moment must be acknowledged, and educators’ relationships with students and families must be prioritized.

When deciding how to reopen, schools must have a concrete plan with key goals for supporting students’ emotional health. Plans may include ensuring social workers are present at schools and providing parents with mental health resources. Educators need continuous trauma-informed training, not only on pedagogy and research but also on how to implement specific practices. And we need to create spaces for both students and families to dialogue and process what has occurred. Schools should host virtual and in-person events so we can ask our school communities what they need and be responsive to those needs; student-led gatherings are also key.

And we should not forget our undocumented students and families, and the challenges they have safely accessing the supports they need. Many of them are juggling multiple responsibilities in a time of uncertainty, as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs DACA, and facing continued threats of being deported or having their family members deported. In addition, as educators we must uplift and understand the unique experiences and challenges that Black undocumented students and families face amid the double bind of systemic racism and xenophobia.

Give students space to process the previous school year

Jennifer Spalding and Lauren Scott — Principal and Assistant Principal, Sunset Park Prep middle school, Brooklyn

Sunset Park Prep begins each school year with Community Days, a series of activities and celebrations to welcome students and reconnect us all to the school community. The goals of these activities: alleviate first-day worries, foster connections to classmates, and create shared community norms to guide our year.

As we look ahead to the fall, the goals are the same, but the annual Community Day event will look a little different. In response to our interrupted year, our returning students will have the chance to spend time with their previous year’s teachers and classmates and reflect on their experiences, and all students will close out the year that was left abruptly.

For the past four years, we have self-funded an additional counselor position. We intend to keep this position in the new academic year, given the extensive loss our school community has experienced due to COVID-19, which disproportionately affected Black and brown communities, and the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. And as we continue to bear witness to gross inequity and injustice, we will recommit ourselves to be anti-racist educators.

Ideas to power next school year in NYC: How can we use and improve remote learning?

2020-05-26T03:39:46+00:00

As nearly 1 million New York City students complete about a third of this academic year from home, all eyes are on what school will look like this fall. Even if campuses can reopen by September, will tablets, apps, and video conferencing continue to play a central role in teaching and learning?

“Next school year will have to be the greatest academic school year New York City will ever have,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said recently, “because everyone is going to be playing catch up.”

To help figure out next steps for schools, de Blasio has created a 45-member task force. Meanwhile, Gov. Andrew Cuomo tapped the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to “reimagine education” — with a likely focus on technology — alongside a 19-member task force that failed to include any current New York City education department officials. (The Gates Foundation is a funder of Chalkbeat.)

As part of an ongoing series, Chalkbeat is speaking with educators, parents, students, and other experts to understand what ideas they think should power the 2020-21 school year.

The first installment focuses on the lessons gleaned from remote learning in the COVID era, and how they should inform how teachers teach and students learn. Among themes that emerged: prioritize younger students and those with highest needs for in-school instruction, embrace what is working for some students when it comes to distance learning, and ensure academics don’t eclipse the emotional needs of the school community even when working virtually.

The responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Prioritize emerging readers for in-school instruction

Lynette Guastaferro — CEO, Teaching Matters

Social distancing will be near impossible with 30 children in a class. For students in grade 4 on, we should consider smaller class sizes and leverage blended in-person and online learning models that support project-based learning.

The good news: When it comes to technology adoption, teachers have come a long way in a short time. Even so, significant challenges remain for our learners in K-3. The remote learning environment is least effective for this age group, especially for those students who, for many reasons, may not have the close support of a caregiver or parent.

They risk falling behind academically and developmentally in their social-emotional and executive functioning skills. Research shows that students who fail to master reading skills by third grade won’t likely catch up, and the development of executive functioning skills at early ages are a key predictor of later success. We must prioritize this group of young students returning first and to a full week of school in smaller classes so we don’t lose this key window of opportunity.

Let academics take a backseat to social-emotional learning (at first)

Roony Vizcaino — Principal, Urban Assembly School for Global Commerce, Harlem

With thousands of coronavirus deaths in New York City, with unemployment rates skyrocketing, and with widespread mistrust of the political system and law enforcement, do we really think young adults want to learn about the Battle of Waterloo? Are our existing curricular expectations preparing them to be productive adults post-COVID?

I don’t even anticipate teaching the first month or so. I believe it will be all social-emotional, bonding activities, student interest-driven, and skill-based.

To make this a reality, there must be a redistribution of funds immediately to schools that need them the most. Priority for in-school learning should be given to these students.

For high school, we should alternate in-school and remote learning by weekday and stagger schedules. The composition of classes should also look different, with ninth and 10th grades learning together. Young teens require more socialization and a more hands-on approach. Upperclassmen have been in these structures and are more independent. That means “on track” 11th- and 12th-graders could combine remote learning and working; with more options for early college, especially for students of color; with evening and weekend options for those who need it; and with teachers having more options when it comes to their work schedule.

Be honest about how much time and training remote teaching demands

Jesse Pena — science teacher, West End Secondary School, Upper West Side

The first thing that surprised me about remote instruction was how time consuming it is. I initially thought that pre-recording lessons would mean I had more time for other aspects of the job, like giving individual feedback. Alas, to plan, shoot, and edit an instructional video can easily take 3-5 hours, and I’m producing one almost daily. If I was teaching multiple subjects, this would not be possible. It is barely manageable as it is, and I have had some near breakdowns on Sunday nights.

I am much funnier in my videos than I would ever be in my classroom. Remote instruction takes away any real concern for management. Where a joke, silly costume, or catchphrase would likely be disruptive in a classroom, stuck at home behind a computer, it is a bright spot in an otherwise dull day. I wore a toga in one video, while talking about Aristotle’s (wrong) ideas about gravity. I showed them how I make a cup of coffee in the morning and then talked about how I actually always make two cups, because small acts of kindness make living in close quarters with another person easier.

For me, the main struggle has been time. I feel like I’m working six days a week, leaving me with little to no extra capacity. We get several emails a day about resources, professional development, and platforms that are being made available, but honestly I just delete them. Learning how to use a new tool takes time and energy I don’t have right now. I think limiting the number of different courses teachers are responsible for would make things more manageable. Giving teachers dedicated time to focus on learning new tools would be nice, but that doesn’t mean 40 minutes one morning, it means a daylong or multi-day training, in lieu of regular teaching duties. I’m sure there are myriad legal and contract issues to consider with those suggestions, but flexibility is key when trying to adapt to a completely new paradigm.

Remember: Kids need to feel seen, even if it’s through a screen

Paola Chatziantoniou — parent of a first-grader at P.S. 85, Astoria

With no vaccine, I’m almost completely sure that I would not send my almost 7-year-old daughter back to school. At the same time this remote learning is far from perfect.

My daughter needs more personal attention from her teachers, more feedback, more video chats, more one-on-one, virtually. The children need to feel the teacher is there.

This is the second year my daughter is in school. It’s all about building social skills. She’s an only child, and she has one parent at home — me — and her other parent is working full-time. It’s very lonely for her. She needs my help the entire time.

I think schools need to be clear with what to expect from families. It’s a big commitment. My daughter is Greek and Uruguayan, but we speak English at home. A lot of the parents of children in her class don’t speak English at home and were left behind.

Teach new material in class, use distance learning for review

Michelle Bouw — eighth-grader at M.S. 51, Park Slope

While we’ve been home, one of my teachers host lunch Zooms, and while attendance isn’t required, they’re a fun way for us to get together and talk about whatever we feel like discussing. I think it’s a great idea for all teachers to do something like this.

My biggest concern for online learning isn’t the toll it’s taking on our education, but rather the toll it’s taking on the happiness of students all around the world. Lots of kids have family problems or no access to a support system during this time; school was their support system. This is a complicated issue to tackle while remaining safe, but daily talks such as my lunch Zoom can do wonders. I always find myself looking forward to them.

More parts of school should be online-based, but we can’t cut in-person learning for lots of reasons. The work environment at home is distracting, the social aspect that motivates many of us is cut off, and our understanding of the material is restricted. If we have staggered schedules, then we could base online assignments off of what we already learned in class. But we shouldn’t be learning new topics online, just reinforcing our knowledge of them.

Rethink what we want our children to know; do it with equity in mind

Tracy Fray-Oliver — Senior Associate Vice President, Bank Street Education Center

Whether helping students process their feelings and empathize with others, or working with them to develop executive functioning skills, there is no denying that this moment pushes us to get clear on what we want our children know, understand, and contribute to our society. That is not limited to content in a textbook or on a standardized exam. We’ve been reminded that there are learning opportunities all around us and context matters.

For distance learning that means considering the use of the physical body in the learning process, and incorporating tactile and creative experiences throughout the day. It includes real-time learning, where students connect with teachers and peers and have open-ended tasks that they can do from home, sometimes working with other students. It incorporates multiple ways for students to demonstrate their thinking and understanding. It also considers technology, scheduling, expectations, and supports that are responsive to each child and their circumstances. We must do this all with equity in mind.

To ensure that all kids have access, we would need to provide teachers with the support, training, and feedback they need to deepen their understanding of these practices and extend them into a virtual setting. Other supports include access to curated, high-quality instructional resources and learning experiences that show what good teaching looks like in a distance learning setting.

Additionally, as schools build out distance learning plans, it will be important for schools to spend the time examining and communicating the role of parents and families in the learning process and what it will take to ensure that they are set up for success.

Acknowledge that some students thrive when learning remotely

Cheri Fancsali — Deputy Director, Research Alliance for New York City Schools

In addition to understanding and addressing learning losses, particularly for the most vulnerable students, it will be important to consider potential silver linings of remote instruction. For instance, are there technology-based tools and strategies that educators have used to promote engagement and deeper exploration? Could staggered schedules for social distancing also provide opportunities for students to get more individualized attention and differentiated instruction? Could learning outside the classroom offer students the chance to pursue community-based projects that spark interest and passion?

Some students report benefitting from remote instruction because it allows them to “work at their own pace, set their own schedule, and be free from ‘the stressful environment of school.’” We can learn from this seemingly paradoxical outcome and what it suggests about changes to the school environment that could help more students thrive.

As schools implement new and different strategies, it will be important to measure a range of academic, social, and emotional effects. This information can help schools better support students’ needs and avoid deepening disparities that result from the pandemic.

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Turning laundry day into a robotics lab — it can be done, says this Harlem teacher

2020-05-08T17:59:16+00:00

Wyman Khuu teaches science and robotics to third- and fourth-graders in Harlem. During normal times, he arranges field trips to Google’s New York offices and enters his school’s robotics team in local competitions.

Even now — without day trips or tournaments, without classrooms or labs — Khuu makes the most of his time with his students. For one lesson, he had students act out the three phases of matter. For another, he used laundry day to teach about “the importance of being specific with our directions, a lesson that we can apply directly to robotics,” he said.

He is also determined to make his at-home classes as user-friendly as possible. “I’ve found that creating very simple, step-by-step directions that break up assignments into digestible segments has been really helpful,” he said.

Khuu, a teacher at KIPP Infinity Elementary, spoke recently with Chalkbeat — explaining what robotics is all about, how his own New York City public school education informs his work, and how parents can develop their children’s interest in robotics during this time.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

In the simplest of terms, how do you define ‘robotics’?

Robotics is the process of building, designing, and programming a machine to solve a problem. But if you were to ask the students what robotics means to them, they would say that it’s working with their classmates to build an amazing machine out of LEGOs or blocks that can move and perform different tasks that they tell it to. We encourage our students to see robotics as an opportunity to take risks, work with their hands, and have fun while challenging themselves.

How are you adapting to teaching robotics remotely?

Since each of our students has access to different resources at home, I do my best to teach the core concepts of robotics through shared experiences. We recently did a lesson on algorithmic thinking, or the process of breaking down a larger problem into all of the little steps necessary to reach an outcome. I had students watch their parents in the laundry room or laundromat and write down step by step how they did laundry. Our class then shared these steps over video and did laundry following only the directions given by other students. We ended up having a lot of laundry done incorrectly because our directions were not specific enough, which helped us as a team to understand the importance of being specific with our directions, a lesson that we can apply directly to robotics.

Since school buildings closed, what has been your favorite lesson to teach, and what about it works well?

Khuu with his students before NYC school buildings closed.

My favorite lesson to teach remotely has been a third-grade class about the three phases of matter and their atomic structure. I had students actually get up and act out how atoms would look in a cell for a solid, liquid and gas. One student, Chloe, demonstrated a solid by holding a yoga pose for 30 seconds, a liquid by showing off her free flowing ballet moves, and a gas by running around throwing her limbs every which way. With students stuck in the house all day, it’s so important for them to be able to get up and move around during lessons, and it also helps them master content in a fun way, rather than through rote memorization.

More generally, what are your best practices for distance learning?

I’ve found that creating very simple, step-by-step directions that break up assignments into digestible segments has been really helpful. The fewer directions I need to give verbally to get a lesson up and running, the better for students. Clearly labeling all of the files and materials with titles like “Open This First — Lesson Slides” and “Open This Second — Lesson Quiz” is both kind of funny and also make it much more straightforward for families to access the lessons.

I have also been previewing the week with families to help them to organize their schedules in advance. The structure of a school day in remote learning is drastically different than in-person learning, so letting families know what students are learning about and how long it will take to complete their assignments is not only appreciated, but also helps students to get their work done more regularly.

How can parents foster their children’s interest in robotics during this time?

Programs like CoderZ, Scratch, Tynker, Code.org, and Codemonkey all give students a platform to work on their computational thinking from home. There are also opportunities to learn about robotics in everyday activities. For example, learning how to follow a recipe allows students to use their algorithmic thinking. And students can work on abstraction in a game of Pictionary with their families.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

I am blessed to have been taught by great teachers, coaches, and mentors at P.S. 162 and M.S. 74 in Bayside, Queens, and then at Hunter College High School in Manhattan. I try to channel all of the positive experiences into my work with students today. One of my favorite teachers was Ms. Salak, my middle school math teacher and first-ever high school volleyball coach. She showed me that education is about far more than just grades and includes all of the experiences that come with school. That has always driven me to be the best classroom teacher that I can be, but also pushes me to offer out-of-classroom opportunities for students.

Before the crisis began, I would coach volleyball and host weekly meetings with over 25 students to work on robotics, programming and problem-solving skills. When schools closed, I didn’t want those experiences to end, which is why I have continued to offer robotics online.

What’s the best advice you ever received — and how have you put it into action?

The best advice that I’ve gotten is about coalition building. I believe it comes from an African proverb, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I try and put this into action by stressing the importance of group work and learning from one another. During our weekly virtual meetings we spend the first 10 minutes playing virtual Simon Says, or having Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournaments to build camaraderie.

We also spend time having students affirm one another and talk about their strengths and weaknesses. For example, a student named Payton said he was great at drawing and building, but that he struggled with staying organized and neat. Another student, Trinity, very kindly offered to help Payton with his organization and said that she could learn from him about drawing. It’s so important that students realize that they are part of a dynamic community and one that they can learn from.

This NYC teacher wants her students to know she’s struggling, too

2020-04-24T22:03:04+00:00

Nestled on her couch, Karin Burrell-Stinson fills her long workdays in her small Manhattan studio apartment videoconferencing with her classes, checking in with individual students, and providing feedback on their work. But a teacher’s job hardly ends there, she said.

Even in normal times, and especially during the coronavirus crisis, “teachers do social work, they send information about [food] pantries in students’ neighborhoods. Teachers are having three-way calls with phone companies to get internet service for students because their parents cannot navigate the different options,” said Burrell-Stinson, a 20-year veteran educator who teaches English as a New Language at Khalil Gibran International Academy.

She also works hard to validate her students’ complicated feelings and logistical challenges. “Some send me pictures of doing classwork in the bathroom at night when it is quiet, while others are trying to do school assignments while they’re on the job at a deli,” said Burrell-Stinson, who has worked for the past five years at Khalil Gibran, a dual-language English-Arabic high school in Brooklyn.

Burrell-Stinson spoke recently with Chalkbeat about online learning challenges prevalent among children who are still learning English, what she does to keep her students on track, and the importance of fostering grit and resilience, especially now.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What does a typical school day look like now?

There is no typical day yet. School is in my studio apartment, which is a first. I have students who know my cell phone number now. I start my day with a Google Hangout notification, most likely. The early birds have already started on the work that is assigned for the day.

Then, I brainstorm a mental list of who I am teaching for the day. If any alarms go off, I text or email those children, so as to try and capture them before they even think about escaping class. After the coffee pot is on and I am showered, I am on the couch working until about 6 or 7 p.m. Whether in a Google Meet or on the phone with a student, a parent, or Spectrum, I am poking around to see who has joined the class or whose cursor is bouncing in a Google Classroom document so he or she knows I know work is being produced, and feedback will be returned. If I had to offer one word for school life now? “Incessant” comes to mind.

How are you adapting to remote learning?

Adapting? Not at all. But I am surviving because my care for students’ learning is everything.

What about your students — how are they adjusting?

That is a good question. It is hard to answer. One of my students would be safer at school than at home. Then there are students who have more family members in the home now that jobs have been cut. There are students who have younger siblings and have to help them with assignments or put them on their laps while they watch a video for history class. There are students who have no internet [at home] and don’t know how to access Google Classroom on their phones, or they don’t want to burden a guardian with surcharges because they don’t have unlimited data plans. Some send me pictures of doing classwork in the bathroom at night when it is quiet, while others are trying to do school assignments while they’re on the job at a deli.

How are you advising your students to get through this?

Many students have griped about how much harder it is to do work online, how challenging it is to be away from teachers and friends, or not to have that daily sugar-filled coffee from whatever franchise they frequent. These children have shared that they feel depressed and confined. They feel they don’t want to do the work, and they definitely don’t want to be on the phone with me during office hours or the you-missed-class-at-9-a.m. makeup session I offer.

I tell them, “You’re right to feel like this is not the best situation, that school via computer is hard, sometimes too hard, and I thank you for saying so. You’re right not to want to be here. I don’t want to teach this way, and I am tired. We are doing it together, and we are going to move on. Being in school from morning till night is not normal, the world’s response to the virus is not normal. What is normal is to feel the way you do, to talk about it, and to know that the teacher who doesn’t even know how to use the mute button on Google Hangouts is struggling with you to have you gain some kind of knowledge everyday. When she sees [you] thinking in complete sentences, it makes it all worth it to push through with you.”

Are there any challenges specific to teaching English Language Learners remotely?

Not only are many ELLs not fully literate in English, but some are also not computer-literate. If they don’t attend a Google Meet or Google Hangout, they don’t see the body language that makes information more comprehensible, they don’t hear the intonation in my voice, and I don’t see their puzzled faces that communicate that they need another example to make the wheels in their minds turn in the right direction. They are still learning to submit assignments, to navigate the myriad emails from their eight teachers.

Do you think this experience we’re all having will give people a better appreciation of what classroom teachers do, day in and day out?

I still don’t know that some people will understand that teachers do social work, they send information about [food] pantries in students’ neighborhoods. Teachers are having three-way calls with phone companies to get internet service for students because their parents cannot navigate the different options. Not everyone speaks Spanish, so the Spanish line is not always an option, especially for most of the students I teach, who are largely from Yemen, Bangladesh, Haiti or Senegal.

Do you expect there to be significant lags in student learning, and if so what will you do to address any such lags once school buildings reopen?

Some students are able to persevere in this realm more than in the classroom. Those children who don’t feel safe in the classroom are thriving. There is also truth in the fact that students don’t have us teachers there everyday to guide them. As a result, they have to push their thinking in formidable ways. Sure, there will be lags in learning. Yet at the same time, some students are able to reveal how much grit they have, and how resilient they are.

What gives you hope at this moment?

My colleagues who are in the trenches with me everyday. The students who are s-t-r-u-g-g-l-i-n-g with living in unstable situations motivate me every time they hand in an assignment that communicates how driven, responsible, and in need of moving forward they are. Finally, the former students who remind me that it is the small moments, lessons, and shares that are the true takeaways that inspired them to keep learning and rising to a next level of excellence that they defined for themselves.

Working from home, this NYC art teacher has students rethinking what they need to create a masterpiece

2020-04-14T23:26:29+00:00

With schools closed and lessons moved online, Bronx high school art Larry Minetti has transformed his dining room into an art studio. From there, he’s teaching his Fordham Leadership Academy students video lessons about topics such as self-portraits. “We went ‘live’ several evenings and had a blast working with the face, practicing together,” said Minetti, a Bronx native who has taught art for 26 years.

His students also have been recreating iconic artworks with household objects, from piles of clothes to tubs of peanut butter. “My students learned that they can be creative from scratch and express themselves through various items that are not considered ‘normal’ for producing art,” said Minetti, who spoke recently with Chalkbeat about what it’s like to teach visual art amid the coronavirus pandemic. He also suggested an at-home art project that parents and teens can do together.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What are the challenges (and benefits) of teaching art remotely?

The main challenge for teaching art remotely is taking into consideration what is available in my students’ homes. We are not in my classroom. They can’t open up a cabinet and take out a gallon of Cadmium Red or Ultramarine Blue acrylic paints. They can’t rip off a piece of clay from a block and start designing a pinch pot. I cannot assume every student has certain materials. There must be equity, so I work with projects that can be done in basic scenarios. I have to use my imagination. The benefits: Watching my students be as creative as possible with limited use of particular tools.

Tell me about what you are teaching your students now.

For one project, we’re reproducing and recreating a famous work of art using found objects, clothes, etc., in the house. The New York City Department of Education provided several online art resources, where I first saw this assignment. I knew this would be awesome to do because we all have laundry, household items, and various objects in our homes. I turned it into a competition with prizes because I wanted even more motivation and participation going into this.

I had to create my own example for my students to see. I could’ve gone basic or small but decided to really do it up, so I immediately chose “Starry Night” by Vincent Van Gogh, which is one of my all-time favorite pieces of art. I grabbed my laundry. I grabbed anything I could find to recreate the colors as the masterpiece has incredible yellows and blues throughout. Once I placed down the representation of the village area — with peanut butter, salad dressing, hot cocoa, milk cartons, and other items — I knew I was done.

My students saw my example. They took it and ran with it. Several used clothing. Several took pictures. Some used technology. One student reproduced a famous still life with a floral piece that happened to be in her home. My students learned that they can be creative from scratch and express themselves through various items that are not considered “normal” for producing art.

For her project, senior Elizabeth Lee recreated Queen cover art, starring herself.

What inspired you to become an art teacher?

I attended high school in the Bronx in the 1980s, when graffiti was booming. I got heavily into the art scene and took classes every single semester during my high school years. I’m a graffiti writer and became obsessed with lettering styles. I was lucky enough to have dynamic teachers who really took an interest in my dedication. I went to the art studios on my lunch periods and any chance I could get. I am so blessed to be working in a field that was always my passion. I involve my students in an array of experiences: acrylic painting, hand-building with clay, custom stencil creations with the use of spray paint, sculpture, and a variety of other mediums.

What advice would you give parents who are being asked to homeschool their children amid the coronavirus outbreak?

My advice for parents (and myself, with my own daughters who are homeschooling through this pandemic) is to scale back. Take it down to a level that is realistic and manageable. A ton of work is coming in. Do your best and try to complete the tasks, but take it one step at a time. Take a deep breath and communicate with your teachers, and let them know if there are difficulties and if more time is needed.

Still life art project, courtesy of Larry Minetti

A lot of the at-home art projects I’m seeing now are geared toward younger children. Any ideas for art projects for older children, such as tweens and teens?

One example is a still life my older daughter did. She is a freshman in high school. The assignment: Every person in my house for her chose a random item. I chose soap, my wife chose Lysol, and my younger daughter grabbed a sponge. We put the three items together and challenged my older daughter to reproduce it. She had a blast and used basic supplies to do the project, such as colored pencils and markers. Getting everyone involved with picking an item is the fun part because each person feels that they had a part. Then we take turns and choose a different family member [to make the art].

Do you think this experience we’re all having will give people a better appreciation of what classroom teachers do, day in and day out?

On the second day of remote teaching, friends of mine were jokingly asking if their kids could be transferred out of their classes or what are the rules of homeschool suspensions? It was all jokes, but the reality is people generally were showing a tremendous amount of extra appreciation towards teachers. I feel parents who are not teachers gained a whole new respect for what we do on a daily basis.

What gives you hope at this moment?

People following the rules of social distancing and pitching in to help others in need really give me hope. We will eventually get through this and the people that are on the front lines as essential workers have my utmost respect and love. Everyone working as a team and following protocol will get us through this. I am looking forward to the day I enter my art studio and see my students. I miss them so much.

These two traits will make you a better at-home teacher, this Bronx educator says

2020-04-06T17:12:23+00:00

The Friday before New York City schools closed for at least a month — and possibly for the rest of the academic year — Michael Urda spent the day holding parent-teacher conferences. Those meetings took place not face-to-face in Urda’s Bronx classroom, but over the phone because of social distancing.

“This was a first for me — the first of what would be many firsts in this unique time,” said Urda, a team leader who teaches English Language Arts to seventh and eighth graders at South Bronx Classical School I, a K-8 charter.

The parent-teacher conferences reminded him of how committed families are to their children’s achievement and well-being; and they left him feeling surprisingly optimistic, even as the coronavirus pandemic bore down on the city. “Times of great struggle present tremendous opportunities for solidarity and growth in a school community,” he said. “In the efforts that I see our parents, our scholars, our teachers, and our support staff making, there is great hope.”

Urda is teaching his students online now and spoke recently with Chalkbeat about how parents can approach at-home learning, what is and isn’t possible for educators working remotely, and the importance of seeing each day as a fresh start — for teachers and students alike.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What advice would you give parents who are teaching their children at home during the coronavirus outbreak?

First, I wish them luck. The cardinal virtues of any educator are patience and belief. While your scholar knows that you believe in them in general, saying to them that you believe that they can master a concept can do worlds of good. Words and encouragement are empowering. Second, with patience, anything is possible. Try to cultivate that skill and admit when you lose your patience. Teaching will be a new way of knowing your child, so take this as an opportunity to learn firsthand how your child learns, what he or she excels at, and what he or she struggles with, so that, when we return to school — and we will return — we can share our insights with each other.

How are you adapting to remote learning?

Remote learning is challenging, there is no doubt. Some of our greatest tools — proximity and [classroom] management — are not as tangible virtually as they are when we are walking around checking work. But the important thing to remember is that there are still skills that translate across any platform: Every teacher can still set clear expectations. Every teacher can still believe that every child can succeed. And every teacher can make himself or herself available to parents and scholars as a source of stability and support.

What about your students? How are they adjusting?

Although many of them are missing the social aspects of school and the physical presence of a classroom, I’ve been blown away by their efforts so far. While it’s an uncertain time, our students are adapting and growing every day.

Tell me about your last day in the classroom before your school shuttered.

My last day in the classroom was spent giving over-the-phone parent-teacher conferences. This was a first for me — the first of what would be many firsts in this unique time. And when I left school that day, no decision had been made on whether the school year would continue or be canceled. But it was during these conferences that my hope was buoyed.

Why hope?

Talking to our parents demonstrated how we all have a role to play — together — in ensuring our children succeed. Times of great struggle present tremendous opportunities for solidarity and growth in a school community. In the efforts that I see our parents, our scholars, our teachers, and our support staff making, there is great hope. We must be there as teachers, in both uncertain and certain times, to help our children learn how to do their best and continue to become the people the world needs them to be.

I’m noticing that you refer to your students as “scholars.” Why?

The title of “scholar” is a professional honorific that helps them to understand that each day, just as we are working at becoming the best teachers that we can be, they are working to become masters of their subjects and to embrace the idea of lifelong learning.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

I have always taken Mr. Dance, who taught me and my three older siblings eighth-grade history in South Bend, Indiana, as my inspiration and example. With his wit, humor, and expansive knowledge of not only his subject but every other, he brought a sense of calm surety to the year right before high school. I recognize how important it was to have a strong voice to prepare me academically and emotionally for the challenges of high school. That has informed my teaching more than anything else.

What’s the best advice you ever received?

The best advice that I ever received came from the teachers who helped train me in my first year and from the teachers who have helped me grow ever since. They each taught me, in their own ways, that the most important thing about teaching is recognizing that both you and the scholars change every day. I make a conscious effort to welcome scholars into my classroom each day, particularly those who struggled the day before.

What was the biggest misconception that you initially brought to teaching?

The biggest misconception was that teachers’ most valuable tool was being liked. The teachers that last and that scholars remember are the ones who make it their top priority to help each scholar find out what their best effort is and consistently reach it.

Recommend a book that has helped you become a better teacher, and why.

“Decline and Fall” by Evelyn Waugh. In the travails of the central character, Paul Pennyfeather, in his first year as a teacher, I saw the importance of making mistakes in your first year and learning from them each year, and each day, after.

Michigan’s Teacher of the Year is homeschooling during the coronavirus crisis. Her children aren’t impressed.

2020-03-20T18:53:31+00:00

With U.S. schools shuttered in an effort to contain the new coronavirus, millions of parents are attempting to teach their children from home. It’s no simple feat for even for the nation’s most celebrated educators.

“Just so everyone is clear: my children are not the least bit impressed at being homeschooled by the Michigan Teacher of the Year,” Cara Lougheed tweeted earlier this week, striking a chord with parents everywhere. Her message received some 12,800 likes and more than 400 retweets.

“As I scrolled through social media over the past week, it occurred to me the pressure teachers and parents are under to ‘teach’ their kids,” she told Chalkbeat. “This is not an easy job with other people’s kids, let alone your own. I wanted to make people laugh a little, and remind everyone we are all equally unimpressive to our own children, fancy title or not.”

Lougheed, a high school English and history teacher at Stoney Creek High School in Rochester Hills, Michigan, is the state’s 2019-2020 Teacher of the Year. She’d been working out of the classroom this school year to attend to the duties associated with the honor. But since Michigan schools were closed last week, she’s been working from home with her two sons, ages 11 and 15.

Lougheed spoke with Chalkbeat about the advice she’d give to those new to teaching, what parents can realistically expect from their children while school buildings are closed, and how the fallout from this pandemic could bring about newfound respect for classroom educators.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What advice would you give parents who are being asked to homeschool their children amid the new coronavirus outbreak?

Parents and caregivers: I want to share with you some advice I give to new teachers. Pace yourself — you have lots of days ahead of you, and there is plenty to learn. You don’t need to do all the cool things this week.

Be intentional about how you begin. One of the biggest mistakes I see new and young teachers make is over-promising to their students and to themselves. Keep your expectations and your schedules realistic. Ask yourself: Can I keep this up five days a week for a month or more? Will my kids be able to? If the answers are no, readjust your expectations. Yes, your kids will get more screen time. That. Is. OK.

Make time to speak with adults — and for yourself. Your kids don’t need constant entertainment. They can still play outside, build a fort, clean their rooms, stare at the ceiling, whatever, without your supervision or a task list to check off.

Your kids know you love them, and everyone is doing their best.

I will also add that this whole thing is hard no matter what age your kids are. In general, younger kids will need more structure and daily consistency, while teenagers want to have some freedom and flexibility. With our boys, we made a VERY flexible schedule with all of our input. We sat down with them and we each answered the questions: What do you want time for as an individual? What do you want time for as a family? What is important to you right now? But again, our boys are preteens/teens, so families have to do what is best for the ages and personalities of their kids.
In this moment, what can parents realistically expect of teachers who are working remotely?

I’m so glad you asked this! Most teachers are in unfamiliar territory here, and some will be ahead of others in their technology skills. I would ask parents and caregivers to extend grace and patience to their students’ teachers. Ask questions as needed, and be patient as teachers navigate all of this. As my own district is stressing, our primary focus should not be about grades. Rather, it is ensuring teachers are connecting with kids, and maintaining the relationships they forged in their classrooms.
In turn, what can teachers realistically expect of parents, especially those who need to work during the day?

Teachers also need to remember that not every student has an adult who can teach them all day. Some of our students may not even be able to log on at all, and that has to be OK. Teachers have to be flexible and understanding with expectations and assignments. Teachers should expect questions, but don’t answer if you don’t know what to say. Defer to your building or district leadership for consistency and clarity. If that isn’t possible, refer to guidance from your state’s Department of Education. Teachers can rely on parent and caregiver support, but we need to be clear, calm, and consistent.

And the children who are out of school — what can we expect of them?
Oh gosh, that is so different for every teacher and every student. I think everyone needs to keep it simple. No one was ready for something like this — especially not our kids. I think you just try to ensure the kids are feeling safe, cared for, and that we provide ways for them to learn new things (or review what they know) as many days as possible. None of us is an expert at every grade level and subject (in our own house we might need help with science!), so we do the best we can and make sure our kids and students know they are loved and that everything will be OK.

Do you think this experience we’re all having will give people a better appreciation of what classroom teachers do, day in and day out?

I sure hope so! We’d all love that. I do want to make clear, though, that classroom teaching, homeschooling, and what we are doing right now are not the same thing. Teachers are trained professionals, and homeschool parents take the time to research and figure out what their own children need. That is not what’s happening here. Everyone was thrust into this with very little notice. So while I deeply appreciate the kind words from everyone appreciating teachers, let’s also remember that so many children’s first teacher was a parent or caregiver, and we all deserve some appreciation when we come out the other side.

What was the biggest misconception you initially brought to teaching?

Probably that everything was in a book somewhere for me to read or copy. It was the realization that I had to figure out how to make material come alive for students — how to present it and assign it and then work to make it better when I did it wrong. That was the biggest shock to me. I love that aspect of teaching, but it takes a lot of time, effort, and reflection to make that work for kids.

Recommend a book that has helped you become a better teacher.

I love Brené Brown’s “Daring Greatly,” and Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility.” Neither is specific to teaching, but that’s kind of the point. I realized I needed to be a better human — a better friend, spouse, mom, daughter — in order to be a better teacher. Both helped me see the ways my own insecurities, biases, assumptions, and unearned privilege were affecting what I brought to my classroom. I encourage all educators to keep learning from educators and non-educators. When you stop learning, you will feel stagnant, and your students will suffer.

What’s the best advice you’ve received about teaching?

Overall the best advice I’ve read and heard is to always assume that everyone is just doing the best they can in that moment. Extend more grace and have more patience than you think kids even deserve. Don’t assume you know what kids are going through, and don’t try to “solve” all of their problems for them. In general, it’s life advice that is especially true when working with children.

Why this Indianapolis teacher no longer tells students their hoop dreams are unrealistic

2020-01-06T19:18:15+00:00

Andrew Pillow used to think it was his job to disabuse students of the notion that they would grow up to be professional athletes. Some of his colleagues would sound an encouraging note and also urge the middle-schoolers to have “a back-up plan,” but Pillow felt a responsibility to let them know they had little chance of playing basketball in the NBA or football in the NFL.

Nine years into the job, Pillow, who teaches at KIPP Indy College Prep Middle school, now considers this approach a mistake. “I believed in keeping it real — and I probably kept it too real,” he said onstage at a recent story slam event.

Teaching means showing students what’s possible, not convincing them what’s impossible, Pillow said, noting, “Crushing their dreams, even if there is a little truth in it, doesn’t get you anywhere.”

Here’s what else Pillow had to say at the story slam, which focused on educators’ first year in the classroom. Teachers Lounge Indy and Chalkbeat Indiana sponsored the event, which was held at IUPUI.

A lot of people like to show kids the real world too soon, and you lose something. I’ve taught four grades. In fifth, you ask: How many of you consider yourselves to be athletes? They’ll all raise their hands. How many of you consider yourselves artists? They’ll all raise their hands. … The more grades I go up and ask those questions, the more they start to specialize. The amount of people who identify as an artist goes down. The amount of people who identify as an athlete goes down. But they could technically be those things. And I realized it’s school that makes them feel like they have to specialize. That’s not a lesson that life taught them. That’s a lesson that I taught them…

The first group of kids that I taught are now college students. And one of them had a big old growth spurt, ended up being 6’5, and is playing Division I basketball. And I definitely told him and his entire class that none of them were ever going to be hoopers. Life has a funny way of teaching you things. Keep in mind: You’re doing more than teaching them arithmetic or social studies or whatever you’re supposed to be teaching them. You’re teaching them what their possibilities can be in life, and that’s your responsibility, too. When they close off those possibilities to themselves, you’ll find all the sudden your class gets more difficult to manage.

Watch the full video below:

Inspired by bananas, Tinder, Taylor Swift: See 12 creative signs from Chicago’s picket lines

2019-10-18T02:09:27+00:00

There were references to Taylor Swift songs and OutKast lyrics, to dating apps and to Dr. Seuss.

On Day One of the Chicago teachers strike, as tens of thousands took to the streets to make their case for better pay, smaller class sizes, and more school nurses and counselors, teachers got creative with their handmade signs.

Some picketing with the Chicago Teachers Union and SEIU73 wore costumes. Others enlisted their pets in the fight.

Here are some signs that stood out in the crowds.

Some striking teachers took a page from Dr. Seuss…

And some channeled Star Wars.

There were signs that targeted Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Some of them compared her to her predecessor, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose relationship with the Chicago Teachers Union was long strained.

Other signs took aim at Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson, with a reference to the hip-hop duo OutKast’s famous anthem “Ms. Jackson.”

Meanwhile, some found inspiration in another musical icon: Taylor Swift.

pic.twitter.com/Ho6wgLqGGV
— Mina Bloom (@mina_bloom_) October 17, 2019

There were colorful signs with earnest messages that spoke to the challenges of teaching nearly 40 kindergartners and to the dedication with which educators approach their jobs.

This sign was creative in its avowed lack of creativity.

There were also costumes…

And churros for sustenance…

And furry friends, of course.

Even a class pet took part in the protest.

You just have to love Chicago educators ❤️ pic.twitter.com/XSwi1mLN8i
— Ella Em (@ella_em_) October 17, 2019

What creative picket signs caught your eye? Let us know here.

Photos on this page courtesy of Chalkbeat’s Ariel Cheung, Yana Kunichoff, and Cassie Walker Burke, unless otherwise noted.

A former student traveled nearly 1,000 miles to celebrate this teacher’s retirement

2019-07-31T01:01:30+00:00

Retirement was more of a pull than push for Laurie Kingsberry. At 58, she would have happily gone on working, she said. But as a new grandmother, she didn’t want the time she spent with her granddaughter to be limited by the academic calendar.

This transition marks a major change for Kingsberry, who has been part of New York City public schools for almost all of her life — first as a student in Manhattan and Queens and then as a teacher and a parent in Brooklyn. Most recently she served as a coach at the United Federation of Teachers’ Teacher Center, the union’s professional development arm, which is run in partnership with the New York City and New York State education departments.

To send off Kingsberry, her colleagues organized three retirement parties, inviting many of her former students, including one who drove nearly 1,000 miles to be there.

Kingsberry mostly taught middle school mathematics, but her 35-year career was not defined by — or limited to — that subject matter. A lover of the arts, she helped start choral groups at three different schools. And a problem-solver by nature, Kingsberry tapped into “the power of the pen,” to develop school programs that weren’t otherwise in the budget. “If someone told me I couldn’t have something, I would say, “Is there a grant I can write so I can make it happen?” she said.

In a recent interview, Kingsberry described what some of these grants funded, and discussed common misconceptions that veteran teachers have about newer ones — and vice versa.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What made you start teaching in the first place?

I was raised in Harlem, on 115th Street and Third Avenue, directly across the street from P.S. 57. Very early, I had a joy for learning — my mom still talks about it. I had such great teachers like Ms. Randolph, who taught my kindergarten class. She was always well-prepared. I remember her smelling good and looking good, and I remember saying, “I want to be just like her.”

For most of your career, though, you taught middle school math — not kindergarten. What compelled you to become a math teacher?

Growing up, mathematics was a struggle for me, but the struggle made me more determined to figure it out. I also have a strong artistic edge, and I tried to merge that interest into my work. One time we were learning about slope, about geometric figures, about the strength of a triangle, and we had the children build bridges — drawing to a certain scale and then building them using materials like toothpicks and gumdrops. Those 3D bridges, they came out beautifully. It’s one thing to learn the characteristics of geometric shapes, and it’s another thing to teach young people about the roles they play in our lives.

Who and what helped you persist during difficult times?

Strong school leaders, especially principals and my assigned “buddy” teachers who modeled effective teaching skills. They allowed me to tap into my other skills and talents. I am a math teacher, but I did choral music in middle school and high school, and I helped start choirs at three different New York City schools where I worked. The kids were really fantastic, and it really brought the community together. It’s so important to find out who your colleagues are on a personal level, so you can see their other gifts and talents and how to bring them forth into the school.

One other thing that helped was that I became familiar with the power of the pen. If someone told me I couldn’t have something, I would say, “Is there a grant I can write so I can make it happen?” This work lets both students and parents know our allegiance to the work we are trying to do. Once when we lost two or three students to violent death, we came to the principal and said, “We know we need to teach academics, but we also have to touch the hearts and souls of the kids who are hurting.” We were awarded a crisis intervention grant — $250,000 over three years, and we did workshops for parents and children to teach them about alternatives to violence. Another time, I helped a colleague write a grant proposal, and we were able to start an afterschool interdisciplinary arts program.

After all these years, why did you decide to retire now?

Could I have worked a few more years? Absolutely, but my first grandchild, a granddaughter named Ryann, was born two months ago. I want to be able to spend time and help shape and mold her life. She lives with her parents in Atlanta, and I want to be able to go when I want and stay as long as I want.

As you leave teaching, what’s one thing you won’t miss about your job?

The commute. I live about 21 miles from the central office, which is near the World Trade Center. Before that, I have always lived about 20-25 miles from the schools where I taught. Up until six years ago, I would drive in every day — always thinking about alternate side of the street parking. More recently, it was a mix of commuter trains, crowded subways, and driving to the 11 different sites where I coached teachers.

And what’s one thing you will miss?

My amazing colleagues. My retirement decision came because I am a new grandmother. I remember the day I told my colleagues that my daughter was expecting, there was a lot of celebration, emails, and texts. And when I retired in June, they organized three major celebrations. There were colleagues and students from when I first started teaching. Many of the people in the room are doing amazing things now. A student I taught about 30 years ago drove up from Jacksonville, Florida, to be there. I’m telling you, I was stunned. Our hug, it felt like it lasted five minutes, and when we stepped aside the entire room was in tears.

Reflecting on your long career, what advice would you give to teachers who are just starting out?

“The learning is in the struggle” — for both teachers and students. I learned about the work of [the developmental psychologist] Howard Gardner, who taught about multiple types of intelligence and the different ways people learn. I realized that the reason some of our students struggle is that we need more tools in our teaching toolkits, that we may need to teach outside of our comfort zones. Teachers can get more comfortable doing that through planning and coaching, by looking at tapes of themselves and analyzing the work they are doing.

You’ve not only been a New York City public school student, teacher, and coach, you’ve also been a New York City public school parent. Tell us about that experience.

My two kids initially started in Montessori schools, but when I reflected on the work I was doing in New York City public schools, I decided I wanted them in public school. I was in the PTA through their high school years. We, as parents, think that because our kids are older, we can step away a bit, but it’s actually the opposite. This is the time to put the time in. I always made sure that they were in different activities that kept them thriving, and it paid off for both of them.

If you had it to do all over again, would you choose a career in teaching?

Yes, and to this day I encourage people to choose a career in teaching. I love the profession and know that there are educators in the field ready to take teaching and learning to the next level. I think collaboration among veteran teachers and new teachers is so important. Sometimes I hear generalizations about “veteran teachers,” and I’ll say, “That’s not who I am.” And sometimes more experienced teachers assume that new teachers, who, for example, have taught me a lot about digital tools, know nothing. I always try to honor what other people bring to the table, and I try to make sure they are honoring what I bring to the table.

‘The opportunity I’d been looking for’: This NYC teacher found a school she loved, and stayed there for 35 years

2019-07-16T04:18:25+00:00

Brooklyn is where Elizabeth Mendoza born and raised, where she went to high school and college, and where she spent her entire teaching career — including, for the past 35 years, at one middle school in the borough’s Bay Ridge neighborhood. At first, it was the salary that drew her to the school. But what kept her there all those years were the people: her students, her colleagues, and her principal. On the heels of her retirement this summer, Mendoza spoke to Chalkbeat for our special retirement edition of How I Teach (read more from the series here). In a wide-ranging conversation, she explains what people get wrong about teaching middle school, what still made her nervous even after decades in the classroom, and why, despite her special education license, she considers herself an “everything teacher.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why did you decide to retire now?

This was my 41st year of teaching, and I wanted to hang out with my family. My parents are still alive. I wanted to be able to do more things with them, to travel with them to [their native] Puerto Rico and other places. I love teaching, and if I had another 20 years of youth, I would have kept at it.

Speaking of youth, what made you start teaching all those years ago?

As a little girl, my grandmother would speak to me about becoming a teacher because I would be able to raise a family while working, with summers off. After graduating from college, I taught at a Catholic school in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn for six years. I was getting paid $7,400 a year, and worked second jobs at UPS and at the telephone company. A great friend of mine said, “I’m teaching in this wonderful school in Bay Ridge/Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, and the starting pay is $18,000 a year.” That was a biggie — the opportunity I’d been looking for. So in September 1984, I joined the staff at McKinley I.S. 259 as a special education teacher.

How have the expectations for teachers changed since your first started teaching there?

My license is in special education, but when I started teaching, the principal was able to assign you to an area of need. I taught special education, Spanish, English Language Arts, bilingual [education], social studies, math, science, and resource room, [a separate remedial classroom for students with disabilities]. It kept my career interesting, and I got two master’s degrees — in special education and school administration — and many certificates. I consider myself an “everything teacher.” Just before retiring, I was a co-teacher in an integrated sixth-grade English Language Arts classroom; of the 30 students, 12 had IEPs.

Another change is that when I first started teaching, they threw you in a classroom and said “teach.” Now you have a mentor who can help you with structuring your classroom, with discipline, and timing. It’s not easy being a new teacher, and it makes a big difference. I’ve never been a mentor, but I consider myself an informal mentor — welcoming new teachers and offering help. Positive reinforcements can help keep teachers the school system.

What advice would you give to teachers who are just starting out in their careers?

I remember in my Special Ed textbook, it said, “Don’t take anything personally.” That’s my advice to new teachers. This child may be reacting, but they are not reacting to you. Maybe it’s something at home or with a peer. When you detach yourself, it will allow you to be more effective as a teacher.

You’ve spent almost your whole career teaching junior high and middle school. What are some common misconceptions about working with this age group?

People think they are older than they are, that they should know more, socially and mentally, than they really can at this age. They’re still babies. This is a transitional stage, and they need guidance. Teachers can provide structure when so much is changing, but they cannot do it alone. You need the guidance counselors, the cafeteria workers, the person who greets you at the door, the deans and administrators. They are in it with you. At some point or another you’re going to need to work with someone to develop the whole child.

What’s one thing you won’t miss about your job once you retire?

I won’t miss getting observed by the administrators and being rated by the city and state to prove that I am a great teacher. No matter how many years I had been teaching, it was an area that would make me nervous because I had to perform and make sure the students did their best. Administrators don’t enjoy observations either. They know who is doing their job and what they need to do it better.

And what will you miss?

Watching students become more mature boys and girls due to the positive influence we’ve had on them. Students still come back and share what they learned from me. I was recently at an anti-vaping rally, and one of my former bilingual education students came up to me and said, “It’s because of you that I’m becoming a teacher.” On a day-to-day basis, you don’t realize how you’re making a difference. But then students will come back and say, “Thank you for always saying ‘good morning.’ ‘Thank you for telling me to join the honor society or the chess club’.”

I’ll miss walking in on the first day in September and catching up on summer adventures, creating imaginative curriculum for the school year, and teaching after-school programs that allowed me to connect with my students on a more personal level. I’ll miss the teachers’ room, where there is conversation and collaboration to be had. I’ll miss my principal, Janice Geary, a dear friend and colleague who makes McKinley “the pride of Bay Ridge.”

What makes her an effective principal?

She has an open-door policy. You can walk into her office anytime, and speak about anything. She always tells you like it is. If she likes what you’re doing, she’ll tell you; if she doesn’t, she’ll tell you. She’s always asking teachers, “What do you need?” and walking around making sure things are working. She’s not a “gotcha” person. She wants her teachers to be happy. She always made sure we received the materials, staff development, and support to provide students with a rigorous education so they can succeed and compete in life.

When you think about the future of teaching, are you hopeful?

Yes, the future of teaching is promising. We need more teachers who are properly trained and really care about children and want to make a difference, who instead of criticizing the system make a positive change in the areas that do work. We need teachers who represent every part of society — different backgrounds, nationalities, ways of life. Students need to see themselves in you. Be a teacher. You won’t regret it ever.

This Michigan teacher didn’t let ‘bullies’ drive her from the classroom

2019-07-09T04:01:54+00:00

Barbara Gottschalk’s teaching career spanned more than 40 years, five American states, and several overseas posts — not to mention multiple grade levels and subjects. Before retiring last year, she taught English language learners at Susick Elementary School in Troy, Michigan, north of Detroit. She previously held teaching positions in Florida, Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio, and in two different regions of Japan.

There were differences from place to place, to be sure. Michigan offered better pay, for example. Florida provided the chance to earn free endorsements in special education and teaching English as a second language. Japan had a high-stakes testing culture. But more noticeable, she said, were the similarities. “No matter where I taught or how poorly teachers were paid there, I had colleagues who were good teachers working hard,” she said.

For our special retirement edition of How I Teach (read more from the series here), Gottschalk, 66, discussed the dramatic ways the teaching profession changed during the course of her career, the “bullies” she encountered during her first year in the classroom, and how her time abroad impacted her view of American education.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Why did you decide to retire when you did?

My husband and I were planning on eventually moving, so my decision was probably less about leaving my work and more about wanting to get started on a new life in North Carolina.

Looking back, what made you start teaching?

I grew up on a farm in rural southwest Nebraska so I wasn’t exposed to many career options. Hard as it may be for lucky young girls today to understand, the only careers I considered when I went to college were teacher or nurse. I didn’t play sports in high school because the teams were only open to boys. I couldn’t try out for the University of Nebraska marching band because it wasn’t open to girls. It’s wonderful that girls have so many opportunities now!

A lot has changed for girls in the intervening years — and for teachers, too. How have expectations for teachers changed since you first entered the classroom?

I didn’t administer any high-stakes tests during my first year of teaching. It was nice if teachers attended some local high school basketball games, but we weren’t required to attend reading nights, Title I parent meetings, etc., the way I did later in my career.

In my first year, I didn’t miss days in the classroom getting professional development as I did in my final year of teaching, but I certainly could have used some professional development and mentoring as a young teacher. In my first years of teaching, I was able to choose the textbook I wanted to use to teach American history. In my last year of teaching, I had to use a highly scripted program.

What advice would you give to teachers who are just starting out in their careers?

Hang in there. I’m living proof a teacher can survive and even thrive after an awful first year. I had challenges in the classroom, but what bothered me most happened outside of school. New teachers weren’t anonymous in the small Nebraska town where I began my career, so it was easy for my students to make harassing phone calls, steal things from my mailbox, and vandalize my car.

I didn’t get the support I needed from my overwhelmed first-year principal, but I also should have reached out to other people for more help, too. Just a year ago as I was planning to retire, I received a Facebook message from one of my students from that first year, apologizing for the “bullies” in the school. I’m glad I didn’t let that awful first year drive me from the profession.

Even after you find your sea legs, the demands of the job can feel overwhelming. What are some things that helped you take care of yourself and avoid burnout?

I think I avoided burnout because I always did something different in the summers. I worked for a school district with a strong teachers union at the end of my career so I was paid well. Unlike many teachers in other states and districts, I didn’t have to take a second or third job in the summer. Teachers work incredibly hard during the school year; that’s why the breaks are so important.

How did your time overseas change your perception of education in America?

Just like a fish who doesn’t think much about water, I hadn’t thought much being an American until I left the states to teach in Japan. I heard so much about the bad effects of high-stakes testing from my Japanese students and colleagues. They admired how American students weren’t subjected to this kind of testing culture and they felt students in the U.S. were learning more creatively.

Years later, it’s ironic that the very thing the Japanese hate about their system — the emphasis on testing and test scores — seems to be what we in America have adopted.

You’ve been retired for about a year now. What’s one thing you don’t miss about teaching?

All the command and control from my school administration, the district administration, the state legislature, and the federal government. That pretty much covers everybody, doesn’t it?

And one thing you do?

I didn’t realize how much social interaction my work life provided. I miss having stories to tell my husband every night — the funny things students would say, the happenings going on in my colleagues’ lives, the latest outrageous thing the district administration was asking us to do.

What’s one thing you have time to do now that you didn’t have time for when you were teaching? Are you keeping your hand in education somehow?

I once read retirement described as “the chance to live ordinary life well.” I now have more time to savor that morning cup of coffee, do more hiking, and read more books. Retirement also gave me time to finish my second book, “Dispelling Misconceptions About English Language Learners: Research-Based Ways to Improve Instruction,” to be published in October.

I also have more time to follow education issues — for example, by reading Chalkbeat. For six weeks this past February and March, I was a test administrator for NAEP [a national academic assessment]. I enjoyed visiting many different schools in my new state of North Carolina.

If you had to do it all over again, would you choose a career in teaching? Do you feel hopeful about the future of teaching?

I’d have more career choices if I were graduating from high school in 2019 instead of 1970, but I’d still choose teaching. I’ve never had any doubts that what I was doing was important. That sustained me through the hard times.

In spite of all the shaming of teachers, the high cost of becoming a teacher, and the legislative attempts to tell us, the professionals, what to do, I’m still optimistic about the future of teaching. I worked with some great young teachers so the profession is going to be fine without me!

We have a deal: Los Angeles teachers will head back to class after six-day strike

2019-01-23T04:18:00+00:00

Striking Los Angeles-area educators are expected to be back in their classrooms Wednesday, after the union that represents them struck a deal with the district.

The agreement, which boosts teacher pay by 6 percent, comes on the heels of a contentious and protracted contract dispute, during which salaries, class sizes, funding for nurses and counselors, and charter school growth were all at issue. The deal announced Tuesday morning will end the walkout that has lasted six school days and captured national attention.

“This is much more than a narrow labor agreement — it’s a broad compact” that furthers social justice and racial justice, said the president of United Teachers Los Angeles, Alex Caputo-Pearl, speaking alongside district superintendent Austin Beutner and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti at a Tuesday morning press conference.

United Teachers encouraged its members to approve the deal, and Caputo-Pearl signaled Tuesday evening that they had. Preliminary figures, he said, showed “a vast supermajority are voting yes.”

The union won a significant victory in eliminating a clause that has allowed the district to ignore class-size caps in times of financial distress. And to bring class size in line with the mandated caps, district schools will reduce class sizes by four or more students by 2022.

Still, the rules will allow classes far larger than national averages for city schools. The class caps with which the district seeks to comply are roughly 29 students for kindergarten, 32 students in grades 1-3, and 39 students in upper elementary school grades. (Magnet schools and neighborhood schools designated as serving mostly Hispanic, black, or Asian students have lower caps.) Middle and high schools cap classes at 42 students, though the district has agreed to limit English and math classes to 39 students next year.

L.A. Unified will hire 300 additional full-time nurses, and provide nursing services five days a week at every district school. The district also agreed to hire more teacher librarians and counselors, ensuring a librarian five days a week at every secondary campus and student-to-counselor ratios of roughly 500 to 1.

The district also agreed to designate 30 community schools, which typically provide students and their families wrap-around health and social services.

At the Tuesday morning press conference, the union chief and the district leader struck a collegial tone — shaking hands and putting aside the angry rhetoric targeting the superintendent that dominated much of the strike. On the picket lines during the past week, many chants and signs portrayed Beutner, a former investment banker, civil servant, and newspaper publisher, as a force for “privatizing” public education through the expansion of independent charters.

The union had been calling for a moratorium on new charter schools. The district agreed to bring to a school board vote a resolution that calls on the state to establish a charter cap and to create a state committee on charters. Under the terms of the contract, district schools that share a campus with a charter school will also have more input in how the co-located space is used.

Mayor Garcetti, who has no formal oversight role of the L.A. Unified district but whose team helped facilitate negotiations, called for an end to negative caricatures on both sides. “They need each other, and we need them to need each other,” he said of Beutner and Caputo-Pearl.

Beutner, who during the course of the strike insisted the union’s demands would drive the district to the brink of insolvency, said the deal has L.A. Unified investing “every nickel we have” to improve local schools.

Still, he said, “We can’t solve 40 years of underinvestment in public education in just one week.”

To take effect, the Los Angeles Unified school board must also ratify the tentative agreement.

Alicia Dobrow, a third-grade teacher at Carpenter Community Charter, a district-affiliated school in Studio City, said the strike has been “very stressful for parents, stressful for students and stressful for teachers.” So upon learning a deal had been reached, she said, “my initial thoughts were elation and gratitude, but now reading over the entire 40 pages, I’m somewhat disappointed.”

She is thrilled that the district struck the provision allowing it to disregard class-size caps, but said the contract doesn’t solve the widespread issue that teachers still have too many students to teach. She also said it doesn’t go far enough when it comes to reducing the amount of standardized testing.

Anthony Robinson, a special education teacher at Sixth Avenue Elementary School, meanwhile, was a yes vote. “There has to compromise,” he said. “We didn’t get everything we desired but there was substantial progress on the issues most important to me — like having a nurse on site every day.”

On his first day back in the classroom, he plans to talk to his students about the strike and its resolution. “I’ll ask, ‘Do you know why we were out there?’” he said. “I’m curious to see their perspective. The last time I did something like this was the presidential election 2016.”

The walkout marked the first strike since 1989 in the nation’s second-largest school district and affected more than 500,000 students in and around Los Angeles.

Umbrellas and anger dominate day 1 of the Los Angeles teachers strike

2019-01-15T02:47:28+00:00

“It’s raining, it’s pouring; the teachers are roaring,” was among the rallying cries Monday as educators — umbrellas in one hand and picket signs in the other — took to the streets to protest working and learning conditions in Los Angeles Unified School District.

Theirs was the first teachers strike in three decades in the nation’s second-largest school district, affecting more than 500,000 students. With national attention focused on them, educators called for smaller classes and more resources while taking special aim at charter schools and superintendent Austin Beutner, whose supporters have promoted charters.

“We believe he wants to starve the public schools,” said Marlene Calvo, a second-grade teacher at Vine Street Elementary School in Hollywood, surrounded by colleagues protesting in front of the school.

Some signs took aim at the LAUSD superintendent.

District leaders say that’s untrue — that they are trying to do right by their teachers and students while not going broke. The district’s latest offer, which the union rejected Friday, included a 6 percent raise, $130 million in funding for additional hires, and a full-time nurse at every elementary school. LAUSD has also agreed to modest class-size reductions. In grades 4-6, classes would be capped at 35, down from 36; in high school, the maximum class size would be about 39, down from 42.

On Monday, participating teachers from across the sprawling district, as well as school counselors, nurses, and librarians, began the day with small-scale protests in front of their schools. Then they joined forces at a downtown Los Angeles park, marching in heavy rain to district headquarters.

Many striking teachers wore red shirts, hats, and ponchos in a nod to the nationwide Red for Ed movement that galvanized teachers last year in states such as Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Arizona.

Unlike in those states, teachers unions are powerful entities in California, where the state government is also a Democratic stronghold. Rather than rail at state lawmakers, then, Los Angeles teachers’ signs and chants targeted Beutner, a former investment banker, civil servant, and newspaper publisher who has led the district since May. “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Austin Beutner’s got to go,” was a popular chant. Some handmade signs featured his image, and others called him out by name.

“Stop Beutner and the other oligarchs from taking over LAUSD,” one sign read.

Halting charter school expansion is not the focus of the union’s contract demands. But the union has called for a moratorium on new charters, saying that these schools divert resources from district-run schools. About one in five Los Angeles public school students attend a charter.

Among those demonstrating Monday were veteran educators who were walking the picket line for the second time — having participated in the nine-day Los Angeles teachers strike 30 years ago. “In 1989, it was really just about a raise,” said Lee Tuomala, who teaches chemistry and physics at Hollywood High School. This time around, “it’s not just about the money, it’s about the future in education,” he said, citing class sizes that he said are not conducive to learning.

“I have 41 students in an honors physics class — that’s too many,” Tuomala said.

Class size remains at issue between LAUSD and United Teachers Los Angeles, which represents more than 30,000 educators. So, too, does funding for additional support staff.

Patrick Doran, who has worked in the district for 20 years, is the sole psychologist for three schools with a combined enrollment of roughly 2,500 students. Splitting his time between Wonderland and Roscomare Road elementary schools and the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, a magnet school serving students grades 6-12, Doran said the vast majority of his time is spent evaluating students for special education services, writing up reports, and attending Individualized Education Program meetings.

What doesn’t get the time it deserves, he said, is the hard work of tending to “the emotional needs of students, what’s going on in their lives, and teaching them how to be more resilient and how to be more connected to other human beings.”

“You have to go home at night, and you worry,” he said.

Before heading to the picket line Monday morning, Doran wrote an email California’s new Gov. Gavin Newsom, asking him “to fully fund education.” Last week, Newsom unveiled his proposed $209 billion budget, including increases to education spending. The overwhelming majority of LAUSD’s $7.49 billion budget comes from the state of California, which spends roughly half as much per student as New York.

“The district should do as much as they can now with the money they have now,” Tuomala told Chalkbeat, citing LAUSD’s $1.7 billion reserves, “and then the union and the district can join together to lobby Sacramento for more per-pupil funding because that’s really what the issue is.” (The district says that reserve could soon become a deficit.)

District schools remained open during the strike, with administrators and substitute staffers working with the students who showed up for school.

At VAPA Legacy High School in South Gate, students in attendance gathered in the auditorium and were given packets of worksheets, said Atzel Martinez, a 17-year-old senior who walked out mid-morning to join teachers on the picket line downtown. He brought with him a sign that read “Maestros trabajamos por el pueblo,” Spanish for “Teachers work for the people.”

“They are striking for us,” Martinez said. “We have an obligation to strike with them.”

The union held a press conference Monday evening, indicating the strike would extend into a second day.

‘A lot of people are looking to California’: What L.A. teachers are thinking about as a strike looms

2019-01-07T20:50:59+00:00

America’s second-largest school district appears headed for a teachers’ strike, with more than 30,000 Los Angeles educators prepared to walk out as early as Thursday.

Contract negotiations between the teachers union and Los Angeles Unified School District have reached an impasse over class sizes, charter schools, funding for additional counselors, nurses, and librarians, and how to spend down the district’s $1.7 billion reserves.

It’s a thorny tangle of issues. So Chalkbeat asked five teachers to explain which ones they’re thinking about most this week, and whether they feel connected to the broader national “Red for Ed” movement for higher teacher salaries and more school funding.

For this cross-section of teachers, smaller class sizes and more school nurses and counselors mattered most. Pay was top of mind for a few but was not widely cited as a sticking point. (L.A. Unified, which serves some 620,000 students, has offered teachers a 6 percent salary increase. But the district contends it would go broke were it to meet some of the union’s other demands — something the union, United Teachers Los Angeles, refutes.)

Several teachers who spoke to Chalkbeat felt aggrieved by the expansion of charter schools — including a teacher at one of Los Angeles’s district-affiliated charters. All of them felt some connection to the national teacher-protest movement.

“We have a huge part of the national population, so I think people want to know what’s going on here in Los Angeles because that will likely be mirrored in the country,” said Michelle Youngblood Jarman, a literature teacher at Eagle Rock Junior-Senior High School.

Answers have been edited for length and clarity.

What issue or issues under negotiation matter most to you?

Rafael Jimeno, teaches sixth-grade math and world art at Southeast DREAMS Magnet Middle School in South Gate: I think the top three would be lowering class sizes; the need for more counselors, nurses, and psychologists; and raising wages to close the gap with inflation.

Any teacher, but especially the ones in places like South Los Angeles, sees that students come to our classrooms with a lot of trauma that they bring from home. It could be the death of a parent or a loved one, it could be violence, it could be poverty or hunger. You can’t effectively cover content and at the same time give students the emotional and psychological supports that they need to contend with those things they bring into our classroom.

We’re not going to attract all these bright, energetic young teachers to our classrooms if our salaries aren’t competitive with what a graduate could get in the private sector. It’s not like any teacher goes into it thinking they are going to be rich, but the gap can’t [be] so wide as to be unreasonable.

Pat Lingard, teaches kindergarten at Castlebay Lane Charter School, a district-affiliated charter school in Porter Ranch: For me, there [are] two aspects that are most important in this negotiation. The first is to make sure our schools are fully funded. They deserve a nurse and a psychologist and lower class sizes and aides in the classroom and a librarian in the library and a music teacher and an art teacher. Those are all fundamental components to a successful education.

The other part of it for me, which is as important, is to prevent the privatization of public education, which is a big part of what this negotiation is about. The more private charters that are allowed to co-locate on our campuses, that draws students away from our public school system and draws money away from our public school funding.

Jennifer Harmon, teaches fifth grade at Kester Magnet in Sherman Oaks: The biggest issue, for me, is class size. In the magnet program, the fourth and fifth grades cap out at 34, which is quite a lot of kids. In non-magnet schools, class sizes can be even higher. One teacher, no aides, no additional support staff involved. We want a section of our contract deleted that says that in times of financial crisis, LAUSD can ignore state class-size caps. Every year it feels like L.A. Unified says it’s in a crisis.

If I’m doing a math lesson, say, for 35 kids in my class, sometimes it’s difficult to pinpoint those students who are having difficulty with the concept or standard until later on, and then it’s hard to go back and re-teach it in a meaningful way. And as an elementary school teacher, it’s really important to make personal connections with your students and sometimes that’s hard to do when you have so many kids — especially when they are kids who need a lot.

Michelle Youngblood Jarman, teaches literature and language at Eagle Rock Junior-Senior High School in Eagle Rock: The cost of living has gone up so much, and it’s really difficult for the district for the district to pay so much in salaries. I do think 6 percent is really reasonable — I don’t think that’s a sticking factor at all.

An issue for teachers in some schools is high class size. It’s eked up from a reasonable number to something that’s out of control. I have more than 40 [students] in several of my classes. It’s impossible to really wrap your head and your heart around really getting to know that child’s needs. Another big issue is that a nurse isn’t on campus. Our school of 2,500 was given a nurse one day a week. It’s not reasonable.

Leonard Goldberg, teaches sixth-grade math and science at Olive Vista Middle School in Sylmar: It’s not the money. If I had gotten into education for the money, boy, did I make a mistake for the last 30 years. What’s challenging to me right now is the unraveling of public education. I see a drain of money leaving our district and going to unregulated charter schools — which is not to say all charter schools are bad. What I’m saying is we’re taking taxpayer money and it is not being held to the same standard that my school is being held accountable to.

[Another issue is having] a nurse five days a week to help students who need to take medications and have them properly dispensed, or, heaven forbid, an accident; a full-time librarian; counselors with a caseload to instead of putting out fires and behavioral issues and instead of being reactive, they can be proactive. Right now, the number of students they need to service is crazy.

What’s one thing readers might not know about what it’s like to be a public school teacher in Los Angeles?

Jimeno: There will be people who will talk about “our failing schools.” But when you’re in the district, when you’re meeting all the people who compose the individual school sites, you have so many passionate, devoted, caring people who are doing their absolute level best to help students meet their own goals to provide them a quality education. All of that goodwill and all of that passion gets buried in data.

Lingard: Being a public school educator — it’s not a formula. You are dealing with living/breathing humans who come with all kinds of family traumas and issues and all different backgrounds. It takes working weekends, getting there and early, working late, working through lunch and recess, and taking classes in the summertime and on weeks.

Harmon: We’re really lucky in my school, where I feel supported by my administrator and by my grade-level colleagues. But there’s a lot we have to figure out on our own, especially when we’re moving to new programs or new sets of standards we have to teach — and there’s really a lack of support, training, and guidance from the district. That part is really difficult. We don’t have any new science textbooks, we don’t have any new supplies, and we’ve had virtually no professional development to teach the Next Generation Science Standards.

Youngblood Jarman: I think a lot of people would be surprised at what is not funded, such as the nurses or counselors. Most people are surprised by our hours. I often work 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., even to 6, 7, 8. People who don’t see the daily life of a teacher wouldn’t realize how much is put into it.

Goldberg: I don’t know how much of the public realizes how much money I spend out of my own pocket — and not just myself, but my fellow teachers at my school and schools across LA Unified [on] everyday supplies like pencils and erasers, notebooks, and backpacks for students who do not have them or cannot afford them. I probably spend $200 to $500 a month.

Michelle Youngblood Jarman, left, with a student.

Do you see this contract fight as being connected to the Red For Ed movement?

Jimeno: In many ways, it’s in the same spirit, but the key difference is what drove all these educators to the streets was that in these other states, unions either didn’t exist or had been severely weakened by legislation. That’s the difference: We’re lucky we have a very strong union that is continually in the process of making sure our district does right by our students and by teachers.

Lingard: I think that our struggles are very similar in a lot of ways to the struggles all the school districts are facing — funding is not sufficient, supports are not sufficient. We’re reaching a point nationally where we realize that if we don’t do something now, our public education is in serious trouble.

Harmon: I think it’s completely aligned. Nobody wants to go on strike, but it’s a fight worth fighting for the kids we have now and the kids in the future. I think that what has been going on in some of the other states in the nation is really picking up speed — and is helping to give voice to teachers that, maybe, we didn’t realize that we had that voice within us.

Youngblood Jarman: I was elected [as a representative] to the California Teachers Association and to the National Education Association, so I see the larger picture more than other teachers might. A lot of people are looking to California and what’s going to happen with charters, a lot of people are looking at the allocation for education in general. We have a huge part of the national population, so I think people want to know what’s going on here in Los Angeles because that will likely be mirrored in the country. To me, ideally, LAUSD and UTLA would work together, not just on our contract but also on our advocacy for public education spending. We really need to be on the same page and go to Sacramento and advocate together.

Goldberg: It’s education as a whole, and especially in the state of California. We’re the [world’s] fifth-largest economy and yet we’re underfunding schools. The folks who need to do the heavy lifting are the folks in the trenches — the teachers, the counselors, the librarians, the support staff. It’s time we speak up, not for ourselves to get a raise, but for the rights of our students who deserve a quality education in our schools. My brothers and sisters are uniting across America to say enough is enough.

Francisco Vara-Orta contributed reporting.