At My Bronx School, 'We've Got 'Em All'
Every summer, teachers from the Urban Assembly School for Applied Math and Science in the Morrisania section of the South Bronx make home visits to incoming sixth graders -- a rare practice that was...
View ArticleTeacher's Diary: Every September, I Know Why I’m There
Laura Klein began to teach at Intermediate School 217, the Rafael Hernandez School of Performing Arts in the Bronx, in 2008, at first as a Teach for America recruit. This year, she received tenure at...
View ArticleTeaching With One Eye Open
Dana Lawit began teaching at the Kurt Hahn Expeditionary Learning School in Brooklyn in 2007. A licensed special education teacher, she won the Gaynor McCown Excellence in Teaching Award in 2010. She...
View ArticleParents Don't Change, but Children Do
Parent involvement touches all aspects of education, affecting children, teachers and schools. Groups of people get together to agree disagreeably, and invent ways to encourage more of it. As a...
View ArticleRules Are Made to Be Broken, and Fixed
The first few weeks of school feel like rehearsal for both students and teacher. We go through routines slowly: practicing how to enter and exit the classroom, seeing how quickly and quietly we can...
View ArticleYou Call This Choice?
She was crying when I picked up the phone.“Miss Klein, I do not know what to do. I am thinking that maybe I should not have brought her here to this country. This is a big mistake. I cannot understand...
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How I Became a Teacher
Entering graduate school at Teachers College in May 2010 felt eerily similar to being 16 again. Though motivated and excited, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.As a high school student, I...
View ArticleUnearthing the Surprises Within a Child's Mind
“Now I feel bad, because it was up to me to save him, and I guess that I didn’t do enough.”This sentence appeared in one of my students’ recent essays. She decided to write about her choice to help a...
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Finding the Child in the Behavior
Let’s play a game. I’ll give you some scenarios, and you decide which ones deserve to be punished with a suspension.a. A girl threatens to kick her pregnant teacher in the stomach after being...
View Article'No Excuses' Is Not Just for Teachers
When asked to identify the qualities that lead to success in life, experts often list the ability to overcome obstacles. Pushing past adversity, through determination and persistence, is the hallmark...
View ArticleSometimes You Have to Settle for Just Being There
As a teacher, you are exposed to poverty, but you are not poor. You care for a child as long as he or she is within reach, but you cannot touch their lives after the school day is done. Still, you know...
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In Creating Successful Schools, One Size Does Not Fit All
After starting my teaching career in northern Virginia, my then-fiancee won the “who moves” discussion, bringing me to New York in 2005, three years into the Bloomberg/Klein school administration. I...
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Mad Libs and Dangling Participles
The most seemingly mundane aspects of English teaching tend to provoke the most intense controversies in the classroom. Grammar, the necessary “evil” that we cannot sidestep as English educators, is an...
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Bullying Changes a School, One Child at a Time
I asked Rocky if she would stay for a moment after school. She’s a wonderful student. Originally from Senegal, she is in her second year in this country, and she has grown by leaps and bounds,...
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Everyday Failures, but a Narrative of Success
You get comfortable with failure when you are a teacher. Not complacent about failing, but comfortable with the reality that each day will include some failure, as well as some success.Some days your...
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Students Learn Differently. So Why Test Them All the Same?
We teachers have been hearing for years about “differentiated instruction.” It makes sense to treat individuals differently, and to adapt communication toward what works for them. Some kids you can...
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No Way Out of the Evaluation Trap
Believe it or not, I wake up every morning eager to go to work. I never know what’s going to happen in my classes, but I invariably look forward to them. My students never fail to surprise me. I feel...
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My (Oops! I Mean, the Author's) Fight for Pronouns
The aim of the language of Newspeak in George Orwell’s "Nineteen Eighty-Four" was to eliminate any words that could promote free thought. While I don’t want to be alarmist, a similar trend is emerging...
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High School Matches That End in Just 'O.K.'
As I walk past the computers in my room, filled, as usual, with students during their lunch period, I pause to see what the girls are writing with such fervor. On one screen I see a list being typed --...
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The 'Magic' of Student-Teacher Relationships
Britney spent more time in the hall than in the classroom. She fought any time that the opportunity presented itself, and involved herself readily in any and all drama in the school.Laura KleinA very...
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