Last fall, Gothamist ran six profiles of New York City Public School teachers. We've turned the interviews into a regular series.
Christopher is a 4th year teacher working at a District 75 school in Brooklyn. According to the Department of Education, District 75 is a special designation for a school specifically serving high need special education students, such as those “who are on the autism spectrum, have significant cognitive delays, are severely emotionally challenged, sensory impaired and/or multiply disabled."
I never had an intention to become a teacher. I went to school for hospitality management because I wanted to work in restaurants and hotels. But when you graduate into a recession, you have to think of other options.
When I was 18, I had finished my first year of college and my dad said to me, “Do you know anyone who is a responsible 18-year-old who would like to work for two weeks at a summer camp with autistic kids?” I said, “I know me.” I got to see how you have to interact in a totally different way from student-to-student and child-to-child.
I did my two weeks, I went back to school and was delivering pizzas. But I got a phone call from my neighbor. “The people from the summer program are opening an after school program. Would you be interested in working there?” I kept on working there past graduation and that’s when I had the revelation that I needed a job.
The easiest job to get from there was to become a paraprofessional. [Editor's note: Paraprofessionals provide support services to students with disabilities in the classroom under the general supervision of a general education teacher.] I was told, “Oh you’re 6 feet tall, you’re a guy. They’ll hire you right off the bat.” Luckily one of the parents I had been working with was a para there and vouched for me.
About a week into it, I got to meet the principal—a lovely woman, Dr. Mary McInerney. Mary sat me down and told me she had this whole grand idea that I would become a teacher. And I disagreed. But Mary knew better.
I asked her, “If I go down this whole other path and become a teacher, will you keep me in mind when I meet all my requirements?” To her word, she found out I was eligible for my internship license and I got a call from her. That weekend was my best friend’s wedding. So I got off the phone with her and I went upstate and I had no time to think of anything—I just knew that when I got back, I had to go to an interview with someone I had never met in a place I had never been, all the way in East New York.
I grew up in Staten Island. I went to school in Staten Island. I went to Catholic School, even for college—I went to St. John’s University on Staten Island. I have a bunch of family from Brooklyn, so I’ve been to Brooklyn lots, but I’d never been to East New York. I thought, “How bad could it be?” It is pretty rough and tumble. When I went in that day for an interview—it was a Wednesday—there was a shooting around the corner.
I didn’t really know what I was getting into but I trusted in Mary. I met my current principal, Heather Leykam, and she sat down and told me her vision. She said, “You will be working in a 12:1:4 classroom.” I thought, okay, I’m used to working in 6:1:1’s, but hey, it’s a job, I’ll take it. [Editor’s Note: 12:1:4 refers to a ratio in a self-contained classroom where there are no more than twelve students, one full-time special educator and one paraprofessional for each three students; in a 6:1:1, there are no more than six students, one teacher and one paraprofessional. According to the DOE, these classrooms serve “students with severe and multiple disabilities with limited language, academic and independent functioning.” ]
I was a stranger in a strange land. I had a staff of six paras at the time and they were all older than me—I was the young guy. One nice thing was that we had a garden around the corner. One of my paras was big in the community, big with the garden. That became a place where we could take the kids.
In District 75, students go to school until they are 21 years old. In high school, you focus on transition and planning for the future. But also gaining independence. “How can you be a more independent person? What job tasks can you prepare for? Is independent living an option?” I work with occupational therapists, physical therapists, speech professionals to come up with cool ideas of how we can get into the community.
Last year, we would do a trip every Thursday to Jay Street Metrotech. We would go to the Farmer’s Market and we would take the apples that the students wouldn’t eat, the scraps of organic food, and we would bring it to the farmer’s market and drop it in the compost bin. It’s a small thing, but they’re going on the train, they’re walking through the community, they’re learning the streets, they’re learning how we go through the turnstile—all these small things that you do every day and take for granted but are big things.
Our students do not earn Regents diplomas. They receive alternate assessments. Every student is individualized. I sit down with their parent and ask, “What are your expectations for your son or daughter?” At this point in my class, the majority of my students are 15-year-olds and they will be enrolled for the next six years, until they are 21. So we ask, “Do you want them to live with you? Do you want them to find an independent living program?”
We have transition fairs where organizations share the different plans that are available and what they do and the level of independence that each requires. The parents get to find out what’s available and also, the kids get to see too. Some parents are more receptive than others. Some parents, it’s their baby and they want nothing more than to keep their child with them. It’s tough to see parents break down in front of you. They want what is best for their child but they don’t want them to leave the protection of somewhere they have been for so long. When you are in a school until you are 21, that’s a long time. You grow bonds, you have people that you trust, so to find a new person that you can trust is a big ordeal.
(Jennifer Preissel / Gothamist)
Halfway through the year, we found that our site would be closing down, that we would be moving to Park Slope. I knew the park was right around the corner, but I had to get my footing. We reached out to the community to see what was here. We got connected with the group that runs the garden across the street from our site. We really wanted somewhere where they could go and have fun.
We did enrichment clusters last year. The idea is that teachers pick an area of focus that interests them, and the students will sign up for these elective classes. We had a group that was interested in gardening; we had a group that was interested in woodworking. I worked with the woodworking enrichment cluster and they made this beautiful bench. We got the art teacher to paint it with the students. We brought it to the garden and had a rollout.
The great thing was, in the enrichment clusters, because the students choose what’s interesting to them, you have students from all over the spectrum, doing similar, modified projects, working together in one class.
Year to year, the kids take different assessments. In September, everyone takes what is called a SANDI, the Student Annual Needs-Determined Index. It’s a rundown of reading and writing skills, gross-motor, fine motor, activities of daily living, social-emotional and it breaks it down—there will be simple tasks such as, can the student eye gaze at the person who is talking? Can they pick up a book that they prefer? Can they ask you a question? As you get down the list, the questions get more and more complex. I might have a student who maxes out on reading at question number 10 and math at question number 30. But the assessment goes to question number 100. You’ll take that information and that will guide you throughout the year on which lessons are appropriate, how to take subject matter and make it appropriate and what you are looking for when you are talking to the parents and setting up goals. Because I can have the best intentions and goals in mind and the parents are like, “Oh, no, I want them to work on this.” I say, “Okay, I’m very flexible.”
My big goals are, they should be working on money, for math—whether it’s identifying, exchanging. I have my higher-level students make fake purchases in the classroom. I have my lower level students identifying coins and bills. Because you need money to be independent. And reading and writing.
In my current unit, I am teaching kids how to make claims through the guise of the Navajo code talkers. I took inspiration from this game Concept, which is all about trying to get across an idea just through pictures. That’s our code. We chose simple pictures—a bee, an orange—and we identify, what are its component parts? Well, an orange is a sphere, and it’s the color orange and it’s a plant. If I gave someone a plant, the color orange that’s a sphere, would they be able to figure out it’s an orange?
For social studies, we did a whole unit on, where does my food come from? How far does it travel? To show them how connections are made and how things get places, I took out a map and I showed them the different train routes. The avocado comes from Mexico—how do we get from Mexico to New York? How do we go from California to New York to get our greens here? How, instead of being reliant on things that come from 2,000 miles away, can we be self-sufficient here?
Last unit, we focused on cells, the building blocks of life. The class made cells using supplies like pipe cleaners and a bouncy ball and aloe vera and food coloring. In the end, the kids each have a squishy bag, which is a cell. It served two purposes because they learned about science, but then they have a fidget to relieve tension with. We called it the “sensory cell.”
There are days where I wrack my brain trying to figure out how to teach topics. And there are days which are physically straining. Students are very active and they want things. Sometimes it’s a struggle to get everyone to stay on task.
My toughest day was probably last year, January 5th. It was a Monday, we had just come back from the Christmas holiday. I had the hardest time getting students back on task because we had been gone for over a week. It’s a struggle because you build routines and then you break routine. And then you have to start from day one and you have to build it again. At the end of the day, I could just see my students had had it. It was rough on them and it was rough on me and I think we all went home very exhausted that day.
Last year, when we unveiled the bench in the community garden—the day that we had the celebration, was one of the best. One of my students was being interviewed by South Slope News and I didn’t know what he was going to say. To the best of my ability, I had taught him everything he needed to know to answer the questions that were going to be thrown his way, and he knocked it out of the park. He really made me feel proud. Sometimes you wonder, “Is anybody learning?” And sometimes you know.
One of my favorite trips is taking the kids to the diner. We have a great diner nearby and they understand our students and their needs. Just sitting there as a group and ordering and learning how to be appropriate and sit nicely—that this is the expectation. It is amazing seeing everyone in a different light, sitting together and eating at the table, it has a family vibe.
You throw anyone into a classroom who thinks that they know what they are doing and they have no idea. There are all these different responsibilities and you have twelve students who each have to be taught in different ways and they will be individually responsible for this in the end and there’s this paperwork and this assessment—it’s very overwhelming for a first year teacher. I said, from day one, “I don’t trust myself. I never wanted to be a teacher. I don’t think this was a good fit.”
But you take it one day at a time and you figure out what’s important and you learn you can do it. And then you find fun things to do along the way.
Read our entire New York City teacher interview series here.
Jennifer Preissel is a New York City high school teacher.
