Best and Brightest Teachers Honored at 2011 Blackboard Awards
At this year’s Blackboard Awards, an event honoring 18 educators from around the city for their outstanding work, a new tradition was created in the form of dozens of small feet clambering onto the stage to say thanks to their teachers. Excited students cheered on the award recipients and accompanied them onstage, giving the audience a window into how these teachers interact with the students who so clearly adore them.
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Many Great Teachers, 18 Honorees
By Josh Rogers
—Blackboard Awards, Special Sections Editor
The Blackboard Awards, now in its 10th year, are Manhattan Media’s way of honoring the outstanding educational work that never seems to get the attention it deserves. Every spring we single out just a few of the city’s great teachers, and this year the Blackboards take on a heightened significance as thousands of our public school teachers face layoffs—including two of our 18 honorees. We certainly hope these cuts to all of our schools can be avoided.
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Teacher Looks Beyond the Numbers
Her students at Hunter High leave with a love for math
Math teacher Eliza Kuberska’s intro to her job was serendipitous. After getting her master’s degree at New York University in 2001, she had already obtained a position at another school but decided to interview at Hunter College High School anyway. She spoke with David Hankin and described the connection she felt as, “I almost heard music and I realized I found my guru and he was going to teach me.” And now, she does the same for others.
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From Tanzania to Wall Street
Millennium’s biology teacher looks beyond the body and sees the whole student
“Life is never dull in a high school, “ Bill LaMonte said with a smile, shouldering a bag full of graded tests and setting off through the mass of chattering students.
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One Part Mom, Another Socrates
Renaissance students says she teaches them to think and loves them like a mother
By any measure, the Renaissance Charter School is a shining example of its kind in New York City. Thandi Guimaraes is a lynchpin of the school’s success, fulfilling multiple roles.
Cultivating Writers and Gardens
Hill also directs students in the school’s musicals
By Alan Krawitz
As one of the first teachers at Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science and Engineering, 6th-grade teacher Meredith Hill is having a real impact and teaching much more than English, according to parents, students and colleagues alike.
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Emphasizing the ‘Special’ in Education
Young Bronx teacher keeps teens interested in school
As a high school educator for children with special needs, Anne Looser has given back to the New York City community more than you might expect for her short 29 years. After just five years of teaching English literature to the freshmen at Herbert H. Lehman High School in the Bronx, Looser is often praised for her compassionate approach to education.
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From ‘Runt’ to Fitness Pied Piper
De Matteo has added sports teams by the dozens to MAT
By Max Sarinsky
John De Matteo didn’t move far when he quit his job on Wall Street eight years ago to become athletic director at P.S. 126 in Chinatown. But the two jobs could have been a world apart.
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Singing His Praises
His students go from pre-K to 2, but they perform opera as well as pop
Not every kid can say they live in an episode of Glee, but the ones in Stephen Cedermark’s class at P.S. 58 have an elementary version of it, and no one is complaining.
“Through everything he does it’s obvious how much Mr. C truly enjoys sharing his passion for music with our kids,” said Vivian Manning-Schaffel, whose 7-year-old son Dylan is in one of Cedermark’s classes.
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Teaching Spanish to Preschoolers
Some students start without knowing any words while others are fluent
By Annie Lubin
Rosa Torres took a leap of faith in 2005 when she accepted a job as a Spanish immersion teacher at the newly opened International School of Brooklyn. Torres had no veteran teachers from whom to learn how to best teach the students in her early childhood classes. There were no proven methods or surefire tactics for teaching in such a progressive environment. But Torres took the freedom and flexibility that the school provided and ran with it.
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