Voices From The Classroom

Emmett Koltun Dienstag was born and raised in the Bronx in New York City. He came to the Hudson Valley to attend the undergraduate program at Bard College and continued his education with the Bard MAT program. During his time at Bard he studied his two passions, science and language. Emmet was inspired to share his love of learning with students. He graduated from the Bard MAT program last spring and now teaches science at Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook, NY

 

I first started teaching when I was 13 at my middle school’s after-school program. A few years later I began teaching at a not-for-profit organization in a summer program. Every experience made me feel that I had something to offer to the future by passing on what my knowledge. This feeling was strongest when I had the opportunity to teach science. Teaching this subje

ct was a way for me to help students understand the world around them. My science teachers invoked a burning passion within me to understand all that I could about the universe. From the infinitesimally small to the astronomically big, I saw the potential to discover so much and yet there was an awareness that is was only a part of the whole story. I wanted others to experience the same wonder I felt when looking around at our world.

 

This desire to inspire future generations is based on lessons I learned from my grandparents. While I learned very little science from them, I did learn a great deal about how to inspire.

When my grandparents arrived in this country, they had nothing. As Holocaust survivors they were beginning a long journey to rebuild their lives after their worlds were taken from them. Yet even with everything taken from them, they were able to create a life for themselves thanks to their desire to learn and grow.

My grandmother Bessie, or Bubbie (Yiddish for grandma), was fortunate to have received an education when she was a little girl. Her family was considered to be quite wealthy, and this afforded her certain privileges that helped her define her future after the war. When Bubbie arrived in America she was able to quickly learn English to help support her new life; thanks to the 4 other languages she knew, she was also able to build a community. My grandfather Jack, or Zadie (Yiddish for grandpa), quickly applied skills he had learned from his father to become a jeweler. For years he worked as a janitor in a jewelry shop in midtown Manhattan. He marveled at the fine art and craftsmanship that his father had developed as a shoemaker. I still own a pocket lighter that he sold at his business with the company logo.

Bubbie and Zadie were passionate and determined immigrants who took the opportunity to learn and create a new life. As my grandparents, they wanted me to be happy and thankful. Their experience as survivors was harsh and cruel and even toward the end of their lives it left a significant mark on their minds. Despite all they had experienced, through all their hardship- they found time to appreciate the world around them. Appreciating family was always a priority and joy for them and they taught my sister and me to do the same. Zadie would take us into his shop and we would learn about the types of cuts of gems. Bubbie would teach us about her cooking and sing us songs in Lithuanian, Yiddish, and English. 

 

Bubbie and Zadie inspire me each day as I teach my students in Red Hook. I enjoy creating opportunities to ignite the spark of learning. All that I do as a teacher is an effort to honor the legacy of my grandparents. I hope to inspire my students to create a life where they reach their potential; a life on their own terms, following dreams for a better future… just like Bubbie and Zadie.

 

 

 

Last week, Dr. Antonio ‘Tiney’ Abitabile received a warm welcome from the Lansingburgh Central School District as he began his service as their new Superintendent. Some of you may know him from the Hudson City School District where he served as Principal at Hudson High School since 2012. He also served as the Associate Principal for the High School, Junior High School and Intermediate School. Before becoming an administrator, Dr. Abitabile taught high school math for 11 years.

As Tiney began his first week at Lansingburgh School District, I asked him to reflect back on his ‘why’.  What keeps him so inspired to serve in the field of education?  And more importantly, what calls him to lead faculty and staff in districts that face the ever-mounting challenges in the world of education? Without hesitation, Tiney pointed to his wall and began to share his ‘why’:

 

There are several diplomas hanging in my office, but the one I cherish most is not the biggest, nor the most prestigious.  In fact, it isn’t even mine. Instead, it is a High School Equivalency Diploma that belonged to my grandfather, “Big Tiney” my namesake.  He received it at the age of 27, after serving our country in World War II, after he married my grandmother and after my grandparents had their first child.

For someone with such little formal education himself, my grandfather always stressed the importance of education as a springboard for upward mobility and freedom.  While he never went to college, he insisted that both of his children did and found a way to pay for it, working 2-3 jobs simultaneously for his entire adult life. 

Probably unbeknownst to him, my grandfather helped me develop my ‘why’.  I look at his diploma daily because it serves as a constant reminder to me of the importance of being a lifelong learner and that I have a responsibility to instill that trait in our students.  It motivates me because it serves as proof of what is possible when a child’s education becomes a priority for those who surround them. He has given me purpose in my work and is the primary reason that most of our family chooses to work in industries whose primary function is to help people, (i.e medical, education, criminal justice).  The reason I choose to work in urban, highly diverse and economically disadvantaged districts (Catskill, Hudson, Lansingburgh) is because the students and their families remind me of my grandfather’s humble upbringing. These are the families that need our help the most.  

There is a quote from Frederick Douglass that I use frequently with my staff, students and families that eloquently defines our work:  

“Poets, prophets, and reformers are all picture-makers—and this ability is the secret of their power and of their achievements. They see what ought to be by the reflection of what is, and endeavor to remove the contradiction.”

As reformers, have no doubt, educators possess secret powers. We see what is possible for our students, we know what ought to be. And it is our job to eliminate that disparity by removing the contradiction that currently exists between the two.   

It is not easy work. It’s exhausting, yet exhilarating and it’s  not for everyone… which is exactly why I love it and choose to do it every day.

 

 

We begin the month of November with a voice from one of our MAT graduates.Gary Dale Burns is a poet-educator from Portland, Oregon. His poetry has been published in Caesura, Chronogram and Cavalcade. In between performing his work in NYC and the Hudson Valley, he teaches Secondary English in the Northern Catskills of New York state.

 

 

At the start of the fall I took a train to Brooklyn from my home in the Catskills. I traveled for the US premiere at the Theatre for a New Audience of a one act play by Peter Brook and his long-time collaborator Marie-Hélène Estienne. I bought a ticket before I was approached to write this post, but it was aptly titled Why?I was looking forward to this event especially because Peter Brook would be speaking in person after the matinee! At 94, he’s at a remarkable age to reach with creative powers still intact and I was eager to hear what he had to say or teach about the theatre, his process, and about life.

The show itself had sparse staging, with only 3 players upon a large oriental rug spread across the space. Props were also minimal – a few chairs, a hat, some jackets on a coat rack. It began with what Peter Brook later said were the only lines of the performance he penned himself, a story about the creation. I took some notes and it went like this:

After the first six days God finished his work and took the seventh day off, the day of rest, which he also gave to humans to observe. But upon visiting the Earth, his angels found something strange and returned to heaven. They told God that the humans didn’t know what to do with his seventh day and that they have invented something new to the Universe: boredom. God isn’t omniscient in Why?so he thinks “Uh, boredom – I didn’t expect that. Here, I’ll give them a gift for those days of rest.” He places something in a box, gives it to the angels, and what do the angels deliver to humanity? Theatre.

However, very shortly after the humans have done what they will with this gift, they wonder which role is most important in theatre – is it the director? The lead actor? The stage producer? Humanity has begun to squabble. They ask the angels to go back to God and ask Him the answer. Once they tell God of this dilemma, God writes one word down on a small piece of paper and asks the angels to send back his answer. The three players open up this piece of paper, while on the screen at the back of the stage His word appears:

Why?

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Before I respond as to why this play spoke to me and my processes as an educator, I must say first that seeing this play was a necessary respite from my first month back at school, one which had followed a long summer of meetings on a School Leadership Team over state-mandated improvements with a building project happening in the background that barred most teachers from setting up their classrooms, myself included. Having some distance in time and space was an act of self-care and as a practicing poet, I needed to connect with my creative side.

Working in a public and rural Schoharie County school, I am one of two instructors of Secondary English in a school that numbers just over 300 students, UPK-12. It’s my first job as a full-time instructor after graduating from the Bard MAT program in May of 2018. I’m happy to report as a new teacher that I’ve been warmly welcomed by colleagues, receive ongoing support from my administrators, and have relative autonomy with which texts I teach and how I design my lessons. In my opinion it’s an ideal environment in which to find my way as a professional. However, why I teach there is another matter…

When the play ended and it came time to hear from Peter Brook he was helped out to stage by his interviewer, the Founding Artistic Director of the Theatre, Jeffrey Horowitz. He looked weak and said he was recovering from a cold. Despite this, he spoke to us about his practice of directing (or as he calls it “distilling”), that it is for him like a football match, a game in which “everyone is responsible – in theatre, we work together to share something, and that warmth is a counter to the ego.” While one could take this response as Brook’s own answer to the humans’ questions for God, he instead recalled his 1968 book The Empty Spaceand the reason for the set design of the play. Its sparseness was rooted in the teachings of his mentor, Gordon Craig (1872-1966), who revolutionized staging by taking down the ornamental curtains, employing the use of screening, and lighting the stage from above. What was most important for Brook was that Craig asked his own questions to arrive at these innovations, questions like “In what space could a new form appear?” – for Brook and for Craig, it had to be “an empty space…don’t fill it, it needs to be left open for the unexpected.” He said that one has to “work to strip away to something, beneath the training,” in order for an actor to find a “sensitive, receptive something” in them. We all listened in silence together, Brook coughing, being handed a tissue by Horowitz, then he spoke a few more minutes, was given a rightful measure of applause, and disappeared behind the very same screen that had the question, the word, the title Why?at the back of the stage.

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On the train ride home, I looked over my notes. This “something” which Brook speaks of – that’s very close to the real reason I go into my classroom every school day. Like the first humans in Why?many of my students are gripped by boredom and wish for some kind of school-born gift to entertain them. Are we not expected to keep our students engaged? Intertwined with this boredom at school, students are like trained actors, trained to respond to certain forms of call-and-response questions, most test and quiz formats, certain reactions to their parents or guardians, or discipline from their administrators. When I draft lessons with opportunities for independent thought, for self-questioning, for an exploration of big ideas, I find that the first step for them is a hurdle I have got to consider before all else – or they are at an impasse. I feel I have a calling to try to aid them in tearing down this training, to help them to reach someplace that is sensitive and receptive, that is open to something new.

This “why” is so essential to my practice because I believe we are at a critical moment in human civilization when what is required of us is not anything we can instruct to each other. It has be rooted in some kind of responsible exploration, in a space like a classroom, where direct experience is valued and a reciprocity of thought and feeling can appear. My “why” is because in a century of crisis, we need to share that warmth which counters our self-centered and ego-centric ways. I’m asking if education can provide that warmth to this generation, and to those that follow them through the same hallways of learning, each time I step into my classroom in the mountains.