Category Archives: Editor’s Picks

Celebrity Sightings: Education Style

Posted on by
Reply

Set your DVR’s! TED Talks Education will premiere May 7th at 10/9 CST on PBS.

45485_10151856481173957_1485942466_n

Take it from someone who was sitting front row center during the taping, this is something you don’t want to miss. The CFK team was offered tickets based on our participation in last fall’s WNYC broadcast of American Graduate, and we couldn’t agree more with the sentiments shared throughout the day.

“Re-imagining education is the key to a more hopeful future”  - TED and TED Talks Education curator Chris Anderson.

“America’s local public media stations share a deep commitment to educational achievement for all students.  We know that completing high school is a significant step with lifelong impact for the student, his family and the community, ‘TED Talks Education’ brings together thought leaders who know how we can engage, teach and inspire a generation born digital and identify the paths to their school success.” - Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of CPB.

My favorite highlights? All-star teachers Pearl Arredondo and Rita Pierson reignited everyone’s passion for teaching. Bill Gates (yes, the Bill Gates) introduced a teacher evaluation system that builds teacher confidence strengthening every aspect of the classroom experience, while providing administrators with the data they desire. Harlem Children’s Zone CEO Geoffrey Canada rallied the crowd with his straight forward answers for how we can close the achievement gap. And (my personal crush) Sir Ken Robinson closed the program with an incredibly moving call to action: Our job as educators is to ignite curiosity and creativity, for with those two things actively in place, children will naturally soar.

Tune in next week, and join the national conversation on what we can all be doing to ensure our kids are prepared for the future!

Watch TED Talks Education Preview on PBS. See more from TED Talks Education.

Meet Jean Mirvil: P.S. 73′s Superman

Posted on by
Reply

We’ll just say upfront that it’s hard not to gush about Principal Jean Mirvil. Even before we heard the great news that P.S. 73 had been awarded A’s in this year’s school progress report, we were well on our way to an almost embarrassing crush on the man. Let’s start with the basics.

Mr. Mirvil, Principal of P.S. 73

When you speak with Mr. Mirvil at Bowl for Kids next week, the first thing you will notice is the aura of calm that seems to surround him. And whatever your topic of conversation, you will get the distinct impression that he is not only well-versed in the matter but also intensely interested in what you have to say. The man is simply unflappable, a quality clearly perfect for anyone in charge of almost 900 elementary students in what was recently recognized as the poorest congressional district in the nation. Maybe it’s the Haitian lilt that still creeps into his measured tones, but we think you’ll find Mr. Mirvil to be the most intriguing man in the room.

Don’t mistake his calm demeanor for a lack of energy, though. In the four years since Mr. Mirvil arrived at P.S. 73, he has not only reversed the school’s downward performance slide but also rallied a broad range of community support that has meant a major bump in student resources, even as city budgets have taken a dramatic tumble. When Mr. Mirvil arrived at P.S. 73 from his previous post in the Bronx, the school was in “a state of vacuum,” with a high rate of student attrition, limited parental involvement, and a recently departed principal. They were also on their way to becoming a failing school, with C’s from the city and some public relations challenges.
Continue reading →

Community Spotlight: Meet Wright Harvey

Posted on by
2

Those of you who’ve been attending our school beautification days have no doubt met Wright Harvey, the artistic guru frantically prepping mural spaces, weighing in on color choices, and adding a few more dabs of paint to his already over-the-top messy work pants. You may have asked yourself, “Who is this mad artist in the paint-splattered jeans with the preternaturally organized girlfriend?” Herein, everything you ever wanted to know about Wright Harvey.

Wright Harvey in his infamous work jeans

This Naples, FL native grew up a mile from the beach and came to art early in life through the efforts of his cousin April. Together they killed long afternoons with art projects and bracelet knotting, and when he went to the University of Virginia to study econ, he also managed to spend enough time in the print shop to add a second major in visual arts.

“Of course when I graduated I relied much more heavily on the economics degree to get a job that would put a roof over my head,” he notes. Wright’s been at JPMorgan ever since, and while there are plenty of opportunities there for creative business thinking, he hadn’t had a real chance to flex his artistic muscles in a public forum in quite some time.

Enter the Change for Kids school beautification days.
Continue reading →

Community Spotlight: Meet Jenny Portillo

Posted on by
2

Currently finishing her senior year at Fordham University, Jenny Portillo is the founding member of our P.S. 73 literacy tutoring program and a brand new Teach for America recruit!

Jenny Portillo (center) with P.S. 73 students on a visit to the Fordham campus

When she graduates this spring she’ll have a double-major in English and history and a completed senior thesis on the shared constructs and themes of traditional poetry and hip-hop music. She counts Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree among her favorite books. “I think his message of selfless love is meaningful for any person at any age,” she says.

In this month’s Community Spotlight, Jenny updates us on the P.S. 73 tutoring program and provides a first-person account of teaching and learning from students.

Continue reading →

Scenes from Saturday Tutoring

Posted on by
1

On Saturdays at 10am, our dedicated bunch of literacy tutors arrives in Bedford-Stuyvesant to work with the 3rd graders of P.S. 243. They fold themselves into undersized chairs and sit amid stacks of books and baskets of school supplies while their students work through the week’s curriculum of reading, writing and math exercises. It’s an inspiring thing to see nine-year-olds curled intently over their desks, and we like to think it’s the coolness factor of their tutors that can make arithmetic and language arts the preferred activities on a Saturday morning.

Saturday tutoring pairs pause for a quick group photo

These sessions are all about literacy—both in terms of reading comprehension and in terms of applying language to other concepts in school. If you hated math because of word problems, you know exactly the kind of paralysis some of our students experience when they read, “Two trains leave the station at the same time heading in different directions…”

It’s not all serious, though. In between Duck for President and multiplication, our tutoring pairs have found plenty of moments to look forward to from week to week. Whether they’re skipping down the halls or discussing the merits of apple juice over soda, they’re making light work of often heavy subjects.

Finally, big thanks to the contingent from Brooklyn Technical College, whose turnout has been hugely responsible for the success of this new venture. You guys are awesome.

And with that, meet a few of the folks who’ve settled into P.S. 243 for the semester:

Continue reading →

Run for Kids: Family Fun, Community Conscious

Posted on by
1

If you’ve been hanging around CFK for a while, you know we devoted last summer to raising funds for fitness and nutrition education at our school in Bed-Stuy. Here’s what all your hard work accomplished.

Over the last eight months, FAN4Kids has become not only a wildly popular program with the students, but an inspiration for the greater P.S. 243 community as well. A group of teachers and administrators launched their own fitness program under the guidance of instructor Justin Jones (with the collective goal of dropping 243 pounds), and Principal Hambright is now installing a salad bar in the cafeteria.

Run for Kids 2010: And they're off! Photo credit: Deb Hymowitz

With all this hubbub over health—and in honor of the upcoming Run for Kids event—we decided to check in with Mrs. Padaya, third grade inclusion teacher and recent fitness convert. She’s added a once-a-week cardio session into her lessons to keep her students alert, and she’s managed to kick a wicked Pepsi habit after weeks of nagging from her students.

WHAT’S A HUMMUS? “My students adore FAN4Kids. All the third graders love when Mr. Justin has them sample healthy foods. Most of them have never tasted green olives, organic bean and corn salsa or hummus (One of my students asked Mr. Justin, “What’s a hummus?”). They even tasted organic whole grain nacho chips, which some said were better than Doritos. Instead of honey buns, some students eat apples. They even bust each other when they see a roll of Oreos in a lunch bag. Mr. Justin has also taught the students how to find healthier foods in the little bodegas that dot our streets like trees. It was a great lesson since there are not Whole Foods or Trader Joes in our area.”

Continue reading →

Community Spotlight: Meet Olivia and Elian

Posted on by
Reply

Olivia and Elian take a quick break. Photo credit: Caitie McCabe

Olivia Olson’s favorite book is Anna Karenina, but ever since she got involved with CFK, she’s devoted every Monday to Curious George. Olivia was born just outside Washington, DC and spent much of her childhood in England, but she arrived to us last year through Idealist.org. She had decided to return to graduate school after a long stint in the finance world and was looking for a way to give back, particularly in the areas of reading and literacy. We put her stellar skills to work with a whole pile of grant requests and then sent her to P.S. 243. There she met Elian, a lovable and creative first-grader whose reading skills were well below grade level. After many months of learning the alphabet and reading Curious George together, the two have become fast friends—one of our favorite stories to emerge from the new literacy tutoring program (get involved here). We’ll let Olivia tell the rest…

Elian is now in the 2nd/3rd grade class, and his reading is really coming along! When we started in October of last year, we were still going through the alphabet and the letters’ sounds. This week Elian and I read “Harry the Dirty Dog” together.  Elian read one sentence, I read the next, and larger words we sounded out together…so much fun. Elian is amazing. He’s addicted to Curious George and is SO imaginative. We can’t get through a page without Elian theorizing about what Curious George is up to, what he saw in a Curious George movie or on the Discovery Channel, etc.
Continue reading →

Another Bronx Reflection: Local Artist Carol Sun Visits P.S. 73

Posted on by
1

A P.S. 73 student shows off his art journal. Photo Credit: Charles W. Bell, III

“All students need to have success and recognition for their success if they are to develop a life-long love for learning.” —Carol Sun, Bronx artist and teacher

The day after Bowl for Kids, our Junior Council Co-Chair, Andrew Maxwell, rolled up the Bronx to observe a couple of very special lessons in Mrs. Cooper-Fall’s and Mr. Han’s third-grade classes.  “Keep in mind,” he says, “this was a Friday afternoon following lunch, so you can imagine that the energy level amongst these kids was…pretty high.”

On the agenda for the day was a visit and drawing lesson by Bronx artist and teacher Carol Sun. “They have been looking at her art in the Bronx Museum,” explains Aurelio Del Muro, the museum’s Teaching Artist.  Their lessons with Mr. Del Muro included not only observing and sketching Ms. Sun’s work, but also writing creative dialogues between this drawing and that. Mr. Del Muro also prepared students with a lesson on public art in their own neighborhood. By the time Ms. Sun appeared in their Friday classes, students already knew her as the famous artist responsible for “A Bronx Reflection,” the set of stained glass panels hanging in the 167th street subway station—just a few blocks north and east of P.S. 73.
Continue reading →

Introducing…THE FIFTH GRADE POETRY PROJECT

Posted on by

Exciting things happen every semester at CFK’s partner schools. Sometimes a school leaps and bounds past its previous test scores (more on that to come…check back soon). Sometimes the larger community recognizes a student’s musical achievements as part of CFK’s programs (more on that soon, too). Sometimes a student raises his hand and asks a question in class for the first time ever (In fact, Mike Quinzio saw this happen; the teacher was ecstatic). But the 5th Grade Poetry Project was a total surprise to everyone in the office. What grew organically out of the literacy tutoring program up in the Bronx may just turn out to be the most exciting news of the year.

The Fordham literacy tutors take a break with their students

My Three Sides

Sometimes

I am mad but you will not like me when I’m mad. I will go crazy.

Sometimes

I am sad you might drown because I might form a tsunami.

Sometimes

I am happy.

I’m Jasmine and these are my three sides.

Continue reading →

2 Yankees + 1 Gossip Girl + Story Pirates = 1 Awesome Day of Literary Fun

Posted on by
2


Here’s a story with a happy ending. Yankees Nick Swisher and David Robertson, along with Gossip

Yankee Nick Swisher surprises Story Pirates actors Lauren Stripling and Jono Hustis

Girl Joanna Garcia and the lovely Erin Robertson, made a surprise visit to the Story Pirates’ end-of-year show at P.S. 73, making an already exciting day that much more celebratory for our South Bronx third graders.

CFK paparazzi managed to catch the foursome sporting stylish Story Pirates t-shirts, participating from the audience, and even hopping on stage to help perform student stories. In fact, they’ve all received the unofficial CFK Good Neighbor Award for being so willing to provide autographs and cell phone pics. Their prize: a lifetime invitation to all CFK events in the greater metropolitan area. Plus our undying gratitude for lending a little star power to literacy education in New York City.

Continue reading →