001hello everyone i am here with candidate number four lori robinson the situation we have at this moment in time is that the you know due to the inclement weather the service that she has is not working as well as we'd like it to and therefore she's not able to join me in the broadcast studio and so my hope is that you can hear her i do have her on speakerphone and what the plan is is that i will try again with her tonight but we're going to see if it'll work right now with me asking the questions and i'd like someone in the chat to let me know if you can hear her if you can't hear her then you know as i mentioned we will end the broadcast early i will do a broadcast
002with her later on either tonight or tomorrow when her internet service is much better and we will still post it and you can watch the replay on youtube okay so i'm going to start off like i said i'm hoping i see that there are 10 viewers at this moment so i'm hoping that someone in the community can let me know if you can hear her responses to the questions that i'm going to ask so lori um there's a there's about 14 questions and you have approximately an hour and a half to respond to the questions the first question as typical is asking you to tell us about yourself what roles what responsibilities or experiences and licenses you may hold that have helped you to prepare to be the next principal of fort river elementary school
003okay um so i said good afternoon good evening to everyone my name is lori robinson and i have been i live in springfield and i've been working here for 25 years as a teacher as a vice principal and also the department chair um 16 of my 25 years i have been in leadership as the vice principal and the department chair i hold licenses as a teacher an administrator a director or district director and i have also applied for my superintendent certification okay i've more about me um i taught in new york wilbraham and spain for two years and lastly in springfield for the last 25 years 16 of which were in leadership as i said before so if you give me did i cover everything in the question um i can repeat the question it
004just asks what roles responsibilities experiences or license you hold that makes you feel that you are prepared to be the next principal or leader at fort river okay well i've kind of i have touched on all areas where most of the areas within the district as the teacher the department chair i have a license as i said as a director and i did an internship as a director and as an administrator so i think that i have vast experience allow me to work into and become the principal of the school because i've got vast experience and i've got vast knowledge i also have a large network of people that i could use or to employ to help enhance the experience for me as a principal but also for the school okay thank you very much
005um question number two says how will your leadership style influence teacher instruction um my leadership style is collaborative i believe that everyone has a voice and that we should all be able to use our voices and express our needs and our desires and our hopes but the other thing too is that we work together um i believe that when we work together when we work using the same language that not the same language meaning the same terms etc like that that it brings a more cohesive environment for the students because there's no confusion we're all on the same page we're all looking at the same thing per se but within our disciplines so there's certain vocabulary words that we would use as far as instruction goes and i think that working with people to develop
006that would be beneficial to everyone so that we have kind of we have we're moving in the same direction and that direction is for student achievement so whatever we can do to support students is the most important thing thank you for that lori question number three says knowing that there is a pandemic and students and staff are just returning to in-person instruction what is your vision for a fully thriving school committed to equity social justice and the social emotional well-being of students and staff i think that first thing is to acknowledge the pandemic and acknowledge the worlds that we've had during the pandemic um i'm sorry decide and think about we should come together and address certain things we'll have to address social and emotional needs mental and emotional provide mental and emotional support for
007both students and staff um see what assess what we have and what we don't have what we've lost in learning what we've lost even in teaching due to the pandemic just the way things have changed we know the plans that we've seen or none of the plans that we've experienced i myself went through two plans almost three plans and everything is lack every plan was lacking something so it is how to identify the deficits or death or the lost learning loss and then figure out ways of um bridging those gaps and this has been a tumultuous year we have heightened heightened awareness of racial injustice and racial inequality and being able to address these things there are a lot of issues that these students have gone through that we as a society have gone through
008but as young people especially have gone through and they're not necessarily equipped to handle them so it's very important to acknowledge them share with them as well that we have acknowledged that we've experienced these things and work on ways to work through them support them address their needs and discover ways to bring people together and it could be as simple as giving them time to just release let go say what it is that they're experiencing and then as a community as a group we work through that because if one person's experiencing it someone else is experiencing it it can be an adult and a child but it's the community being able to communicate having the space to communicate with each other and then as far as instruction goes look at different models of instruction especially
009now with the gaps with learning gaps we have to look at how or what's most important is should the focus be on coverage of material or is it better to cover less but have more deep engagement to cover less but go deeper and stimulate you know curiosity and inspiring and encouraging more learning and peaking your curiosity and reassessing things reassessing the purpose of assessment itself why are we doing it or how are we doing it what what are our expected outcomes and looking at different ways of assessing students and assessing ourselves as well just trying to to find ways to address all of your needs as best as possible we have to create means for students to be able to speak to voice their angst you know their their lack of understanding of certain things
010or their understanding or their interpretation of things but it's also creating that space for adults too because a lot of things that we ourselves have experienced that we have to come to terms with and examine and understand so it's creating a space for everything to happen for people to be able to connect with each other and connect with themselves within a curriculum as well okay are you ready for question number four i think so okay so question number four will be very familiar to you it says at fort river we consider all groups to be critical stakeholders how would you work effectively with a diagram with a diverse group of families or caregivers who may have values that differ from yours how would you get input from groups that have not felt included in school
011decisions in the past okay um the first thing would be to create a communication um be it through telephone through the internet through letters in some cases it may be home visits but it is to create a path of communication language may be a barrier the amherst areas is diverse it's international i'm fortunate in that i grew up in a very diverse environment so i understand i have some understanding of different cultures and it's learning well it would be learning those cultures and understanding what their values and what the cultural values are and implications are and speaking with people getting them i'm i'm a student of life i will be a student forever um it's about learning learning cultures learning the world understanding people so it is working on understanding people and letting them know
012that it is okay that it's important that they participate that they are important to us you know we work we're in a community we work as a community we work as a whole and opening communications however however possible if it's about having meetings when we have meetings we can just decide on the time if it works every for everyone have meetings early morning then we have meetings early morning um if we need to have smaller like satellite meetings then we do that but whatever it is we work to accommodate as many people as possible and remind them and encourage them to speak because they do have a voice and they are invested the students are invested in them they are invested in the students this is a community where we work together we have to
013be we have to have some type of cohesiveness so recognizing differences is a wonderful thing but also embracing the differences in a positive way is an even better thing we learn from each other our world gets bigger with as we learn more from each other okay question number five says tell us about a time when you had to make a decision that you knew would be unpopular what steps did you take prior to making this decision and how did you handle the pushback if there were any um okay when i was an administrator in the seventh grade the school closed and so they brought the school up into satellites and what happened was part of it was that you lost staff so there were people that were very entrenched in the one thing that they
014taught and it couldn't be with the new situation it couldn't be the one thing that they taught we had to expand their offerings and there was a lot of pushback i've only taught this for you know 20 years or something like that and i thought about it beforehand and [Music] as the as things were changing as transitions were coming i kept telling people there were going to be changes i wanted to prepare them you understand that the schedule that you have now won't necessarily be the schedule that you'll have then and i'd ask them what else would they be willing to teach what else would they like to teach and of course most of the people didn't want to change anything but there was not much that i could do about it because we only
015had we had a limited number of people and the curriculum still had to be addressed so i looked for their strengths i spent a lot of time speaking with people going to classrooms observing asking them about what they felt what they felt strongest about and um i worked with i worked on learning them in order to be able to to give them a schedule that would work for them in the sense that they would be accepting of it but also most importantly that would work for the students as well and it came out to be pretty good we had an english teacher that i knew i found out was a reading specialist so i worked with her to create a reading program for the ell students because we didn't have any ml teacher in the
016building i worked with a science teacher to expand her her science offerings and that worked out well and then we we actually expanded that curriculum a bit for the students so that they learned they learned more and they got to experience more one because they were one grade but also because the teachers had some more they had more of a chance to express themselves and expand their offerings to use their expertise okay you ready for number six yes this is usually a time when i asked the candidates if they'd like to stop and get a sip of water are you are you okay with continuing or would you like to pause for a second no i'm okay for now okay great so number six says what is your ideal discipline policy and how would you
017develop such a policy my ideal policy is something that's fair and just um but and equal but understanding that equity or equal isn't isn't necessarily straight across the board balance it's understanding the children but to understanding the people that are in front of me as far as how to discipline or what or what the discipline should be i think that one one thing about discipline that i've seen in the 25 years plus that i've been teaching is that they kind of do discipline across the board as one thing but you know at times there are underlying issues it could be an issue at home it could be um personal issues sometimes you know it could be personal issues um it could be a lack of understanding it could be a cultural issue a lack of
018understanding um or something else and so it is finding out what the what the problem is before administering across the board discipline i think that you have to work with people you know address the student behaviors but also work with the student to work to learn how to work through their conflicts and issues and create relationships build relationships with the students have the students build relationships with each other so that they can voice their frustrations it's not to say that every disciplinary issue is something that's underlying sometimes someone just needs to act up because this is what is happening we have to deal with those things but i think understanding the underlying issues sometimes gives us more insight and we're still there's still be discipline but it doesn't have to necessarily be what is across
019the board you're allowed to have some creative discipline if there's a violation against the community then they pay they pay back the community let's just say the kid rode all over the wall or something like that or the student wrote all over the wall then they'd be responsible for cleaning the wall it's not for anyone else to clean the wall you've made the mess so you clean it up if you're leaving your your your food tray on the table or you've made a mess with the food you know with the food in the cafeterias then you get a broom and you clean it up it's about giving back to the community that you violated and then understanding why that you did why you did it so i want it to be fair i'd want it
020to be just but there's also has to be discipline in it as well the discipline would be that you pay back the community in one sense in one case or if it's something larger than we have other excuse me we have other means or other types of discipline but i would look for it to be fair and i would look for it to be just and um i look forward to be educated educative educative as well okay well thank you for that i believe parts of your response to that touches on the next question so question number seven says can you give a specific example of action steps you have taken to implement restorative practices in your prior schools um well that worked on community building with the students among themselves but also with the
021adults so because it is a community it's not we don't have two separate communities in the school it's one community students have to understand that and they have to work and build their community as young people but as young people they have to connect with the larger with the older community with the adults and working on resolving conflicts before they happen the student is having an issue with this with the teacher when the teacher notices the issue perhaps they can have a conversation before it turns into something else you know catherine i see that you know you're a little upset about something or you seem not too engaged what's you know do you want to talk about it what's the problem what's wrong and it could be that the child just doesn't understand what's happening
022you know doesn't understand the curriculum and then sometimes people act up because they don't understand so there's a way of getting away from it so we can avoid the problems before they start it's much better um we work on resolving the conflict beforehand we build relationships early on in the beginning so that students can feel comfortable i'm at least moderately comfortable speaking with the teacher ahead of time or if the student doesn't feel comfortable themselves they have a partner in the room that can speak to the teacher and say katherine's having some trouble can we work together it's just looking for positive ways to support each other positive ways to address issues you know jews and wrongdoings and [Music] control behaviors personally finding different ways of uh expressing a problem without being destructive to the
023community okay question number eight says how ready and equipped are you to address issues of racial justice please provide examples of how you engage with this type of work so right now we're in the we're in a tumultuous time there's a lot of issues connecting a lot of issues concerning racial justice and injustice and really trying to make sense of it i think for me one of the things is listening to students and letting them voice their feelings and their interpretations of it i'm by no way by no means an expert and i would actually invite people with better knowledge than i have with more accurate knowledge than i have because i would hate to say something that would be misconstrued and turned into something else but i would invite people that with better knowledge
024and better experiences to be able to speak with students when i was in high school i think it was my freshman year we had people that came in to talk about drug addiction drug and alcohol addiction so we they were experts and what they were talking about because they lived it and when you have people that may have lived certain racial injustices or ethnic or cultural injustices they can speak better to it and explain it better to someone maybe on the outside looking in because we're looking at it and making judgments based on what we believe and what we feel and i would rather i personally would be able to speak somewhat but i would also ask for the support of people that were better equipped to invite them in to have a talk to
025have like workshop sessions even for very large things have like maybe workshop sessions for kids to learn and to understand how things why things are happening and even offer them the opportunity to work on ways to again improve and avoid such happenings i mean i share i can share personal experiences but how far my personal experiences are pale in comparison to what life is like right now [Music] so i would invite people to help the students work through it and the students and the adults even because these are very large issues and it's tumultuous and it's destructive to our society as a whole and it's helping the students work on rebuilding what our society and our cultures okay are you ready for the next question yes okay question number nine says please speak to the
026importance of art music physical ed tech and library instruction in our students education and in our school community art i think well depends on the type of art that we're talking about if we're talking about visual arts and theatrical arts visual arts tell our history it is before we we have art we've had art before people were writing we've had art before people were really standing straight and art tells our history we see our history through art through a contemporary lens and through an ancient lens so art tells our history and it's important because it's also for students [Music] the ability or the opportunity for students to create art is an outlet because it's a self-expression and i think that's important that they again have their have the ability or the the occasion to express
027themselves and use their voice through a different means to show themselves in a different way i was in new york this past weekend and there was art all over the place and beautiful murals everywhere you look there was something beautiful murals on the sidewalks sides of buildings everything and i think that's something that children need or we all need it to be able to create something because that creativity it's a flow and it it's nurturing i think that's the word that i'll use it's something that's nurturing um theater arts theatrical arts is the same thing it's again the ability to to express oneself to show oneself in a different way and it's also a means for us to tap into some hidden talents we may or may not have had tech again is creating it's
028tech itself is a different it's art itself you're creating all these things are creative you're creating something you're building something it's your own hands it's an expression of you it's something that comes from you it comes from your heart um the library is like a second home to me libraries and bookstores are my favorite places to go um they're so much and they're so rich and i don't know for me it's a solace i just find it calming to be there in those places but you have the opportunity again to explore you can never leave you could never leave your city but you could travel all over the world it gives you the opportunity to to imagine and to experience so libraries are very important there are educational places we learn we have the opportunity
029to learn you know express ourselves or expand our knowledge through the creation of someone else [Music] did i miss one art all right music pe tech and library art second library so maybe music and music well music music is again i mean these are all means of self-expression music is that it's a creative outlet it is a creative outlet it is a different way of learning all of these things have an opportunity have a place in the classroom as well because we learn through art we learn through music you learn different things we can approach a curriculum differently by incorporating art by incorporating tech we can approach learning differently so as opposed to talking about a prism we build a prism and so we see the size of it and we understand it because it
030becomes real to us we learn you know working with numbers tessellations with math for example um art is a very strong learning tool music is art all of the arts or very strong learning tools theatrical arts learning to to speak you know um being able to enunciate being able to project but also being able to pronounce you know to pronounce words joe biden was a stutterer and he conquered his stuttering by by reciting poetry amanda gorman the poet laureate she herself had us speaking a speech impediment and it was through the art for both of them that they were able to overcome their difficulties so art is a huge outlet but it's also a therapeutic tool as well tech is the same thing it's a large outlet but it's a therapeutic tool because you have
031that ability to create you have an outlet and you need those outlets in order i think you need those outlets for survival i knit and it's i don't know it's not therapeutic for me because i'm a little it's not therapeutic for me but in the end i've created something and i feel better about it so it does offer me some therapy after the fact but not endurance but that's my personality um it is that means of letting go that means of outlet but it's also learning as i said art tells history it tells all of our history from the beginning up until the present we see our history no one can imagine and granted you know some paintings are embellished but no one can imagine what the world was like 200 years ago without having
032had art there are no snapshots of 200 years ago so we use art to see we use art to learn history we use art to learn culture we use art to learn about ourselves and others okay so now we're at question number 10 and this one should also seem familiar to you it says at fort river we have three district-wide programs caminantes our dual language spanish english program aims a specialized program for students who have high functioning autism spectrum disorder building blocks a specialized therapeutic program for students with emotional disabilities who who need specific social emotional and behavioral supports could you please discuss your experience with each of these populations and your experience working with specialized program students okay um i've had i'm as a foreign language teacher as a spanish teacher i had a
033lot of experience working with students from other who spoke other languages in addition to spanish even as an administrator when we didn't have a teacher that was strictly for ell was an ell teacher so it i come across a lot of you know i come across a lot of different students with different needs we had one girl who had been a refugee in kenya and then she came over and she did not speak english at all the only thing that she could say was my name is and say her name that really that was a name that was assigned to her because where she came from they wouldn't have an english name for her but nonetheless it was eye-opening to have been around someone that had absolutely no knowledge of the language and to watch
034her grow and watch her thrive within in the school environment i would because i wanted to know more about her i would go to class with her every once in a while and sit down and learn with her and to see how she learned and to understand um as for other children with i went to reading classes with some of the other students and watched how they started to understand humor and humor is the most probably the most difficult thing to understand in another language they started to understand humor and and their enjoyment yes and their enjoyment of it um and as a teacher i've um [Music] always had students yeah i have i've always had students from my first year where at my current assignment i've had students that had high functioning autism and
035sometimes it was just working through and figuring out ways to make the curriculum accessible to them i had one student that couldn't keep up with writing and taking notes so i started making notes for everyone sitting down with the students and working with them individually to address what whatever it was that they had issues with i mean if it's an issue of being able to write quickly or handwriting or spelling so we would work together to figure out how we could make things work for them the student and i what would i would ask them what would what do they need what would be beneficial for them then i would have to make that happen so i had a lot of experience i used to request students that that came from what was called life
036skills so because they may have had they were perfectly fine in the classroom they didn't have any as far as i was concerned they didn't have any real issues that would prevent them from coming in to the classroom and they were fine with it and so they were usually my best students because they were very very focused and dedicated to what they were doing and we work together again addressing your needs knowing what your needs are so we need to work with writing and spelling then we sit and work with writing and spelling and my teaching point is for and i'm teaching this from a different point in the classroom it's still working and having everything successful i've always had i've been fortunate i've always had very good luck and very strong relationships with the
037students that i've had from from the diverse populations i had a class once where i had four students that were from length which would have been students with high functioning autism then i had some more students that had ieps that had some more cognitive deficits and this is all in the same classroom and then i've had then i had [Music] some students that needed to move at a slower pace but it is finding what is needed through for all of them and working so that everything was working in a way that allowed them to achieve what they needed to achieve and be successful and be content in the classroom which is the most important thing okay thank you question number 11 says caminantes is the dual language program at fort river how will you support
038the mission staff families and curriculum of this program and serve as an ambassador in the larger community well number one i've read about the program and i heard from and i heard about it and i actually love the program so that would be the biggest and i would probably be the biggest ambassador because i think it's something that is very important in our society in our culture and in our country we are a very large country and we don't support learning second languages as as we should this is a country that was built on immigration everyone has an ancestor that originated from somewhere else very few people have ancestors that were here in the beginning so with that it is embracing cultures and it's embracing cultures and how do i say um reviving reviving our
039country and reviving what this country is about this is the country that was built on immigration people came from all over the place to live here and we have a vast wealth of cultures language customs and we should celebrate those so if we can have a program that offers dual language it's a wonderful thing it's because we are making ourselves ourselves more accessible to the world for opening the world up to us and bringing the world to it and bringing the world back to us because there's so much to learn from another culture there's so much to learn about our own culture by studying another culture by being able to speak another language we're making the world a smaller place for us we're making ourselves global citizens and in the end that's what we should
040be we should be global citizens not simply a citizen of this country but a citizen of the world and perhaps these students will be the ones that will actually achieve world thing i peace be a big and i would be a big ambassador and i would tout the program the not only the unique quality of the project the essence but the unique quality of the program but it would be something that i would encourage and i would actually want to expand i won't interrupt now no i was the one who interrupted you it's it's different when we're not in the same broadcast studio to see eye to eye or anything so for me to take the cues that you're finished it's hard um so question number 12 says what thoughts or ideas do you have
041for bringing a sense of joy compassion love and unity into fort river elementary school at the student level the staff level and for the whole school excuse me um again it is communicating and building relationships asking people to [Music] step outside of themselves be willing to open up you know it is finding a means to share um encouraging dialogue encouraging communication encouraging openness um sharing something about ourselves understanding each other really working on understanding each other and finding ways of connecting finding something that we have in common or creating or that we may have in common it could be as simple as finding interest finding interest common interests working together creating maybe micro clubs or something like that where we can share our expertise and our knowledge students have a vast wealth of knowledge as
042adults do and it's sharing that and working together that we could just find some harmony and create and create art create something that is something that shares like i said you know earlier walking through new york city there was so much art and then i was in harlem in fact that there was a piece about it and it's working toward that piece that makes things more cohesive when we're calm and we're and we're together we're on the same page and we're looking at the same thing and we're thinking about the same things we tend to be more more cohesive we when we share ourselves and share our beliefs we tend to get become more cohesive so that what i would do i would work on creating space for expression and finding things that would be
043well it could be fun and joyful i mean it could be something singing and dancing having like i said small clubs where there's the ability to sing to dance to share something to cook anything that brings us together and gives us the opportunity to create real relationships and lasting relationships i think in my bio i said that i still talk to my spanish teacher from high school you know we commute we i we call each other i check on her because she lives in florida now but i check on her to see that she's okay we and we talk about life i still go to dance with my dance teacher from high school so but it's creating those laughs and connections where you develop the love and the joy for what you're doing but it's
044also the love and joy for the people that that are in your surround so creating a space for them creating a space for people to express themselves and share that's it okay good thank you so you mentioned in your comment that students have a vast wealth of knowledge and adults do too and that leads us into question number 13 where it says how would you support fort river staff to demonstrate their expertise i would ask them what their interests were a simple um what's the word a simple i can only think of it in spanish at this point a simple survey find out what people's access are and what they think they're best at it didn't it doesn't have to be academic so what do you think you're best at and what would you be
045willing to share so academically if you would like to teach quantum physics now that's fine we find a way to incorporate the quantum physics into into the curriculum but and students have their own they have their own their own knowledge they're vast they know more than we can ever know about a lot of things that we don't understand right now as far as society goes i still don't understand tick tock but they can explain that to us um each we each we learn from each other so it's again it's about sharing i would ask adults what they would like to share um with students probably not i wouldn't term it that way but we do a needs assessment and find out what they like what they do and create something that allows them to express
046themselves but also adhere to the curriculum so you can find ways of tying everything to the curriculum um that's a good thing about project-based learning you can find some ways to tie everything to the curriculum but at the same time students are sharing their knowledge sharing their expertise and they could possibly involve the adults as well if there's a larger project i don't know like we're in a drought right now this world is in a drought finding ways of conserving water finding ways of creating means or access to water that's not just simply out of a bottle doing that investigation students can work with with adults to do that investigation and create a plan for the community itself it's working together and just sharing everything that we know i did a video for a student
047she learned she was learning to knit but she didn't know how to finish things i i made a video for her to show how to finish things off but with native you teach number you teach you're teaching numerology we'll use that we can share our knowledge just we can share it we offer we we have discussions we talk about different things and then you ask someone what can you explain such and such to me you know like i don't understand new phones it's all the things that go on with the iphone the students are your best they're your best information your best teachers so it's encouraging them it's encouraging communication and again it's building relationships i think it's really about building relationships where you can share what you know share your expertise and your knowledge
048are you ready for the next one yeah all right so typically at this point i go back to question number one because we have more people viewing the broadcast at this time who may have missed and although they can always go back and rewind and watch it later on youtube i still have been going back to that question number one so in keeping with that question number one once again says please tell us about yourself what roles responsibilities or experiences and licenses you may hold that have helped you prepare to be the next principal at fort river elementary okay um my name is lori robinson and i am from queens new york i have worked in springfield public school system for 25 years and as a teacher as an administrator and as a department chair
04916 of my 25 years have been in leadership as a department chair and a vice principal i'm licensed as a teacher and administrator a director and i've applied for my superintendent certification as well i've taught in new york wolverhampton and spain for two years and spring school for the last 25 16 of which again were administrative order and leadership positions um i think what i didn't share with you was my commitment to education or how i became involved in education um my cousin who recently passed was a special education teacher but she herself was an inspiration because she suffered from sickle cell anemia she had a stroke at the age of 10. she was homeschooled until high school and with her homeschooling she was at grade level so she entered high school and she went
050away to college so she left home she went to another state to go to college and live in the dormitory and everything the big thing about my cousin that i think is most important and it is um part of how i formed my philosophies is that she was a big believer in educational equity she was a standard she was a teacher for special education but she didn't teach the curriculum that they offered because it was not challenging enough she felt so she thought that she plucked in the standard curriculum rather than less challenging one because at the end these students were going to be led out into the world and the world wasn't going to take into account that their curriculum was different so she made sure that her students would be able to function
051in the same world without being underprepared so it's very important to me because i do the same thing i am a strong believer in equity and i don't like to take away from the students i believe that you're capable of learning everyone's capable maybe we address it in a different way but we're all capable of achieving the same thing understanding it working through it and being able to complete it um the other person that had a strong influence on me these are is my principal from elementary school she my school was a very small school again i was in queens new york it was on jamaica avenue if anyone's from new york it was on jamaica avenue in queens new york when they had to when they still had to train with the above-ground trains
052and it was situated between a furniture store and some other store i remember the store on the other side with an apartment on top of it a little part with apartments on top this stands out to me because one day when i wasn't paying attention i was looking out the window you know the fire next door so that was the excitement we had to go down the alley between the two buildings to run out to get away from the fire but it was a small school and it was a poor school because the neighborhood was mostly working class people and they were people from all over was probably every nationality in that small area that was there so we had people from all over the place that came to that school but they didn't have
053a lot of money so part of the way they paid as i said before was like my um principal had parents in the school they offered services they volunteered in school so he couldn't afford a secretary perhaps so this parent would be the secretary building you know making costumes doing all kinds of things for the school i remember one parent was a piano player played the piano for us it was a p and a music teacher so we had a lot of different people but the thing that was inspirational about it was that we again we had everything that the new york city public schools had as far as curriculum went every book that they had we had so there was that creativity and that desire and that drive for us to be the same
054or have the same opportunities as the larger group has and she achieved that i don't know how but she achieved it the students that left at school were well prepared us is better prepared than some of the some of the children that were in the larger environment she had great impact on the students you know for years they would talk about her they would see her she looked at the community they went to the same church so these are people that helped form me helped form my mind my views and my desires as far as education and i think i probably would not have gone into education if it weren't for them okay so the next question says what is something you have done that you are especially proud of and it does not have
055to be work related something that i've done well i'm proud of all my students i have great students um i'm connected to them but i haven't done everything i think most recently and it is it was a big deal for me because i was so proud of her i had a student that when we started out for four years ago she was barely coming to class so i called her grandmother and her grandmother came and we had a discussion so the girl would start coming to class and so she started coming to class and she started waning off again and then she showed up again and i teach high school taught high school in springfield she showed up again she told me that she was pregnant but more than that she her grandmother told her
056that while she was in school that she should find someone that she could trust and she could depend on that would support her and she chose me and i was a little taken back because i was like so what am i supposed to do i don't know but i also told her that she should think twice about it because i'm tough and i'm hard there's things like that i believe in education i'm a strong believer in it and i don't think it should be wasted and her practices were wasting it so she agreed to step up and do what needed to be done long story short she had the baby then baby became an excuse not to come to school so i took care of a baby for two years while she came to school
057she bring the baby i teach i hold the baby she'd go to class the end of the day she'd take the baby she'd go home on her graduation day i held the baby she graduated she took the baby she went home she's now thriving and he's thriving they moved but i think that's probably something that i'm most proud of that i actually got her to graduate helped her through it and she's working on becoming successful and finding her place thank you for sharing that story and the last one says is there anything that you would like the fort river community to know um let's see well one thing is i live where i work so would i be chosen to be principal i would immediately move to amherst because i believe in the invested in
058the community in which i'm teaching so i would be visible accessible living with next to around sharing hello hello hello hello hello can you hear me we can hear you oh lord everything is going against me today um the phone's still working you're still being broadcasted so they can hear you too oh my goodness um so like i said i would be part of the community like i live where i work i don't have more than i have been fortunate to not have more than a 10-minute commute to my job i you know i can look out the window and see students all the time when we see each other in the supermarkets everywhere we go so it's important to me to be part of the community so that's one thing um i like i'm
059not a very talkative person that's probably the most i've talked in all two weeks but i'm not a very talkative person but i am accessible and i like to do things i like to know people and i like to learn cultures and learn about people i travel a lot i like to share um and what else can i say i lived in spain for two years and i'm the type of person that immerses myself in a culture i didn't live as an american i lived as a spaniard would live my first semester i made the mistake of living with an american and i thought i'm anti-american but my roommate was just terrible roommate so i moved in with a different group of people we were five women in the apartment how did it go three
060were spaniards one was danish and then there was me the american so we learned each other's cultures foods everything but we i mean i lived like a spanish for two years and i taught and i like to be part of my community and part of my culture i do things within the community to help better lives of other people or just whatever community service that there is so i'm very much dedicated to the people in my cert in my area my surround um i have like i said i was born in queen in jamaica queens and queens is probably the most culturally diverse of all the five boroughs in new york city i'm a graduate of this porter school in farmington connecticut my graduate of the university of massachusetts at amherst as an out-of-state student
061and i graduated from nyu with my masters my master's degree was in the role of the dictator in the modern novel in a modern hispanic novel but um i say this because that that eclectic and diverse experience that i've had both in and out the classrooms both as a student and teacher has made me like sponge-like and sensitive to communities to which i've been exposed and hungry to learn more about them while ensuring equity for all cultures and ethnicities regardless of age status of class i told my students today that in my lifetime i knew two people that were over 100 and that was astonishing to them but it was also to explain to them that age doesn't separate us when i'm 16 years old and i'm talking to someone that's 100 years old and
062we can find common ground age doesn't separate us we separate ourselves when we don't have to so kind of an open book okay well thank you for joining us to this evening and you know we wish you well as um and and thanks again for sharing your experiences as to why you believe you'd be the next principal or best principal for the fort river community so i know with the technical difficulties many might want to have an opportunity to at least see you live and in the broadcast so what i'm going to do is ask sasha the assistant to the superintendent to schedule another stream yard possibly for tomorrow so that maybe you can respond to one or two more of these questions and the audience gets to see you live and that'll be posted
063also and available for the families of the fort river community to be able to see you okay thank you very much and i do apologize for the internet issues it's not you it's not your issues so you know technology things happen with technology right now everyone's you know learning it or struggling with it or having difficulties with it um in some way shape or form so we we're sure that you know the next time you're able to meet with us they'll be able to see you via the stream yard platform too okay okay all right so thank you again for being here and you take care and for the community thank you everyone for listening to me okay take care bye-bye okay take care bye-bye and for the community i just want to remind you
064that via the email where you have the um links for these four live stream opportunities there's also a link for you to decide who you'd like to see as the next principal of fort river so please go back to that email and click on the link to put your vote in and let your voice be heard as to who you'd like to see move forward to the superintendent thank you again for joining me in all four of these forums and please remember that you can always go back and review and watch these meetings again thank you and all of you stay healthy and well thank you