New Teacher Profiles
‘Scaffolding students’ dreams’
Will Dulin, a third-year teacher at Pathways to Graduation in Jamaica, Queens, takes pains to truly see his CTE students, helping them to forge pathways to educational success even when they can't quite envision them themselves.
Creating a ladder of learning
New special education teacher Emily Hang Duong, who teaches math and science at IS 234 in Brooklyn, motivates her students by never letting them forget that they have every opportunity to grow.
Speaking her students’ language
Candy Jorge, a Spanish teacher at Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School in Manhattan, came to the United States from her native Dominican Republic at the age of 17 with nothing. Now the 9th-grade team leader develops and implements curriculum infused with texts rooted in Latino culture to model success for her primarily Dominican students.
With a song in his heart
“There is no music like live music. It’s a transcendent experience,” says Thomas Wright, the new music teacher at Edward R. Murrow HS in Midwood, Brooklyn.
Wright, who previously taught elsewhere in the country, took the job in September, attracted by Murrow’s robust music department.
Queens teacher keeps his students wired
Louis Pichardo brings his twin passions for teaching and electrical work to his job teaching electrical installation to career and technical education students at Queens Technical HS in Sunnyside. Pichardo, a third-year teacher, asks his students to be active participants and investigators.
Fostering pride in creativity
Jennifer Figueroa believes that anyone can be an artist. And the Bronx native, now in her third year of teaching art at PS 178 in Co-op City, knows that an expansive definition of "artist" helps kids take pride in all kinds of creativity.