Charyn Koppelson, Principal From Hell, Now Assigned To Teachers College Community School

EXCLUSIVE: Ex-principal of school with multiple sex assaults now working in Morningside Heights

Charyn Koppelson, who had been the principal of Public School 194 from 2008 to early 2012, now works as an assistant principal at Teachers College Community School and pulls in a $100,000 salary. While chief of P.S. 194, two students were sexually assaulted by the same boy. The parents of students involved sued the Education Department for a total of $16 million.

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BY CORINNE LESTCH / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12, 2013, 2:29 AM

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The cover of the May 31, 2013 edition of the New York Daily News.

Charyn Koppelson was the former principal at P.S. 194 in Harlem. 

A principal who was reassigned after reportedly letting kids run wild at a hellish Harlem elementary school still earns her six-figure salary as an assistant principal at another school, the Daily News has learned.

Charyn Koppelson, whom parents and teachers called “emotionally unstable,” was principal of Public School 194 from 2008 to January 2012, when she was reassigned. A third-grade girl was sexually assaulted at the W. 144th Street school in 2009, and the boy responsible was the ringleader of a group that last year dragged a student into a bathroom and forced him to perform oral sex, according to court papers.

RELATED: BOY FORCED TO PERFORM ORAL SEX ON MALE CLASSMATES

Two lawsuits — for a total of $16 million — were filed by the parents against the city Department of Education, The News reported last month.

Koppelson now oversees roughly 125 kids in pre-K through first grade at Teachers College Community School in Morningside Heights, where she has worked since this past August, agency spokesman David Pena said. She makes more than $100,000 a year.

RELATED: FORMER PRINCIPAL AT OUT-OF-CONTROL HARLEM ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PERMITTED ROWDY CULTURE

“Reading the story in The News was disturbing,” said one parent of a kindergarten boy at the school, who declined to give her name. “I’m worried about the people they’re hiring. I’m shocked.”

According to Pena, Koppelson is assigned to a principal excess pool, where administrators are shuffled among schools after they’ve been investigated.

RELATED: IN HARM’S WAY

There are currently 195 administrators — 168 assistant principals and 27 principals — in the pool. “I wish the DOE would expeditiously handle these issues,” complained another parent.

Pena said Koppelson would not be assigned to Teachers College Community School for the school year beginning this fall. When reached at the school by a reporter, Koppelson said, “I have no comment. Thank you.”

clestch@nydailynews.com

Hometown Teacher Heroine: Danielle Bero

Teacher makes connection between writing schoolwork and students’ lives

Nearly half of the students in Danielle Bero’s class are homeless or in foster care, and almost all come from low-performing middle schools and meet federal standards for a free lunch. For these kids, concentrating in class can be almost impossible. But Bero’s approach to writing and speech — from poetry slams to screenwriting — is engaging the students, and earning her a nomination for a Hometown Heroes in Education award.

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By Ben Chapman / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Saturday, June 22, 2013, 10:06 PM

Susan Watts/New York Daily News

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Danielle Bero is nominated for a Hometown Heroes award for her work as a creative writing teacher with disadvantaged kids.

For her amazing ability to inspire students, a creative writing teacher at a Manhattan school for troubled kids was tapped for a Hometown Heroes in Education award this week.
Queens native Danielle Bero, 28, connects with students at the Broome Street Academy Charter High School in SoHo by encouraging them to express themselves through poetry, screenplays and letters to pen pals overseas.
Nearly half of her students are homeless or in foster care, and almost all come from low-performing middle schools and meet federal standards for a free lunch. For these kids, concentrating in class can be almost impossible.
But Bero keeps them engaged with creative assignments that draw on their own life experiences.
No topic is considered off-limits or too difficult to tackle in her class.
RELATED: DAILY NEWS “HOMETOWN HEROES IN EDUCATION” AWARDS OFFICIAL RULES
“I create a safe space for students to talk about whatever they want,” said Bero, who has taught at the Academy since it was founded in 2011. “They know they can share anything and nobody will judge them for it.”
Bero’s inspiration for teaching at-risk youth in the city came from stints studying in Africa and working as a teacher in Indonesia after she graduated college.
That’s when she came to believe that even young people who face dire situations, such as war and extreme poverty, can find solace and strength from creative projects.
And Bero said her background — attending Queens public schools and Lafayette College on a scholarship — helps her forge a special connection with her students.
RELATED: BROOKLYN TEACHER SAVES UNCONSCIOUS 7-YEAR-OLD
“The students connect with me because I came from a similar background and I understand where they’re coming from,” said Bero, whose class is mandatory for freshmen.
She tries to make her assignments as accessible and inspiring as possible for her students. Poetry slams and screenplay-writing exercises are class favorites so far.
The goal, said Bero, is to forge a connection between schoolwork and her students’ lives outside of class, even if the subjects can be difficult.
Sexuality, domestic violence, addiction, homelessness and racism are among the topics that Bero’s students have confronted in their coursework.
RELATED: MUSIC TEACHER NOMINATED FOR NYC HOMETOWN HERO
Jayda Estrada, a freshman from the Bronx, said the class takes kids out of their comfort zone, but in a way that allows them to feel confident in what they have to say.
“It taught me how to stand up for what I believe in, in a creative way,” said Jayda, 15. “It’s okay to have opinions when you write. You can say what you want.”
Bero, who also runs the school’s creative writing and performance club, and coaches the basketball teams, said she’s happiest when her students feel empowered.
“I want to provide them with a safe and productive environment so they’re not on the streets,” said Bero. “Whatever it is, at least I’m in the room with them.”
bchapman@nydailynews.com

January 7, 2013

Danielle Bero ’07 Helps Inner City Youth Find Their Voices

posted in Alumni, Alumni Profiles, Featured Alumni Success Stories, Have Cur Non Impact, News and Features, Top News

tagged with Class of 2007

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Whether in the classroom at Broome Street Academy in New York City or on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, Danielle Bero ’07 is never without one accessory—a bracelet an Easton child made for her while participating in Lafayette’s Kids in the Community (KIC) program. It reminds her of what is important and who matters.

Danielle Bero ’07 with her class at the Broome Street Academy in New York City

What is and has always been important to Bero is social justice. So important that she created her own major at Lafayette called creative media and social justice. Discovering who matters occurred when she worked as a KIC volunteer through the Landis Community Outreach Center. As KIC grew, Bero realized the programming could no longer accommodate children spanning ages 6 to 17, so she started a spinoff program called Teens in the Community.
“The minute I went down the hill and met those kids, I knew that was what I wanted to do,” she says. “Back in my social justice classes, I found that the solutions to most of the problems we discussed were access and education. If I could be involved in education, I could target a lot of the issues directly.”
She began that journey by first winning a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to work at a high school outside Jakarta, Indonesia, for a year. She taught students conversational English and helped them gain a better understanding of the United States. When she returned she began teaching English to sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders in the Bronx through Teach for America.
Bero received a master’s in secondary English education at Herbert H. Lehman College, City University of New York, and is completing a second master’s there in educational leadership/educational management.
She is a founding teacher at Broome Street Academy (BSA), a charter high school that opened in the SoHo area of Manhattan last year. The school recruits students who are homeless, in foster care, or from low-performing middle schools. Through its partnership with The Door, one of New York City’s leading youth development organizations, BSA also provides nonacademic services, including counseling, health care, creative arts, and college prep programs.
“Students in foster care or transitional housing are one of the most troubled, at-risk, and forgotten populations,” Bero says. “A school like BSA completely changes the game—and the trajectory of success—for them.”

Danielle Bero ’07 teaches her creative writing class.

Bero teaches creative writing, coaches the boys’ basketball team, runs a writing program, and serves on the committee that oversees the school’s unique advisory program. Each student is assigned to a small group, guided by an adviser. Bero’s creates the curriculum and lesson plans, which include team building, community service, and leadership.
Most of Bero’s students relate more closely to Jay-Z than Shakespeare, so by integrating artistic genres like hip hop and film, she gives them more confidence to express themselves. Her pupils study hip hop lyrics and culture and discuss misogyny in the music industry. They create their own 16-bar verses and choruses about topics that arise in class. The slam/spoken word unit builds on those skills.
“Hip hop can be visceral and gut-wrenching, and when I see my students have that same connection with their inner selves, it’s a beautiful moment,” says Bero, who records and performs her own work.
Bero wants to do more than teach. For instance, she wants her students to study abroad. In addition to her year in Indonesia, as an undergraduate, she mentored and taught children for a summer in Namibia and South Africa and studied in Guatemala for three weeks during an interim session.
“My trips to Indonesia have produced some of the most meaningful experiences in my life,” she says. “My first stay allowed me to grow up. I became more patient. It solidified my desire to teach. I felt the most intense homesickness and felt the most liberated. Being able to travel through Lafayette opportunities equipped me with the strength and knowledge to absorb into the culture.”
BSA will select 10 students for a cultural immersion program, in which they will study language and culture, and conduct team-building exercises. Bero will accompany them to Java, Bali, and Sumatra next spring.
“Lafayette helped me define myself and put me in a position to speak for those who didn’t have a voice,” says Bero. “If I hadn’t gone to Lafayette, many of the opportunities I have been able to take advantage of might not have existed. It provided me the very access that I try to provide to my students.”

1 Comment

I read with great interest the work you are doing and your dedication to helping children who are less fortunate. It is apparent that this has been a passion and commitment of yours from the time you attended Lafayette .
As an alumnus who graduated 50 years before you (1956) I have similar feelings and interests. I will be in New York in the Fall and perhaps we can have lunch and discuss our mutual interests. Amongst my involvements is the Lee Pesky Learning Center http://www.lplearningcenter.org and the Pesky Award for Inspirational Teaching (Google).
Congratulations on your good work ………Best regards , Alan Pesky

The Grading Fiasco

Murphy’s Law and The Regents Grading Fiasco of 2013

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21JUN

By: Two Social Studies Teachers for MORE

By nature, social studies teachers do two things: they make it their business to know what’s going on, and they try to answer why is this happening. Perhaps this is why many of the bloggers you read just happen to be social studies teachers.

For high school social studies teachers, this June marks the first attempt at centralizing the grading process for our two exams: Global History and Geography and United States History and Government. According to the plan, student exams, when finished, are placed in a shipping box and sent (to Conneticut, of all places) to be scanned by McGraw-Hill, a private company. The scanned version of the exam is then presented to a teacher for grading over the Internet using software that has been developed by McGraw-Hill.

Teachers have been assigned to report to central grading hubs located throughout the city’s five boroughs. Each hub can accommodate approximately two hundred teachers. The process is supposed to be simple: teachers go to a URL, located on a McGraw-Hill-owned domain, and use their official Department of Education username and password (the same used for email, SESIS, ARIS and the payroll portal [each built by other for-profit corporations]). Upon entering the password, the teacher is presented the test that he or she has been assigned to grade and grades the different portions of the exams.

A few things need to go right in order for this to happen. Well, a lot of things need to go right in order for this to happen. First, the exams must reach their destination and be scanned over the two-day weekend. I’m sure McGraw-Hill swears they were. Then, the Internet connection between the exam locations and the user (the teacher, located at the school) needs to be up and running—and it needs to continue to operate throughout the entire process. Lastly, the servers (including the file server, where the scanned version of the exams are stored and the authentication servers that validate the usernames and passwords for each teacher) must be functioning.

Now, the original schedule for the week included having social studies teachers grade between the days of Monday and Thursday. We were supposed to return to our assigned school on Friday. Remember that original schedule. The fiasco that has ensued since yesterday wouldn’t be the same without referring to this original schedule.

On Monday, we all sat around while the “system” presented exams on our screens to grade. Many teachers were not able to log in (a true problem with the authentication server). Others were able to log in, but not able to access a single exam item to grade. Although the system listed many exams available to be graded, it simply did not present these exams to teachers’ screens for grading. After two hours of sitting around in the borough of Brooklyn, teachers were told to go back to their assigned schools. The system had a problem, the supervisors said. It couldn’t download the scanned exams. Teachers in Queens and Manhattan were given this news one hour later (a noon “dismissal to site” order was given at one hub at least in Queens; a 12:30 “dismissal to site” was given in at least one hub in Manhattan). At that point, teachers in all three boroughs were informed that Friday “may be a grading day.”

Overnight, the system seemed to be doing just fine. Exams were processed and seemed ready to be delivered to teachers’ screens at their “hub” schools. When teachers arrived this morning, everything seemed to be up and running. Now this was similar to the experience that high school English teachers had during the January Regents: The exams weren’t ready to be viewed on the first day, but by the second day, everything was up and running. So imagine the surprise felt on people’s faces when, at around 9:25 (just 25 minutes after everyone in the system was logged in and grading the exams), the system started to experience glitches. It would hang for long periods of time before presenting an item to grade. It would not present exams. It would freeze completely, forcing the user to log out and log back in to try to access more exams.

It limped along until about 11:30 AM (remember that time) and the folks in charge thought they had fixed the glitch. But by about 12:30 in the borough of Brooklyn and 1:00 in the borough of Queens (unknown as of this moment in Manhattan) teachers were, once again, sent back to their assigned schools and told to come back again on Wednesday.

Wednesday was another disaster with the computer system crashing and teachers being sent back to their home schools for a third straight day. Hey, we though this mayor was so concerned with the environment, yet he has people driving back and forth!

Thursday the system worked until 2:00pm then shut down. At this point we have frustrated, demoralized teachers grading exams. That’s not fair to anyone. Per session (over-time) hours are being offered for the weekend. Can this money be better used going to our classrooms and our children?

Update: Friday, over a week and half after the exams were given the system continues. To say teachers are annoyed and mentally drained would be an understatement. We are not robots and the week of a fiasco, out of our home schools, in am environment where we are treated as nothing more than factory workers, teachers are “sick and tired”. the crowning moment was when we were notified that we were required to report back to the grading centers on Monday. Remember if we were in our home schools doing this the right way, we would be done already. We try to remain as objective as possible when grading, but we’re not machines and this deteriorating situation has to be affecting the grades.

Many of us who have been assigned to reeducation—I mean, grading centers—will miss the most important day of the year, graduation day. We all know the media, politicians (both parties) and corporations have attacked teachers and our unions saying we’re the ones who are anti-children, but truth be told, watching “our kids” graduate is our favorite day of the year. Not allowing us to watch our own student’s graduate, the chance to spend one last moment celebrating with them, is an extreme disappointment for us all who have watched our students grow for the past four years.

The greatest travesty is as class-size continues to increase; after-school programs have been eliminated; arts and music, and many other courses have been reduced; yet millions of dollars are being spent on a flawed system. Where are all the “private sector always does it better” folks now? The grading system is impersonal: read the essay, punch in a score, and move on to the next one. This is supposed to a more accurate, fairer system? We think not. The art of teaching and grading continues to be done away with. Cookie-cutter rubrics, scripted lesson plans, standardized testing, and now computerized grading. Millions of dollars has been siphoned off from our public school children instead it goes to further fill the pockets of Bloomberg’s cronies and their corporations who only look to “monetize” our children

There isn’t anyone, even the most corrupt politician, who wouldn’t agree that this money being wasted on a flawed grading system could not be better utilized by going to our children, where it belongs!

So as exceptional social studies teachers we have learned the key to any great lesson is great questions.

The state law says teachers can’t grade their own students’ exams, why did this mayor feel the need to take it one step further and start this new multi-million dollar system?

Why are charter schools excused from this process?

Can the money being diverted to McGraw-Hill be better used for our children and their schools?

If teachers are being evaluated on these tests, how do we know if we have have improved or not without grading the final test?

How can we help our children improve if we don’t grade their last exam?

Is standardized grading the right answer to help all our children become “college and career” ready?

Isn’t a teacher who has taught the student better prepared to grade their essays and know if they have developed their skills?

Does the regents exam and the grading rubric take into account the child’s cognitive skills, socio-economic situation, and level of fluency with the English language?

Jeff Kaufman on The New Evaluation Plan, the Scam

 

This is Jeff:
Direct Vimeo link: http://vimeo.com/26575544

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Danielson: What We Lost – The Lesson Plan

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While the ink is drying on John King’s decision and our Union touts how great Danielson is as an evaluative tool it is becoming clearer just how much our current contract was changed without a single vote from one of our members. Of course there is much that will be decided and practice may be implemented in different ways in different schools but there are some changes which could cause major problems to future employment.

Under 8E of our contract a lesson plan is for the use of the teacher. Who knows what we gave up to get this provision in our contract but it was important enough to stop principals from routinely collecting lesson plans or forcing teachers to spend punishment time creating documents. An extraordinary example of the abuse was when a bilingual Chinese teacher who wrote her lesson plans in Chinese was given a letter to her file because the principal could not read the plan and would not allow her to translate it.
Similarly a more experienced teacher who has good command of her pedagogy need not write down every aspect of a lesson to demonstrate good planning where a newer teacher might need some prompts. It’s like going to a good friend’s house who has just moved upstate. The first visit you put his address in MapQuest and follow the detailed turns. By the fifth visit you’ve figured out shortcuts and don’t need a map.

Lesson planning is essential to effective teaching. Danielson recognizes this in Domain 1. But evidence of good lesson planning is how the lesson is preformed, not in a piece of paper a supervisor must rate you on.

Under Danielson 2 out of our 22 rated components specifically deal with the lesson plan, component 1e and 1f. Under component 1e, the lesson plan is mentioned as part of a teacher’s design for coherent instruction. Here a highly effective teacher will have a lesson plan that “clearly indicates the concepts taught in the last few lessons” and that “the teacher plans for his students to link the current lesson outcomes to those they previously learned." An effective teacher “reviews lesson plans with her principal; they are well structured, with pacing times and activities clearly indicated.” An ineffective “teacher’s lesson plans are written on sticky notes in his grade book.” Source: Danielson 2013 Rubric-Adapted to New York Department of Education Framework for Teaching Components.

Similarly, component 1f, designing student assessments, appears to evaluate a lesson plan based on how well it “indicates correspondence between assessments and instructional outcomes.”

To be clear, both before King and Danielson and after King and Danielson you need a plan. It’s just now the plan is not for the teacher and it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve driven to your friend’s house; you better have a copy of the turn by turn directions or you may be rated ineffective.

Posted by Jeff Kaufman at 6/16/2013 08:08:00 AM