New Orleans has become ground zero for education reform. This is the third in a three-part series on what might be coming to a school near you.
The license plates outside the New Orleans Math and Science Academy tell the story of the city post-Katrina: New Jersey, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Florida and Ohio.
Young teachers eager to rebuild the city flocked from across the country to New Orleans, and to its new charter schools. The school district was remaking itself from the bottom up in a way no other urban district was doing and they wanted to help.
Nick Wachtler, a math teacher at the academy, arrived in 2008. Originally from Richardson, Texas, he came from Yale University via Teach for America.
“The charter movement is very big here right now,” he said. “I wanted to be a part of that. I love New Orleans and I wanted to teach in New Orleans.”
He is one of close to 500 Teach for America corps members and 650 alumni now in New Orleans. They represent about one in five teachers in Orleans Parish.
“They tend to be younger, they tend to be more Caucasian than the rest of the demographic,” longtime education activist Leslie Jacobs said.
And they’re sometimes resented by the older teachers who were working in the city before the hurricane, all of whom were laid off and many of whom were not hired back. A class-action lawsuit challenging the firings continues in the courts.
“There are folks in New Orleans that resent these out-of-towners coming here and teaching in our schools,” Jacobs said.
She believes the city needs both: the new teachers and the older ones who returned to New Orleans after the hurricane in 2005 to reopen schools.
Another activist, lifelong New Orleans resident Flozell Daniels, tries to maneuver between the two positions to hear from as many in the community as possible on how to improve education.
Were it not for the thousands of people who came to assist in the recovery, New Orleans would not be thriving now, he said. Since Katrina, the close-knit city has opened up and become more welcoming.
“And I’m not sure that’s something we would have done pre-Katrina,” he said.
One morning last month, Tshepiso and Mohamadou Sani were excited about enrolling their 7-year-old daughter, Jolie, in the Morris Jeff Community School, a newly reopened primary school focused on attracting children across ethnic and racial groups. That’s unusual for New Orleans where the vast majority of students in the public schools are African-American, Tshepiso Sani said.
“Diversity was a big, big, big thing for us,” she said. “She gets to be around different cultures and different people.”
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The thrid in a three-part series on educational reform in New Orleans.
PART 1: NEW ORLEANS’ NEW START
PART 2: IN A CLASS OF THEIR OWN
The license plates outside the New Orleans Math and Science Academy tell the story of the city post-Katrina: New Jersey, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Florida and Ohio.
Young teachers eager to rebuild the city flocked from across the country to New Orleans, and to its new charter schools. The school district was remaking itself from the bottom up in a way no other urban district was doing and they wanted to help.
Nick Wachtler, a math teacher at the academy, arrived in 2008. Originally from Richardson, Texas, he came from Yale University via Teach for America.
“The charter movement is very big here right now,” he said. “I wanted to be a part of that. I love New Orleans and I wanted to teach in New Orleans.”
He is one of close to 500 Teach for America corps members and 650 alumni now in New Orleans. They represent about one in five teachers in Orleans Parish.
“They tend to be younger, they tend to be more Caucasian than the rest of the demographic,” longtime education activist Leslie Jacobs said.
And they’re sometimes resented by the older teachers who were working in the city before the hurricane, all of whom were laid off and many of whom were not hired back. A class-action lawsuit challenging the firings continues in the courts.
“There are folks in New Orleans that resent these out-of-towners coming here and teaching in our schools,” Jacobs said.
She believes the city needs both: the new teachers and the older ones who returned to New Orleans after the hurricane in 2005 to reopen schools.
Another activist, lifelong New Orleans resident Flozell Daniels, tries to maneuver between the two positions to hear from as many in the community as possible on how to improve education.
Were it not for the thousands of people who came to assist in the recovery, New Orleans would not be thriving now, he said. Since Katrina, the close-knit city has opened up and become more welcoming.
“And I’m not sure that’s something we would have done pre-Katrina,” he said.
One morning last month, Tshepiso and Mohamadou Sani were excited about enrolling their 7-year-old daughter, Jolie, in the Morris Jeff Community School, a newly reopened primary school focused on attracting children across ethnic and racial groups. That’s unusual for New Orleans where the vast majority of students in the public schools are African-American, Tshepiso Sani said.
“Diversity was a big, big, big thing for us,” she said. “She gets to be around different cultures and different people.”
**********************************************************************
The thrid in a three-part series on educational reform in New Orleans.
PART 1: NEW ORLEANS’ NEW START
PART 2: IN A CLASS OF THEIR OWN
