Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Transformative Event Number 5: Payback Time to the Students at Jamaica High School in Queens, New York

It was an amazing year of payback to inner city kids at Jamaica High School in Queens, NY.

(Please read a previous blog on my teaching experience at JHS by clicking on the link in the preceding line.)

What follows is a shortened version of the earlier blog.

Jamaica's Hilltopper student newspaper was once recognized as the finest student newspaper in the nation judging by the number of Columbia University Scholastic Press Association Awards the paper received year in and year out.

The paper had not won an award since the early 90's and had not been published for several years though numerous attempts were made.

Working with a group of inner-city kids, mostly Hispanic, I served as faculty journalism advisor and inspired a group of 30 dedicated rough- at -the edge writers to bring two issues to press. (The lead article in one issue was on the rapper 50-Cents who grew up within blocks of the High School.)

Concurrently, I had the pleasure of teaching two classes of ESL, and two English classes. I loved teaching and my students were most appreciative. I particularly enjoyed teaching Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet George Orwell's 1984.

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