Jessica uses a self-designed curriculum to reach various learners. She wrote and obtained grants providing $250,000 for technology in STEM equipment and $175,000 to start a hydroponics lab in the school. She has led students in the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition for several years, resulting in a combined $87,000 in prize money. She has recently petitioned the NYC Parks Department to dedicate an outdoor space next to the school so she can expand the hydroponics lab and create a sustainable community garden for the families and the broader community.

Having been trained in Culturally Responsive Team techniques, Abrams piloted student-led restorative justice circles. She also facilitates a girl’s group called Girls Empowerment Movement (GEM). Recently, the GEM hosted a community town hall to better understand the food Insecurity in their community and responded with action and service learning. They have been responsible for a community fridge and a clothing drive. Some of the GEMs joined Jessica when she took 25 students to Europe in May to submerge themselves in different cultures and life experiences as part of a leadership program culminating in a service learning project based on what they learned as global citizens.

Billy will often have student teams teach specific lessons to one another, finding students often have new ways of conveying content that is more relatable to their peers. He also has his students host monthly professional development for the science department. These workshops are designed for teachers to learn from their students and develop classroom spaces to bridge engagement gaps in teaching and learning.

Billy uses the students experiences and interests as launching points in his lessons. He incorporates the arts, especially dance, which he has a background in, into his curriculum to make content accessible, engaging and memorable.

He is working toward his doctoral degree in Science Education. He spends his summers participating in teacher travel opportunities. Last summer, he went to Accra, Ghana with the Opus Dance Theatre, and as the Director of Curriculum, he provided over 200 students with arts-in-education programming. This summer he will be traveling to Poland as part of his fellowship with the Auschwitz Foundation.

Talia believes in teaching through students rather than teaching to students. Her lessons are kinesthetic, and students learn by actively doing. She teaches students at all levels and abilities, ranging from those with no acting interest, who she may reach through lighting design or stage management, to those with advanced acting skills. She also founded “The Renaissance Players,” a performing arts troupe outside the classroom. They do one monthly showcase, performing on important, topical subjects such as bullying.

She has a partnership with the New York Theater Workshop, allowing students to see a matinee show and work with a teaching artist on preshow and post-show workshops. The partnership also includes a residency with the class that offers students to choose from a wide range of jobs in theater production, from writing and performing monologues to costume design. She started a series called “The Professional in the Classroom,” where she invites professionals from all different areas in the theater industry to come into the classroom and share what they do. She strives to have this series represent the demographics of her students and brings in as many diverse voices as possible.

Zach Rosch developed a curriculum for an aviation class that has become one of the most popular courses at his school. Rosch incorporates physics, math, earth science, and robotics into this unique class, in which he designed the entire curriculum for himself, given the unique subject matter. His students learn how to fly using flight simulators and drones. The course has inspired some students to pursue their pilot’s license for an aviation career. When students mentioned their interest in learning on a real plane, he found someone willing to donate one, and that plane now sits in the school’s parking lot. The students learned how to rivet and put the plane together and are now building computers to run virtual reality simulators on the aircraft.

He also serves as the STEAM Operations Director at the High School, which means he is a resource to any other teacher wishing to incorporate more STEAM elements into their courses. He hosts a “Day of Flight,” where he brings grammar schools from the area to experience the program that he has built and encourage their interest in STEM. Outside of the classroom, he is a NASA CCRI Education Ambassador and a NADA Product Reviewer, a small group of teachers from around the country who meet and work with NASA scientists to distill their data into enriching lessons for students.

Sarah Slack is not only teaching science but is also teaching her students to be scientists. Slack wants her students to learn the associated skillset and critical thinking skills that come with technical knowledge. She received a grant to acquire multiple hydroponics towers installed throughout the school, which she uses to build connections with other subjects. For example, she has worked with an ENL teacher to grow popular herbs used in students’ home countries.

Slack encourages her students to create connections to the larger world of science by taking advantage of research opportunities that she infuses into lessons in the classroom. She has studied wolves across North America to develop a lesson on evolution, traveled to Antarctica to study glaciers and the effects of climate change, and spent a year working on a research team with NASA’s Climate Change Research Initiative.

She is the District 20 STEM coach, helping create district-wide STEAM events. She is also on the Middle School Science Leadership team, is a co-chair of the NYCDOE’s Climate Education Leadership Team, and is also working with the NYCDOE’s Office of Sustainability on a Professional Learning series in which more than 100 teachers learn how to incorporate climate education into their classrooms.

Brian Sweeney oversees the school newspaper, which has over 150 contributors and publishes daily. He created and directed a writing center for students where newspaper editors serve as writing tutors. In the wake of the school’s declining reading performance, Sweeney helped spearhead the school’s reading initiative, which included an all-night Halloween Read-a-thon with Edgar Allan Poe ghost stories and s'mores. Through efforts and events such as these, students in the school have logged over a million minutes of independent reading this school year.

For high school seniors, Sweeney helped create, organize, and pilot the senior symposium. This program challenges students in the spring of their senior year to participate in a research course in which they create a syllabus, choose a text as a focal point for their project, and write a long-term research paper using resources from Queens College for presentation at the college library. Sweeney hopes that this initiative will be implemented for seniors across the boroughs in the future.