Inspiring aspiring teachers at East High

Posted by [email protected] | Sep 25, 2015 | East/Warner, Education | 0 |

Rochester Education Foundation Partnership Awards Dinner, October 9th, 2013. Laura Delehanty, center.

THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN THE DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE. DUE TO A SERVER CHANGE, SEVERAL OF THE PHOTOS ARE MISSING.

Also see a more recent story on East High School’s Teaching & Learning Institute

If your children want to be teachers, send t hem to East

October 15, 2013

Last week, Laura Delehanty, Lead Teacher at East High School’s Teaching & Learning Institute was presented with the Education Award at the 8th Annual Rochester Education Foundation’s Partnership Awards Dinner. Above, Laura is pictured with a score of recent alumni and current students from her (along with her husband, co-director Daniel Delehanty) nationally recognized early teaching training program. The dinner’s keynote speaker, Roland Williams, gave an impressive talk about his journey from East to Syracuse University, the Super Bowl and professional post-football success.

It was the exuberant TLI kids who stole the show.

Last June 15 students graduated from TLI. This year 16 are on track to complete the program. If the past is indication, the sky is the limit for these motivated and determined young people.

Created in 1995 with a Ford Foundation grant, TLI’s mission is to help the RCSD grow its own teachers. Through this rigorous program taught by East teachers from all disciplines, students learn the nuts and bolts of lesson and unit planning, lesson organization, preparation of materials, delivery of instruction, classroom management and reflection upon classroom performance. In their senior seminar, students complete a paid internship at one of the district’s elementary schools or in a 7th or 8th grade classroom at the high school, as well as prepare portfolios for the culminating exit interview.

Since its inception, TLI has graduated over 200 students. Currently, thirteen TLI graduates are working in the district as counselors, teachers, and administrators. When it comes to building diversity and excellence, this is grassroots education at its best.

Here’s the TLI “Hall of Fame:”

Angelique Aponte Nunez — RCSD teacher
Stephanie Bliss — RCSD school counselor
Dr. Leonard Brock, ED.D – Executive for Special Projects at The Children’s Agenda
Andrella Hurley — RCSD teacher
Chastity Johnson — RCSD teacher
Tiffany Lee – Assistant Principal, RCSD
Catherine Newman — RCSD teacher
Yesenia Ortiz — RCSD teacher
Anthony Plonczynski — runs the Upward Bound Program at the University of Rochester. Currently pursuing his PhD at the U of R.
Leslie Rivera — RCSD teacher
Yaijaira Walker — RCSD teacher
Sara Walter — RCSD teacher

If your children want to be teachers, send them to East

About The Author

[email protected]

Welcome to Talker of the Town! My name is David Kramer. I have a Ph.D in English and teach at Keuka College. I am a former and still active Fellow at the Nazareth College Center for Public History and a Storyteller in Residence at the SmallMatters Institute. Over the years, I have taught at Monroe Community College, the Rochester Institute of Technology and St. John Fisher College. I have published numerous Guest Essays, Letters, Book Reviews and Opinion pieces in The New York Times, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Buffalo News, the Rochester Patriot, the Providence Journal, the Providence Business News, the Brown Alumni Magazine, the New London Day, the Boston Herald, the Messenger Post Newspapers, the Wedge, the Empty Closet, the CITY, Lake Affect Magazine and Brighton Connections. My poetry appears in The Criterion: An International Journal in English and Rundenalia and my academic writing in War, Literature and the Arts and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. Starting in February 2013, I wrote for three Democratic and Chronicle blogs, "Make City Schools Better," "Unite Rochester," and the "Editorial Board." When my tenure at the D & C ended, I wanted to continue conversations first begun there. And start new ones. So we created this new space, Talker of the Town, where all are invited to join. I don’t like to say these posts are “mine.” Very few of them are the sole product of my sometimes overheated imagination. Instead, I call them partnerships and collaborations. Or as they say in education, “peer group work.” Talker of the Town might better be Talkers of the Town. The blog won’t thrive without your leads, text, pictures, ideas, facebook shares, tweets, comments and criticisms.