"Building Bridges Program" trains qualified people free of charge to

Long Island Business News, Jan 19, 2007 by Ambrose Clancy

Marilene Duarte-Smith, a woman well acquainted with changes, needed another one.

After working for Time Inc. for 25 years, the Westbury resident took a buyout package in 2001 and charted a new career course. She went to Hofstra University and became a certified Web designer, then went on to Nassau Community College for a paralegal degree.

Then she hit a snag. It was difficult finding work, and when she did, the work was unfulfilling. The wife and mother of two suddenly thought, she recalled with a laugh, "Oh, my God. I've got to do something else."

"I was desperate," she said.

In her 40s, with no guaranteed job, worried about helping support her family as well as searching for work that she could be passionate about, Duarte-Smith remembered some advice her mother had always given her, advice she had ignored.

"She told me to be a teacher, but I always thought that was a 'girly' job, which of course it's not at all," she said. "Then I thought that all through my life I've been teaching."

At Time, she had been in on the ground floor of the computer revolution and one of her many jobs was the go-to tech person, teaching the editorial staff of Sports Illustrated how to navigate through technological shoals. She was a volunteer teacher at Westbury's Holy Child School where her daughter, Mary Elizabeth, attended, teaching Photoshop and other computer programs to students.

Not knowing how to proceed, she drove on a whim to Adelphi University in August and found a sympathetic ear. She mentioned her degrees, her life experience and the fact that she speaks Spanish and Portuguese (her mother is Brazilian and her father is Portuguese). She then learned about the "Building Bridges Program," which takes qualified people and trains them free of charge to be teachers of math, science or English as a Second Language. The newly minted teachers commit to working at least four years in New York City schools.

Duarte-Smith is now training at P.S. 19, an elementary school in Corona, Queens, to teach fluency in English to kindergartners.

"It's a dream come true," she said. "I'm over 40 and I'll have a new career - a guaranteed job doing something I love."

Learning mathematics and science is difficult enough for most children - it can be impossible without trained teachers, said Rafael A. Negron, who with Eva Roca coordinates the Building Bridges Program for Adelphi. New York City and many other municipalities find it difficult to attract trained math and science teachers because students of those disciplines enter the more lucrative private sector - especially in the booming health care industry - rather than remaining in academia, Negron said.

The shortage of math, science and language teachers "is an epidemic across the country," he added.

When the New York City Department of Education released a Request for Proposals 18 months ago to recruit and train teachers, Adelphi applied and won the grant. There are currently 28 students taking 40 credits on NYCDE fellowships at Adelphi's Manhattan Center. Adelphi educates the student-teachers and then certifies them; after course training, each spends time observing in city classrooms.

As important as science and math teachers are teachers of English as a second language, because of the new wave of immigrants flooding to New York from around the world. In Queens alone, 40 percent of the 2.2 million residents are foreign-born and the school system has identified more than 100 languages and dialects.

Building Bridges has a capacity to train up to 75 students for each one-year program.

Donald Harnick, 58, of Long Beach, teaches physical education to fifth graders at P.S. 261 in Brooklyn. He originally worked in a family-run retail and wholesale candy distributorship, but when business soured he became a teacher. Like Duarte-Smith, he said he always wanted to teach.

"When one door closed, another one opened and now with Building Bridges another door is opening for me," Harnick said.

Soon he'll become certified as a teacher of English as a Second Language. Most of the students speak Spanish as their first language, but "there's a little bit of everything, including Bengali" among his students, Harnick said.

He originally wanted to train as a math teacher, but was persuaded to take the other course. Somewhere down the road he might eventually teach math, he said.

Duarte-Smith said the kindergartners she works with as an observer "speak many different languages," but her knowledge of Spanish helps many of them. She's found herself, she said.

"Anyone who wants to learn," Duarte-Smith added, "I want to teach them something."