Taking on Brooklyn

Today, I began to play with this sentence in my head.  “I’m from NYC.”  “I live in Brooklyn.”  It started to sound right, but on some level, it still doesn’t.  I grew up on Long Island.  My folks still live there.  I have begun to discover a few new things there as an adult.  Yet for years, Long Island, and New York, were not places I wanted to be.

I went to college in St Louis to get far away from home.  To experience something completely different.  As far as geography goes, I may have been happier, and may still one day consider, living on the west coast.  As a child I had opportunities to spend my summers outdoors, and recognized the need to pursue adventure in my life.  It’s the reason I went on an Outward Bound course after college.

You know when you see a car or van with a bike or kayak strapped to the roof.  Since I was little, I’d say, “I want to be that person when I’m older.”  Perhaps if I were living in Portland, Oregon, I would be.  Yet I’ve started to settle in NYC, the urban jungle.  I bought the kayak, it’s just sitting on my wall.  Three hours is a long drive at times, and finding other white water kayakers in Brooklyn is a lot more difficult than you’d expect.

For me, this upcoming year is hopefully about becoming a New Yorker.  This is no longer the “place where I work.”  It’s also the place where I live.  The place where I have found community.  I want to dig into the history, and make the connection to my grandparents who grew up here, my mother and father who both went to the same Tilden HS back in the late ’50s and early ‘60s, my mom who taught at Erasmus and Far Rockaway HS, my aunt who teaches art at the same school my grandmother taught literacy, PS 91 in Flatbush.

I have slowly been building a history here.  I have found love and experienced loss.  I found out my grandfather was dying my first year of teaching.  I began my 2^nd year of teaching with fresh wounds from a relationship upended.  My last year of teaching I began like a rookie, ripped out of my comfortable PS 27, diverse, where I would spend my lunch time practicing Spanish with the librarian and para professionals and talk civil rights history with the African-American math coach, and thrust into a nearly all white, all female environment.

I have slowly found new communities.  Red Hook, the poor part, has begun to feel like a second home.  Park Slope, whose streets I’ve walked for four years now, is slowly opening itself to me.  I have begun to educate myself more on Judaism, the culture which has conflicted me for a lifetime.  This has opened me up to the upper west side community, as well as the Jewish communities of Brooklyn.

As I get to work trying to change communities, I realize that change comes from understanding and becoming a part of community.  What I gained from the NYC Teaching Fellows that few others may have gained, was a deep connection to a school in a particular neighborhood.  It just so happens that this neighborhood is a mere 3 miles from where I live.  It just happens to connect by a foot bridge to another community, Cobble Hill, which I may in time develop connections to.

I used to think of my life here in terms of work.  I thought about the prospects of 25 years of teaching.  Now, I think about what it would mean to live in Brooklyn for 25 years.  I see that word and think of my parents.  I think about the opportunity that will come with patience.  I do live in Brooklyn.  I do live in NYC.

Today, I began to play with this sentence in my head.  “I’m from NYC.”  “I live in Brooklyn.”  It started to sound right, but on some level, it still doesn’t.  I grew up on Long Island.  My folks still live there.  I have begun to discover a few new things there as an adult.  Yet for years, Long Island, and New York, were not places I wanted to be.

I went to college in St Louis to get far away from home.  To experience something completely different.  As far as geography goes, I may have been happier, and may still one day consider, living on the west coast.  As a child I had opportunities to spend my summers outdoors, and recognized the need to pursue adventure in my life.  It’s the reason I went on an Outward Bound course after college.

You know when you see a car or van with a bike or kayak strapped to the roof.  Since I was little, I’d say, “I want to be that person when I’m older.”  Perhaps if I were living in Portland, Oregon, I would be.  Yet I’ve started to settle in NYC, the urban jungle.  I bought the kayak, it’s just sitting on my wall.  Three hours is a long drive at times, and finding other white water kayakers in Brooklyn is a lot more difficult than you’d expect.

For me, this upcoming year is hopefully about becoming a New Yorker.  This is no longer the “place where I work.”  It’s also the place where I live.  The place where I have found community.  I want to dig into the history, and make the connection to my grandparents who grew up here, my mother and father who both went to the same Tilden HS back in the ‘60s, my mom who taught at Erasmus and Far Rockaway HS, my aunt who teaches art at the same school my grandmother taught literacy, PS 91 in Flatbush.

I have slowly been building a history here.  I have found love and experienced loss.  I found out my grandfather was dying my first year of teaching.  I began my 2^nd year of teaching with fresh wounds from a relationships upended.  My last year of teaching I began like a rookie, ripped out of my comfortable PS 27, diverse, where I would spend my lunch time practicing Spanish with the librarian and para professionals and talk civil rights history with the African-American math coach, and thrust into a nearly all white, all female environment.

I have slowly found new communities.  Red Hook, the poor part, has begun to feel like a second home.  Park Slope, whose streets I’ve walked for four years now, is slowly opening itself to me.  I have begun to educate myself more on Judaism, the culture which has conflicted me for a lifetime.  This has opened me up to the upper west side community, as well as the Jewish communities of Brooklyn.

As I get to work trying to change communities, I realize that change comes from understanding and becoming a part of community.  What I gained from the NYC Teaching Fellows that few others may have gained, was a deep connection to a school in a particular neighborhood.  It just so happens that this neighborhood is a mere 3 miles from where I live.  It just happens to connect by a foot bridge to another community, Cobble Hill, which I may in time develop connections to.

I used to think of my life here in terms of work.  I thought about the prospects of 25 years of teaching.  Now, I think about what it would mean to live in Brooklyn for 25 years.  I see that word and think of my parents.  I think about the opportunity that will come with patience.  I do live in Brooklyn.  I do live in NYC.

A New Education Project by Daniel Lilienthal

Dear Family and Friends,

As many of you know, I have been working for the past 7 years to improve our education system. I have self-published a book, attended conferences, worked with 100s of kids, been a NYC public school teacher, and in many ways have been an activist trying to find my voice in a large conversation about education reform. Recently, I have been working with a former colleague of mine to address some of the problems in education specific to low-income kids, including creating a free summer program for kids with no access, supporting literacy through instruction and motivation as to its value, and supporting youth with exposure to individuals and opportunities right in their own backyards.

My goal is to help in creating positive change within a low-income community in Brooklyn, known as Red Hook. I worked there as a NYC Teaching Fellow for 3 years, and specifically went there because of its connection with a network of schools known as Expeditionary Learning Schools supported by Outward Bound, an organization which I have been a part of since college. Outward Bound helped to transform my life as it does thousands every year, and Their public schools are being recognized as presenting a new and positive way to do education.

In a controversial decision, my school, PS 27 in Red Hook, was shut down in 2009, as part of a national and city-wide effort to improve our education system. Since that time I have been doing a great deal of research and networking, and have begun exploring various opportunities. While one option I have looked at is developing a non-profit organization, which is no easy task, my primary objectives are still to make positive change in our education system, and now, to support a neighborhood with about 10,000 residents living in the public houses of Red Hook.

I invite you to read the description of the organization, BrotherMelo, which I have been a part of now since February.

BrotherMelo is a community based organization that is in the process of developing a board of directors and developing as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Our mission is to support youth and families through programs, partnerships, and conversations that support positive change and educational opportunity. The organization was formed in 2008 after the tragic killing of, Marquise “Brother” Sanders, a 13-year old boy living in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. His uncle, Karl Sanders, was born in Red Hook public housing and is currently a public school teacher in Red Hook, where he has mentored hundreds of kids, and serves as a positive change agent within the community. His work is to ensure youth have positive role models and programs in their lives, and to prevent other needless acts of violence in our communities. The organization, which began as a basketball and education after-school program and summer basketball tournament, was created with the assistance of NBA superstar Carmelo Anthony, who was also born in the Red Hook public houses.

BrotherMelo works on a grassroots level to organize various stakeholders in the Red Hook community of Brooklyn, a low-income neighborhood of about 10,000 residents, to create programs, partnerships, and hold conversations to create positive change in the neighborhood. While crime has lowered since the ’80s and various organizations are working on the ground to support youth and families, Red Hook still suffers from a large number of students not finishing high school, a history of low parental involvement with their public schools, and a culture of drugs, teen pregnancy, and low rates of literacy.

The objectives of BrotherMelo include lowering the community drop-out rate and sending more youth to college or into employment, engaging parents to be more involved in their child’s education, improving the community literacy rate, as well as creating a more positive climate within the public housing community through the building of social capital.

Our immediate needs include board development, fund raising, and adding partners to join our conversation and building our network. Our current network within the community includes three schools in Red Hook, the Red Hook Community Justice Center, the Red Hook Initiative, as well as numerous community leaders, families, and youth. We are currently working to develop partnerships outside with NYU’s Reynolds Program for Social Entrepreneurship.

Our programming for this year includes the following:
1) Continue an after school program started in ’09-’10 school year with approximately 30 teens.
2) Facilitating weekly conversations for teachers within the community, started in ’09-’10 school year.
3) Organizing a community-wide conference for resource sharing and networking.
4) Build upon a summer youth leadership program started this past summer with 10 teens.
5) A city-wide basketball tournament, entering its 3rd summer, serving over 200 youth from around NYC.
6) Community-wide philanthropy events for Thanksgiving and winter holidays.

As the education director of BrotherMelo and co-chair of development, I look forward to the opportunity to speak more about our work, our vision, and to find ways to create new partnerships in order to fulfill our mission. Please contact me for more information.

Daniel Lilienthal
dan_lilienthal@yahoo.com
516-355-1137

An unusual, usual day

Time to get up, get up, get up…I repeated in my head.  Raisin bran, banana, Daily News, shower, dressed.  I’m taking the bike today.  Hooray!  Taking the bike today.

Down 7th Ave., Park Slope to Carroll Gardens.  Bike lane.  Nice!  Cruising over the bridge, into Red Hook, past PS 27.  Ahh…my old school.  Down past Van Brunt Street to Conover.

Good Sherpherd presents, South Brooklyn Community High School.  A transitional school for kids short on credits, or on the verge of dropping out.  That’s where I met Millie, director of the school.

It’s great to talk with kindred spirits.  Fully understanding why kids fail.  Their program grew from being run in the basement of the PAL Miccio, a local community center, into an amazing facility, a full-blown school.

Stake holders.  It’s a word I hear a lot.  “You need to pull together all the stake holders,” she tells me.  Housing authority.  Community members.  Social workers, teachers.  We talk a bit about Outward Bound.  One of my course mates from my 45-day North Carolina course worked as a student advocate at her school.  “Outward Bound is wonderful,” Millie says.  She tells me how they use OB for staff development.  I tell her how it changed my life.

I bike over to the Red Hook Initiative.  I speak with Lisa, who tells me about her community organizing campaign regarding a new cement plant in Red Hook.  “The pollution is right in our back yard.  Dust floating into our parks.  This doesn’t belong here,” she tells me.  We talk about housing, and she shows me a flier about neighborhoods where public housing is converted into private.  “We can’t afford to live here,” she tells me.  “I’ll chain myself here before I let them move me from my home.”

Everyday in Red Hook is eye-opening.

Back in Park Slope, with my friend Eitan.  Entering his 3rd year of medical school, I’m fascinated by his life.  “I spent the night on call at the VA hospital,” he tells me.  He’s doing his rotations now.  Surgery.  “I haven’t done pediatrics yet,” he says, “Maybe I’ll love that.”  I begin to wonder what I would do if I was in medical school.

We walk and talk.  Nothing like good conversation.

Later, I quickly catch up with Dave, a social work friend of mine, followed by a phone conversation with Aaron, one of my best college friends.  “You ever think about going into politics?” he asks me.  I think for a while.  “Maybe,” I say, and realize that it wouldn’t be as a candidate, but more the Deborah Meier style of building networks of progressive educators and working locally with schools and communities.  This is political, I think to myself, and realize how, for now, I can be politically active on a local level without touching politics in the way most people think of the word.

Finally, a conversation with some partners of mine, Chris Johnson and George Martinez.  Classy guys.  Activists and organizers.  We talked about Red Hook, and education, and networking.  I’m still trying to figure out my vision, and it’s becoming more clear, but still needs to be worked out.  “These conversations are a part of it,” I explain.  Education is an every second kind of thing.  I’m not studying how to develop a non-profit, should that be the direction I want to go.  I’m living it.  I certainly hope for this project, this vision of mine, to take off.  But like my book, this experience has taught me so much.

Back home I cook a quick dinner.  Turkey burgers, salad with avocado, iced water.  I throw on a little NPR.  “Yeah…I’m becoming one of those people,” I realize.  But in just the last week or so I’ve begun to feel that addiction to intelligent conversation.  I put on 93.9FM and it’s like my questions are being answered, things explained.

I begin to wind down.  The day new and exciting.  Nothing usual about it, but in many ways, just a usual day.

8/18/10

When I was in South Africa, I kept up a blog for quite a while.  I also kept a journal.  During a 21-day backpacking and canoeing course that I co-led with 10 at-risk boys, I kept a daily journal.  Upon returning to our base camp, I sat and typed up over 50-pages single spaced on Microsoft Word, and uploaded it onto my blog.

I was pretty loose and free with that blog.   I’m working to regain that voice here.  To talk more about daily events in my life, thoughts, experiences, musings.

Let me start once again with the craziness that has been my life since February.  I started volunteering with a 2-day a week after school program in Brooklyn, where I got to befriend Carmelo Anthony’s brother, Justice.  I got to attend an event at Madison Square Garden called the Jordan Brand Classic, where the top HS players in America announce where they are going to college on ESPN, and was sitting courtside next to Maeshon Weatherspoon, mother of Josh Selby, the #1 HS player in America, who announced he’s going to Kansas.  I got to meet Idan Ravin, Carmelo’s personal trainer, and a former Orthodox Jew.

I attended an education speaker series at Pace University, where Bill Ayers spoke.  His name popped up during the Obama campaign, as they were neighbors, had a few brief encounters, and Obama endorsed his book on education.  In the ’60s, Bill was part of a radical political group called the Weathermen that tried to blow up government buildings in protest of the Vietnam War.  After his talk, I found my way into a small group with Bill that went out for dinner and drinks.  I actually smoked hookah (flavored tobacco), with Bill, while talking about politics and education. (yes…I know I’ll never be able to run for president now, although it apparently didn’t bring down Barack).

I had dinner a few months ago with George Martinez, a candidate for US Congress.  I met Torry Maldonado, a successful author who wrote a book Secret Saturdays that wonderfully captures life in the projects, as he grew up in the projects of Red Hook.  He came to speak with the summer camp I put together, and teaches locally in Park Slope.

For several weeks, I attended a weekly meeting put together by TED.com.  We met at Gray’s Advertising on 23rd street in Manhattan, and each week watched a video, followed by a group discussion.  The website is full of inspiring videos and “ideas worth spreading,” as is their tagline.  There I met more amazing people, JD who runs basketball camps and programs in India and many other countries around the world, Rhagava, who was a TED.com presenter and has taught art to 1,000s of kids around the world.

Most recently, I’ve been having phone conversations with Deb Meier, founder of the small schools movement and considered one of the leading speakers and writers on progressive education today.  This spring there was a symposium named after her in NYC, bringing together 100s of schools and educators.

When I left my job in February, I thought about what it would be like to spend 1 year “traveling,” in NYC.  Like the author of Eat, Pray, Love, I was depressed and unhappy with life, and yet opted not to travel abroad.  I’m not sure what chapter I’m in, but beyond all the volunteering, I have experienced what feels like the world without leaving my own city.

Time feels like it’s running short for me.  I need a job, and yet there is so much I want to learn and do.  Yesterday, I spoke with my good friend Doug, an architect turned entrepreneur.  He makes and sells dips (digdips.com) in Chicago.  He works a lot.  He is misunderstood.  Any money he makes goes back into his business.  And yet he told me last night, “I have never been happier!”

I am feeling quite happy, but know I need to do more to turn my passion into a career.  I slipped up my last time.  When I was in St Louis, I had a couple of deans, professors, and about 30 students who I was in contact with who I wanted to bring together for a conference on student engagement.  I got inpatient, and moved on to something else before I made that happen.

I once again think a conference is the starting point.  It is my hope to bring together a group of people interested in change.  Whether it’s improving teaching, supporting at-risk kids, helping fatherless kids, making curriculum more relevant, supporting literacy in low-income communities, finding engaging texts for kids to read, helping people find their voice through writing.  Or my favorite and yet hardest to talk about, dealing with anxiety and depression.  There are things that ought to be talked about, and since I was a kid I have felt the frustration of reading about problems, and wanting to be a part of the solution.

When I first left teaching, I started to google, “time off from work.”  I soon stumbled upon a TED Video that like many other videos and experiences since then, would shape me in new ways.  This video suggested that we are in school our first 25 years of life, work the next 40, and have about 35 to retire.  “What if,” the author suggested, “we took off 5 years of retirement, and sprinkled them into our working lives every 7 years.”

I began to think of this year as a sabbatical.  Sure, I hadn’t worked yet for 7 years, but it had been 7 years since college.  A friend of mine on Facebook commented, “It’s like a shmita,” the Jewish word for sabbatical, to leave the land to rest.  Although not working, I feel as though I have not rested much, and before starting this blog, have not had much time to feel creative.  Writing has been one of the greatest gifts in my life, and I feel fortunate to have had the time to rediscover it.

My senior year at Wash U I signed up for a creative non-fiction writing class.  My first piece received no positive feedback from the professor besides the red pen.  Writing has been a lonely road since then, something that I share publicly, yet still somewhat privately.  Despite my negative school experiences, I still yearn for a genuine learning community.  I think about a program that I might get the proper support, mentoring, and guidance.

Argh…

The Days After College: The Sequel to College Daze

After College: The Sequel to College Daze

For those who don’t know, I have spent nearly eight years now writing about how I struggled within the traditional education system.  As a student at Washington University in St Louis, considered an elite university, I found that the way that I learned did not match the way many of my classes were taught.  Since that time I have self-published a book, written numerous articles, attended conferences, read profusely, worked with hundreds of kids, and spent 4 years inside the New York City public school system.  I have essentially dedicated my life to solving my own conflicts with learning and the school system, and in that time have become an outspoken advocate for strengthening and supporting teachers, students, schools, and communities.

My first 3 years were spent teaching at PS 27, a struggling though progressive oriented school located in the public houses of Red Hook, Brooklyn.  I spent my first year supporting struggling readers, and the next two teaching 5^th grade, while attending night school at Brooklyn College as part of the NYC Teaching Fellows Program.  As an untrained teacher, I was sent to one of our cities poorest communities, given some of the most challenging students, and asked to teach them with the least amount of support.

In many ways it was no surprise that New York City decided to close down my school in 2009.  Test scores were low, student behavior was wild, and there was a culture of frustration within our staff. Our principal, who was removed under accusations of tampering with test scores, consistently received low marks on teacher surveys.   Still, I was one of the few who spoke out, who recognized the strength in our staff, the positive vision and structure that our principal did put in place, and who advocated for a fight to keep the school open, with the expectation that things would have to change.  Nearly 17 schools have fought and won that same fight over the last school year.  Still, many teachers argued that the school ought to be closed, that the trust with the principal was too low to be dealt with.   Staff morale was so low, our unity divided, and this allowed us as a staff to become victims ourselves in the process.  Our voices muted, our best values and ideas silenced, we rolled over and turned the keys back to the city.

A mere 20 minute walk from PS 27, I would find my next school, PS 29 in Cobble Hill.  Separated by a foot bridge that crosses the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the bridge literally separates the two communities, and represents an artificial dividing line between race and class as well.  The industrial steel and auto shops with their barbed wire fences and towering red brick houses with New York City Housing Authority stamped on them, change into million dollar brownstones, cafes with names like Le Petite Café, and organic wine replace malt liquor.

Working in PS 29 was an experience in culture shock.  The culture of kids reading was far different than that in Red Hook, as was the obvious disparities in parent involvement.    For various reasons, I hit a personal wall around February, and applied for a temporary leave of absence.  At the time I had no idea where life would head from there.

As someone with a natural eye for critique in the world of education, I was able to recognize the fact that schools and communities are unique, not always set-up to be compared.  Within my classroom in Cobble Hill was a parent who opted to look for alternative options for her child, when it appeared the methods or relationships within the school were causing her child to withdraw emotionally from learning.  This event helped me solidify my understanding of the depth and breadth of our struggles with education.  They cross lines of race and class, and they cross between that bridge which divides two neighboring communities in Brooklyn.

So I went on leave from teaching in Cobble Hill, an affluent neighborhood in Brooklyn.  As a community member in Cobble Hill once commented to me, “We don’t often go on the other side of the bridge,” referring to the walk to Red Hook…

A video of me thinking aloud…

Video Blog, Take One

The Days After College, The Sequel To College Daze

The Community That Learns Together

What is community?  I’ve experienced many of them throughout my life.  Rockville Centre, Long Island.  Saint Louis, Missouri.  London and Cape Town.  Park Slope, Upper West.  My family.  My wrestling team.  My summer camp.

Online.  There was a time when I found community online, in this world of blogging.  In the world of writing I often find kindred spirits.  It is in blogging, where I have discovered and been discovered.  An Outward Bound instructor, a home schooling mom, an aspiring writer working in a Barnes & Nobles in Manhattan.

Finding community is the washing away of isolation, and the connection of similar interests and values.  I attended an event at NYU’s Reynolds Program for Social Entrepreneurship a few months back, and found, for a moment, the community which I still hunger for.  To a group of graduate students from various schools, Wagner School of Policy, Steinhardt  School of Culture and Education, School of Law, I pulled out a napkin and began drawing a visual representation of my vision for how we can transform the culture of a low-income community in Brooklyn.  How we might transform public housing into extensions of public schools, and the schools an extension of the housing.  Suddenly, I had found a community not of doubters, but of idealists.  “Yes, it’s possible,” they said.  “Why can’t we?” they asked.  “How can I help?” they wondered.

The invisibility of community is in its social networks.  Think Facebook, but in real life.  Yesterday I had a conversation with a graduate from Columbia’s Teachers College, her degree in international education.  Through a friend from college, I was now connected to a new community of ideas.  “Yes, teachers need to continually be learning and stimulated.” “Yes, other countries view teaching on par with being a doctor or lawyer.” “Yes, other country’s school systems encourage a gap year after college.”

That conversation, which took place in Union Square, was followed by another later in the evening with my good friend Roger.   At age 67 and a fellow free-thinker, our conversation carried as we walked through the Upper West Side.  “It’s true, kids dropping out may actually be good for some kids,” “I’ve experienced it, we can have programs where kids of different race and class discover their similarities,” “There’s a movement, and kids can be part of the curriculum making process.”

I began to realize that in NYC, as in other places, community is both hidden, and alive at the surface.  While I am frequently lonely in Park Slope, a neighborhood known for community but geared towards families with baby-strollers, I am re-energized by those connections I have built over the years, and those unexpected learning experiences.

Today, while exploring in Red Hook, I happened upon the director of the Brooklyn Community High School, a transition high school for students with truancy problems.  As I continue to discover and explore, this conversation felt like a buried treasure.  We talked about the drop-out crisis, and the issues which bring students to her school.  “Yes, it’s difficult for families to imagine college.  Yes, there’s kids caught up in gangs.  Yes, our community has wonderful resources, but kids and families still fall through.”

This last conversation left me humbled.  A reminder that learning is a complicated thing, with knowledge and experiences sometimes hidden, sometimes beyond reach.  A reminder of the lives failed.

I contemplate turning this year into a social experiment, where I document my learning, and bring awareness to the process I am embarking on.  I think about how I can best connect with the community around me, online, family, NYC, friends.  I contemplate how I might learn macro-economic theory, how to better design the interior of my apartment, how to connect with a heritage that often doesn’t speak to me.  I wonder about working with “green jobs”, constructing a building, chemical engineering.

I realize no school can answer all my questions, and teach me all I want to know.  The teachers are hidden about.  I think about schools.  I think about how even there, teachers are hidden.  I talk to Ray, a school custodian in Red Hook, and the questions he can answer.  “Sure, I can tell you all about Vietnam.  Of course, I can explain how the boiler system works.  Definitely, I know the history of Brooklyn.”

Laurel Road. Kingsbury Ave. 7th Ave. My various streets, from my various communities.  The web of learning grows, the systems move forward and back.  From, “One two three, eyes on me,” to PdD, we are a community that learns together.