By Amir Galban
Staff Writer
Few relationships exemplify Saint Rose’s “dear neighbor” ethos in both spirit and practice as the school’s long-standing partnership with Pine Hills Elementary, where education majors are teaching assistants and where some graduates have chosen to stay.
Saint Rose education majors have been able to partake in field observations where they spend consistent time by a teacher’s side during the school day. Because Pine Hills Elementary is within walking distance of the campus, it makes it much easier for students without cars and worried about time management to participate in school activities.
Student teaching is a vital opportunity for current education majors to be immersed in a school’s day-to-day activities while making valuable connections for the present and future.
One of the key things to learn for education majors is to understand how to handle young children while creating an effective and friendly learning environment. Education major Samantha Bonesteel, ’24, is a TA this semester under fourth-grade teacher Michelle Chiappone at Pine Hills Elementary. Chiappone, a 2006 Saint Rose graduate, also teaches as an adjunct at the college, just one example of the ongoing close relationship between the institutions.
Bonesteel said her experience at Saint Rose so far has prepared her with what she needs to operate in a room full of kids. Her classroom experience shows how she engages and communicates with the students while learning from a professional teacher in real time.
Teachers have discussed the Saint Rose and Pine Hills Elementary unique open-door policy that has let the two institutions give student teachers from Saint Rose opportunities to work with school staff and students.
Chiappone expanded on this idea. “We don’t get as many resources as schools like Giffin or North Albany, but we have students from those areas. So, to have Saint Rose as a partnership, they provide a lot of additional help and support for students,” she said. “There’s always been an open-door policy and we’ve benefited both ways. I feel like we benefit because we have adults in the classroom for students who might need extra help, which they can’t always get without another teacher.”
Pine Hills Elementary is a diverse school with kids from over 15 countries, where for many, the dominant language at home is not English. There are approximately 400 students in grades K-6, with the average class size of 18 to 25 students.
The tremendous cultural and linguistic diversity in the school represents the changes in the Pine Hills neighborhood and presents its own unique challenges for teaching. When talking with teachers, they mentioned that one of the challenges of teaching English as a new language (ENL) students is communication with students’ families.
Translations from Google or online translation services aren’t always accurate. It is also a challenge to understand what they know and learned from their home country. Even with these difficulties, some teachers choose to focus on the plus side. “The positives of teaching ENL students is the rich diversity the class has,” said K-5 reading teacher Lotus El-Bahtity. “All students from so many backgrounds and experiences learn together and about one another and the world. Some students are refugees with very little schooling,” she said.
El-Bahtity recounts one success story where a refugee student with very little schooling and who struggled early in her education ended up graduating from Saint Rose with an education degree. Now, that individual “is student teaching with the teacher who failed her in the second grade. It all came full circle, and that is our hope for all of our students from wherever they start,” El-Bahtity said.
Most teachers at Pine Hills are graduates from the college, perhaps reflecting how many Saint Rose graduates have taken the notion of “home” to heart and stayed nearby. Justin Gallo is a current teacher at Pine Hills and graduated from Saint Rose in 2012. He explained that after struggling early on in college, transferring to Saint Rose was a huge part of why he was so successful.
Gallo emphasizes the devotion of community building and professors at Saint Rose. To this day, he has a personal connection with his professors, even after ten years.
Gallo was one of the first cohorts to start the residency program and credits field observations as part of that program in helping him learn how to work in a classroom. “What that allowed me to do is spend time throughout the semester before I student taught in the classrooms that I was going to be student teaching in,” he said. “So I built relationships with the kids, and built relationships with the staff members. I got a true understanding of what the school was like and how it operated so that I was able to really focus on the instructional part for when I became a student teacher.”
Gallo said the ongoing relationship between college and elementary school offers unique opportunities for education majors. “We have a lot of connections with Saint Rose. I’ve taken about eight student teachers from Saint Rose. Just knowing that there’s a school close to Saint Rose that they’re able to be a part of will be a nice transition for them because we have teachers here that are also teaching at Saint Rose.”
Gallo said he has worked with some of his former professors to continue the connections. “I’ve had some of my professors from Saint Rose reach out to me since my time there and they bring their classes into my room where they can do some tutoring with my kids,” he said.
He said that this is a convenient strategy for both students trying to become teachers and the elementary students where both can learn from each other. Gallo credits the solid relationship with college students and their professors for using collaboration methods to provide real-world experience in the workplace.
Chiappone said there are many advantages for Saint Rose educators to become absorbed in the Pine Hills community. She credits Theresa Ward, dean of education at Saint Rose, with helping create plans to bring students from Saint Rose to work with the children.
As Gallo and other Pine Hills teachers who are Saint Rose graduates attest, the programs have positive results for both student educators and the pupils that range from after-school programs to classroom work.
“We are a leadership school, and we give students the opportunities to be leaders and show us what they’re good at. Pine Hills stand out to us as helping create better citizens of the world who are much more dependable and kinder,” Chiappone said. “We are building a whole person, not just on the academic side.”
Chiappone also credited Saint Rose with the job they were doing preparing these students. As teachers, they can pick what students they want to observe, and Saint Rose students are always the most prepared. “I just know that Pine Hills is a great community that embraces others and gives opportunities for those who want to go to teaching. We culture our own. It is a great foundation,” she said.
Chiappone mentioned that there is so much to learn from this school and it’s close to the college for a reason. This relationship promotes the ideology of home for the College of Saint Rose where students will have the resources and strong community behind them to pursue what they want. Most importantly, the long-term connection the college keeps with its students has allowed current education majors to apply their current knowledge to make a positive and lasting impact on the youth close by.
