A fascinating piece on Jeff and his teaching career. Where did they get that MORE is left wing? They must not know about Mike Schirtzer.
http://school-stories.org/2014/03/street-law-101/
by
Annum Khan
Posted on 28 March 2014.
Definitions on the white board included:
killing with intent
super reckless
felony murder
Kaufman engages students at Aspirations in the study of criminal law.
A dozen students, half the total enrolled, showed up to the high
school’s only elective class. The 17-year veteran teacher considered it a
good day. Half a class was better than less than half – the usual
attendance rate in his other U.S. and World History classes. It was even
better than the entire school’s average of 43 percent, a record so low
that it is in violation of New York State attendance requirements.
“Do you still call it school when there are no students? That’s the
philosophical question,” Kaufman wondered out loud, as he prepared to
teach his class.
Undaunted, Kaufman walked around his class with confidence as his
students called up the assignment on their desktop computers:
What is the difference between being convicted of grand larceny or attempted grand larceny?
Kaufman knows the difference all too well from his time as a criminal defense attorney and as an NYPD officer in the 83
rd and 73
rd Precincts of East New York, neighborhoods with some of the highest homicide rates in the borough and city.
At one point, Kaufman asked the class what the legal definition of
“jostling” might be. From the back of the class, Nassor Jordan, 18,
muttered an accurate definition. A dark-haired girl sitting across from
him questioned in a snappy tone why he seemed to know so much about
crime.
“He’s got some experience. Give him some credit,” Kaufman said,
without missing a beat. The girl was silent. The lesson continued.
Kaufman has seen it all, from his years in law enforcement, criminal
justice, and then as a high school teacher in Riker’s Island, all of
which taught him a valuable lesson: strong relationships are the key to
success, especially with the youth raised in the midst of poverty and
crime.
“Academics are important but it really takes second place to
relationships,” said Kaufman, with conviction. He has years of
teaching experience, particularly at failing schools where he sees
at-risk youth struggle everyday.
Aspirations Diploma Plus High School, a last chance transfer school for East New York teens.
Kaufman taught in what was once called East Brooklyn Congregation
high school for two years, before it was phased out for chronic failure
and eventually replaced in 2011 by Aspirations. He was the only teacher
to make the switch from one school to the next. The others were
displaced.
Since the beginning, Aspirations has struggled to keep its rates
above the barely adequate mark. Attendance continues to hover around an
abysmal 43 percent. In 2012 zero students graduated after four years; 32
percent graduated after six years. Last year rates improved slightly,
bringing the whole school up from a D to a C on the city’s report cards.
The students come from a high-crime, low-income neighborhood
where slightly more than half its residents live on welfare, and where
11 percent – the highest rate in the city – have been accused of
educational neglect.
It’s no wonder that keeping attendance up is one of the biggest
challenges to teachers like Kaufman, who tries against life’s
distractions to hold their attention. The relationships he has built
with students keep him coming back.
Kaufman has made a career of getting inside kids’ heads, particularly
kids who are stuck in some of the city’s most neglected neighborhoods
and schools. Street Law he knew from experience was the best way to
engage kids in learning about government and global history. The school
has a 23 percent pass rate on the Regents Global History test, the
lowest of any subject. “Criminal law is government to them,” said
Kaufman. He battled to keep all his sections in the curriculum. But the
principal decided to cut his other sixth and seventh period Street Law
classes to make room for three-month test preparation courses.
This sixth period class is the last one offered. Kaufman asked a
student to read the scenario of Rajana, a woman who committed arson.
When she read the name “Rajana,” another student blurted out, “Vagina!”
Kaufman ignored it. He barely registers retorts, jokes, and vulgar
comments. Nothing much seems to rattle him. It’s part of his survival
strategy.
Instead, he deflected the sophomoric retort with another question,
“Can conspiracy happen between two people?” Silence. Random guesses
followed, which he used to direct them to look it up online on
Black’s Law Dictionary.
Jordan waited until the right moment, then volunteered detailed
information about arson law. “You must have been charged with every
crime in the penal law,” Kaufman said to Jordan.
“No, only a little,” Jordan responded matter-of-factly.
In the mid-90′s, Kaufman left life as a criminal defense lawyer to
teach a paralegal program at Franklin K. Lane High School, a now
shuttered Brooklyn public school, because he “saw something at the end
of the tunnel” in the world of teaching adolescents. His time as a cop
and as a lawyer left him unsatisfied. Kaufman wanted to make an
“immediate impact” and yearned for a “sense of salvation” that came with
teaching that he didn’t see on the streets.
When Franklin Lane shut down, Kaufman got a job teaching adolescent
offenders at Rikers Island from 1998 to 2005. There he developed a
course called Criminal law for the Incarcerated Student, an early
version of Street Law. He encouraged students to get involved in
activities such as a student newspaper at Rikers,
Three Main Jump Off, and a citywide high school competition in stock market investment, which his students won.
Kaufman was forced to leave Rikers when he violated rules by
contacting an inmate while Kaufman was outside of class and the jail to
offer him extra help with college credit courses. He was sent to a
reassignment center, more infamously known as New York City’s “Rubber
Room,” where suspended teachers await their employment fate. Kaufman’s
fate took him through Queens Academy, an early model transfer school in
South Jamaica. A few months later Kaufman was moved to a suspension
school in the Bronx, a part of Kips Bay Academy that took in students
who violated a school’s disciplinary code. Finally in 2007, Kaufman was
hired at the East New York high school. “I am now fully invested in
education, so I’m not going to abandon it,” Kaufman said.
Kaufman is currently the union chapter chair at Aspirations as he was
one at Rikers. He served as one of the six high school representatives
on the United Federation of Teachers executive board in 2003 and was a
Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association delegate in the 83
rd
precinct. A member of a left-wing union cause, MORE, Movement of Rank
and File Educators, he rallies for better working conditions for
teachers.
Kaufman tried to implement a law club, debate team and peer mediation
and youth court in the past at Aspirations but all were eliminated due
to lack of interest and funding. While Kaufman believes “the model of
transfer schools is awful,” in that it leaves at-risk youth without much
needed support, he recognizes the students in them need someone who
understands where they come from. “There is a certain way you’ve got to
talk to these kids.”
“At first, I didn’t want this class,” said Onyjie Edwards, 19, of the
Street law class. Edwards is currently on her school leadership team, a
collaboration between school administration, parents and students where
school concerns are heard. Edwards ended up finding the class very
useful because she learned her rights. “I wish we had more classes like
this in what we need to know on a regular basis.” Edwards is a senior
who is one global history Regents exam away from graduating.
“I love this class; you learn about the law. People don’t know the
law,” said student Abraham Aquino, 19, who hopes to enlist the U.S. Navy
after graduation. He liked how the class asked him to think about
challenging concepts such as the relative difference between murder and
rape, or how crime affects the criminals’ families, or other laws
surrounding assault and misdemeanors.
“To me, it’s empowering. I want them to question authority, to
question me, to question their parents,” Kaufman said of the class. He
erased the white board moments before the bell rings for dismissal for
the day.
The last trimester of the year began Monday. This course would be
eliminated to make room for Regents test prep. Kaufman ticked off all
the other initiatives he began and lost.
Street Law was just another. “These kids,” he said, “need special things.”
###
feeling proud
