New Haven Independent

Thus, Luis F. Rosa, New Haven’s new Teacher of the Year, began a model lesson Monday about the triangle “family” for the 7th and 8th grade bilingual math students whom he has been teaching for 15 years at the Fair Haven Middle School. It was the prelude to a warm ceremony in which Rosa and four runner-ups were honored by their peers, students, and members of the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) Board of Education for a shared sense of teaching that goes far beyond imparting knowledge.

After receiving the congratulations of Dave Cicarella (on the left), who was a colleague of Rosa at Fair Haven Middle School, and BOE member Mike Nast, who graduated from the school (!), Rosa said to a reporter regarding the kite, “It’s a great way to teach measurement and especially symmetry. Believe me, when you try flying a kite and if there’s no clear proof of line of symmetry in it, guess what happens!”

Of Rosa’s teaching said Cicarella, who is president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, “I was an instructional coach in math here at Fair Haven Middle School, and more often than not, when I entered Luis’s class, he was my teacher, and I left learning new things.”

The runners-up this year, the 15th of the competition, (pictured, left to right,with Rosa and NHPS Superintendent Reginald Mayo) are: Susan Gudas of Troup Magnet Academy of Science; Dania Champlin, a five year veteran at Sheridan; and, on the far right, Lorna Edwards a 7th and 8th grade English teacher at Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School. (Another runner-up, Cheri Cardinal of King/Robinson was not able to attend.) All received a plaque from Mayo and high grades indeed: “These individuals underscore that in New Haven we have the best teachers in the country!”

In his remarks, Rosa, a quietly engaging man with a twinkling smile, said, “Teaching is a form of service that is very critical to our future, and it is very humbling.” A modest man, who hails originally from Puerto Rico and from a family of teachers and missionaries (several of whom were present for the ceremony), Rosa said he loves what he does. He called it an awesome responsibility to be teaching, potentially, the next Martin Luther King, or Bill Gates, or Rosa Parks. He said that it never happens alone, that his style reflects the work of all his colleagues in the NHPS.

He was cited by Mayo and admiring colleagues not only for his love of children — indeed of all people — but for his believing all kids can learn, being an innovator, and for going far, high, soaringly beyond the call of duty.

Which brings us to the kite in the picture below and at the top, and the several others that festively adorn Rosa’s classroom. To say he runs a bike-building, kite-building, and golfing club for kids, especially those struggling to learn, and that he utilizes these experiences as teaching moments doesn’t do justice to the spirit of learning going on in this classroom. Better to quote a few lines from Rosa’s philosophy of teaching, which he submitted to the Teacher of the Year competition:

“Our 2006-2007 math results for grades six, seven, and eight indicated proficiency improvement goals necessary for word problems and approximating measures. A lesson that helped us address these goals involved an ordinary kite. One of our challenges for our math curriculum was to teach symmetrical relationships. A large kite then unexpectedly made its appearance in our classroom. It sat on our instructional table waiting patiently to be included in our lesson. Inevitably, students sparked with curiosity began to ask questions about its presence. In short order, concepts such as perimeter, surface area, and symmetrical design relationships were being avidly discussed. This ordinary kite suddenly … was guiding the instruction, and students began to understand several abstract concepts aided by a concrete tool. Measurements of vertical and horizontal axes soon followed, and, of course, students designed and built their own kites.”

Kids were learning their lesson in Rosa’s classroom even while all these festivities were going on. Seventh-grader Rodney Calixto, for example, had been measuring angles less than 90 degrees and now learned these were “acute.” Then he found the definition of the isosceles triangles, which he’d been measuring, in the text.

When he recited it to Rosa, the Teacher of the Year queried: You say the definition is that it has two equal sides?

Yes, said Calixto.

“Por lo menos,” replied Rosa, who switches effortlessly into and out of Spanish, when necessary, to make sure, he said, that the kids exiting bilingual class and the still mainly Spanish speakers will get it. “Por lo menos,” it has at least two sides that are equal. Might it have more? Now, therefore, what about this equilateral triangle?”

Oh, and, New Haven Independent readers, do we all know what “scalene” means?

Before the answer is provided, the other fine teachers, the runners-up, were asked what good teaching meant to them. Champlin said it was really knowing and respecting her kids, realizing it’s a lot harder than she thought, but also appreciating the endless unspoken rewards, like the smiles on kids’ faces when they get IT. Susan Gudas said that, after 25 years in the classroom, she has a lot more patience with her Troup kids, but that if you listen, every situation can be a learning experience not only for kids, but for herself. And Lorna Edwards, of Betsy Ross, who taught for 12 years in Jamaica before coming to New Haven, said that when she teaches literature “it’s really important to connect the text to real life.” When they read a short story about homelessness, she said, the class went out and interviewed some homeless people. They found people, such as a woman had almost finished college, who broke the stereotype. “And we always pose the question,” Edwards said, “what can we do to help.” She smiled, and placed her hand on her heart.

Teaching as service. It was precisely what Luis Rosa, Jr., said, moved him when he entered the school every day. “There’s a plaque on our school,” he said. “It reads: Enter to learn, go forth to serve.”

Rosa’s application is being submitted to the competition for Connecticut state teacher of the year, which was won by New Haven’s Dr. Burt Saxon in 2005.

Oh, and scalene, fellow students, refers to a triangle where no sides are of equal length. End of lesson. Or is it the beginning?