Farewell, Dr. Joseph -- New Rochelle Says Goodbye to a
Principal Who Made a Difference in Many Lives
By Robert Cox
on Mon, 04/30/2012 - 10:29 Board of Education Education
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Dr. Yigal Joseph will retire this June after 12 years as
Principal of New Rochelle's Columbus Elementary School. He will be missed. Dr.
Joseph's strong leadership, marked by a boundless enthusiasm for improvement
and genuine caring will be missed the most.
"He is, hands-down, the finest principal that I have
ever had the privilege of working with," said one senior-level
administrator who worked with Joseph for years.
"I am going to miss his inspiration" said Luz
Maldonado, the outgoing PTA President at Columbus School. "I think he
understands the spirit of Columbus in our lives."
"I will miss his compassion for the kids, his
intelligence and all his good heartedness," said Sabrina Watkins, a third
grade teacher at Columbus who has worked there for 11 of Joseph's 12 years at
the school. She praised Joseph for being innovative, current and
forward-thinking in his educational approach.
"I found a friend," said Mayra Aguilar, the
incoming PTA President. "He is not a principal, he is a friend. He is a
power of example for everybody. If you needed anything you had him. He was
always, always, always there for you and and for all the parents at Columbus.
He is everything. We are going to miss him too much.
Long-time board member David Lacher, who was on the board
when Dr. Joseph was hired, expressed his admiration.
"We recognized immediately in Dr. Joseph a profound
intellect combined with a passion for his work which encompassed all whose
lives he touched", said Lacher.
That intellect makes Joseph unique. When Talk of the Sound
recently sat down with Dr. Joseph to discuss his tenure at Columbus Elementary
school he explained his educational philosophy by seamlessly weaving together
strands of thought from influences that include Albert Camus, Steve Jobs,
Reinhold Niebuhr, Bob Marley, Buddha, Harold of Purple Crayon fame and many more.
Dr. Yigal Joseph is a man in motion with a mind perpetually
stuck in the "on" position.
When then-Superintendent Linda Kelly asked him to take over
Columbus in 1999 the school was struggling. The student population included a
disproportionately large percentage of high needs children -- students with a
large number of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (the
bureaucratic way of saying "poor") and a large number of students who
hear only Spanish spoken at home and can go their entire week without speaking
English except at school.
The number of high needs children only continued to increase
over the last dozen years yet, against the grain of conventional wisdom,
students at Columbus -- a science magnet school -- have thrived. The school consistently
outperforms the rest of the district in state Math exams.
Despite the strong test performance, Dr. Joseph takes issue
with the tests themselves.
"These are dangerous times for education," he
said. "I agree with accountability but I do not agree with the
methodology."
At the same time, Joseph is a realist. He knows there is
demand for greater accountability both for students and teachers.
"I tell my teachers, you have to get scores up so you
can do other things."
That mix of healthy skepticism for easy solutions, an
unbounded optimism and a practical realism is quintessential Joseph.
Many educators fear accountability because they do not want
to be accountable. Joseph recognizes this.
"Not everyone can accept accountability. Some teachers
will look for someone to blame."
Adding to a system that includes ELA and Math tests from 3rd
to 8th grade, the New York State Report Card and AYP ratings (Adequate Yearly
Progress), New York State is incorporating the new Annual Professional
Performance Review or "APPR" which measures teacher performance
based, in part, on standardized state tests.
Joseph objects to state's new APPR because it undermines his
belief that for a school community to succeed there must be a shared vision
among the teachers.
"The new APPR only serves to pit teacher against
teacher."
He believes that investing the school with a shared vision
of success is at the root of the success of the faculty and staff at Columbus
have had in working with the largest high needs population in the district.
"Schools can organize for success", said Joseph.
"You start with high expectations and provide the resources and
support".
Columbus Elementary School is noted for creating a welcoming
environment for students and parents.
Every member of the staff from the pedagogic staff to
janitors, cleaners, hall monitors, lunchroom monitors and security staff are
part of that shared vision. Cleanliness and order pervade the building which is
consistently among the best maintained in the district.
It has not always been easy to instill the idea in teachers
to have high expectations. Joseph points to a 33% turnover rate in new teaching
staff at Columbus under his watch. Yet after the initial disruptive effect of
Joseph's approach there is also stability. Only 3% of the teachers have been at
the school for less than three years suggesting that a weeding out process that
began more than 10 years ago is largely complete.
Dr. Joseph expresses the challenge as overcoming the
"Tyranny of Good Enough". He rails against the idea that there is an
acceptable level of mediocrity that makes "good enough" acceptable
for "these kids".
"We are capable of excellence", said Joseph.
He sees no room for complacency and is comfortable with
confrontation. He notes that to make a pearl requires a grain of sand inside an
oyster, implicitly acknowledging his role as a disruptive force.
Yigal Jopseh's firmly held beliefs on education and
administration have been shaped over a 40 year career than began in upstate New
York. He began teaching English in 1970 at East High School in Buffalo, NY. As
a young, wide-eyed optimist he said he believed like many of his generation
that he could change minds and, in so doing, change the world, quoting Bob
Marley to make this point.
"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but
ourselves can free our minds."
"Teaching was more like a calling", said Joseph.
"I was interested in social justice".
He spent several years working at the Little Red School
House in Greenwich Village, New York City's first progressive school. Founded
as a public-private education experiment in 1921 to apply the educational theories
of John Dewey in am ethnically diverse public school, the Little Red School
House became a private school in 1932 largely due to opposition from within the
public school system to the progressive ideas on education. While there he went
to graduate school and became a school psychologist.
His career as a school psychologist eventually took him to
the Chancellor's Office of School Improvement to review schools and supervise
intern training where he remained until he came to New Rochelle in 1999.
Joseph took away from these experiences a strong commitment
to problem-based learning which emphasizes independent-thought consisting of
critical thinking, decision-making and problem solving.
As an example, when students at Columbus were getting
injured playing soccer during recess his initial reaction was to prohibit
students from playing soccer at recess.
"We have over 250 4th and 5th graders on the ball field
and playground during recess; and we have more than 280 2nd and 3rd
graders," said Joseph. "Forgetting the space issues, the lunch
monitors are not well versed in organized play and we were unable to get them
to coordinate that."
Last spring, fourth grade students in Mrs. Zaccagnino's
homeroom wrote a letter to Dr. Joseph asking him to permit soccer games during
lunchtime recess. He explained his apprehension and discussed the matter with
his direct supervisor, Assistant Superintendent Dr. Jeffrey Korostoff.
Joseph saw the issue as an opportunity as a real life
"problem-based learning opportunity" of direct interest to the
children. Dr. Joseph suggested to the students that they write a letter to
Korostoff and Kelly Johnson, New Rochelle Deputy Commissioner of Parks &
Recreation about the possibility of creating an elementary school
inter-scholastic soccer league as was done with basketball.
"My only caution is that this should not be a
simulation." wrote Joseph at the time. "Problem-based learning is
authentic problem-solving with a legitimate outcome. If we are not hopeful that
this could get off the ground then let's not lead them down a slippery
slope."
Joseph then worked with teachers to turn the approach to
Korostoff and Johnson into an class-wide interactive writing assignment to make
the case for starting a league.
"Their teacher did a wonderful job in shepherding their
thoughts; they made sure to include the girls and the less involved classmates.
I thought their letter was terrific," said Joseph.
The next step was a meeting between the students and Dr.
Korostoff and Deputy Commissioner Johnson. The pair met with the students to do
a needs assessment and to begin to determine the level of interest. The
students were then charged with gathering information that would be required to
consider going forward with the idea and to determine funding costs and budget
development.
The problem of injuries during unsupervised play at recess
was turned into a practical, solvable real-world problem, "How could we
play soccer in a safe way?" which led to more problems to solve such as
"Could we start up a soccer league?" and "What are the costs
that we would need to cover?" Johnson is now working with New Rochelle
Parks and Recreation Commissioner Bill Zimmerman to secure fields with the hope
of starting things off with an inaugural inter-scholastic weekend soccer
tournament.
For Johnson, the experience of being in the classroom for a
real-world example of problem-based learning was rewarding.
"I enjoyed being part of the process," said
Johnson. "I had never seen or witnessed how the students went from concept
to a vision to a commitment to make it happen."
The development of an inter-scholastic soccer league
epitomizes Dr. Joseph's approach and impact on the school. Having made a
decision to ban soccer at recess it would have easy to simply reject the appeal
from students and just as easy to given in to student or parent pressure to let
the students play soccer at lunch time. Instead, the more arduous, complex path
was taken. The issue was turned into a year-long learning opportunity that both
engaged and empowered students, one that will afford additional learning
opportunities down the road -- how to select teams, how to schedule games, what
sort of uniforms to wear, and more.
Dr. Joseph frames much of his thinking on education in terms
of empowering change agents -- teachers, students, parents, staff.
Joseph is in a war against what Albert Camus, another
influence, called the "absurd orthodoxy of habit".
In his best-selling metaphorical novel, The Plague, the
French-Algerian existentialist wrote:
Many continued hoping that the epidemic would soon die out
and they and their families be spared. Thus they felt under no obligation to
make any change in their habits, as yet. Plague was an unwelcome visitant,
bound to take its leave one day as unexpectedly as it had come.
For Joseph, change is about not just make changes in habits
but obliterating them entirely through a process of continual improvement.
There is no such thing as "gradual change".
"It's not enough to have 'practical strategies",
said Joseph. "Change is sudden".
Joseph acknowledges with specific off-the-record examples
the need to have sharp elbows over the years to fend off forces both inside and
outside the building that would seek to undo what he has built at Columbus.
Other battles have been made public.
Dr. Yigal Joseph received the We Are One Award at the Annual
SEPTA Dinner last week (picture)
Dr. Joseph was recently honored by the Special Education PTA
"We Are One" Awards dinner.
One speaker noted, "He was doing RTI before there was
RTI."
RTI or Response to Intervention is a method of academic
intervention used to provide early, systematic assistance to children who are
having difficulty learning through early intervention and frequent progress
measurement. The theory is that students who do not have a biologically-based
learning disability will respond to RTI thus helping the student and reducing
the number of classified students in the district both saving the district
money and concentrating resources on the students who do not respond to RTI.
Shortly after he took the helm at Columbus, Dr. Joseph began
to express his dissatisfaction with the district's centralized approach to
Special Education students which was to refer students with suspected
disabilities to the Committee on Special Education ("CSE"). Joseph
believed that his staff had a better understanding of their students and their
needs and that he had the resources in the school building to address those
needs better than an outside committee. He worked with his own team to develop
a strategy of identifying and responding to struggling learners without a
referral to the CSE. This led to a turf war with the Special Education
department which saw Joseph's approach as an attempt to circumvent their
processes. The approach worked out by Dr. Joseph and his team at Columbus is a
custom-version of the RTI program later adopted by New Rochelle district-wide
hence the recognition that Dr. Joseph was doing RTI before the rest of the
district.
Dr. Yigal Joseph expounds on Dweck's idea of Fluid
Intelligence (picture)
Joseph has taken on his fellow psychologists, as well.
Joseph often cites educational theorist Carol Dweck, a
psychologist at Stanford University. Dweck rejects the notion that intelligence
is innate and that students are either lucky and born smart or unlucky and not.
Joseph embraces her work on the the Effort Effect which rejects the notion of
fixed intelligence, instead holding that intelligence is fluid, a notion not
accepted by many psychologists.
Another battle he has fought has been against the
conclusions in the highly influential Coleman Report (Equality of Educational
Opportunity, 1966) which held that student performance derives from family
background.
The report is often cited as an argument that school funding
has little effect on student achievement. It is often referenced by both sides,
albeit unknowingly in most cases, in the so-called "North-South"
debates over public education in New Rochelle. Critics of the district,
especially district spending, cite the conclusions of the report to argue that
high taxes to support lavish school spending does not translate into good
education. Proponents of the district often blame poor outcomes at certain
schools (e.g., Isaac E. Young Middle School) and among certain sub-groups
(e.g., Black/African-American, Latino) on the failure of parents to get
involved with their children's education.
Dr. Joseph sidesteps the debate by rejecting the entire
premise of Coleman.
He is strongly influenced by the work of Ronald R. Edmonds
who introduced the concept of Effective Schools. Edmonds sought to reframe the
findings of the Coleman Report, arguing that it is school response to family
background not family background alone that determines student performance.
In 1979, while on the faculty at Harvard and working in the
New York City school system, Edmonds wrote:
I want to end this discussion by noting as unequivocally as
I can what seem to me the most tangible and indispensable characteristics of
effective schools: (a) They have strong administrative leadership without which
the disparate elements of good schooling can neither be brought together nor
kept together; (b) Schools that are instructionally effective for poor children
have a climate of expectation in which no children are permitted to fall below
minimum but efficacious levels of achievement; (c) The school's atmosphere is
orderly without being rigid, quiet without being oppressive, and generally
conducive to the instructional business at hand; (d) Effective schools get that
way partly by making it clear that pupil acquisition of basic school skills
takes precedence over all other school activities; (e) When necessary. school
energy and resources can be diverted from other business in furtherance of the
fundamental objectives; and (f) There must be some means by which pupil
progress can be frequently monitored. These means may be as traditional as
classroom testing on the day's lesson or as advanced as criterion referenced
systemwide standardized measures. The point is that some means must exist in
the school by which the principal and the teachers remain constantly aware of
pupil progress in relationship to instructional objectives.
For Joseph, inspiring teachers to have a high expectation of
their students is crucial to a school's success.
"Beliefs are so powerful because they generate real
outcomes", said Joseph, producing a 1998 article from the New York Times
to support his point.
Placebos Prove So Powerful Even Experts Are Surprised; New
Studies Explore the Brain's Triumph Over Reality
...scientists, as they learn that the placebo effect is even
more powerful than anyone had been able to demonstrate, are also beginning to
discover the biological mechanisms that cause it to achieve results that border
on the miraculous. Using new techniques of brain imagery, they are uncovering a
host of biological mechanisms that can turn a thought, belief or desire into an
agent of change in cells, tissues and organs. They are learning that much of
human perception is based not on information flowing into the brain from the
outside world but what the brain, based on previous experience, expects to
happen next.
Dr. Joseph likes to tell the story of how Columbus teachers
responded to his insistence on the power of belief to cause real change by
presenting him with a copy of Harold and the Purple Crayon, a 1955 children's
book by Crockett Johnson. It is not hard to understand why:
Harold, is a curious four-year-old boy who, with his purple
crayon, has the power to create a world of his own simply by drawing it. Harold
wants to go for a walk in the moonlight, but there is no moon, so he draws one.
He has nowhere to walk, so he draws a path. He has many adventures looking for
his room, he draws his own house and bed and starts going to sleep. He does so
only in his dreams though.
Joseph is Harold but a wide-awake Harold, creating a new
reality through belief supported by means turned into action.
The power of the teacher to transform lives through
believing in and supporting students is described in a book that Joseph
regularly distributes to teachers, Thank You Mr. Falker, an autobiographical
account of a struggling learner by Patricia Polacco. In the book, she tells
how, as a young student with dyslexia she struggled to read. At a time when not
much was done to address learning disabilities she describes the feeling of
drowning and in need of rescue. The low self-esteem that came with her
struggles were compounded by a bully who teased her and made her "feel
dumb". Mr. Falker intervened to stop the bullying and through that
experience came to learn of her reading difficulties. He got her a reading
specialist and today she is a published author with many books to her credit.
Polacco writes:
Mr. Falker had reached into the most lonely darkness and
pulled me into bright sunlight and sat me on a shooting star. I shall never
forget him...so this book was written both to honor Mr. Falker, but also to
warn young people that mean words have a terrible power...and that they should
do all that they can to see that teasing stops at their school.
It has not all been a bed of roses for Joseph -- or his
staff.
"Initially there was resistance to teams that were self-directed",
said Joseph. He said many teachers have long been accustomed to top-down,
male-dominated leadership. The reaction of many teachers during his first year
was to worry about who will be blamed if students don't perform when they are
being made responsible within a distributed leadership model.
He tells the story of several changes he made after his
first year, what he calls his "assessment year", during which many
people were coming to him with a great deal of information all at once. He
watched and listened, looking for ways to makes sudden, impactful change.
One of the first things he noticed was that certain core
subjects were being de-emphasized in a school schedule that revolved around the
AMPEL program ( Art, Music, Physical Education, and Library).
"I observed that when time ran out in classrooms,
social studies and science went out the window," said Joseph.
In seeking to identify the reason the school schedule was
anchored around AMPEL, Joseph discovered that the gym teacher was preparing the
schedule. When he asked the gym teacher why she was taking on the added
responsibility of schedule development, she said "I want to give myself
the best schedule". Joseph took the scheduling responsibility away from
the gym teacher and made core subjects the priority.
A second change was to end the practice of punishing kids by
putting them in the hallway.
A third was to adopt a co-teaching model where ESL teachers
were based in the classrooms avoiding the need to pull ELL students out of the
regular classroom during the school day, a major disruption in a school with
such a large number of ELL students. Joseph recognizes that poorly done,
co-teaching can be a dumping ground for failed or lazy teachers or that the
classroom teacher might try to boss around the other teacher creating
resentment. In a successful co-teaching environment, Joseph said, the students
cannot tell which teacher is which as the teachers work side-by-side and learn
from each other.
A fourth was the introduction of problem-based learning. In
a problem-based learning environment, problems must be real not simulated.
"The annual EXPO event is a perfect example of
problem-based learning", said Joseph. "Last year 4th grade students
work with an architect. Teams worked to create, design, and market their ideas
to panel who offer a critique then make a selection. A new design is created
based on the critique of the winning team and that design is actually built
taking a 2-D concept to a 3-D reality."
After these changes were made at Columbus, test scores began
to increase. Yet, while good in theory, any of these changes could easily fail
on their own without strong leadership as many teachers, administrators and
parents noted. The difference have been Yigal Joseph.
Dr. Joseph's mixture of boundless optimism and faith in his
staff and students to overcome obstacles tempered with an understanding of
human nature's tendency to resist even beneficial change makes for what might
be called a realistic idealism. This explains why he describes his role as
change agent in terms of both Reinhold Niebuhr and Buddha.
Niebuhr, a theologian and American foreign policy thinker,
was cited as a key influence on foreign affairs by both John McCain and Barack
Obama in the 2008 presidential race. Obama's acceptance speech of the Nobel
Peace Prize was heavily influence by Niebuhr.
Niebuhr rejected the idealism of many of his contemporaries
before World War II in favor of "realism" in foreign policy. He
became the leading proponent of the "just war" theory. Niebuhr is
also widely credited with an early version what has become widely known as the
Serenity Prayer.
Father, give us courage to change what must be altered,
serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from
the other.
Joseph talks a great deal about the Buddhist concept of
"mindfulness", the need to be aware of our intentions as human
beings.
"We are often not aware at times of our
intentions", said Joseph, who became a Buddhist after growing up in a
Jewish family. "We also need to be aware that every solution generates new
problems." He adds that the best ideas are ones that have the least
collateral damage not none.
He applies these values to bringing about change in the
school where being a leader is about being a change agent not a maintaining
agent.
"I go to people who are likely to be the most resistant
first," said Joseph. "Preparing for change in a school often requires
an iterative process."
In June he will leave a school where he has had a tremendous
impact. Asked why he is leaving after 12 years, Joseph said he has been telling
people he wanted to go out on top like Michael Jordan.
Informed that Jordan did not go out on top but rather hung
around the NBA for several more years after as his skills had declined and
ended up spending the last two years on a losing team, Joseph showed some
concern.
Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time, retired
from basketball after winning three NBA championships from 1992-94, signed with
the Chicago White Sox minor league organization, failed to make it to the major
leagues, un-retired from basketball, returned to the Bulls where he won three
more NBA championships, retired, then un-retired and went on to play two
desultory seasons with the Washington Wizards, a shadow of his former-self,
before retiring for the third and final time in 2003.
It was suggested that he might want to tell people he
wants to go out like Sandy Koufax.
Koufax retired at the end of the 1966 season after 12 years
with the Dodgers. He left the game at the peak of his career at the age of 30
due to arthritis in his left elbow. In his final seasons, he was the National
League MVP (1963), pitched a perfect game (1965) and won the pitcher's triple
crown three times by leading the league in wins, strikeouts, and earned run
average, winning the Cy Young Award each time -- in 1963, 1965, and his last
season in 1966. In 1972, he became the youngest player ever elected to the
Baseball Hall of Fame.
Joseph happily accepted the suggestion and has begun telling
people ever since he wants to go out like Sandy Koufax.
With the Jordan-Koufax dilemma solved, Joseph proudly cited
a recent report on Columbus Elementary School as an example of his going out on
top. The report, Know Your Schools for NY Kids, Best Practices Case Study:
Meeting Critical Needs at the Elementary Level Columbus Elementary School, New
Rochelle City School District, was published last summer.
The report begins:
Columbus is open and welcoming to parents, many of whom
arrive with baby carriages and strollers in tow. Making parents feel
comfortable at Columbus is a long-standing, school-wide goal. A bust of
Christopher Columbus overlooks the school's circular foyer, where parents and
other visitors are greeted by student work posted on walls and projected from a
video monitor by the security desk. Included in the student work are proposed
floors plans drafted by fourth graders for the design of the Expo Exhibition
Hall, a hands-on, integrated learning project.
Columbus Elementary School houses six classes each of
kindergarten through grade five. Class size averages 22 students. A full-day
kindergarten began in the 2009-2010 school year. The building's cleanliness
reflects a quiet energy. Student movement in the halls is orderly and
comfortable. A greenhouse, nature study pond, fully-equipped science lab,
digital multi-media production center, and computer lab support the learning in
this magnet school for science, math and technology, a problem-based learning
school. The students learn English by using it to solve real life problems.
Although Columbus Elementary has served Hispanic students,
mostly from Mexico, for many years, the percentage of the Hispanic population
has risen over the years, increasing the need for all teachers to teach English
as a second language (ESL). Mainstream as well as ESL teachers feel responsible
for developing their student's English language ability. In 1998, 66% of
students were Hispanic compared to the current 82%. Yet students consistently
perform better than the state average and well above most schools with lower
percentages of English Language Learners.
"As the report indicates, we have made Columbus a
shining example for New Rochelle," said a pleased Yigal Joseph looking
back on his 12 years. "The teachers are excellent, we have a rigorous
curriculum, the administration is respected and the building is
well-maintained."
David Lacher of the New Rochelle Board of Education may have
summed it up best when he said:
"Throughout his tenure in New Rochelle, he has embodied
an abiding human sensitivity, respect for his faculty and staff, engagement
with his parents, and the highest regard for every student who passed through
his building. For an educator, a community could not hope or wish for
more."
(picture) Dr. Yigal Joseph stands at the door to his office, an homage
to thinking differently about the world.
