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Guilderland teacher unites students and community for action and awareness

Climate change comes in many forms. Guilderland teacher Matthew Pinchinat is trying to change the climate from one where people are maligned because of their differences, to one where differences are appreciated.

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Ready for the Rock Walk: Guilderland teachers create campaign of support

Photo by El-Wise Noisette. Thanks to the efforts of two teachers, on April 30 students in Guilderland schools will be participating in Rock Walk to raise awareness and support for two students battling a rare cancer. High school students Gabe Zullo and Jenna Meier are in treatment for Ewing sarcoma. About 200 children and young adults in the entire country are diagnosed each year, according to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and somehow the compass spun twice on Guilderland, an Alb...

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Giving is second nature to Saratoga Springs special education teacher

Marion Gyarmathy honed her caring nature in her day job teaching special education students at Saratoga Springs high school. When there’s a need outside of school, she turns her attention to The Giving Circle of Saratoga Springs. Like many volunteers, Gyarmathy is happy to help keep the wheels of caring turning. Sometimes she works with a crew responding to a call for help by doing cleaning or yard work for a local person in need; other times she helps collect and sort supplies for hurric...

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Clinton educators help students get 'A Better Chance'

Clinton TA members Amie Johnson (left) and Kelly Landry. Photos provided. Kelly Landry knows that education is seldom equal. But 11 years ago, an article in The Boston Magazine made it personal for her. The piece was about Lawrence High School, a Massachusetts school near the New Hampshire border with a 50 percent graduation rate. She and her family had welcomed Malaquias Canery into their home the day before for the start of a four-year period as his host family through A Better Chance of...

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Grassroot giving includes sharing the gift of books

Albany reading teacher Carey Fusco knows books, cover to cover, inside and out. They are not casual friends. She sees them as lifelines. Fusco volunteers at Grassroot Givers, a nonprofit organization supporting underserved communities in the Capital District. Fusco’s work with the organization’s literacy initiative helps put books into the hands and homes of children. Fusco, a member of the Albany Public School Teachers Association, helps to sort and label some of the hundreds of boo...

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Global human rights action began as small ripple for Long Island educator

It all started with chocolate. Learning about children being exploited as workers on cocoa farms gave teacher Pamela Mary Schmidt a taste for making change. Chocolate on the mind can be as strong as chocolate on the tongue. As an educator now teaching in Freeport, she has had many transformative moments in the classroom, but it was her introduction to human rights work while teaching in Brentwood in 2009 that she says changed her life. “I like to teach by connection to real-world events, ...

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Port Jefferson teacher Charlotte Johnson rides in memory of ALS champion and fundraiser Chris Pendergast

You might assume that, as a marathon competitor, Charlotte Johnson has a sparkling collection of hard-earned medals hanging on a wall. But no. She’s given them all away. It’s personal. She used to teach with Christine Pendergast, whose husband Chris, also a teacher, was diagnosed with ALS the year Johnson began her career at Comsewogue. Chris Pendergast, an outdoor enthusiast and athlete who founded ALS Ride for Life, raised $10 million in the more than 27 years he lived with the cr...

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In Copenhagen, 'Little Libraries' bring big opportunities

It’s a different way to walk the beat. These days, Copenhagen retired teacher Deb Barnard Strianese makes the rounds once a week to check on and restock three new Little Libraries she helped bring into being in her own very little town. Her story began, as most do, with an idea. She thought about how her town did not have a library. As an elementary teacher, she knows first-hand how students can lose a lot of reading skills in summer, a situation heightened by not having a public library...

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Kingston educators begin community-wide book group on race

Sometimes a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single book. In Kingston, that book is “So You Want To Talk About Race” by Ijeoma Oluo. City residents are reading it as a group called Kingston Reads.

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Culinary arts professor cooks with kindness for his community

“I called it Depression Soup Kitchen when I first started,” said culinary arts professor Joe Forget, a member of the EOC Alliance local union. “But anti-depression is what I’m really doing.”

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Peace, Love and Hope: Message of piano continues to be important

In springtime in New York City, palettes of color emerge in rampant beds of tulips in Central Park, fields of bluebells in Brooklyn’s Botanical Garden, and daffodils in backyards in Queens. And then there are the pianos. Yes, since 2006, springtime in New York has meant the appearance of 50 pianos painted by talented artists and available for the public to play. Although this year’s pandemic prompted suspension of the program, more than 500 pianos have been set out since this publi...

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Bethlehem garden guru volunteers with students

For more than a decade, teacher Lisa Wood has volunteered to work with students at Bethlehem Middle School twice a week after school in a garden club.

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Pearl River art teacher transforms rail trail with paint and imagination

In a crush of color, art teacher John DeMarco spent part of summer 2018 on a bicycle and walking path in Albany County transforming a quiet underpass with paint and imagination. He was chosen in a competitive quest for artists to brighten up a section of the nine-mile Helderberg-Hudson public rail trail.

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For his 70th birthday, Chris Pendergast got his voice back

Most of the time, Chris Pendergast — the retired Northport teacher and longtime ALS patient — speaks through the computer attached to the front of his wheelchair, using his bright blue eyes to stare at a letter and blink.

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With Collegiate Scholars of Tomorrow program, UUP member Christopher Ellis puts young students on the path to college

By night, by weekend, and by evasive minutes and hours here and there, he directs a new program — Collegiate Scholars of Tomorrow — that puts hope and college money into NY 529 College Savings Program bank accounts for third graders across the city.

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Schenectady culinary instructor gets a sweet surprise

Laura Macey of the Schenectady Federation of Teachers (left) with her student chefs. Photo by Liza Frenette. Laura Macey is very busy these winter weeks. Her high school culinary students are providing food for a 14-school wrestling invitational, and then finger foods and desserts for 200 people at the Schenectady Education Foundation dinner gala. Trays and trays of chocolate chip cookie dough have been scooped out and laid out for baking by student chefs in professional white coats. Crusts fo...

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A mitten tree grows in Guilderland

Students in the town of Guilderland in the Capital Region are making mitten history today as they bring in warm, colorful hand coverings to share with others in need. Two educators set up a fake green fir as a Mitten Tree, and students soon began loading the branches with gloves, hats … and mittens.

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With a closet full of clothes and boundless compassion, Morrisville teachers work to meet the needs of a community

Not every student has sufficient clothing to keep out the cold, or nice enough to keep away the sneers. Some families know the knot of not having enough food. And in Morrisville, there is no longer a grocery store. But clothes and food for the taking can be found inside the local high school, thanks to the efforts of concerned teacher Meaghan Palmer. Here in the Morrisville Clothes Closet, students can find donated shirts, pants, coats, new socks and underwear for themselves and their families.

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A Dickens Tale: Volunteering on the roofs of Puerto Rico

As a CUNY Brooklyn College student majoring in kinesiology, Jamir Dickens is becoming familiar with studying the mechanics of body movements — but his knowledge was tested in a new way this past summer when he spent two weeks walking on the roofs of hurricane-damaged homes in Puerto Rico. It’s a whole new way of moving when you’re up on the roof pouring concrete in the hot summer Caribbean sun, noted Dickens, who volunteered with a group of CUNY student volunteers. “We w...

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Union activism lays foundation for retiree’s work with Peace Corps

During his 40 years of teaching biology, anatomy and life science in Orchard Park, Tony Agnello was also busy experimenting with how he could improve the lives of others. Now in retirement, he is strengthening and mobilizing community outreach through his work with the Peace Corps Alliance for Intercultural Understanding — doing so at a time in which democracy is under attack, and while fear and disillusionment reign. “My personal intention is to spark the interest of teachers and ...

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