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LES Principal on the Challenges for Transfer Schools

By Lisha Arino | November 3, 2014 7:45am
 Lower East Side Preparatory High School Principal Martha Polin poses for a photo at her desk on Oct. 6, 2014.
Lower East Side Preparatory High School Principal Martha Polin poses for a photo at her desk on Oct. 6, 2014.
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DNAinfo/Lisha Arino

LOWER EAST SIDE — After spending 13 years as a marketing executive in the film industry, Martha Polin realized she wasn’t happy.

She had been successful, she said, rising through the ranks to become vice president of marketing at MGM United Artists. But after a while, the job “ceased to be enjoyable.”

“I was working in the entertainment business for a major motion picture studio and I was the only woman and I hit the glass ceiling, as they say,” Polin said.

“So one day, I left and I never went back. I decided I was going to be a teacher.”

The choice she made more than 20 years ago was the right one, she said. Today, Polin is in her 14th year as principal of the Lower East Side Preparatory High School, a transfer school that helps students who have dropped out of high school or fallen behind in credits.

She loves her second career, which began at Wagner Middle School in the late 1980s, she said. After that, she served as assistant principal at Simon Baruch Middle School 104 and the New York City Museum School.

Polin was also the director for Ballet Tech, The New York City Public School for Dance before she became principal at the LES Preparatory High School in 2002, Polin said.

"Lower East Side Prep is a wonderful school," she said, calling its student body "interesting" and "diverse."

Unlike more traditional high schools, students tend to be older, between 16 and 21 years old, and most of them have already attended at least one other high school, she said. The set-up presents many unique challenges both to the students and the teachers.

The school also has a large number of non-native English language speakers and Polin estimates that about 27 different languages are spoken inside the school. While a large percentage of the school's 550 students speak Chinese or Spanish, others come from far away as Yemen, Nepal and Africa, she said.

"A lot of the kids are coming straight from the airport," she said.

Polin recently talked to DNAinfo about her decision to teach and the challenges she faces as a principal in a transfer school.

What makes a transfer school different from a regular high school?
The students are over-age and under-credited. Like, if they’re American kids, they may have been at another school, maybe a large high school where they didn't earn the credits they were supposed to earn or get the attention they needed in the classroom. We have a lot of support for students here.

Every student here has an individualized program. No two students have the same program. We look at their transcripts. We see what they need to graduate, and their classes are given to them based on the needs that they have. In most other schools, kids travel around as a class all day. Here, everyone has an individual program.

It takes some students a year ... or there are kids who come with 10 credits maybe and they have a lot to do, so it might take them three years to graduate.

It’s really ungraded here until you become a senior and then we know, you have x amount of credits to go before you graduate, you’re now a senior.

If students have individualized programs, how do they get to know their classmates and make friends?
The whole school eats lunch at the same time in the cafeteria. We have a lot of clubs and a lot of activities. On Friday we had a new student picnic in the courtyard with food and dancing and games. They tie-dyed T-shirts and it was really a lot of fun.

There’s Spanish club, a Chinese culture club, there’s student activities. There’s a coordinator of student activities [and] there's a senior adviser, so little by little, the kids do make friends.

How do you help new students transition into the school, particularly those from other countries?
At first, we have an advisory for all new students to familiarize them with the building and the teachers and where to go to for help.

And then all of these students, if they don’t speak English, they’re put in an ESL 1 or 2 class where immediately they’re given kind of survival skills — "How do you negotiate the subway, how do you read a map? What English words do you need to know immediately?" and so on. Then the process of building their language skills begins.

In addition to the language barrier and possibly cultural differences, what are some challenges you face?
I always say many students who are here, come with a backpack full of trouble. It’s a Title I school, which means it’s below the poverty line, so kids are often dealing with problems at home. Perhaps they have never quite learned how to study so we offer study skills, SAT prep.

There's lunchtime tutoring. There’s also homework help everyday except Wednesday, after school. Wednesday is when we have our professional development but they can get help from a math teacher, an English teacher, a social studies teacher and so on and so forth.

Why did you decide to become a teacher?
I kind of had reached the pinnacle, I was the youngest and only female vice-president in my company and it was not satisfying. I don’t know how else to put it.

It was financially lucrative. At first it was fun and then it wasn’t fun. And it was, in my mind, rather meaningless. So I thought a lot about it and decided I would become a teacher.

What would you say to people looking to work in education?
For me, it’s been an incredibly rewarding experience. I love the students and I love to come to work every day. It’s an incredibly diverse job, where you’re never bored because kids are never boring.

There are always new challenges and new problems to solve, plus I get to work on a team with two fantastic assistant principals and a great literacy coach that works with the teachers and professional staff developers. This team is my cabinet.

You don’t have to do things by yourself. You don’t have to have all the answers. You can put the question out there to five or six people who can help you solve the problem.

And it’s fun. I know that sounds crazy in a way but I actually love my job. I love the kids. I love my school and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.