TRANSCRIPT:
This transcript was edited for length and clarity.
Luis Hernandez: Each year, the Providence Public School District presents one of its own with the prestigious Teacher of the Year Award. This year’s awardee is Rachel Greenberg, who teaches at Bailey Elementary School, and she joins me now. Rachel, first of all, welcome and congratulations.
Rachel Greenberg: Thank you so much.
Hernandez: What was it like when you heard that you were Teacher of the Year? Tell me what happened that day, what happened at that moment.
Greenberg: I knew something was a little weird that day because my husband asked me to change my shoes before I went to work, but that was it. I didn’t know. I thought it was just a regular assembly, so I was sitting down with the kids and sitting in the middle just to make sure that everybody was behaved. When the superintendent came in and started alluding to what he was talking about, I looked at one of my first graders and I go, “Listen, if things get weird, you’re in charge of my phone, don’t let it fall!” And so she took the phone and then they called my name and I got up and everything just was a blur.
Hernandez: Well, again, congratulations. You know, I’m curious, I want to ask you, how would you describe your approach to teaching?
Greenberg: I would describe my approach as quirky. That’s how my approach is. My approach is different. I’m an only child, and growing up, I lived in the boonies, so there was nobody around. So I had imaginary friends, and I had cousins, and they came every so often. But my mom and I were by ourselves. I was home and she would make songs up all the time about everything. And so I kept doing that. And I do that even in my classroom. We take things that are like, not things that are boring, but things that are mundane that you have to learn and we make them fun. So instead of learning about roots and plants and how the roots are in the ground, we make a song out of it. And so it becomes, “The roots are in the ground. They soak the water up.” So every year, A new batch of kids, new songs, new things they like.
Hernandez: Your background is working with kids who are not English speakers first, right?
Greenberg: Yes.
Hernandez: This population of students where English is not the first language, this population is growing and this is, of course, a challenge to the education system. What don’t we understand about this problem and what do we need to be doing to try to help these kids more?
Greenberg: We don’t understand that if you try, they try. I will tell them that I am trying to learn Spanish as much as I can, and every language. So I have kids who speak Haitian Creole. I have kids who speak Pashto. I have kids who speak Spanish. I have kids who speak Swahili. So it’s about being vulnerable and open to learning from them. There’s two levels of language. There’s a social type of language, which you would use with your friends, with your family. And then there’s an academic language, and the academic language takes five to seven years to be on level with their native speaking peers. It’s very overwhelming. Like, I have a little boy now who’s from Haiti and he is boisterous and energetic. He’s an outgoing child. So he is very social and picking up a lot of language, but I have other kids who are shy, and it’s going to take them longer. And society doesn’t really understand that it takes a good seven years to master that language.
Hernandez: As you know, school districts all over the country are having a hard time finding teachers and retaining teachers. I wonder, why is that?
Greenberg: It’s a draining experience every day because you give so much of yourself. It’s emotionally taxing. It’s an empathy overload because you love these kids like they’re your own children. So my last name is Greenberg. And my students are called Greenbergians. And we live in the land of Greenbergia. So they are the Greenbergians, and I say, “once you’re a Greenbergian, you are always a Greenbergian. I don’t care if it’s now, if it’s in the summer, if it’s 20 years from now when I run into you at the grocery store and you have your kids with you, you are still my kid.” I have a vested interest in them as a person in society.
Hernandez: Real briefly, tell me what is the best part about being a teacher? What’s, for you, the experience?
Greenberg: Oh, the spark, the spark that they get when they get something. So every year you have a kid that comes in and goes, “I can’t do this. I can’t do this.” And I go, “Oh, wait a minute. You forgot a word. It’s ‘I can’t do this yet.’” So we collect all our work throughout the year and then we hand back some of the work that they did at the beginning of the year. Then they reflect on how they’ve grown as a student. And this is first graders. [I say] “Look at your growth and see what you did,” and say, “that wasn’t me that did that. That was you. You put in the work.” When they see that and that spark happens, they’re like, “Oh, I can do this. I can do hard things.”
Hernandez: What does it mean to get this award?
Greenberg: It means a lot. We work so hard. Like, we are the most developed, the hardest working, the most empathetic. The team that I have around me is why I got the award. It’s not me that does that. It’s the kids and it’s the teachers and all the staff that I work with. That’s what allows us to do what we do.
Hernandez: Rachel Greenberg, Providence Public School District Teacher of the Year. Rachel, congratulations. Thanks so much. I appreciate it.
Greenberg: Thank you.
