NJ.com

Newark surprises its 2017 Teacher of the Year

NEWARK — Walk into Brian Klasner’s classroom and odds are, you won’t find him sitting at his desk or lecturing at the front — he’ll be among his students.

On Tuesday, when a dozen school administrators, members of the media and fellow colleagues surprised Klasner to crown him Newark’s Teacher of the Year, he was sitting near the back of the room with a group of students.

“These are my parents guys,” Klasner, 29, said as he stood up to greet Schools Superintendent Christopher Cerf and his parents, Lisa and Joe Klasner.

“It’s validation of years of people telling me ‘No, you can’t do this,’ ‘No, that doesn’t work, use a textbook, don’t break the mold,'” said Klasner, a social studies teacher at East Side High. “I’ve always had these ideas and I’ve pushed as much as I could.”

Students sit in groups peering over iPads and talk about the internships they’ve landed at the East Orange Animal Hospital or as a physical education instructor. Their business cards are displayed along a wall.

“Coming from elementary school for me, it was difficult to adjust to high school,” said junior Romaine Johnson, 16. “He was always there for me and making sure I was on the right track … if it looks like if you have a bad day, he’ll say a pointed joke and just brighten your day.”

“Other teachers won’t take time out of their day to help you even with your personal issues,” said student Destiny Diaz, 16. “We’re learning in a different way.”

Diaz said the Klasner is always finding new ways to learn through technology. She looked around the room and said, “I don’t even know where the textbooks are.”

Klasner’s classroom is coated in posters of history icons like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., but also quirky images like a photo of a viral cat meme with the words “Mr. Klasner’s caring face.”

“I can never see myself sleeping in his class,” Johnson said — partly because Klasner will draw on your face with a dry-erase marker if you do, Diaz added.

Students say Klasner is always making jokes and showing funny pictures. The classroom Smart Board on Tuesday was projecting a picture of a baby elephant.

“If you’re singing a song, he’ll ask who sings it and say, ‘Let’s keep it that way,'” Johnson added.

Klasner was chosen from a pool of 22 other educators who were nominated by their principals. A graduate of Quinnipiac University, Klasner has taught for seven years and leads the school’s first Comic Book Club.

“This is a tremendous honor and a very well deserved one. We are incredibly impressed,” Superintendent Cerf said.

Klasner is an advisor for the school’s Big Picture Learning program, a national model that challenges traditional forms of schooling and lets students to take control of their learning through practical applications, such as internships.

The Big Picture academy enrolls 110 students at East Side and requires every student complete an internship.

“You don’t need a textbook to teach,” said Klasner who has taught at East Side for four years. “I also want to take them outside of the school, outside of class. Every one of my students has a business card, everyone has a resume, everyone has a cover letter, everyone has interviewed … there’s great traditional teachers, but I’ve been supported with every one of my crazy ideas.”

Source: By Karen Yi | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Newark’s West Side HS is a Special Champ to Morristown-Beard Coach Who is Fighting Cancer

Barry Carter | The Star-Ledger | Email the author | Follow on Twitter

The Newark basketball team wearing pink socks, sneakers and T-shirts had Coach Eddie Franz on edge, as he nervously watched to see if they could close out the championship game on Sunday.

“All right boys, guard up,” he said, seated in section 202 at the Louis Brown Athletic Center in Piscataway.

His playoff season at Morristown-Beard School ended last week, but Franz was channeling his thoughts to West Side High School, his second-favorite team, for good reason.

The team was wearing its pink ensemble in his honor. Franz, 60, has lung cancer.

He appeared to be calm as the Rough Riders were clinging to a two point lead with 1:13 remaining in the Group 2 NJSIAA final against Camden High School.

Internally, though, he was rooting hard because the team has been helping him through a tough period in his life.

Although pink is the color usually used to denote breast cancer, kids don’t make a color distinction, they just see cancer and they wanted to do something for Franz, who has been a part of Newark basketball for 13 years.

“It really hurt me,” said Yasim Hooker, an 18-year-old senior who has known Franz since elementary school. “I was in a lot of pain.”

The socks and sneakers are plain as day, but the T-shirts they wore on the layup line and on the bench crystalized their thoughts.

“Pray for Franz” was written on the back.

“Another Day. Another Chance” was on the front. The logo belongs to Fam Eternal, a Newark apparel company that made the shirts and whose co-owner knows Franz, too.

Since the coach’s diagnosis in January, pink has become the teams lucky color for an unlucky disease. West Side has gone 9-0, but it needed one more victory to claim its second consecutive Group 2 title and to win for Franz.

“The thing about the disease, you feel like you want to do something to be a part of the fight,” Franz said. “I think that’s what these kids felt like they needed to do.”

The relationship between Franz and Newark starts with Akbar Cook, the head coach at West Side.

Franz has known Cook since he was a 15-year-old teenager at Life Camp, an outdoor summer program in Pottersville where Franz has been director for 30 years.

“He’s been a mentor to me, almost like a father figure that I didn’t have growing up,” Cook said.

Franz hired Cook to work at the camp as a counselor. Years later, after Cook graduated from college and expressed an interest in coaching, Franz hired him to be junior varsity coach at Morristown-Beard.

Cook moved on to Newark Vocational School and the relationship between the two men strengthened. Franz would help Cook train his team, which would play a scrimmage game against Morristown-Beard before the season and a regular season game at the end.

The urban and suburban players became friends. They were around each other a lot, playing in the same summer basketball leagues and working as counselors at Life Camp.

“We called it Vo-Beard,” Franz said.

About three years ago, Cook was hired at West Side as head coach and the Vo-Beard connection might as well have been called West Side-Beard. The kids kept scrimmaging with each other on the court and working together at camp.

Since Franz’s shocking diagnosis, the relationship has grown even closer. The kids blew him away when he first saw them wearing pink during an Essex County tournament game last month.

Franz was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma, a cancer that usually afflicts smokers, but one the American Cancer Society said is prevalent in non-smokers.

Franz, who never smoked, thought he had pneumonia after exercising one morning in January. He had shortness of breath and went to the hospital for a chest x-ray.

“The first thing they (doctors) say to me is, ‘Are you a smoker?’ ” Franz said. “I knew at that point, there was a problem.”

It shook him up.

Cook was rattled, too. He wore pink last year when he coached West Side to its first championship. Pink tie, shirt and socks. Pink anything. He did it to honor his late mother-in-law and two aunts, who died from the disease.

Two weeks ago, West Side’s starting center, Quaion Taylor, learned that his grandmother had cancer.

“This is bigger than basketball,” Cook said.

When he got the call from Franz, that’s all he could think about.

“I was saying here we go again,” Cook said. “I’m not a crier, but I was on the phone crying with him.”

He told Hooker about Franz’s diagnosis and the two put their heads together.

“I thought it would be a good idea to wear pink to represent Franz and win a state championship,” Hooker said.

Quayon Williams-King, 18, said, pink is his favorite color and Franz is one of his favorite people because of the coach’s honesty.

“He always kept it real with me,” said Williams-King. “He would tell me if I was doing something wrong.”

Franz, however, said he doesn’t feel special. He’s gracious.

“To see kids supportive of somebody who is not their coach, it kind of shows the comraderie that basketball gives you, and how relationships develop over the course of time.”

Franz may want to change his mind about not feeling special. Cook wore his pink shirt for the first time Sunday.

“I just want him to know that he’s not alone,” Cook said.

Before the game, the message was clear.

“Franz is here, let’s do this for him,” Hooker said.

They defeated Camden 51-49, and did their small part in helping a man who means so much to them cope with cancer.

View the story on nj.com.

NPS Superintendent Christopher Cerf Speaks Out on Behalf Undocumented Newark Students

Last week, Newark Public Schools Superintendent Christopher Cerf, along with education leaders from around the country, signed a petition to support the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

“While we can’t be certain at this point exactly what the new administration will do regarding DACA, what we do know for certain is how the recent election, and the rhetoric that accompanied it, has made Newark families feel,” explained Superintendent Cerf about why he felt compelled to sign this petition. “The DACA program and the DREAM Act proposal gave many immigrant families in our community a greater sense of stability and inclusion. With the election, many of these families and even some educators have expressed real fears about their future,” noted Superintendent Cerf.

He continued, “Newark is a community where one out of every three residents is born in another country, and 25 percent of students speak Spanish as a primary language at home. These students and their families contribute immeasurably to our community. I signed this petition to let all of our undocumented students and immigrant families know that we at Newark Public Schools stand with them and will do everything in our power to ensure that they continue to have access to a high-quality education here in Newark.”

See below to learn more about the education leaders who joined Superintendent Cerf in signing the petition to support the DACA program, advocacy efforts on behalf of undocumented students in Newark Public Schools, as well as workshop information the district is offering undocumented students who are leaving high school to pursue college or a career.

the 74 logoWhat John King and Other Education Leaders Who Signed Petition Want Trump to Know About DACA
“Notably missing from the president’s executive orders, however, was a repeal of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a policy created by President Barack Obama in 2012 to provide work authorization and freedom from deportation to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. Still, amid fears the Trump administration will kill off DACA — his campaign website promised to ‘immediately terminate’ the program — more than 1,700 education leaders from across the country have signed a petition calling on the president to leave DACA alone… As the fate of hundreds of thousands of students remains up in the air, here are the reasons that some of America’s top education leaders signed the Stand for Children petition… Chris Cerf, superintendent, Newark Public Schools: ‘While we can’t be certain at this point exactly what the new administration will do regarding DACA, what we do know for certain is how the recent election, and the rhetoric that accompanied it, has made Newark families feel. The DACA program and the DREAM Act proposal gave many immigrant families in our community a greater sense of stability and inclusion. With the election, many of these families and even some educators have expressed real fears about their future. Newark is a community where one out of every three residents is born in another country, and 25 percent of students speak Spanish as a primary language at home. These students and their families contribute immeasurably to our community. I signed this petition to let them know that we at Newark Public Schools stand with them and will do everything in our power to ensure that they continue to have access to a high-quality education here in Newark.’” (The 74, 1/25/17)

njcomTeachers petition district to defy Trump, protect immigrant students
“A group of public school teachers are petitioning the Newark school district to protect immigrant children who may be targeted under the President Donald J. Trump’s proposed crackdown on illegal immigration. During Tuesday’s School Advisory Board meeting, teacher Branden Rippey presented a petition signed by more than 160 educators and community members asking the district to declare schools off limits to federal immigration authorities, refuse to share students’ personal information and take concrete steps to carry out both actions… The petition asked Newark schools to officially pledge to stand between these anti-immigration forces and the students it threatens. ‘We demand this be more than symbolic language,’ the petition read. Schools Superintendent Christopher Cerf said he had already signed a petition to protect young undocumented students who benefited from Obama’s executive action to protect them from deportation and give them work permits. ‘I will assure you that I share your perspective and this organization is not going to cooperate with that kind of conduct,’ Cerf said.” (NJ.com, 1/25/17)

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UNDOCU-Newark: A Workshop on Access to Higher Education Services for Undocumented Students & Parents
On February 4, 2017 from 9am to 1pm, Newark Public Schools, Essex County College, Rutgers Law School, UndocuJersey, and Make the Road NJ are offering a free conference for undocumented students. The workshop will talk about the college admissions and financial aid process for students regardless of immigration status. There will also be information regarding scholarship opportunities and free Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) screenings offered. (Newark Public Schools Website)

Giants’ Sean Landeta, $20K Kickstart Newark Health Initiative

By: Jessica Mazzola | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com | Email the author | Follow on Twitter

NEWARK – City kids got a sweet taste of the healthy life Wednesday, thanks to $20,000 in grant money to start up the “Fuel Up to Play 60” program at the Oliver Street School.

Former New York Giants Punter Sean Landeta was at the school Wednesday to help celebrate the grant, donated by the nonprofit Dairy Council Health Foundation, ShopRite, and Fuel Up, a program of the American Dairy Association and the NFL.

Fuel Up to Play 60 is a school wellness initiative aimed at getting kids moving, and eating healthier foods. Thanks to the program and grant money, the Oliver Street School welcomed Wednesday a new build-your-own yogurt parfait bar in its cafeteria, and an NFL flag football program.

The ShopRite of Newark is also leading a nutrition education campaign that will include dietician visits to the school, and in-store field trips.

Read the story on nj.com.

All-Newark State Championship Final Renews City Pride for Football

By Matthew Stanmyre | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com on December 01, 2016 7:30 AM

Weequahic quarterback Tymen Sampson (2) is stacked up by Shabazz linebacker Jahsim Gordon (50) in Thursday’s high school football Soul Bowl showdown at Untermann Field in Newark. Weequahic outscored Shabazz for a 22-8 victory. 11/24/2016 (Steve Hockstein | For NJ Advance Media)tory. 11/24/2016 (Steve Hockstein | For NJ Advance Media)

The 2008 and 2009 seasons were some of the darkest times for Newark high school football. Those years, none of the city’s six public schools that play the sport finished with a winning record, and all combined the teams won just 33 games against 87 losses.

Interest in football was plummeting, athletes were opting for other sports and promising players were flooding to private schools outside of Newark, coaches say.

But change was coming.

In 2010, Darnell Grant took over as head coach at Shabazz High, where the program had gone 7-33 the previous four seasons. The next year, Brian Logan moved over to Weequahic High, inheriting a team that was 16-23 over the four years before.

Since the changes, the football teams at Shabazz and Weequahic have made astounding turnarounds, combining for a 95-48 record, seven trips to the state sectional title game and one elusive state championship.

And now, Newark’s football resurgence has reached a crescendo with Shabazz and Weequahic meeting in Saturday morning’s North Jersey, Section 2, Group 1 state championship game at Kean University after both teams steamrolled through the bracket and trounced opponents by an average of 31 points.

“It’s a testimony to my staff and a testimony to Brian’s staff to be able to build something here where people say that you can’t,” Grant said. “Both of us, that’s the biggest legacy: Building programs and building consistent winners with consistent success.”

Even more incredible, Shabazz and Weequahic both are located in Newark’s South Ward, where the schools are among New Jersey’s most historic — and bitter — rivals. In an unusual twist, the teams also faced off a week ago in their annual Thanksgiving Day matchup dubbed “The Soul Bowl,” where Weequahic prevailed, 22-8.

Newark’s football renaissance even has Mayor Ras Baraka — who will honor both coaches Thursday morning during a ceremony at City Hall — following along closely.

“It absolutely has a great impact in city pride,” Baraka said in a phone interview with NJ Advance Media. “It improves the program, gets people interested in the school, makes a lot of young people want to try out and play football, which is very beneficial because of the discipline and structure of playing on a football team. It goes a long way in the community. It unites parents, it unites whole blocks.”

Baraka, who served as principal of Newark Central High before becoming Mayor, also said having winning programs such as Shabazz and Weequahic helps infuse the student bodies with positive reinforcement.

“It gives them pride, a feeling of success, accomplishment, of being a part of an organization that’s winning, the team effort,” said Baraka, who also formerly served as a vice principal at Weequahic. “It just lifts the entire morale of the student body population and gives them a reason to want to come to school, a reason to be in the school.”

The climb to the top at Shabazz and Weequahic came quickly under Grant and Logan, respectively. Grant moved over from nearby Irvington High, where he had built the Blue Knights into a state power, seeing the potential to resurrect a once-proud Shabazz program that had fallen on hard times but had strong facilities and a beautiful stadium.

In seven seasons, Grant has led Shabazz to three state title game appearances, including a North 2, Group 1 state championship crown in 2014 – the first in school history.

Logan, meanwhile, captured one of Newark’s four overall state football titles since 1974 as head coach at West Side High in 2007, but seized the opportunity to take over his alma mater at Weequahic.

His Indians teams have been nothing short of dominant, winning nine games or more four times and making the state finals three years in a row from 2011 to 2013 but falling short each time.

Logan said the success at both schools is a product of Grant and himself “being more than just an average football coach in the suburbs.”

“It’s a 12-month a year job for us,” said Logan, who also credited his staff for his team’s success. “Football season can’t end and we go home and take a break. It doesn’t work like that with us. You have to constantly know what your players are doing, try to do the best you can to monitor them. When they know somebody’s concerned about them, they’re going to do every effort to try to do right.”

Other Newark schools also are having success in football. Barringer went 8-2 in 2015, Central finished 7-3 in 2014 and West Side was 7-3 in 2013.

East Side, however, has never made the playoffs and finished 0-10 this season.

“We play good football in Newark,” Logan said. “We have just as much talent as anybody around the state.”

The success at Shabazz and Weequahic is even impacting the youth level, where coaches say Newark kids are eager to play football again. This fall, several Pop Warner teams such as the Brick City Lions, Southeast Stallions and Central Ward Blue Devils have qualified for national and regional championship tournaments.

“A ton of kids after this week are going to want to flood to Shabazz and Weequahic just to get that opportunity that these guys are having on the big stage,” said Al Hillman, coach of the Stallions. “The kids feel like, ‘I can actually play on this field and do this.’”

Newarkers say the only downside to Saturday’s championship game is that one of the teams will lose.

The good news? With Grant and Logan leading the charge, Newark’s football future appears bright.

“It would be cool for Newark to have an opportunity to get two titles,” Grant said. “But at the end of the day, Newark’s going to have a champ no matter what this year and that’s a good thing.”

Matthew Stanmyre may be reached at mstanmyre@nullnjadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattStanmyre.

Newark East Side Boys Soccer Thrives on Diversity on Way to Historic Season

Richard Greco | Send an Email | Follow Richard on Twitter | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com | View the story online | Follow NJ.COM on Facebook

Tucked away in the outskirts of one of New Jersey’s most perilous cities for teens, a growing soccer power at Newark East Side hit its stride in 2016, beating heavily favored Seton Hall Prep for its first Essex County Tournament title since 1978.

But before East Side could even dream about hoisting the county tournament trophy, the team, which features players from six different countries, some of whom speak only their native tongue, needed to break language and cultural barriers and become united.

That process began in preseason.

Head coach Jose Periera, who speaks English and Portuguese, separated players into three working groups based on the language they spoke. Each group was led by a senior captain. Kevin Avila worked with the Spanish speaking players, Lucas Moraes with the Portuguese speaking players and Tiago Da Costa, although he is fluent in Portuguese as well, with the players that speak English.

“We all separate in our groups and we all translate,” said Avila, who moved from Ecuador when he was seven. “It’s our job to translate things that coach says like what time practice is and things like that.”

While the groups were being assigned, two of East Side’s players were absent – Walter Hernandez and Jonatas Barbosa Periera. The two strikers spent the preseason working jobs to help support their families.

Hernandez moved from Honduras to Newark in September of 2015 and was not a member of the team until this season.

After getting acclimated with living in the United States, Hernandez reached out to Coach Periera for a chance to join the team.

“Last year I was moving to a new country so I didn’t really know how to adjust or how to become part of the team and talk to the coach,” Hernandez said through a translator.

“This year I had the courage to talk to him because my cousin had a good relationship with the coach so that helped me a lot,” he added, referring to Jose Salinas, East Side’s JV goalkeeper in 2015.

Once school started, Hernandez cut down his hours working with his uncle delivering construction materials, allowing him to take on a more prominent role for East Side. But he still needed to earn his starting spot.

It didn’t take long for the senior forward to have his name penciled into the starting lineup. He recorded his first varsity goal in East Side’s season opening 1-0 win over Livingston. His first hat trick came just a few games later when the Red Raiders beat Columbia, 4-0. Hernandez never cooled off and led East Side with 20 goals in his first and only high school season.

“Walter wasn’t with us in preseason,” team captain Avila said. “I heard other players saying, ‘Walter, Walter’ a lot, but I had never met him. When he came to the first practice during the season I was like, ‘Wow this guy has a lot of talent.’ I was surprised because I wasn’t expecting him to be this good.”

Barbosa Pereira was the other player absent in preseason; he was also headed for star status. The senior was a regular on last year’s varsity squad and his desire to be part of the team, despite having to work, was as evident as ever during preseason.

In the summer, Barbosa Pereira reported for work at Pao da Vida Bakery on Oliver Street in Newark at 5:30 in the morning and got out at 2:30. That didn’t stop him from reporting to East Side’s afternoon practices at 3:30.

“It’s a very hard balance between school, work and soccer,” said Barbosa Pereira, who had nine goals and eights assists in 2016. “I go to school, I work, I practice and I train to prepare myself for the future. It’s hard. I have to work for my family. I have to help support my mother and my family.”

The long days took their toll and his coach could tell.

“I noticed that Jonatas was exhausted,” Coach Pereira said. “We had an a.m. practice that he’d miss, but he’d be at the afternoon practices. He was sluggish because he was so exhausted.”

Coach Periera understood what his players were going through because he went through similar circumstances in his life. The East Side alum moved to America from Portugal when he was 11, excelled with the Red Raiders from 1994-1998, and was the first person in his family to go to college.

“When I tell them that I was the first one in my family to go to college, they might look at me and say, ‘that could be me,’” said Coach Periera, who became head coach six years ago. “I tell them that it’s not easy, but when times get tough, to use use your family and friends to help pick you up…I want to be a difference maker for them because other people were difference makers in my life.”

The coach is not the only person looking to be a difference maker. The atmosphere at East Side encourages students to help their peers, especially ones that are new to the country. East Side’s soccer players take that attitude to heart and are willing to take struggling teammates under their wing and help them without being asked to do so.

“That’s just part of our nature,” Da Costa said. “Since we all come from different countries, we all have been taken under someone’s wing by somebody that was older than us. It’s natural behavior to do that because it’s the right thing to do.”

As new students begin to see the similarities between themselves and their peers, East Side becomes less intimidating and they begin to get involved with the school’s programs; in this case with one of the top soccer teams in the state.

“We have our 2,000 students, so it could be very intimidating coming from another country and not speaking the language,” Coach Pereira said. “Then when you start to look around and a lot of students speak your language whether that is Spanish or Portuguese – when you join the team, now you are going to realize that some of those people are your classmates. Now it’s encouraging them to get active and be part of something.”

Once these players became part of East Side’s soccer team, a magical run followed. They not only claimed the ECT championship, but added a sixth straight Newark Public Schools title to finish one of the school’s most successful seasons, despite falling to Bridgewater-Raritan in the North 2, Group 4 semifinals, with a 17-2-1 record.

While the accolades proved how good this team was on the field, overcoming the barriers they faced in 2016 showed how close it became off the field. Whether players were from Honduras, El Salvador, Portugal, Ecuador, Brazil or even tiny Cape Verde, off the West African coast, once they put on a Red Raiders jersey, they were part of a family.

“It’s fun having all these guys from different countries,” Da Costa said. “You get to learn their cultures and get to be a part of it. We’ll come home from a win and we’ll be playing Spanish music and all be dancing with the Spanish kids. Then we’ll play Brazilian music and be dancing with the Brazilian kids. It’s just fun to get along with everyone.”