- [Narrator] Funding for this edition of Think Tank with Steve Adubato has been provided by The New Jersey Education Association.

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[MOTIVATIONAL MUSIC] - Hi, everyone, Steve Adubato.

Once again, three excellent educators making a difference every day.

You ask, "Who will teach our children?"

These are the teachers.

First, Carly Broomhead is a visual arts teacher at Emma C. Attales Middle School in Absecon, New Jersey.

Gary Whitehead, english language arts teacher at Tenafly High School in beautiful Bergen County.

And finally, Nicole Hamlet, biology teacher at Trenton Central High School.

Welcome all of you great educators.

Thank you for joining us.

- Thank you, Steve.

- Thank you for having us.

- Thank you.

- Let's get the county educator teacher out of the way.

Carly, do you admit that you were the Teacher of the Year in Atlantic County?

What year?

- For this current year, 2025.

- You are the Atlantic County Teacher of the Year?

- Yes.

- Gary Whitehead, Bergen County Teacher of the Year '23, '24?

- Correct.

- And Nicole, you are the current Mercer County Teacher of the Year, correct?

- Yes, for 2025.

- Nicole, how proud were you and are you of that distinction?

- Wow, I was overwhelmed.

They called me totally off guard, but I was very proud.

I was very honored to have the distinction of being Mercer County Teacher of the Year.

And it's still, every day, it's still, I feel like it's not real.

But I've met some great people.

I met Carly, the rest of the team, so I'll never forget this.

- Nicole, how long you been teaching?

- This is my 20th year teaching in the city of Trenton.

- Gary, how long?

- This is my 28th year.

- Carly?

- Same, 28.

- Carly, let me ask you your passion for teaching today compared to when you started.

Describe it.

- I think my passion for teaching has grown, and honestly, you know, I was born and raised in a family of educators.

It's always been a part of my life, and it seems was just natural.

But I feel that over the last, especially 20 years or so, you know, there are some events obviously that have only allowed my passion for teaching, I think, to grow.

And honestly, I think the pandemic was part of that, because for a solid year and a half, I only taught my students virtually, being a special area teacher.

And I think that really reignited how much I loved that contact, and that having students in front of you to talk with and interact with, and not just see their pictures and answer emails.

So I feel like that really helped reignite my passion for teaching, and it's just kind of grown from there.

- Gary, you're shaking your head.

Talk about your passion.

First all, why a teacher for you, and why now do you care more than ever?

- So, like Carly, I also come from a family of teachers.

My dad was a teacher.

- Same here.

Dad, his two sisters, aunts, my sister.

Yep, family of teachers, public school educators.

Go ahead.

- I'm sure that had a lot to do with it.

I also had a high school English teacher for three years who I found to be very inspirational.

And I think that's, you know, a big part of the reason why I got into teaching.

But I agree with what Carly was saying about, you know, post pandemic.

I remember when the kids finally came back to the classroom, I felt reinvigorated too, because Zoom school was just horrible.

It was just not really a great way to educate people, and, you know, we all missed the physical contact, and, you know, being in the same room together.

So when kids came back, it was wonderful.

And, you know, I'm sort of getting to the tail end of my career, but I still feel a lot of energy about it and, you know, pretty happy to go there every day and do what I do.

- Good stuff.

Nicole, let me ask you this, so you're in the area of, you're a biology teacher at Trenton Central High School.

It's an urban school district.

- Yes, right.

- Curious about this.

So we're gonna go beyond why you love teaching and your passion for teaching and being teachers of the year in your county, to some more challenging aspects of being a teacher today.

How has current immigration policy, Nicole, impacted your students, if at all?

- Well, it has impacted the students, but we try our very best to make sure everyone feels welcome.

- And how do you do that?

How do you do that?

- Oh, just by welcoming our students every single day by letting them know it's okay when they share their concerns with us.

A lot of our students are fearful of just day-to-day interactions, but when you have a welcoming environment for them to learn, they want to learn.

They're coming to school, they're excited about learning.

And to me that's the most important thing, keep them excited about learning.

And that's what makes the job worthwhile when your students wanna learn.

- For you, being an educator in an urban community, I was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey, and teachers like my first grade teacher, Ms. Hoffman, at Ridge Street School, had an impact on me for the rest of my life.

And so often, we interview all kinds of educators and people involved in urban education.

I'm curious, what do you say to those, Nicole, who may not have ever lived in an urban community, or don't relate or interact with people in an urban community, and don't expect much from students in urban communities, and grossly underestimate their potential?

Talk to those folks, Nicole.

- Well, I didn't grow up in the urban community.

I grew up in South Jersey, in Cumberland County, New Jersey, so this is a different environment for me too.

But I've been here for 20 years, and I would absolutely dispel all of those reasons that people might believe that students in urban environments do not wanna learn.

My students, the students that I come into contact with every single day, they wanna learn, and they express that.

They're looking for an educator to ignite their fire.

It may be that they just had an educator that didn't ignite their fire.

So over the years it kind of got worn down.

But they wanna learn.

And that's what makes my job great.

I would not be here 20 years if my students didn't wanna learn.

I mean, they absolutely love coming to school.

College-bound, trade school-bound, this is their future, and they're just looking for people who want to engage and love their jobs.

- So let me, I'm curious about this, Carly, as Nicole was talking about her students, I don't care whether you're in an urban, rural, suburban community, our kids, your kids, your students, are dealing with a whole range of issues that have been exacerbated, mental health issues, connected to all kinds of things, including social media.

To what extent, Carly, do you believe your role as an educator is to help your students?

You're not trained as a psychologist or a psychiatrist, but to what degree are you concerned about, and attempt to support your students, as it relates to their challenges outside of academics, more specifically their mental health issues?

- Personally for me, being a teacher of visual arts, one of the things that I focus on, you know, obviously the middle school level, I'm not teaching 100% of my students that are going to grow up and have a career in the visual arts.

And I know that.

There might be one or two in every year that might, you know, take on a career that has anything to do with a visual arts.

So a lot of what I do is I approach art from obviously a creative problem-solving standpoint, but also from a mentally health standpoint.

There are a lot of studies being done right now.

There's a book that I'm kind of halfway through, called "Your Brain on Art," but it's actually from the director of the Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics at John Hopkins.

And all kinds of studies being done to show that when we participate in those creative endeavors, you know, our heart rate slows, our blood pressure lowers, our cortisol levels drop, all of those things, our stress reduces.

So I try to approach visual arts as, you know, a pathway to that, a very easily accessible, you know, I can sit here and I can draw for 20 minutes till I'm gonna feel better about something, or I'm just going to be able to relax and refocus myself.

And also to kind of go back to what we were talking about with the whole social media aspect too, you know, for a lot of my students that's a self-esteem boost.

The fact that they have a talent and they're cultivating that talent.

You know, and I encourage them to share some of that on their social media, the artwork they're creating, instead of just, you know, selfies and things like that.

- Can we deal with this?

And I wanna get response all the way around.

I know it's a complex issue, but I'm curious, there are discussions across the country, including in New Jersey, about banning cell phones in the classroom.

Gary, if you were voting on this in the State Senate, how would you vote?

- Two hands up.

Aye, yes.

- Yes?

- Yes, ban the cellphones.

- Ban them?

- Collect them at the door.

Absolutely.

- And, Carly?

- Well, I fall like 50-50 on this.

I agree that they should not have access to them on a daily basis in every class.

It's the policy in my district currently that their cellphones are supposed to be stored in their lockers.

But again, for me as a visual arts teacher, sometimes we use them as a tool.

I do teach a little bit of digital photography and graphic design, and I do every once in a while allow students who wanna use their own personal photos for some of those things, just to have their phone long enough to share their photos with me, so that I can upload it to their devices.

- Right, Nicole?

- My opinion is to ban the cellphones, but I do use cell phones at times in the laboratory setting.

They use the cell phones to capture their images, to capture data from their experiments.

So I think that per class it should be up to the teacher who is teaching the class.

But overall, yes, the cellphones are a problem.

And students, once you take the cellphones, the students, they respond well.

It's just there's a little bit of, you know, they don't wanna give them up, but once they give them up- - Hold on, we don't wanna give them up.

- Yeah.

But it's necessary for their young brains.

And I think that once they get it's only temporary.

- They'll get it back.

- They should do studies on their attention span once the cell phones have been removed.

- So Gary, let me ask you something.

This is a not really a cell phone issue, somewhat related to technology.

So I noticed the other day that our daughter, who is in high school, she was preparing for a language arts-related assignment.

And I always like to read what she writes.

Sometimes she'll ask for feedback.

But this time she said, "I'm doing it in class."

And I said, "Why are you doing it in class?"

And she said, you know what she said, right, Gary?

- I do.

- Explain to us, talk to us about AI and other forms, other digital platforms for information, that, how the heck do you manage it as an English language arts teacher who wants students not to cheat and plagiarize, but to think and write and grow and learn.

- It's a real challenge.

And it came out of the blue about a year or so ago, year and a half ago, when ChatGPT came out.

Prior to that, you know, there was always issues with plagiarism, but they were kind of easy to detect with certain software that our school subscribed to.

And, you know, just being a savvy reader, you could tell when something was not a student's work.

Nowadays, I too am giving a lot of in-class writing, because I would say 100% of students at my school are using AI, probably 100% of- - Hold on, 100%?

100%?

- Yeah.

- How?

For what?

- They use it for all kinds of things, and some of them are legit.

- Okay.

- For instance, I was talking with my journalism students recently, and they were preparing for a quiz they were going to have.

I forget what subject it was, but the girl was using an app on her phone that used AI, and she could just tell it what she wanted the AI to teach her, and then she could listen to this little mini lecture on the material.

So it was just a way of, you know, reinforcing what she had learned in class.

- But hold on, Gary, where's the critical thinking?

- I agree.

And this is what- - I'm just asking.

Is there any critical thinking involved in that?

- So, I don't think so.

And my fear with AI, as much as it might help us with study skills, or even for me as a teacher, help me to create materials, for instance, I recently used a podcast in class that I created using AI, which sounded realistic, and was just another way of letting students engage with a story by hearing people talk about it.

But, back to my point, I do think overall, despite, you know, the direction that AI is going, in the next 10 years, I think it's gonna be integrated into our lives in every respect imaginable.

But overall, I feel that it is the death of original thinking, the death of creativity, and the death of innovation.

- A lot to think about.

And PS, we've done a whole range of interviews as it relates to our excellence in education series, particularly "Who Will Teach Our Children" mini series.

Look on our website, which will be up right now, SteveAdubato.org.

Look for previous interviews we've done with great teachers, great educators, but I'm curious about this, Nicole.

So each one of you, Teacher of the Year in your county, love what you do, tremendous passion, but teacher burnout is real.

Nicole, how real?

- Well, it's extremely real.

I think that teachers, pre-pandemic, it was building, during the pandemic, I think for some teachers, the integration of technology was an overload.

We didn't get a chance to practice, we didn't get a chance to plan, it was just two days and we went live.

So for some people, it's easier than others.

The younger teachers tend to navigate technology a little bit better.

We were reaching out to one another for help if we were hitting technical snags along the way, but the burnout, I believe, is because there's a lot of additional things that teachers deal with besides just planning lessons and teaching.

You are dealing with mental health issues, you're dealing with a whole range of issues with our children.

Again, for me, I love what I do.

Sometimes I do get tired.

- You feel it, you feel it, sometimes?

- I feel it, but the students need us.

So that is what keeps me coming back.

They need us to show up and to educate.

So yeah, this is spring break right now.

We're getting a little bit of rest.

- We're taping this in late April.

Go ahead.

- Yeah, we're taking it late, but my advice would just, keep pushing.

If you're a teacher, you need to take the time for yourself to self-regulate, but you gotta get back in there.

- Carly, let me ask you, what do you do for yourself to manage your wellbeing, slash potential burnout?

- As far as during the school day, you know, I make an effort to kind of put the paperwork aside, you know, put the paperwork aside for a minute, and actually, like, talk to students.

For me, one of the things that keeps me in it every single day is just building those relationships.

You know, and I tell new teachers all the time, like it's easy to get caught up in the lesson planning, and the responding to the email, and making the parent phone calls, and that is the job, right?

But there's so much that happens during the day, and within interactions with students where there is joy.

You know, there are five or six students right now that don't have my class at this point in the year, but they stop in my room every single day.

They stop in my room every single day to say hi, to tell me what's going on in their lives, and I think that personal connection, knowing that, you know, they're bringing a smile to my face, and obviously they wanna come see me.

I think a lot of that personal connection is what can help prevent burnout a little bit.

Like remembering that there's a person behind that face in the chair, in the desk, in your classroom, and just getting to know that person and letting them get to know you a little bit, I think can help prevent a lot of that, you know, daily grind, burnout.

- Well said.

Gary, let me ask you this, the prospect of government intervention in what you teach, how you teach it, what books are acceptable, what books are deemed not acceptable, to what degree is that added to, particularly coming from the federal government right now, to what extent has that added to the pressure, and quote unquote, "Potential burnout" for educators like you in the English language arts?

- I'm lucky that I teach in the state of New Jersey where things are a little more progressive, and it hasn't affected me much in my job, but I know it's a real problem around the country.

I think at least 10 states have instituted book bans, and most of these coming from political actors, or, you know, advocacy groups that I think are misdirected, and I think that more needs to be done in places where that is happening.

You know, maybe empowering librarians more, supporting, you know, banned book reading clubs, things of that nature to prevent this.

- But there are federal issues and the Federal Department of Education, there's Title 10 money, there's all kinds of dollars for students with special needs, and a whole range of... People say, "Well, public education is administered by the state, based on the constitution and local governments."

I know, but the federal government has a role.

Without being political at all, let me ask you, Nicole, to what extent are you aware of, and do you care about, what goes on with the Federal Department of Education as it relates to your teaching in your school district?

- I believe there's a role for the federal government in education.

I think that to ensure that we have equity across all states.

I think that's the role of the federal government, not so much to dictate what is taught, and- - That's right.

- Leave that up to the states, but to make sure that we're always moving towards a more equitable educational system, I feel like there's a role for the federal government.

- Yeah, so equity and education, not a dirty word at all Carly, right?

- No, no, not at all.

- How would someone be against equity in public education?

- That's a really good question.

Maybe it's just a lack of research to understand how it really trickles down to students to making sure that, you know, a student who has a visual impairment has the tools that they need to be able to read, or a student that has a hearing impairment has the projection system, you know, an amplification system, so they have equal access to what's being taught to them.

So I do think maybe it does just come down to a lack of research to what does this funding actually do.

You know, how does it affect an individual student on an individual basis in an individual classroom, instead of looking at one lump sum and just saying, "It all has to go."

- We have a couple minutes left.

I just wanna get some feedback on this.

To what extent, and we've had many conversations, my colleague Jacqui Tricarico and I have been, we're down in the Atlantic City Convention of the New Jersey Education Association, talking to all kinds of educators and others, and one of the themes that kept coming up is, who will go into teaching public school education, moving forward?

Gary, to what extent are you concerned about the pipeline, the current and future pipeline of future great educators?

- I'm very concerned about the shrinking pipeline.

I did a little work on this last year with JerseyCAN, an advocacy group and- - Great organization.

- Yeah, and in the research that I did for my particular project, I learned that the retention rate in New Jersey has decreased by 44% in the last 12 years.

And if we can't entice young people and current students in high school, college, to go into the profession, you know, what is gonna happen?

There's just not gonna be staffing in schools.

So I think programs that find young people who might be interested in education and foster that interest are definitely needed.

- Carly, before I let everyone go, what would you say to someone considering, got a minute left, to someone considering a future career as a teacher with all the challenges?

The most rewarding part is?

- Most rewarding part is the daily connection, the thank yous, the pride that you see in a student's face when they know that they nailed something, or they know they did a really good job, or just seeing how proud they are of the work that they do, and seeing it payoff for them.

- All right, one to 10, Nicole, one to 10, 10 being tremendous job satisfaction, one being what it is, what's your number?

- 10.

- 10?

You're going with 10?

- I'm going with 10.

- Gary, what are you going with?

- I'll go with nine.

(Steve laughs) Carly, look at the pressure that just got put on you.

What are you going with?

- Yeah, right?

Right.

I'm gonna have to say a 10 for me.

I'm a 10.

I work in a really supportive district, so I have no complaints.

- Gary, you sure you're not gonna be influenced by this?

- I'll stick with my nine.

- Nine's a good number.

To Gary, to Carly, to Nicole, cannot thank you enough.

Who will teach our children, excellence in education.

If these three educators are representative of who is teaching our children, there's reason to be hopeful with challenges all around us.

I wanna thank all of you for joining us.

We appreciate it.

Well done, and thank you for your service every day teaching, molding, shaping, and caring for the countless children in public school education.

Thank you to all of you.

- Thank you.

- Appreciate it.

- Thank you.

- Steve Adubato, more importantly, those are three great educators.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] Think Tank with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by The New Jersey Education Association.

NJ Best, New Jersey’s five-two-nine college savings plan.

RWJBarnabas Health.

Let’s be healthy together.

PSEG Foundation.

The Russell Berrie Foundation.

Wells Fargo.

NJM Insurance Group.

Kean University.

And by PSE&G.

Promotional support provided by NJ.Com.

And by ROI-NJ.

- (Narrator) New Jersey is home to the best public schools in the nation, and that didn't happen by accident.

It's the result of parents, educators and communities working together year after year to give our students a world class education.

No matter the challenge, because parents and educators know that with a shared commitment to our public schools, our children can learn, grow and thrive.

And together, we can keep New Jersey's public schools the best in the nation.