- We're now joined by Edwin Reyes, who's the principal of a terrific school in the city of Newark, a Technology High School, a 2023 Blue Ribbon School Award winner.

Good to see you, Principal Reyes.

- Good to be here, Steve.

Thanks for having me.

- You gotta let everyone know why the Blue Ribbon Award is so significant.

- Oh, I call it almost the equivalent of an Emmy or those types of awards.

It is probably the pinnacle for any school, and I do say school, 'cause it's not an award that's won by one person.

It's extremely, extremely special.

And I'm extremely grateful to the hard work and dedication of our entire school community, our teachers, our parents, and obviously, more importantly, our wonderful students.

- Well said, we're gonna put up a graphic for our series, "Who Will Teach Our Children".

As you talk about your teachers, what makes the teaching slash learning experience at Technology High so special, please.

- Yeah, so, it really is simple, right?

People kind of overcomplicate this.

Our motto is, if you take care of a student's social and emotional wellbeing first, then everything else just falls into place.

It is truly a student centered, student first type of school, where we make sure that we provide everything that students need in order to be successful, but beyond that, we take care of them and we make them our own.

And so my agreement with parents when they come to our school is that when you drop them off at the doorstep, they become my child.

And thus, that's the way we treat them.

And we ensure that all our staff member, everyone who works here, understands that philosophy.

- So you've actually said our teachers become their parents, and maybe there are people who may bristle at that.

What do you mean you're not their parent?

I'm their parent.

But tell folks what that really means.

- Yeah, so my parents don't bristle at it at all.

They know that the students are being sent to a community of people who just care about them left and right.

We have great partnerships with our parents.

What it means is that we are going to provide the same love, attention, and honestly, education, that we would for our very own children.

And that partnerships works really well with our parents.

They know that they're sending their child to a school, where their child becomes the center of everything that we do, and they're very grateful for that.

- Principal Reyes, let me ask you this.

The learning loss, the impact of COVID, vis-a-vis learning loss.

First, what have our students lost in terms of their learning?

And then what have they lost in your view from a social and emotional perspective, please.

- I mean, they've lost a lot.

I think we're starting to come around now.

I think we're starting to leave COVID behind.

I try not to even use the word around here, because I think it really is time for us to move on.

However, it has impacted our students, you know, socially and emotionally.

We have more students coming with problems to the school, more meetings with social workers and with guidance counselors regarding just their emotional state.

Same thing goes for teacher, right?

So teachers are human beings, too.

And a lot of people don't believe that, but us in education, you know, we have emotional instability sometime.

And I think COVID did a lot to do that.

However, I do see it, right?

I do see us getting over the hump.

I think our school is almost to the point where we were prior to COVID, and I think, and I hope that that's what's gonna start to happen across this entire country.

- You know, there've been a lot of reports about this, Mr. Reyes, that make it clear that there's a teaching or teacher shortage, and the city of Newark, it's no different.

In fact, it may be more, it may be worse, because the needs of our students are so great in our inner cities.

Are you seeing more teachers leave the profession?

And if so, what the heck are we doing to keep the teacher pipeline as healthy as it needs to be?

Please share with us your thoughts.

- Sure, and that's probably one of the biggest impacts of COVID.

You know, a lot of teachers spent a lot of time at home behind the camera, and they understood that they could actually make a living working from home, or because there's a shortage of teachers, there's been this competition between districts for hiring teachers away from other districts, which kind of becomes a problem.

I think that we have to make teaching appealing again to young kids that are sitting in a college classroom at this particular time.

And, you know, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, right?

The way we do that is by making sure that they are supported, but more importantly, that they're paid like the professionals that they are, right?

So increasing pay for teachers is something that I advocate for.

Our district has done a good job of raising the starting salary.

When our superintendent found out that we were having these shortages, he actually raised the teacher salary for a starting teacher and gave out bonuses, to especially to teachers in math and science, which are hard to fill subjects.

But again, it's giving them the support that they need when they come out, kind of making it an appealing job as opposed to going somewhere else.

- Let me share this in the time we have left, that the Newark Public Schools have been a long time partner of ours for a series.

We had over 20 years, our Stand & Deliver Program, that Principal Reyes knows well, where we taught our mentors and teachers, our workshop leaders would teach and coach public communication skills, leadership skills.

So let me disclose that, and also, my final question to you is you're a big advocate of student leadership and students making mistakes to learn, why?

- It's the only way to learn, right?

So we've instituted some policies here in the school that allow students to make mistakes.

So for example, we were one of the first schools to allow students to retake an exam, right?

So what we said was, "It's okay for you to make a mistake, but then what do you do afterwards?"

And if we just give them a grade and let them go, then they don't come back and they don't wanna learn.

Student leadership is huge, right?

So this is where students get the opportunity to learn the skills that they need to become effective leaders, to communicate with other people, and to work effectively with people who they may not necessarily agree with all the time.

- That's Edwin Reyes, who's the principal of a terrific Blue Ribbon School award winner, Technology High School in Newark.

Thank you, Principal Reyes, we appreciate it.

- Thanks again, Steve, I appreciate you.

- You got it, thanks so much for watching, and we'll see you next time.

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

Celebrating 30 years in public broadcasting.

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And by The Adler Aphasia Center.

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And by ROI-NJ.

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