Teachers blast in-person AP language exam
Say some pupils will opt out
New York City foreign language teachers are furious that their star students might miss the all-important Advanced Placement World Language exams because of an “unfair” policy requiring the test to be taken in person.
Roughly 7,000 students across the city are scheduled to take an AP World Language test this spring. The exam is the culmination of a rigorous yearlong class, and can award credits that allow students to skip introductory college courses and save money.
But unlike other Advanced Placement subjects which offer students an online test they can take from home, the World Language exams can only be taken in person — a deal-breaker for many families who are still worried about COVID-19, teachers said.
“I think it’s very unfair to force the students the whole year to learn so many things, and then disregard them,” said one AP Spanish teacher in the Bronx who asked to remain anonymous because she’s not authorized to speak.
“They want to [take the test] but they’re scared,” said a Spanish teacher from Queens about her students.
The College Board, the company that administers AP exams, said it requires World Language exams to be take in person because of concerns that students could cheat at home with translation apps.
“Students in an unproctored, at-home testing environment could use any widely available, free translation app to gain an unfair advantage on the exam,” said College Board spokesman Jerome White in a statement.
City language teachers rejected those concerns, noting a language translation app would do little to help students on the listening and speaking portions of the exam. They pointed out that officials managed to offer an abbreviated, at-home version of the test last year.
The greater danger, teachers said, is that students who diligently prepared for the exam may miss out on the chance to show what they know and earn valuable credits.
“They’ll be very disappointed,” said the Queens AP teacher, who prepared 30 students for the test. “It’s kind of like getting ready for the Olympics, and then the week before you find out you don’t qualify.”
College Board officials said they would offer students who miss the AP exam the opportunity to take another test called the College Level Examination Program, or CLEP, which can also award college credit.
But CLEP generally covers more introductory material and is accepted at far fewer colleges than the AP exam, teachers argued.
Students taking AP exams in other subjects will be offered a digital version of the test, though College Board has barred students from using their city-issued iPads — a move could affect up to 21,000 students.
Foreign language teachers said the in-person rule puts their pupils at a severe disadvantage. The majority of the city’s high school students opted for remote-only classes this year and some even moved outside the country, the teachers said.
“I have one student in Ecuador, one student in Peru, one student in Honduras,” said another AP Spanish teacher in the Bronx who asked for anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“I’m telling students they have to come back to the [U.S.], and that’s just so unfair,” she said.
Spanish teachers said the AP courses, and corresponding exams, have been an important resource for the city’s many “heritage” Spanish speakers — students who grew up hearing the language and want to improve their fluency while earning credits toward college courses.
Even if students do show up for the in-person test, teachers said they wonder how students will handle the speaking portion of the test while wearing masks, and how they’ll adjust to technology they’ve never used before.
“Being in the building maybe for the first time since last March could be completely overwhelming for the students,” said the Queens Spanish teacher.
City Department of Education spokeswoman Sarah Casasnovas echoed those concerns.
“New York City families have been through so much, and we’re disappointed that College Board is not offering digital options for the World Language AP exams,” she said in a statement.
“We’ve been advocating for digital versions of the exams while working with them to provide the safest in-person testing environments possible for the exams this year.”
A woman killed when a fire swept through her East Village apartment was recalled Saturday as an artsy New York original who survived a similar blaze 15 years ago.
Wendy Schonfeld was found dead after flames gutted her apartment early Friday. Fire marshals believe the blaze may have been caused by faulty wiring in an air conditioner.
Even at 80, Schonfeld was a vibrant fixture in her E. Fifth St. building and a priceless mentor to former colleagues at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “She lived and breathed the arts,” said Robert La Force, a neighbor for 29 years.
“Even though she didn’t really go out the last couple of years, she was still a part of everything,” said La Force. “She would stick her head out the window and talk to people.”
Her home was crammed with artifacts from Mexico and elsewhere collected during a lifetime of devotion to the arts.
At the Met, Schonfeld was recalled for guiding younger colleagues to get their noses out of books and helping them communicate the grandeur of art to the general public.
“She had that wonderful New York way of setting things straight, with kindness,” said Joanne Pillsbury, a curator at the Met. “She was a fountain of information about objects and ideas.”
Schonfeld — who got around with help from a walker — survived another blaze in the same apartment more than a decade ago, and suffered permanent health problems from smoke inhalation, friends and neighbors said.
“It was very tragic to hear that the fire got her the second time around,” La Force said.
Her beloved pet cat, which La Force adopted for Schonfeld a couple of years ago, was also still missing Saturday.
Schonfeld, originally from Detroit, moved to New York decades ago and settled in the East Village. She worked as an administrator at New York University, but returned to school to get a graduate degree in art history.
She worked as a researcher and lecturer at the Met and an art history professor at various colleges. She studied arts of Mexico, Africa, South America and Indonesia, and was an invaluable font of information about innumerable fields.
“She was a real mentor for younger students,” said Debra Nagao, 63, an art historian.
It is no exaggeration to call the March issue of Everybody’s New York Caribbean magazine Kamala-powered — driven by articles celebrating and discussing Kamala Harris, the first U.S. vice president with Caribbean roots.
In addition to the Harris coverage, magazine publisher Herman Hall said his articles “Malcolm X and January 6, 2021” and “Blurs the Thin Line Between Caribbean-Americans & African-Americans” have also been popular among readers.
“What we witnessed on Jan. 20 was the manifestation of the contributions of Caribbean people for more than 250 years symbolized through Vice President Kamala Harris,” writes Hall in the Publisher’s Letter titled, “VP Kamala Harris Fulfills the Dreams of Early West Indian Immigrants,” which begins the coverage of Harris — whose parents hail from Jamaica in the Caribbean and India.
Then there’s “Kamala Harris: From Howard to Vice President” by Kanene Ayo Holder, which follows Harris’ time at historically black Howard University.
Writer Wendy Gomez compiled the reactions of selected Caribbean women responding to the question, “How did you feel when you saw Kamala Harris take the oath of office as vice president of the U.S.A.?” It’s answered by VP Records co-founder Pat Chin; Brenda Harris-Ephraim, president of the 369th Veterans Association; Shadel Nyack Compton, managing director of the Belmont Estate in Grenada, and others.
To order the March edition of Everybody’s, in digital PDF format or in print, visit everybodysmag.com/ magazines
Recalling Bunny Wailer
Bunny Wailer, the last surviving member of the pioneering reggae group the Wailers, died last Tuesday in Jamaica, his manager told Associated Press. He was 73.
The three-time Grammy-winner died at Andrews Memorial Hospital in the Jamaican Parish of St Andrew, his manager, Maxine Stowe, told reporters. His cause of death was not immediately clear. Local newspapers had reported he was in and out of the hospital after a stroke nearly a year ago.
Musical comrades, record companies, politicians and fans paid tribute to Wailer.
Born Neville Livingston in a Kingston, Jamaica, slum, he formed the Wailers musical group in 1963 with childhood friend Bob Marley and Peter Tosh.
As their international fame grew, the trio popularized Jamaica’s reggae music and Rastafarian religious movement around the globe. The original Wailers broke up in 1974. Afterward, Wailer, as a solo act, won his Grammys.
Chisholm conference
Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn is marking Women’s History Month in March by hosting the ninth annual “Shirley Chisholm Conference: Gender, Activism, and Social Justice” on Wednesday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
The event is being presented by the Caribbean Research Center of Medgar Evers College.
“In honoring her legacy, the Shirley Chisholm Conference recognizes and celebrates her by paying tribute to women who have labored unstintingly for the progress of their communities without regard for race, gender, age or national origin,” said the organizers.
Honorees at the conference include former City Councilwoman Una Clarke; Zinga Fraser, assistant professor in the Africana studies department of Brooklyn College and director of the college’s Shirley Chisholm Project, and Earl Phillips, secretary treasurer of Transport Workers Union Local 100.
Admission is free, but registration is required. Participants will receive information on how to join the meeting after registering. To register, visit bit.ly/ ShirleyChisholmconference2021
For information, send email to Michael Flanigan at CRC@mec. cuny.edu.
Jersey City pioneer dies
Funeral services for Dorothy Allen-Bellinger — a pioneering member of the Jersey City Police Department who died in a twoalarm fire Feb. 18 — will be held Sunday at Jackson Funeral home in Jersey City.
The services can be seen via Zoom, with meeting ID 403-5572134 and password 2W1968.
Allen-Bellinger was one of the first Black women on Jersey City’s police force.
Cheryl D.B. Murphy, president of the Jersey City West Indian
Carnival Association, which organizes the annual Jersey City Caribbean-American Carnival, is one of Allen-Bellinger’s children.
Virtual Fine Art show
The Caribbean Fine Art Fair is returning — virtually — Wednesday through March 24, featuring the works of more than 70 artists from the Caribbean and the diaspora.
Artists from Barbados, the Bahamas, Dominica, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago and the U.S. Virgin Islands and other locations will appear in the show, which will be displayed virtually for the “first time ever” and witnessed globally.
“This year, patrons will have full online access to artwork in a range of media,” said Anderson Pilgrim, executive director of the 11th annual CaFA Fair. “We will engage everyone with video content and enhance the exhibitions with virtual panels and presentations.”
The virtual Caribbean Fine Art Fair can be seen online — free of charge — at cafafair.com and caribbean.global. For information, send email to info@cafafair.com.
CaFA Fair 2021 closes March 24 with a live event.
During the summer before the pandemic, photographer Shirley Mitchell noticed a tall, leafless tree across the street from her Long Island City home that stood out against the vibrant green foliage of its neighboring shrubs.
The stark contrast made Mitchell pause and pull out her camera. The 71-year-old had recently enrolled in photography classes at the Queensbridge Houses that had steered her toward seeing the world through the eye of her lens.
She took several frames of the dying tree that summer day in 2019, and she continued to capture the plant when coronavirus hit New York all the way through February, when its trunk was eventually chopped down to a lifeless stump.
“I would go look at it about every week, and I’d photograph it if something changed,” said Mitchell, who also took images of when workers sawed off its branches and squirrels danced around the scattered limbs.
“Last month they finally cut the whole thing down,” she said. “But I’m still following it, I still want to see if they pull the roots out. I’m still following the tree.
“It makes me sad to see it go, but I feel good because through the photographs the tree will be remembered even though it’s not there anymore.”
Mitchell is one of 150 women who joined the F-Stop Project in 2019 put on by the Josephine Herrick Project for NYCHA residents — and one of eight women who continued to meet virtually throughout the pandemic to share their work.
She and the other women will be featured in the short film, “The Way I See Now,” premiering Sunday at the Queens Theatre.
“The F-Stop Project aimed not only to engage residents in dialogue, but to challenge mainstream notions about public housing and give residents the tools and platforms to frame the narrative about their community,” said Miriam Leuchter, executive director at the Josephine Herrick Project. “The images these women took are personal and poignant and display their love of community.”
Mitchell first took to the craft as a kid, when she watched how her father, John H. Jacobs, photographed them as children in Queensbridge.
But it wasn’t until she started to take the weekly, free classes that Mitchell began to see the artistic quality in everyday objects.
“One of our teachers had talked to us about vegetables, and she showed us this amazing picture of heirloom tomatoes,” she said. “So the next time I went to the grocery store, I was looking at the heirloom tomatoes and I found the ones that looked the most interesting.
“Instead of worrying about how they tasted, I was going by whether they looked like a sculpture or not, and I wondered, ’How will that look when I cut it? How will it look in this light or that light?”
For Mitchell, “The Way I See Now” will not only be about her and her friends who bonded over their shared love of photography, but a way to preserve the memories of the people they captured.
“Years from now, maybe when we’re not here anymore, people will still know us through this film,” she said. “And people in the area can feel proud that nobody thought their neighborhood and their lives and their faces weren’t worthy of saving and sharing.”