San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
East Side teacher raises the bar
He brings high standards, but is keenly aware of challenges Highlands High students face
On a recent summer day, Noah Lipman sat in his classroom at Highlands High School, waiting to see if a student or two might show up for the voluntary summer writing class he was scheduled to teach.
No one did. But judging by the decor on the walls, students might wish that they had.
Hanging on the back wall were three large posters, each with a congratulatory message applauding the social studies teacher for campus, district and regional recognitions he earned the previous school year. And pinned on bulletin boards around the room were dozens, if not hundreds, of photos of Lipman grinning with recently graduated students.
In most of the photos, Lipman is in a custom-made suit, the shirt pocket monogrammed with his initials. He wears the same outfit on this summer day — he has worn it every single day through 17 years of teaching.
“I come to education a little differently than most people,” he says when asked how he ended up teaching high school on San Antonio’s East Side.
From the front of the classroom, Lipman’s voice resonates with a gruff New York accent, which gives the impression that he just walked off the set of “The Wolf of Wall
Street.”
Lipman, 62, landed in the Alamo City after more than 10 years teaching high school and college in Long Branch, N.J., which followed a decades-long career as a criminal defense lawyer in lower Manhattan.
“Education is professional, just like practicing law,” he says. “I won’t try cases in court without a suit and tie on; I’m not walking into my classroom without a suit and tie on. That sets a tone, it really does.”
Lipman has made a reputation as the type of teacher who doesn’t mess around, yet students gravitate toward him. He sets high standards but is keenly aware of the challenges many of them face, and he goes out of his way to make sure they know those hardships don’t define them.
“He’s tough as nails with his expectations of them,” said Principal Penny Pruitt. “But he’s funny, he’s nice and he’s just a good person. It doesn’t get any better than that, right?”
Those qualities earned him a place in “SA Lights,” an Express-News
initiative that for 12 weeks will honor people who are making a difference in education, housing, food security and economic innovation.
Lipman teaches Advanced Placement U.S. History, AP U.S. Government and Politics and AP macroeconomics, as well as regular government and economics classes. Over the years, he’s become a champion for the College Board, the national nonprofit that runs the AP model, spending much of his time outside of school consulting for it and training educators around the country.
“I’ve become, basically, somebody who’s devoted to what College Board does, and that is closing the achievement gap in America, or at least attempting to,” Lipman said. “We’ve made some progress, but there’s a lot of progress left to be made.”
College Board leaders can be credited with Lipman’s arrival in San Antonio. They saw the way he had turned around his New Jersey school’s AP program and challenged him to do the same at Highlands, where almost no student in the previous 10 years had passed the AP exam for any of the subjects he teaches, Lipman said.
Now Highlands, where about 90 percent of students are economically disadvantaged, has the highest AP scores in the San Antonio Independent School District for all three of his subjects, Pruitt said. Lipman also started Highlands’ mock trial team, which won regionals and placed 17th in the state last year.
One member of that team, Johnathan Rodriguez, a recent
graduate, said Lipman “was a lot different than many of my other teachers, especially because at Highlands the culture is very different.”
“He really pushed us,” Rodriguez, 18, said. “It’s kind of this attitude of not wanting to settle for less.”
Lipman long ago decided to only teach in high schools where a majority of students are economically disadvantaged. It’s a way to support students who may need more help and guidance, but Lipman said he makes it clear to them that he’s not going to go easy.
“I enjoy working with students who can achieve a potential most people don’t think they can have. But it requires work,” Lipman said. “I keep (expectations) the same and that means that some students will fail. That is unfortunate, but that is life, and I’d rather you fail now and succeed later than pass now and fail in life.”
The drive to help students who may have a harder time excelling in school came from his own experience.
Growing up in a singleparent household in New York City public housing was tough, Lipman said. He attended a majority-minority trade school and later worked his way through college and part of law school, where he had teachers and professors who helped him land scholarships and find his way.
Today, Lipman pays it forward. His students say he helps them find scholarships and apply to college, gives them bits of legal advice if they or a relative need it, and makes himself available at all times.
After working out at 5 a.m.
every day, the former competitive triathlete gets to school around 6:30 a.m. and stays in his classroom until about 7 p.m., his door open to anyone who wants extra help, or just to chat.
When he’s not traveling, hiking or seeing a show at the Majestic Theatre, Lipman will host Saturday sessions, where he greets students with extra credit opportunities and breakfast tacos — a treat he first discovered when he moved to San Antonio, he said.
“If you put in the work, I will take care of you, and that’s basically my attitude towards education,” Lipman said.
Daniel Ochoa, 17, took AP classes with Lipman and finished in the top 10 of his senior class. But toward the end of the school year, he struggled to maintain his high grades while working to support his family, and talked to Lipman about it.
Knowing that Ochoa had a penchant for music, Lipman proposed a creative project to bump his grade. Ochoa would have to write, produce and record 15 rap songs, each one about a different landmark Supreme Court case that students had to understand as part of the AP Government and Politics curriculum.
Ochoa spent five days working on the project. The songs were so good, Lipman said, that he played a couple of them for a group of teachers he was training in North Carolina a few weeks later as an example of how students might engage with the course content in a more exciting way than just cramming from a textbook and writing an essay.
“It felt like I was really being supported by somebody,” said
Ochoa, who received a scholarship to study civil engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Over here, all the other teachers are like, ‘You’re a good student, we don’t have to worry about you,’ but then Mr. Lipman, he’s the one who’s actually there supporting me and like, ‘Hey, why did your grade slip by one point?’ ” Ochoa added. “It can be annoying, but at the same time, I know he’s just trying to make me do my best.”
Lipman has also been praised by students for his willingness to lead conversations in the classroom about important and sometimes controversial topics. He has made time in class for discussions about current events, finance, abortion, immigration and health care, said Dayanh Rubio, 18, a recent graduate.
“I thought that was really impressive, especially since we’re a Title I school and social issues are a lot more prominent,” Rubio said, referring to a federal law that defines poverty thresholds for school funding programs. “It was nice that this white guy from New York is aware of these social issues, because most people his age probably wouldn’t be.”
Many teachers might avoid those conversations for fear of offending students or others, she said, but Lipman created an environment where students felt comfortable asking uncomfortable questions.
“Obviously, he didn’t force you to choose a side; he just wanted you to know that whatever side you do eventually choose, you have to know enough to back it up,” Rubio said.
Before his new graduates start college or work this summer, Lipman will meet with them one final time to celebrate their passing scores on the AP exams. They’ll choose a local restaurant and, per Lipman’s longstanding policy, dinner rates will be a meritocracy:
Those who got a 3 out of 5 on their exam will bring $10 and Lipman will cover the rest. Students who got a 4 must bring $5 and those who earned a 5 will get a free meal.
It’s consistent with the style that makes Lipman so effective.
“A kid picks up real quick whether you’re fake or not,” Lipman said. “Kids are very bright when it comes to that and I try to be as real as possible.”