A long-delayed tent revival for Bridgeport educators

Every day, the 20,000 or so youngsters of the Bridgeport public school system leave their homes, as varied as they can be, and head off into the hands of the 1,300 teachers who will play oversized roles in the course of their lives.

So routine is the daily drill that it can just become part of the wallpaper: the buses loading backpack-laden kids in the morning and disgorging them in the afternoon.

But it is not routine. Lives are being shaped.

Bridgeport’s public school system doesn’t always do a very good job of telling its positive stories.

Just for instance, many years while still on the job, I tried to get the names of the public high school valedictorians and salutatorians. The purpose was to tell their stories. It was an exercise in tenacity. When the exercise succeeded, the stories were great.

Bridgeport kids off to Amherst, Harvard, Dartmouth, Fairfield University and so on bucked the narrative.

But not every year was it possible to flail through the webs of bureaucracy, wait for the return calls. In the vacuum, casual suburban — and city — readers were left more acquainted with the grim news about teenagers that often comes out of a city like Bridgeport.

The other day at the Trumbull Marriott, teachers, administrators and their fans got together for a spirited session of appreciation known as the Inspiration Awards, put together by the Fairfield County’s Community

Foundation, the Bridgeport Public Education Fund and other groups that toil behind the scenes to level the ground just a bit for those Bridgeport schoolkids and the adults who watch out for them.

Among many presentations given were the Theodore and Margaret Beard Excellence in Teaching Awards. The award honors Bridgeport public school teachers who are recognized for the instructional skills and passion for inspiring students. Started in 2002 by the Beard family, the award includes a $20,000 gift payable over three years, so as to encourage these exemplary educators to stay in the district at least that long.

A lot of pent-up energy was expended in the room on Wednesday. Because of the pandemic, there had been no Inspiration Awards ceremony last year. So, when the winners of the 2021 and 2022 Beard Awards were announced, their pockets of fans were ready.

Alexandra Lage, a sixth-grade teacher at Waltersville School, and an 11-year veteran of the system, and Nicole Lynk, a sixthgrade teacher at Wilbur Cross School and a seven-year veteran of the system, were the 2021 winners. for space and clarity.

Whoops, hoots, hollers, boo-yahs, wolf howls and various other tent-revival exultations exploded with the announcement of each name.

Likewise was the reception for 2022 winners Cynthia Crudale, a science teacher at the Fairchild Wheeler Inter-district Magnet School, an eight-year veteran, and Careen Derise, a social studies teacher at the Inter-district Discovery Magnet School, also an eight-year veteran.

Winners of the George Bellinger Leadership Awards for principals were Eric Graf, the principal at Central High School, and Brett Gustafson, principal at the James J. Curiale School, for, respectively, 2021 and 2022.

It’s also worth noting that all of the award recipients — too numerous to list here — also had to deal with the sudden, impromptu development of “remote learning” techniques required by the scourge of COVID-19 in early 2020.

There was, as Gustafson explained to me in an interview in early 2020, no “pandemic playbook” for principals, teachers and administrators to draw from when the crisis erupted. Just one more hurdle for Bridgeport teachers to face, hike their britches up, and get over.

Not to mention, as was noted by Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim, many of Bridgeport’s kids are dealing with “every imaginable kind of issue at home.”

And as to diversity, Ganim also noted that 57 languages are spoken in the school system.

U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, the 55-year-old

Democrat who represents Connecticut’s 4th Congressional District, carved out some time to go to the ceremony.

Himes called teachers “underappreciated and underpaid in even the best of times.” And these are not those.

It’s a grim reality, the congressman, said that as a society we will be dealing with kids who have now fallen behind, the collateral damage of those very “remote learning” techniques quickly adapted at the outset of the pandemic.

One of the first lines of defense are the public school teachers of whom we ask and expect so much. Their influence on these kids is immeasurable and not always immediately visible. The good ones create an air of expectation.

Himes told a story of himself as a kid in grammar school, being a bit of wise guy when a teacher asked the class if someone could give an example of what a “pen name” is.

“‘Bic,’ I shouted, and everyone laughed,” the congressman recalled.

After class, the teacher took young Mr. Himes aside.

The ‘Bic’ line was sort of funny, the teacher conceded.

“’But,” Himes recalled him saying, “I expect better from you.”

That certainly doesn’t explain the life’s accomplishments that brought Mr. Himes to Washington, but … he remembered it.

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