14 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • JANUARY 2022
COVER FEATURE
THE EDUCATORS: LONG ISLAND
BY BRIANA BONFIGLIO AND
TIMOTHY BOLGER
From teaching children remotely
during earlier waves of the coronavirus
pandemic to refereeing passionate debates
over whether to require children
to wear masks or get the Covid-19 vaccine,
educators have played a prominent
role in the war on the virus.
And between the sometimes boisterous
school board meetings and parent
teacher conferences, local educators
have been performing a herculean task
of keeping students from falling behind
academically despite kids having been
thrown off track.
Local schools are brimming with anecdotes
of teachers going above and
beyond to help students overcome
these challenges, which is why the Long
Island Press has deemed educators our
People of The Year. What follows are
just some of their stories.
Jennifer Wolfe, a social studies teacher
at Oceanside High School, who was
the 2021 New York State Teacher of the
Year, spent the year traveling to events
honoring the nation’s top teachers and
discussing the obstacles educators
are facing in the pandemic. For Wolfe,
who has taught at the high school for
25 years, the biggest challenge has
been remaining “fi lled with hope and
energy” during a time when students
are struggling with mental health more
than ever.
“My students are incredibly traumatized,
really,” she says. “Teachers are
the fi rst adults they see in the building
whom many of them confi de in and
look to for support and guidance and
joy. So you›ve gotta stay positive and
present for them while continuing to do
lesson plans and grading and talking to
parents. All the other jobs of teachers
haven›t gone away, they›ve just become
harder. It›s become a much more complicated
year.”
Wolfe carves out time in class for students
to relax, talk among themselves,
and engage in breathing exercises, she
says, because she knows that their social
and emotional well-being impacts their
learning. She notes that the pandemic
has brought to light issues in education
that needed addressing, while making
students and families more aware of
mental health resources.
The pandemic also gave her new technological
tools to provide more eff ective,
individualized instruction to students,
she says, recalling the early days of the
pandemic when she and fellow teachers
banded together on late-night Zoom
calls, at a time when they all felt like
fi rst-year teachers discovering how to
teach remotely.
“Communities have realized that schools
are so essential to everyone›s well-being,
and that it is really gratifying,” Wolfe
says. “We learned about the power of
teacher-driven decision making in
schools, and I›ve never seen us come
together this purposefully around
reworking our profession.”
Yvette Adams-Estes, a fifth-grade
teacher at Rhodes Academy in Hempstead,
began teaching in a brand-new
school building that just opened this
year, which she says has made a huge
impact on students’ learning. She previously
taught at the Jackson Annex
School, where she says there were no
art rooms nor a gymnasium for the kids.
“Being in a modernized school is wonderful;
we have everything we need,”
Estes says. “I can›t say enough about
what the kids have now that they did not
have at Jackson Annex. They deserve it
aft er what they›ve been through, and
I’m happy for them.”
When the pandemic suddenly closed
schools in 2020, the teacher of 23 years
– in New York City public schools before
she came to Hempstead – personally
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