Kimberly Schiller's Exciting Times
These are exciting days for Kimberly Schiller. She was recently engaged and is leading a very busy life that is both personally and professionally fulfilling.
This marks Ms. Schiller's sixth year working as an English teacher at J. Taylor Finley Middle School. She is the faculty advisor for the Finley First Edition, the school's student-newspaper and served as a student-mentor for four years.
"My parents wanted me to find a career that I would wake up looking forward to each day and I do that, every day," Ms. Schiller said. "I love school. I love bringing new stories and ideas into my classroom, then discussing them with my students. It's the most rewarding thing to see a student really try in class by speaking up, finding their voice, explaining and supporting their thoughts and opinions, and making those strong connections between their experiences and the literature we read."
Ms. Schiller holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in English and secondary education, respectively, from Adelphi University. It really isn't surprising that she finds herself in a classroom, standing in front of a group of teenagers.
Destiny was Teaching
"I always knew I wanted to be a teacher," Ms. Schiller said. "My mom always jokes about how I used to make my little brother play 'school' with me, even though he didn't want to. I would assign him reading, questions, etc."
Prior to coming to Finley, Ms. Schiller was a sixth grade English teacher at NEST+m (New Explorations in Science, Technology and Math), a magnet school for the gifted and talented on the Lower East Side in Manhattan. She completed a year-long internship at Grand Avenue Middle School in Bellmore.
"It was never a question as to what I wanted to do, just what subject I wanted to teach," she said. "At first, I wanted to be an art teacher, but after working six years at the Levittown Public Library and taking an amazing class on women's writers, I knew that I wanted to teach literature and writing more than anything."
The teacher has found a home at Finley. She is well-liked by her colleagues as well as the school's nearly 700 students. "I try my best to always be here for my students," she said. "I want to guide them and listen to them, all the while helping to prepare them for the challenges that they will face in high school and college."
"Ms. Schiller never tires in her quest to find engaging, creative, and 'out-of-the-box' ideas to bring to her students in order to stir their passion for literature and its connection to their lives," said Joseph Leavy, district director of humanities. "The list of her achievements is long, but I would be remiss not to highlight her work in the area of unit design focused on labor and immigrant history. She not only presented her work this summer in a colloquium at Adelphi University on the topic, but also made unique links in the classroom between English Language Arts standards and the study of history and social studies, mindful that connecting literature can bring experiences of our past alive to students."
One of the teacher's initiatives has been establishing book clubs with her students and collaborating with the district's arts in education program to bring literature to life.
"Really Found a Voice"
Ms. Schiller said that over the past few years she has "really found a voice" by studying and teaching about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that resulted in the deaths of 146 garment workers and led to safety and generally improved industrial working conditions.
Ms. Schiller has been to the site of the fire in Manhattan many times and has participated in observances of the tragedy. "It's such a passion of mine and has been since my second year of college," she said. "Now I have been bringing that to my students, who seem to find it horrifying and fascinating at the same time. Even though the tragedy took place almost 100 years ago, it's relatable and is a tragedy that needs to be remembered and [the issues] still fought for."
Last year, Ms. Schiller organized a visit to Finley by former state Senator Serphin Malteste and his brother Vincent Maltese, who are both involved in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire remembrance movement. The pair came to the school to speak with students about the Maltese's connection to the tragic fire.
The energetic teacher has helped coordinate the Lower East Side Tenement Museum's annual visit to Finley Middle School. "Their interactive presentation allows our students to feel what it was like to be a newcomer to this country and compare and contrast what it feels like to be a new immigrant today," Ms. Schiller said.
This past summer the Finley teacher was given an opportunity to lead a breakout session at the Education and Labor Collaborative's annual forum on the Triangle Shirtwaist fire at Adelphi University's Soho campus.
"I was able to meet and speak with people from across the country that also teach, mainly at the college level, about the fire, unions and labor injustices," Ms. Schiller said. "It was an amazing and inspiring experience."