Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Delivers Remarks at DOE Big Apple Teacher Recognition Awards

June 15, 2015

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Thank you so much, Carmen. Well, my good friends, I have such admiration for what you do. And I am at one of those moments in life where I’m reflecting a lot because on Friday, I am turning a page – a chapter is ending – I’m going transition when my son Dante walks on the stage for graduation 

[Applause]

And it’s impossible to have your youngest child go to their high school graduation and not think about the teachers who made so much possible. And if you spend a little time with Dante and Chiara, you will see two young people who are thinking all the time, who are learning about the world around them, who feel like they are actors in the drama, like what they think, what they do matters. And that urgency and that energy – I know so much of it came from the teachers – the teachers in their lives at PS 372, at MS 51, at the Beacon School, at Brooklyn Tech, who gave them that inspiration and that energy and that belief that learning would take them to great places.  

That is why it is my deep honor to be in your presence.  I have seen that with my own children. I’ve seen that with so many teachers, for so many children. And there is no more noble profession.  And there is no more noble leader for a noble profession than our Chancellor Carmen Fariña 

[Applause]

I want to thank her, because I think you would agree with me she is a teacher’s teacher. She has been there and back.

[Laughter] 

And I appreciate deeply – I see the reverence that so many teachers hold her in because she’s the real thing.  And I would like to editorialize, and I bet Michael Mulgrew is gonna be on exactly the same page with me that we waited quite a while in this city for that crazy, wacky notion of a chancellor who was actually an educator – and it is finally here, and it was worth it. 

[Applause]

And I’m going to talk about Michael and our work together, our partnership in a moment. I want to thank him. But I also want to thank – we have a special guest from the Office of Emergency Management. I like – Joe Esposito, I like it when you move out of your normal subject matter. Joe Esposito, commissioner of emergency management, thank you for joining us today.

[Applause]

So the third annual Big Apple Awards – we will honor tonight twelve teachers from all over the city who have devoted their lives to our children, and have done it with tremendous distinction, and have shown us just how much impact this profession can have. They have had that effect on children you could only describe as magical because it’s so powerful, and so lasting, and it is so wonderful to celebrate them. Now Carmen said education has been one of my priorities. I would argue it has been my top priority – and I’m proud of that fact.  What we did with pre-k was a labor of love for all of us, and we are so excited about September when are literally will have a seat for every child in this city – full-day pre-k for every single child in this city.

[Applause]

We’re excited that we were able to create the possibility – also starting this September, it will finally happen – every, any and every middle school child who wants and after school seat for free will have it guaranteed to them. 

[Applause]

I’m excited – Carmen’s excited – no one is more excited than Michael about the PROSE schools, which are so extraordinary. Educators deciding what will work in their school – how’s that for an idea whose time has come?

[Applause]

Many people like to talk about reform – this is the real thing. Respecting educators, and letting them lead the way, and letting them make their work the best it can be – that is truly exciting. And I am particularly – particularly invested in our 94 renewal schools because we, my friends – and some of you here tonight teach in those schools. Some – I think even some of our awardees teach in those schools. And I want to tell you, I want to thank, and commend, and uplift, and support anyone and everyone who is part of the mission to turn those schools around. They were ignored for too long, and now the cavalry is coming and we’re going to turn these schools around and make them good again.

[Applause]

We did these things because we all worked together. That very simple concept of cooperation and shared vision, which wasn’t there in the past – it’s here now. But we also were able to do all these things very quickly because of a simple concept called mayoral control of education – because the buck stops here. And I know it, and the people know it, and we were able to do things fast because there was actual accountability. 

Now, my friends, you know what it takes to educate children. I hope and I pray that our public servants in Albany are thinking clearly about what we have been doing just in these last 18 months, how this schools system is moving under a great leader, how this is what it was meant to be, and they need to have our back by renewing mayoral control of education so we can keep going. 

[Applause]

Now, let us turn to the awardees. And I want to remind you – I think I’m preaching to the converted, but these people are not just great teachers because their kids got good test scores. There is so much more than that.

[Applause]

And slowly but surely, my friends, we are showing this country that there’s something better than test scores. That it’s the work of teachers, there’s actual learning, there’s multiple measures, there’s such a better way to go.

[Applause]

But great teachers help the whole child – not just the academic child, the social development of the child, the confidence of the child, the social consciousness of the child. A great teacher moves mountains and turns these young people into ultimately great adults and great citizens. So, you’re going to hear in a moment from Marie-Jouvelle of the DOE who will speak about the awardees. So you’ll hear about each of them – the folks who will win these Big Apple Awards. But I will give you a brief taste of an apple. Let me tell you about Rick Ouimet –

[Cheer]

There’s Rick’s cheering section. Rick teaches English to seniors at Millennium Art Academy in the South Bronx. Now this is beautiful – he read a book that was very influential to so many people. He read the book Savage Inequalities, written years ago about what was wrong in our education system, about the gap between the rich and the poor, who had opportunity, who didn’t. You could read that book and turn away, or you could read that book and go straight to the front to make a difference. Well, he went straight to the front and he decided he needed to teach in New York City public schools. He says about his work, “It doesn’t even feel like a job half the time,” because he enjoys it so much, because it means so much to him. And he encourages his students to look for poetry, and meaning, and ideas in everyday life. Now here’s an important example – he taught his students the rhetorical device, the chiasmus. Now, if I knew what a chiasmus was this would be going a lot better – but it sounds great. And the students fell in love with the notion of seeing when there was a chiasmus, and what it meant, and how to interpret it. And they would come up to him every day – and run up to him and tell him how many chiasmuses they heard each day. That reminds me of one of Carmen and [inaudible] favorite stories from pre-k – the day we were at a pre-k classroom and we’re reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar. At the end of the reading, the least interested, least involved student raised his hand just out of nowhere [inaudible] and I called on him, and he looked at me very purposefully, and he said, metamorphosis. 

[Laughter]

I was like – that is one advanced pre-k student, let me tell you. So, this is a story of so many teachers who gave up themselves and showed kids just how far they could go. Before I turn it over to Marie-Jouvelle, I would like to quote from the writer William Arthur Ward. He said, “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”  There are many great teachers. We are honoring some tonight, but there are many great teachers.

[Applause]

And we are blessed to have so many people in this room tonight to devote themselves to over 1.1 million children. And thank you for al you do for this city. It means so much to all of us.

[Applause]

Now, I want to introduce to you to a humble but lovable CTE teacher. 

Michael Mulgrew: I was an English teacher. 

Mayor: Okay, CTE school –

[Laughter]

Michael Mulgrew – it was Grady, right? Michael Mulgrew used to teach at Grady. If you spend sometime with Michael Mulgrew, he will inevitably start telling you the stories of the students he taught, and what they meant to him, and how he tried to reach them, and how he tried to inspire them, and what they taught him. And I have been blessed to hear those stories, and that is one of the reasons I know how extraordinarily committed he his to making these schools better for every young person – the president of the UFT, Michael Mulgrew.