Sure it’s easy to complain about the problems facing our schools.

More students are entering the system not knowing how to speak English. Pressures are mounting to perform well on state tests. Too few students are graduating from high school. Spending is tight.

But what’s it like to see these challenges through the eyes of a new teacher and actually be expected to do something about them?

Over the course of the school year, four new teachers have agreed to open up their classrooms to The Journal News for a personal look at how the next generation of educators is working to turn obstacles into opportunities.

It all begins today with an exploration of four very different classrooms on the first day of school.

(Please stay tuned for videos still to come! And refresh the page if a photo slideshow does not load below.) 

Rina Esquivel: Port Chester, kindergarten

PORT CHESTER — Rina Esquivel is prepared for the crying parents and hyperactive children, everything that comes with her first day on the job as a kindergarten teacher.

But watching 26 tikes buzz around the room at Park Avenue Elementary School, the weight of the responsibility is sinking in anew.

The task is hers to teach these children to read, write, add and, in some cases, to speak English. And Esquivel, 24, couldn’t be happier.

“I’m just so excited,” Esquivel, who is Hispanic and fluent in Spanish, said as her students sang with a music instructor. “I’m ready and willing to give all my time. I’m not looking at the clock. I want to help them learn.”

Esquivel, who previously worked as a substitute teacher, is the only bilingual kindergarten teacher of three in the school. Her hire lays the foundation for plans to begin a dual language program next school year, said principal Rosa Taylor.

This year, lessons will be taught in Spanish during the morning and English in the afternoon. Next year, if a dual-language grant is approved, classes will be taught in both English and Spanish on alternating days with a goal to make all students bilingual by the fifth grade.

The type of curriculum is essential in the school where nearly a third of students are English langage learners, Taylor said.

“Children have to learn to read, and sounds and phonemic awareness in their native language to transfer it to their second language,” Taylor said. “Rina demonstrated that she had the skills as a teacher. Her interaction with students was excellent.”

On this day, Esquivel reads to the children and has them introduce themselves to each other. Later, as Spanish lullabies play in the background, students sit in tiny chairs at bean-shaped desks coloring in worksheets before beginning a half-hour sing-along.

“You have to keep them busy,” Esquivel said.

A native of Port Chester, Esquivel, who also was an English language learner in school, knows the challenges facing many of the students. She graduated from the local high school and still lives in the village. At Manhattanville College in Purchase, she majored in early childhood education and Spanish.

“I can help them build a foundation,” said Esquivel, who is preparing to enter graduate school to further her study of bilingual education. “They explore things and discover things. This is great, seeing them in their early stage of learning.”

Marguerita Street: Roosevelt High School, algebra

YONKERS — Marguerita Street could have been allocating millions of dollars worth of funding for NASA, had she taken a job offered to her while still in college.

Instead, she’s allocating a slew of mathematical know-how to students at Roosevelt High School in Yonkers.

“I didn’t want my career to be about salary, I wanted it to be about purpose,” said Street, who just joined the district and is teaching ninth-grade algebra. “Being able to make a difference in someone’s life is priceless.”

While she’s had previous teaching experience in New York City schools, joining the Yonkers school district this year has been an opportunity to return to her roots and give back to the community that she calls home.

The 25-year-old teacher is herself a Yonkers graduate, finishing as the salutatorian of the city’s Lincoln High School in 2001.

On her first day of class this week, Street started with a lesson she knew would get her students’ attention: How rap star Jay Z uses math in his everyday life, from calculating how many millions of albums he’s sold to managing the money that he makes.

“You have to be able to think outside the box and interact with your students,” Street said. “Whatever you can do to capture your students’ attention for 46 minutes, you have to do it.”

One of the things on the top of Street’s mind as she embarks on the school year is keeping her students on track to graduate and emphasizing the importance of going to college in today’s world.

Yonkers is one of the school districts in the Lower Hudson Valley that most struggles with seeing its students through to graduation. Only 62 percent of city students graduated in four years as of August 2007, according to the New York Education Department. That rate was 56 percent at Roosevelt.

For Street, keeping students on track means helping them pass the math Regents exam at the end of the year, which she sees as her biggest challenge.

But boy is she confronting that challenge head on.

“I told them today I didn’t want any of them to pass. I wanted them to excel. They looked at me like I was crazy,” she said. “Children will reach as high as you set the bar for them to reach… I want them to reach as high as they can.”

Tracy Brusie: George Fischer Middle School, science

CARMEL — On her first day as a teacher, Tracy Brusie displayed the kind of courage the profession demands. She showed her middle school science students her own eighth-grade picture.

Brusie was once a student here at George Fischer Middle School. And as she passed her picture around the room, she let the 10 boys and four girls in her class know it was even OK to giggle.

“You’re not alone,” Brusie said. “Everybody was there one day.”

Brusie, 37, put science aside on this day and focused on introductions.

The Putnam Valley resident and Carmel graduate, class of 1989, talked about her son Dylan, who was starting first grade in the district that day. She even describing the digestive disorder he deals with and passed around a framed photo of her and Dylan hugging.

In turn, her students completed a “human scavenger hunt” that required them to get to learn interesting things about one another.

Connecting with her students, making them comfortable so they can learn is Brusie’s main goal.

“It’s really important to let them shine through and really let them be themselves and discover science,” she said.

She had no butterflies the night before this first day. After all, Brusie student-taught here last year and substitute taught here for two years. Many of these students already know her.

A licensed X-ray, mammography and MRI technologist, Brusie left that career a year ago to enroll in a teaching program. She’d risen to a management position that left her without the personal contact she enjoys. Science was the natural subject area for her to choose.

Her lab is on the second floor of the school’s new wing, overlooks athletic fields from which the distant din of mowers carried like the last gasps of a summer ended.

Rather than distracted, though, her students’ paid rapt attention as she read from Dr. Seuss’s “Oh, the Places You’ll Go.” Her intended message for the class: Ask for help when you need it, and know that you will succeed.

It’s a message she’s already taken to heart.

“As a first-year teacher, I have a lot to learn from my colleagues,” she said. “I hope to be able to relay science to my students in a way that allows them to discover it on their own, with a little assistance from myself, and just have fun with them.”

Kate Moran: Clarkstown elementary schools, foreign language

NEW CITY — You couldn’t tell that Kate Moran had only had two hours sleep when she walked, smiling, into Michelle Partenza’s first-grade class at 9 a.m. on the first day of school this past week.

“¡Hola!” the 26-year-old first-time teacher sang as she wheeled a cart containing a beach ball, a shower curtain and a large tote into one of the many classrooms at Link Elementary School where she’ll be a frequent visitor during the school year.

A hand to her ear in the universal grade-school gesture that means “repeat after me” elicited a chorus of “¡hola!” from the 22 students sitting unsure in their desks.

By the end of the 20-minute lesson, the first-graders knew how to say “mouse” and five different colors in Spanish and were able to sing an “adios” song even though Moran never said a word in English to them.

Both Moran and Clarkstown’s elementary school foreign language pilot program are brand new this year.

The language program is being tested at Link as part of a move to enhance the district’s offerings and take advantage of young children’s ability to acquire language almost without effort. If successful, it may extend to the district’s other nine elementary schools.

Moran is fresh from research and a master’s degree program in Spanish with extra certification as an English as a Second Language teacher from New York University after an undergraduate career at Rutgers.

The New Jersey native is the only person in her family who speaks any foreign language, she said, but she has honed her Spanish in both Spain and Mexico and is a passionate believer in the importance of communication and exposing very young children to a foreign language and culture.

“I’ve always loved languages ever since I was a little girl,” Moran said. “I was 9 … when I found my mother’s old Spanish textbook and started teaching myself. I could say things my parent’s couldn’t understand. That’s when I first realized how much power language has. It gives you the power to communicate.”

For the rest of the school year, she will be dividing her time into 20-minute Spanish lessons in each of Link’s classrooms, kindergarten through fifth grade.

By 3 p.m., Moran was ready to sit down and relax after visiting three first-grades and three third-grades.

“I was very happy with the first-grade lesson,” she said in reflection. “The third grade lesson—I needed to work on the transitions. I think it went really well …. I’m exhausted.”

In Mamaroneck, ninth- and sixth-grade students as well as the elementary schools had their first day of school yesterday and the remaining grades started today.
The district has made several security changes at the high school this year, in light of a string of bomb threats there in March.

District spokeswoman Debbie Manetta said security cameras are now present inside and outside the building. In case of another threat, officials are currently undergoing emergency response training with the Southern Westchester Board of Cooperative Educational Services.
————————————————Opening day at Westchester’s second biggest school system, New Rochelle, went off without any significant problems for the district’s nearly 11,000 students, Superintendent of Schools Richard Organisciak said yesterday.
“It’s 20 after three and I haven’t gotten a call yet saying ‘my kid hasn’t gotten home.’ “I’m keeping my fingers crossed,” said Organisciak, who visited three of the district’s 10 schools yesterday.
—with reports from Ernie Garcia, Aman Ali and Len Maniace

Eastchester students and parents said they were generally satisfied with the way the district handled combining classes from Greenvale and Anne Hutchinson elementary schools yesterday, after an asbestos problem at Hutchinson last week delayed the building’s opening.
“It seem really organized today when I dropped my son off,” Tricia Abrams said of her son Edward, 8. “Things seem to be moving smoothly.”
Her son is one of Hutchinson’s 430 students that will share space with 517 Greenvale students this week after an asbestos remediation project stretched past the school’s opening date.
Hutchinson’s roof was under construction in July when rain seeped into the building’s second-floor ceilings, which are covered in asbestos. Officials said the ceilings are being replaced and floor is being cleaned and the Hutchinson building should be open by Monday.
Greenvale students such as Naoki Takebayashi, 10, and Evan Wasserman, 7, said their classrooms doubled to about 40 students with the influx of Hutchinson students. But both said the building didn’t seem crowded.
“There were about 40 kids in his class but it ends this week so I don’t think this is much of a problem,” said Sugiko Takebayashi, Naoki’s mother.
Greenvale principal Theresa Sullivan said she too was pleased with how today was handled. The school’s building is large enough to accommodate for the number of students and both schools are starting their classes about half an hour apart to reduce traffic before and after school.
Hutchinson principal Theresa Cherry echoed Sullivan’s remarks.
“The students have really done a fabulous job as well as the teachers accommodating each other,” Cherry said. “Everything has fallen into place quite well and we are grateful to our Greenvale hosts.”

Schools in Pelham opened without incident yesterday, though only the high school was open all day. The district’s four elementary schools were only open for half the day and the middle school students only attended school for 90-minute orientations.
On Tuesday the new Superintendent Dennis Lauro, Jr. held an event for school staff at the Pelham Picture House to screen a video he created to express his expectations for the coming year. Lauro’s goals include improving academic programs while increasing revenues, streamlining operations and reducing costs.—————————-
The Yonkers Public Schools reported a minor fender bender involving a school bus yesterday morning.

Schools spokeswoman Jerilynne Fierstein said no one was injured in the accident between a mini-school bus and a car on Warburton Avenue near Union Avenue. There were two children and a parent on the bus around 9:30 when the incident happened.
Schools were not open in Yonkers yesterday, but school buses took parents and pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children to 29 schools as part of a special program for children who are riding school buses for the first time.

The Yonkers Public Schools opened today.

In the Rye Neck school district, students were welcomed by teachers wearing matching black outfits symbolizing an ongoing battle with the district over new teacher contracts.
The union has said in the past the district is treating them unfairly including the obligation to work mandatory overtime.
District spokeswoman Deirdre Gilligan declined to comment on the contract negotiations.
“The district reports a smooth opening and we’re delighted to have everyone back,” she said.
—Ali Aman

The 10 or so kids at the Soundview Loop bus stop were excited to go back to school at Meadow Pond Elementary in Lewisboro yesterday, said Lisa Valdes.
Valdes, the recording secretary of the PTA, was sending her almost-6-year-old son Nicholas off to first grade.
“Everyone was just eager to get back, taking pictures and everything,” she said. Even the first graders were feeling confident and self-sufficient with a year of experience under their belts.
And the PTA parents like Valdes and Nicole Ferrante, the first vice president, who sent off her second grader Alexa and third grader Gia, are looking forward to Meadow Pond’s welcome back picnic on Friday and later the Halloween event and November book fair.
“It was great to get on the bus,” Ferrante said. “They were excited to go see their friends.”—Elizabeth Ganga

Yorktown High School freshmen Paige Priskie, 13, of Cortlandt Manor, and Taylor Hubner, 14, of Yorktown, reflected on the end of their first day
while buses collected students at the main entrance. The friends said they had been a little concerned about getting lost in the Crompond Road school building but found their way to classes without a problem.
Priskie had first-day advice for next year’s incoming freshmen.
“Leave your text books in your lockers so you don’t have to carry them around,” she said.
Hubner’s suggestion: “Don’t be afraid to ask anybody to help.”—Chris Serico

At the Bedford Central School District, the first day of classes meant some parents had to figure out how to get their children to school amid the elimination of bus routes within a half-mile of the district’s five elementary schools.

Bedford Village resident Andrew Payne was among those who lost busing because of budget cuts earlier this year. Payne said yesterday that he went into work in Manhattan early so his nanny walked his 8-year-old son, Oliver, to the Bedford Village Elementary School.
Payne was heartened to hear from his nanny that police cruisers were visible along his son’s walking route to school.
“She said it was pretty evident that people saw the police and they slowed down,” said Payne, a clothing designer. “Hopefully, they (the police) will be able to be there all year long. That would be an enormous help.”
Jere Hochman, the school district’s new superintendent, spent his day yesterday travelling to all seven school buildings. He visited classes and even rode on the bus with high school and middle school students.
“I was over in Mount Kisco at about 8:30 a.m. There were crossing guards at the corners. There was extra police presence,” Hochman said. “There were parents out walking with their kids … The kids got to school very well.”—Sean Gorman

Robert Meyer, principal of Austin Road Elementary School in Mahopac, said the first day back was a success.
“Everything went very smoothly,” Meyer said. “The kids were eager to get back and are already engaged in the classroom.”
But getting home did not prove as seamless for some Austin Road students. Carmel police responded to an incident involving an Austin Road school bus at approximately 3:20 p.m.

The bus driver observed a spark and smoke coming from the bus’s dashboard while in transit on Gleneida Boulevard, said Lt. Brian Karst. The children were promptly evacuated and no one was injured, he said. The problem appeared to be an electrical short in the ignition system, Karst said.
“It was a terrific first day until you get the call,” said Mahopac schools Superintendent Robert Reidy. “You want to make sure that, first and foremost, everyone is safe and they were. So I’m happy to report that.”—Marcela Rojas

THORNWOOD — Other than a few glitches with the school buses, opening day at Columbus Elementary School went smoothly, said Mount Pleasant schools Superintendent Alfred Lodovico.
“The students’ schedules and the bus schedules were not always jiving,” he said. “It wasn’t perfect, but we have resolved the issues with the bus company.”
The school held its annual first day picnic for each grade level (third, fourth and fifth).
“It was really fun to go to the picnic and meet all of my friends, but I miss summer,” said fourth-grader Olivia Schettino.
The first day was “surreal” for first-grade teacher Traci Cairo, who went to Columbus as a child.
“There are a handful of teachers here who taught me, and now I am teaching alongside them, as a colleague,” said Cairo. “It’s different, and it’s great.”
Michael Cunzio, the interim principal since July, said the third-graders were given an early arrival time, giving them a chance to navigate the new school.
“They were the only kids on the bus, and I think it brings their anxiety level down a bit,” he said.
Mary Lorusso, mother of a fifth-grade daughter, will end her five-year association with the school when her youngest completes this school year.
“This is Maria’s last year here.  She’s very excited about being part of the oldest group in school,” Lorusso said.
Eugene Cho, another fifth grader, followed his mother, Soo Jin, out of the school as they made their way to their car.
“I feel like he is growing up,” said Soo Jin Cho. “He will have to work very hard to get ready for middle school next year.”
Edward Burns examined his fourth-grader daughter’s expression and declared: “It appears that the first day went well.”
Chloe Burns concurred.
“It was great, but I miss summer,” she said. – Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy

“It’s was a super first day,’’ said Principal Bill Greene as the dismissal bell rang and 550 students poured out of the Tarrytowns’ Washington Irving School. “We had the usual confusion about lockers and schedules and buses, but we just managed to get everyone to the right place and, hopefully, we’re going to get everyone home.’’
A week ago, Greene wasn’t sure the school for fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders would even be presentable for the first day.

A classroom remodeling project and work in the auditorium left the building full of dust and debris.
Outside Washington Irving School, sisters Clare and Elyse Johnson compared notes and disagreed over who had the tougher first day.
“I had the most stress because I’m in the sixth grade now and we have to switch classes more, said 10-year-old Clare.
“I don’t know the school or the rules,’’ explained Elyse, 9, a fourth grader. “I thought I might get lost or might break a rule and get in trouble.”
Their mother, Joanne Johnson, chuckled when asked how her day went, after watching her 5-year-old son start kindergarten at Tappan Hill while her “big girls’’ headed off to Washington Irving.
“I cried when I left Luke, but he didn’t,’’ she said. “He was very excited and he had a great day.”—Rich Liebson

Sloatsburg parent Julie Rose was one of the first five people to line up in the parking lot outside Suffern Middle School right before school got out yesterday in order to catch her son as he left the building.

This was a nervous time for her, she said, having Kenny start middle school.

“He’s a little nervous about not finding his way around. I’m doing OK,” she said.  “This is such a big change from the elementary school.”

Kenny, 10, on the other hand, already had forgotten his pre-school jitters by the time classes got out about 2:30 p.m.

“It’s a new school and a lot of people. I was afraid I would get lost and eventually I did,” he said. “But I thought it was a lot of fun.”

He expected his favorite class this year would be technology, he said. “I’m like the person who loves electronics and stuff like that,” he said.

Austin Akey, 11, who is Kenny’s friend and classmate, was getting a ride home from school with his buddy. He, too, thought the day went well.

“It’s kind of easy to get lost on your way to your other classes,” he said. He expected his science class would be his favorite.

It wasn’t only the students and parents who were nervously anticipating yesterday’s school opening.

Brian Fox, Teresa Ivey and Andre Lawe, the new administrative  team leading Suffern Middle School, admitted that, between the three of them, they’d probably slept five hours the night before total.

Fox, who was an assistant principal last year, is the school’s new principal; Ivey was the veteran, on her second year as assistant principal, and Lawe was on his first day as assistant principal after a career in New York City schools.

“It was very different, a very smooth transition,” Lawe, who’s held the Rockland post for two months, said. “It was fun. It was very fun.”

Ivey said she felt more confident this year than last, when she first made the move from classroom teacher to administrator. Dealing with worried parents and other potential glitches was easier with last year’s experience under her belt. The students, she said, are always the easiest part of the day.
“I do enjoy this,” Ivey said.

Fox said he was so excited about starting the new year that sleep eluded him for most of the night.

“I got no sleep at all last night and I’m starting my 28th year” in education, he said. “I felt like I was back being a sixth-grader on that starting day.”

The three administrators said that they had opened the middle school on Tuesday to allow the fifth-graders to find their classrooms and experiment with their lockers without pressure.

“I think, overall, we had a great day today,” Fox said.

Simone Zitouni has watched her three children advance through the East Ramapo school district until only her youngest remains.

Yesterday’s first day of school was a landmark of sorts for her, now that her two older children are in college. She said she stayed indoors yesterday but still watched her youngest, Molly, standing at the bus stop, the same way she watched her from the stop itself when she was 5.

“You still get the stomach flutters on the first day of school. This is my baby,” Zitouni said. “Molly’s a senior at Ramapo (High). The bus came on time — it only took 12 years — and she was excited to go and for the new season.

“She said all the (other high school) kids looked very little to her, but this first day of school was monumental, something for the memory box. I watched her go on the bus like when she was in kindergarten. She was texting on her iPhone down at the bus stop.”

Even the drivers passing by were aware that school had started, Zitouni said.

“Everybody was very courteous on the road, the buses were there and it looked like a nice day to start,” she said.

At the Bedford Central School District, the first day of classes meant some parents had to figure out how to get their children to school amid the elimination of bus routes within a half-mile of the district’s five elementary schools.

Bedford Village resident Andrew Payne was among those who lost busing because of budget cuts earlier this year. Payne said yesterday that he went into work in Manhattan early so his nanny walked his 8-year-old son, Oliver, to the Bedford Village Elementary School.
Payne was heartened to hear from his nanny that police cruisers were visible along his son’s walking route to school.
“She said it was pretty evident that people saw the police and they slowed down,” said Payne, a clothing designer. “Hopefully, they (the police) will be able to be there all year long. That would be an enormous help.”
Jere Hochman, the school district’s new superintendent, spent his day yesterday travelling to all seven school buildings. He visited classes and even rode on the bus with high school and middle school students.
“I was over in Mount Kisco at about 8:30 a.m. There were crossing guards at the corners. There was extra police presence,” Hochman said. “There were parents out walking with their kids … The kids got to school very well.”—Sean Gorman