THE BEAT | education
Top of the Class
KIPP educator earns national acclaim By Dawn Wilson
With only three days left of the school year, Kathryn Hurley stands before a class of second graders and conducts one last exercise. Her charges, dressed in the navy and khaki uniforms of KIPP Central City Primary charter school, look at the papers in front of them. One girl sucks her thumb. Hurley urges them to “break the code” – to match a letter grid to words that spell out a question. They must answer it in three complete sentences. It’s half game, half academics. It’s all leading to third grade literacy. Hurley, recently recognized as a finalist for the prestigious Fishman Prize for outstanding teaching, paces the semi-circle of tiny desks sporting a pair of black sunglasses atop twisted-up thick hair. She’s all business. “I’m missing a pair of eyes,” she says and ticks off a name. She points two fingers in the direction of a child and returns them to point
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at her own eyes. The children start writing out their questions. One asks: What would you like to tell your teacher? Asked to answer aloud, Chastity reveals a budding future in sales or diplomacy: “I would like to tell Ms. Hurley she’s cute.” Another question asks: Name some of the things you learned this year. A girl named Paige writes: “I learned to find my matching evidence.” These second graders have spent three hours a day with Hurley for nine months honing their reading skills and learning the basics of essay writing. They go into the third grade knowing how to write a thesis, or point of view, and how to pick out textual evidence to support their claims. Paige even spelled the word “evidence” correctly on the second try. A Tulane University graduate, by way of
New Jersey, Hurley started out as a kindergarten teacher. Now in her seventh year of teaching, five at KIPP Central City, she has shifted to second grade. “I’m obsessed with second grade,” she says. “I’m still the coolest person in the room.” She’s always obsessed with teaching literacy, a honed skill that led a colleague to nominate her for the Fishman Prize, a prestigious national award that recognizes teachers for “superlative classroom practice.” Of 800 applications, Hurley was one of 101 applicants asked to submit classroom videos and references, says TNTP, a New York-based non-profit dedicated to supporting quality teaching in public schools. Of those, Hurley was one of 21 semi-finalists selected for unannounced classroom visits. cheryl gerber PHOTOGRAPH
