Tag: teachers

Com­plete reset

How 2005’s Hur­ricane Kat­rina changed city’s edu­ca­tion sys­tem

Chris Dier was just starting his senior year of high school in neighbouring Chalmette when Katrina hit. He's now a history teacher at Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans.

This article was written by Sharon Lurye and was published in the Toronto Star on August 31, 2025.

Twenty years ago, Hur­ricane Kat­rina changed the face of edu­ca­tion in New Orleans forever. The school sys­tem was utterly des­troyed and then utterly trans­formed, becom­ing the first and only all­charter school dis­trict in the coun­try.

Kat­rina made land­fall on Aug. 29, 2005, and The Asso­ci­ated Press asked three sur­viv­ors to reflect on what it was like to be a stu­dent or a teacher dur­ing that tumul­tu­ous period.

For some, con­nec­tions they developed with edu­cat­ors who helped them through the crisis inspired careers as teach­ers. Their exper­i­ences also offer les­sons for teach­ers and schools going through nat­ural dis­asters today.

What fol­lows are the edu­cat­ors’ accounts in their own words, con­densed for pub­lic­a­tion:

A storm evacuee found caring teach­ers in Texas

Chris Dier, a his­tory teacher at Ben­jamin Frank­lin High School in New Orleans, was just start­ing his senior year of high school in neigh­bour­ing Chal­mette when Kat­rina hit. He evac­u­ated to a hotel, then a shel­ter for Kat­rina sur­viv­ors in Texas.

I remem­ber wak­ing up to my Aunt Tina banging on the hotel door. I remem­ber she said, `There are hun­dreds of bod­ies every­where,’ that the levees broke. I’ll never for­get get­ting that knock on the door that let me know everything has changed, everything is dif­fer­ent.

There was an eld­erly couple that came to the shel­ter and talked with us, and they offered us their trailer so we could actu­ally have a space to live. We stayed in that trailer for the remainder of the year, and I fin­ished my high school in Texas, Hende­r­son High School.

One of the reas­ons I wanted to become a teacher was because of how these teach­ers treated us at our low­est points. I remem­ber Coach Propes, the soc­cer coach who got us soc­cer cleats and took care of us in that way. I remem­ber Mrs. Rains, the Eng­lish teacher who had us in our class and had all the sup­plies ready. I remem­ber Ms. Pel­lon, the Span­ish teacher who also had sup­plies for us. Mr. McGin­nis, he would come in in the early hours to tutor me in chem­istry because I missed weeks of school.

They made me feel wel­come. They made me feel like I belong. They made me feel that I was part of a lar­ger com­munity, as opposed to just a stat­istic.

The last thing I wanted to do grow­ing up was be a teacher, because I saw how my mom was a teacher and all the time and effort she put into her craft. She would be cook­ing with her left hand and grad­ing papers with her right hand. I wanted more in life. But Kat­rina changed me in that way, because I saw how these teach­ers respon­ded.

Everything we talk about is `before Kat­rina’ and `after Kat­rina.’ Now I have `before COVID’ and `after COVID.’ I star­ted see­ing the par­al­lels right away, right when the schools closed down, March 16 (in 2020).

The ques­tions that (stu­dents) had, those same ques­tions I had after we evac­u­ated dur­ing Hur­ricane Kat­rina. I remem­ber think­ing, `Are we really never com­ing back to school?’

I went home that week­end and wrote an open let­ter to seni­ors, offer­ing some sup­port and advice. I wrote about what it’s like to lose your senior year. I said that folks will down­play the situ­ation, because they don’t know what it feels like to have their senior year stripped. But I do know. I try to tell them that they’re not for­got­ten: Teach­ers are think­ing of them. We care for them.

A new school left a stu­dent miss­ing New Orleans’ `love and atten­tion’

Jahquille Ross has been an ele­ment­ary school teacher and prin­cipal and now works for the edu­ca­tion non­profit New Schools for New Orleans. When Kat­rina hit, he was an eighth grader at Edna Karr Mag­net School on the West Bank of New Orleans.

We decided after watch­ing the news on Fri­day to leave Sat­urday. I just remem­ber being on the high­way forever. Lit­er­ally forever. I lived with my brother and my sis­ter­in­law dur­ing that time, because my mother had passed away when I was 12, in 2003. We were head­ing to Alex­an­dria, where my sis­ter­in­law is from. I just remem­ber being hungry for a long time.

It was dev­ast­at­ing to see what all was tak­ing place in New Orleans on national TV dur­ing this time. When you saw the large amount of people, the impact of the water and the flood­ing and the dam­age that was done because of the wind, it was like: Oh, we’re going to be in Alex­an­dria a while.

At that time, `a while’ to me was like, maybe another week or two. And that wasn’t the case.

It was one, two, three, four schools in one year. Exhaust­ing. It was hard to make friends wherever I went, because I was unsure at that time, how long are we gonna be in a par­tic­u­lar set­ting? Places just don’t feel like New Orleans.

We moved to Plano, Texas, for about six months. Really nice area, really nice people. There were more white people than I’ve ever seen before at school. I felt the racism a little bit more. It was more pre­val­ent from stu­dents.

I was not per­form­ing aca­dem­ic­ally at the level that I had nor­mally been in New Orleans. Just try­ing to stay afloat in my classes was a struggle. The teach­ers didn’t really go out of their way. They were strictly, like, `This is the les­son, this is the mater­ial, this is when the test is.’ I just didn’t get the love and atten­tion I was accus­tomed to in New Orleans.

I came back to New Orleans in March or April. It felt good to be back home. I had my friend base from middle school. I had friends from ele­ment­ary school. I was back amongst fam­ily and eld­ers, like my grandma, my auntie, my cous­ins, every­body. We lived 10, 15 minutes within each other, which is really good. We had neigh­bour­hood­based school­ing, you know, prior to Kat­rina.

It changed the tra­ject­ory of my life. I did not want to always become an edu­cator. With my mother passing away, it was school that groun­ded me. It was the teach­ers and lead­ers inside of those school build­ings that sup­por­ted me, pushed me and encour­aged me.

I had some pivotal edu­cat­ors in my life who played a big role in my edu­ca­tion and my jour­ney. In return, I felt like I could do that for other chil­dren of New Orleans. I chose to go into ele­ment­ary edu­ca­tion, so that stu­dents in their early years of edu­ca­tion would have the oppor­tun­ity to be edu­cated by a Black male.

Flood­ing wiped out schools — and memor­ies

Michelle Gar­nett was an edu­cator in New Orleans for 33 years, mostly in kinder­garten and pre­K, before retir­ing in 2022. She was teach­ing kinder­garten at Park­view Ele­ment­ary in New Orleans when Kat­rina hit and had to evac­u­ate to Baton Rouge.

When we were able to come back to the city, going back to my ori­ginal school, Park­view, it was dev­ast­at­ing to see the school just com­pletely des­troyed. That memory, I wouldn’t want to go through that again if I could be spared of that.

My mother was a classroom teacher, and she had given me a lot of things. Just memor­ies you just can’t get back. My mother was a little bit of an artist, so she drew a lot of the story­book char­ac­ters for me. My dad also gave me a cas­sette tape with the song “Know­ledge is Power” that I used to play for my kids. I lost the tape he had given me. So, you know, sen­ti­mental things. Every­body in the city lost a lot.

My classroom was just moul­ded and water warped and it smelled and it was just hor­rific. I can say, nobody could sal­vage any­thing from that par­tic­u­lar school. It was just all — all was lost.

We were all in Baton Rouge together as a fam­ily, 23 of us strong in my daugh­ter’s house. Sib­lings, cous­ins, aunts and uncles. On top of the 23 people in my daugh­ter’s house, she was eight months preg­nant at the time. But we were happy. Every­body was safe, and we had to accept things that we couldn’t change.

I loved what I did. Got into it strictly by neces­sity. My second daugh­ter, who is now deceased, had a very rare form of mus­cu­lar dys­trophy. Orleans Par­ish hired me as my own child’s spe­cific aide. She was only in school a short time from Decem­ber to May and the next month, two days after her sixth birth­day, she passed. I was asked to con­tinue work as a child­spe­cific aide. Dur­ing that pro­cess is when I got the pas­sion and desire to go back to school, to be cer­ti­fied in edu­ca­tion.

We think we choose a path for ourselves, and God puts us in the place where he wants us to be. Teach­ing is where I needed to be. And I abso­lutely enjoyed it.

Jahquille Ross has been an ele­ment­ary teacher and prin­cipal and now works for the non­profit New Schools for New Orleans. When Kat­rina hit, he was an eighth grader at Edna Karr Mag­net School on the West Bank of New Orleans.

School daze

Teach­ers from sev­eral boards describe stifling con­di­tions without cent­ral air

Andrea Frenke pulled her daughters Liridon, 6, and Everest, 9, out of school early Monday because they were feeling ill from the extreme heat.

This article was written by Isabel Teotonio and Omar Mosleh, and was published in the Toronto Star on June 24, 2025.

Stu­dents and teach­ers grapple with heat in schools that lack cent­ral air

With Toronto in the grips of a heat wave, prin­cipal Anthony Levy spent much of Monday walk­ing the hall­ways of West Pre­par­at­ory Junior Pub­lic School doing tem­per­at­ure checks and mak­ing adjust­ments as mer­cury levels rose.

Classes on the upper level were relo­cated to the cooler base­ment, stu­dents did their work in the hall­way, recess became optional and teach­ers rotated kids through cool­ing centres, loc­ated in the lib­rary and a multi­pur­pose room.

“We did have a plan com­ing in,” Levy told report­ers at the school, near Allen Road and Eglin­ton Avenue West, where half the stu­dents were absent Monday. And “it’s a work in pro­gress as the heat goes up.”

Teach­ers and stu­dents across Ontario grappled with swel­ter­ing con­di­tions in schools that are sev­eral dec­ades old and lack cent­ral air con­di­tion­ing.

Monday’s heat was so extreme in Toronto that a power out­age left about 2,700 people without elec­tri­city, pools faced rolling clos­ures and the mayor vowed to intro­duce a motion this week to address what she calls “ser­i­ous gaps” in the city’s heat relief strategy.

As tem­per­at­ures soared — in Toronto it hit 36 C, but with the humi­dex felt as hot as 44 C — stu­dents were encour­aged to wear light cloth­ing, drink water, avoid phys­ical activ­ity and keep to shady areas in the school yard. And, when pos­sible, staff kept lights and com­puters turned off, closed blinds and cur­tains, opened win­dows, rotated kids through cooler spaces and used fans — some teach­ers used per­sonal fans, while oth­ers bor­rowed them from the kids’ par­ents.

The Toronto Dis­trict School Board, the coun­try’s largest, has 579 schools — 177 have cent­ral air con­di­tion­ing, 243 have a cool­ing centre (typ­ic­ally in the gym, a lib­rary or a mul­tipur­pose room), and the rest have small air con­di­tioner units in the lib­rary.

Board spokes­per­son Shari Schwartz­Maltz said schools were not closed because it would be dif­fi­cult for par­ents to find child care.

By com­par­ison, six Ontario French­lan­guage schools without air con­di­tion­ing were closed Monday and will remain shuttered Tues­day.

Sev­eral teach­ers from vari­ous boards — the Star isn’t identi­fy­ing them because they weren’t author­ized to speak — described stifling con­di­tions, not­ing many stu­dents were absent, and some left school early.

One Toronto kinder­garten teacher said the board should have closed schools without cent­ral air con­di­tion­ing, rather than treat­ing staff like “glor­i­fied babysit­ters.” At her school only the lib­rary is air­con­di­tioned, but all classes have fans provided by the par­ent coun­cil. Still, her classroom hit 30 C.

“It’s excep­tion­ally hot. We’re just try­ing to do calm, quiet activ­it­ies,” she said, adding water activ­it­ies in the shade out­side were planned for the after­noon.

One high school teacher in the Brant­ford area said Monday “was unreal, simply unable to work,” and sent a photo show­ing her classroom at 35 C.

While she even­tu­ally moved to a cooler space, “expect­ing any­one to func­tion in this heat was not real­istic. Stu­dents com­plained about not being able to think, and being stuck to seats when try­ing to stand up.”

And, she added, “you know it is hot when the toi­let seat feels like it is heated.”

Toronto mother Andrea Frenke picked up her kids, ages six and nine, from school dur­ing lunch­time because they weren’t feel­ing well. When she arrived, a hand­ful of oth­ers were also there to get their chil­dren.

“We’re talk­ing like five­year­olds and six­year­olds com­ing home and telling their par­ents, `I could barely keep my head up in class, I feel naus­eous, I have a head­ache’ … no one can learn in an envir­on­ment like this,” said Frenke.

Although one of her kids was in a classroom that had an air­con­di­tion­ing unit in the win­dow, that’s not suf­fi­cient given the body heat gen­er­ated in a class of roughly 30 stu­dents. Cent­ral air con­di­tion­ing in schools shouldn’t be a lux­ury, but is an “abso­lute neces­sity” on scorch­ing hot days.

“Some­times I just kind of laugh and cry, think­ing this is sup­posedly a very advanced developed coun­try, but we don’t have some of the most basic infra­struc­ture for the health of our future gen­er­a­tions.”

The province should require schools that don’t have air con­di­tion­ing to can­cel classes dur­ing extreme heat events, she added, while acknow­ledging this would put par­ents in a tight spot if they’re unable to adjust work sched­ules.

Emma Test­ani, press sec­ret­ary for Edu­ca­tion Min­is­ter Paul Calandra, said boards have pro­to­cols on how to deal with heat and are respons­ible for ensur­ing each school fol­lows appro­pri­ate pro­vin­cial and muni­cipal health and safety require­ments.

“The province provides over $1.4 bil­lion in annual fund­ing to school boards to help renew and improve schools, includ­ing air con­di­tion­ing,” she said. “Over the next 10 years, our gov­ern­ment is invest­ing $30 bil­lion to sup­port school con­struc­tion, renewal and improve­ment.

“We will con­tinue to mon­itor the impacts of the warm weather and work with school boards to help keep stu­dents safe.”