Classical music plays over the loudspeaker system at P.S. 189 in Lincoln Terrace. The sound of a violin has become a regular fixture since Principal Berthe G. Faustin joined the Lefferts Gardens School, also known as the Bilingual Center.
A pianissimo signals to students and staff that she is in the building: The musical touch is characteristic of the small and big changes she has brought to P.S. 189, in the hopes of rebuilding the school’s academic reputation.
“I believe in the culture of inspiring children, staff and parents,” she said from her office during New York Cares Day on Oct. 23, as children and volunteers participated in the annual day of chores at the public schools.
“As an administrator, you have to make sure that the environment is set up for teaching, for learning,” said Faustin, a teacher since 1983 who holds two master’s degrees from Bank Street College, in bilingual special education and in administration and supervision.
At 5 feet tall, Faustin’s firm tone belies her height, which she jokes about. “If I sit down, I blend right in with them,” she said of the students.
Besides the music, banners like “Learning is our #1 Priority” that were not here a couple years ago encourage its denizens to achieve and work as a team. She provides Latin to the fifth- and sixth-graders to develop their vocabulary.
Faustin demands that administrators call at least 20 parents weekly to update them about student performance. She awards pins to children who do very well to help them learn that there are good and bad consequences to life.
“This business is about options,” Faustin said. “It’s about children doing well in the world.”
Already, some staff members are relieved that the school is back on the right track, after about five years in a slump during which four principals went through it, the city’s education system was overhauled and the merits of bilingual education questioned again. All that was reflected in its students scoring lower on exams, current and former school officials said.
While Faustin has been principal, math scores for all the grades in the highest levels rose by nearly 20 points, from 38.7 in 2002 to 57.3 in 2004. Reading scores for the highest two levels went from 37.1 in 2001 to 49.8 in 2004, a 22-point increase.
The Bilingual Center, a flagship school catering to children whose primary language is either Haitian Creole or Spanish, was getting the disappointed head shake from some parents and teachers who remembered its shining history.
“Now, we’re back,” said Vicky Fernandez, a technology specialist at the school since 1986. “Since Ms. Faustin has been here, it’s been a 360-degree turn.”
Faustin, a graduate of New York City’s public schools, repeated the same thing she said two weeks ago when accepting an award from Haitian Americans United for Progress for her work in education: “It would be foolish for me alone to take credit. It’s a team effort.”
She said it is the parents, who send their children to school ready to learn, staff who stayed loyal to the Bilingual Center during its downward years, and the students who are behind the turnaround, including achieving higher scores on city and state exams.
Parent participation is welcome. Here, signs are displayed in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole. It’s all in keeping with the school’s mission of producing children who are polyglots, critical thinkers and articulate speakers.
About a third of its 1,200 students are born in Haiti or of Haitian parents, she said. Another third are Latino, and the rest are a mixture of English-speaking Caribbean and African-American children. Historically, Haitian families have been attracted to the school for its English as a Second Language classes, the teachers’ reputation as disciplinarians and alumni recommendations.
Adèle Henri, for example, enrolled her children at P.S. 189 because her niece told her it was a good school. Her three kids – in first, second and sixth grades – are safe, compared with the violence she has heard of at other schools.
“I didn’t want other children to be fighting with them,” Henri said in Creole. “Here, they don’t have any problems. They come straight home when school ends.”
Henri said she came to give a hand during New York Cares Day, when volunteers carry out such projects as painting doors, organizing bookshelves and cleaning out rooms.
While Faustin sat in her office, she called out to Henri and her son in Haitian Creole to update her on their assigned drawings that are slated to be posted on each floor. It was one of several interruptions, invited and unexpected, during an hour.
Eighth-graders came in looking for a small band-aid because one student had cut her arm somehow. Another one asked for a rubber band to put up her newly permed hair so that paint would not get in it. Volunteers needed materials; phone calls streamed in from the security desk and a cafeteria server informed her about food arrangements.
It’s no wonder that Faustin, a Cedarhurst, NY resident, comes in by 5:30 every morning. But she handles it fine, doing one thing at a time as they come along. After all, she did grow up in a household of 11 children in Porte-au-Prince, watching her mother, Jusseline, deal with all of them.
“I’ve always wanted to have children,” said Faustin, a single woman, “I asked God for one or two, and He gave me twelve hundred.”
The early training she received at the Faustin home has carried her through. The classical music comes out of there, because of her father Emmanuel’s passion for it. The love of learning was planted by their father who tutored them everyday after school and encouraged them to read constantly.
When she came to the United States in the 1960s and enrolled in the third grade at I.S. 389 in Crown Heights, Faustin said she found the school work was very easy because students did “a little homework after school” and were not required to memorize their lesson as they were mandated in Haiti.
In Crown Heights and Bayswater/Far Rockaway, where the family moved later on, Faustin said she knew she wanted to work with children. She sang in her church choir, joined the local Girl Scouts, went camping and took part in other activities.
She contemplated becoming a child psychologist, but after taking one education class – where she had to help a child having difficulty with reading, she was hooked. After graduating from City College, she worked with autistic children.
“The expectations were too low,” Faustin said. “I grew tired of seeing that, day in and day out, we did the exact same thing with children, even with those who had learned it.”
After a stint at a Catholic school, she took a job at P.S. 138, working with emotionally disturbed children that were both English Language Learners and needed special education.
“I never wanted to believe that children with special needs didn’t have hope,” she said.
Faustin says that since she does not have children of her own, she is netting on her current students for her social needs tomorrow. “I have a vested interest in this,” she said. “If these children fail, it’s because we fail them as a society. I’m counting on them.”
