Deputy mayor praises KIPP founder as some collaboration efforts continue

Buery, a charter school founder himself, gave a warm introduction to Dave Levin on Tuesday, noting that one of his favorite books is “Work Hard. Be Nice.,” which chronicles Levin’s early days as a teacher and founder of KIPP, which started in Houston and is now the country’s largest charter school network.

Buery’s comments, made Tuesday at an event for district and charter school educators, serves as a reminder that the de Blasio administration’s position on charter schools is more nuanced than how it is often portrayed by pro-charter advocacy groups. Sometimes that perception is fueled by officials’ own comments, such as when de Blasio said he wasn’t going to support lifting the city’s charter school cap or when Chancellor Carmen Fariña recently suggested that some charter schools were inappropriately recruiting and pushing out students.

After Buery’s introduction, Levin gave an abbreviated version of his online course on character education to about 150 teachers and principals. The two-hour session was the latest example of a charter school leader stepping into the role of district school collaborator, something Chancellor Carmen Fariña has encouraged during her time at the department. Last month, Uncommon Schools hosted an all-day professional development conference tailored to district principals and teachers and, in October, Success Academy took visitors on a tour at two of its Harlem schools in the morning and hosted workshops in the afternoon.

NYC Collaborates, which hosted the event, emerged from the District-Charter Collaboration Compact, signed in 2010 by then-Chancellor Joel Klein amid the rapid expansion of charter schools during the Bloomberg administration. (Klein offered a less enthusiastic view of collaboration as a tool for improving the school system at an event promoting his book on Wednesday. “We’re not going to change it by kumbaya, building a bigger tent,” he said.)

Fariña serves on the board of the New York City Charter School Center, which operates NYC Collaborates, but was with de Blasio at an announcement about high school football safety during the event.

Most of Levin’s presentation explored the different ways school staff members can respond to the small interactions that make up a school day. One exercise called on participants to brainstorm ways to reinforce what he calls “positive psychology,” which prompted one teacher to say he wanted to say ‘good morning’ more often and another to say she would smile more while giving instructions.

In the video below, Levin demonstrates how a teacher should and should not react when a student gets stumped by a math problem.