The hearing was a part of the lawsuit filed by Brandeis parents to stop Upper West Success Academy from opening in the Brandeis campus, which is currently home to five high schools.

The city has said that it needs four weeks to prepare the building for Upper West Success, which would be the only elementary school in the building. Since teachers are set to begin work on August 2 and classes start August 24, construction on an elementary-only cafeteria and multipurpose room would need to begin immediately.

Judge Paul Feinman chose not to extend the temporary restraining order against those plans, saying that it made sense to allow some construction to begin in case the co-location was given a green light.

“I don’t see what harm there is to allow construction on the first floor to move forward,” he said.

Judge Feinman’s decision is complicated by the other lawsuit he is considering, filed by the UFT and NAACP, that aims to stop 16 charter schools from co-locating in district school buildings. Brandeis is included in that lawsuit.

Because of the other case, lawyers said it was still unclear how much construction would be legal tomorrow at 10 a.m. when the Brandeis restraining order expires.

“We’re speaking with the other counsel and resolving that right now,” said Emily Kim, who is representing Success Academy Charter Network.

During the hearing, Judge Feinman made it clear that this decision “should not be misrepresented” as an indication that the charter schools would prevail in the larger co-location lawsuit. “It is hardly such a statement,” he said.

Feinman also indicated that a final decision in the case might be at least three weeks away, saying he was concerned that the case wouldn’t be wrapped up before his vacation, which is scheduled to start July 22.

In 2009, Jesse Olsen was a teacher at Validus Preparatory Academy in the Bronx when he realized the school wasn’t accurately recording students’ attendance patterns. Realizing that the city’s school data clearinghouse, ARIS, couldn’t help, Olsen created a data system of his own, called Impact Solutions. The data system was one of several created around the same time by educators who were frustrated with ARIS.

By September 2010, Impact Solutions had already been picked up for use in 21 city schools, which were paying between $10 and $25 per student per year for the program, and Teach for America had started using it as well, we reported at the time.

Collecting those fees violated city ethics rules, the city’s Conflict of Interest Board ruled this month. The rules prohibit public employees from owning a business that contracts with their agencies and from using their positions to boost their business interests. Olsen violated both regulations when he began selling Impact Solutions to schools throughout the city, COIB ruled.

According to COIB’s report, Olsen didn’t learn that his business ran afoul of city rules until “in or around October 2010.” He resigned from the Department of Education in November — “at great personal sacrifice, financial and otherwise,” he testified — to focus on Impact Solutions. But he continued to work with the schools that had contracted with his company — another violation of city rules. Employees who leave the city payroll are not allowed to work with their former agencies until a year after their departure.

In his disposition, Olsen also reports that the iZone, a technology-centered division of the Department of Education, reached out to Impact Solutions in March 2011, less than four months after Olsen had resigned from the DOE.

Taking into account Olsen’s attempts to follow the rules once he learned about them, the board fined Olsen $4,000.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew addresses graduates of Grady High School. Male graduates wore red caps and gowns, and female graduates wore white. Students with blue stoles graduated with Regents diplomas.

A sea of red dotted with white caps made up the graduating class at William E. Grady Career and Technical High School on Monday.

The color contrast on display during Grady’s graduation exercises reflected the school’s stark gender imbalance: 80 percent of students are male. They were the ones wearing red caps and gowns, while female graduates wore white.

Grady’s vocational programs — which include automotive technology, construction trades, and heating and air conditioning repair — tend to enroll mostly male students. A culinary program attracts both men and women. (A cookbook distributed at graduation, titled “We ♥ Julia: The Recipes of the Whisk & Ladle Bistro,” showcased senior culinary arts students’ top recipes, including Cuban black bean soup, Swedish meatballs, and spanakopita.)

But despite the odds, both of Grady’s two top graduates were women. Valedictorian Jannatul Noor is heading to Philadelphia University, and salutatorian Catalina Lucero, who said in her speech that she graduated with an 88 average, will attend the Fashion Institute of Technology. Citywide, two-thirds of valedictorians were women this year and last.

At the graduation exercises on Monday, held under a tent on the school’s football field in Brighton Beach, teachers union president Michael Mulgrew spoke about having taught at Grady for 13 years earlier in his career.

“In every fight, every negotiation … I always go back to what I learned here in this school,” he said. Geraldine Maione, finishing her first year as principal after being placed at Grady as part of the city’s efforts to boost the school’s performance, told Mulgrew she was bestowing a title upon him: “The Common Man’s President.”

Last year, Grady’s 4-year graduation rate was 42.3 percent, one of the lowest rates among schools that the city is not trying to close. The school listed 173 students in its graduation announcement this week. According to Department of Education data, Grady had 464 students classified as ninth-graders in 2007, when this year’s seniors would have started high school.

Grady is one of three schools we’re following as part of The Big Fix — the year-long series we’re doing in partnership with WNYC about a variety of efforts to improve struggling schools. Look out for a more detailed report soon about the school year’s end at Grady.

The recent results of a 2010 NAEP assessment in U.S. History have rightfully been damned by leading figures in the school reform movement as evidence of a startling lack of student knowledge about the history of our country. My experience administering the exam this year showed me that there is a disconnect between the State Board of Regents and teachers on history teaching. The victims of this disconnect are the students who deserve to be appropriately assessed on their understanding of global history but are not.

My main concern about this year’s exam lay with the “Document Based Question,” or DBQ, which asked students to synthesize primary source material into an essay that addressed the concept of human rights using three examples: the Ukrainian famine of the 1920s and 1930s, the Cambodian crisis of 1970s, and the conflicts in Rwanda during the 1990s. The lumping of these three unique experiences into a group of “human rights violations” is bad historiography. I’m not a history teacher, but my understanding is that good history requires the consideration of people, policies, and events within the framework of the governing ideologies and realities of the particular time and place. The concept of “human rights,” while part of political traditions dating back to ancient Greece, is most directly associated with the United Nations Declarations of Human Rights, which was drafted in Paris in 1948. Since then, human rights has been used as a framework for understanding both the most inspiring examples of the struggle for freedom and dignity, as well as examples of governments and policies that oppress, destroy, and kill. This history is a standard and necessary component of the global studies curriculum and should be how all schools teach the concept of human rights.

It is far too simple to then impose this concept on an event as complex as the Ukrainian famine and experience during the 1920s and 1930s. While one cannot necessarily argue against considering Stalin’s collectivization plans and policies toward Ukraine and its people a human rights violation, it is a well established best practice, and better history, to teach students to interpret history from the point of view of its actors. Is it best to understand the “Reign of Terror” during the French Revolution or the rule of Genghis Khan as human rights violations?  Or is there more to gain by considering the events of a particular time and place from the perspective of those who experienced it? Rigorous historical thinking supports the latter approach.  Human rights are best understood from the perspective of those who affirm them in the face of the most egregious violations and not from the perspective of the governments and policies that violate them.

Furthermore, I was struck by the historically inappropriate nature of the documents that students were asked to use. For example, one document was a transcript of a “Frontline” episode in which a narrator describes the refugee crisis in Rwanda and a journalist from The New Yorker provides additional input. What is the purpose of teaching students to read transcripts from television programs? Shouldn’t an exam worth this amount of preparation and importance use more contemporary primary sources that historians are using to construct our understanding of events such as those in Rwanda? Even, for example, clips from the TV show itself? Teachers are expected, as they should be, to teach units that integrate technology and a variety of media. The Regents exam should do the same. A complex historical question, like the DBQ essay this year, requires commensurate documents. There is more to gain from a student constructing an understanding of a concept or an event from sources from a variety of media. If we expect better historical writing from our students, then it’s time to broaden the DBQ to include better documents.

Finally, while students are prohibited from using the United States as the primary example in their essays, several documents focused on policies in which the United States played a fundamental if not an active role. One document discussed the role of Nixon’s secret war in Cambodia as a source of popular support for dictator Pol Pot. Another document emphasized the importance of the response by the Clinton Administration to the events in Rwanda. While I understand that the United States does not have to be the focus of an understanding of these examples, including these primary sources only unnecessarily complicates a student’s task. An understanding of human rights violations in second half of the 20th century necessitates a role for the United States. If we want students to demonstrate their understanding of these events well, then they should not be prohibited from focusing on the United States in their essays.

What is the overall purpose of the Global History and Geography Regents exam? If the State of New York wishes to challenge students with questions such as the DBQ about Ukraine, Cambodia, and Rwanda, then teachers need the opportunity (and indeed a mandate) to teach thematic units that explore a deeper understanding of these events as linked beyond their shared character as “human rights violations.” All are equally linked by imperialism, the Cold War, U.S. foreign policy, the advance of modern military technology, racial and ethnic tensions, nationalism, scarcity of resources, and economic policy and planning. If the Board of Regents wants complex thinking from our students, its tests should at least reflect a solid grasp of historiography and an understanding of how students best construct knowledge. The Board of Regents and the experts who write this exam should be encouraging creative units from teachers that are based not only on state curriculum standards, but that are rooted in the work of historians. With this information, they could better write a test and DBQ that would include primary source material from a wide range of media, and reflect constructivist history and social studies learning.

This year’s DBQ was cheap and lazy. The teachers who work hard to convey the complexities of historical thinking and the students who rise to the challenge of writing history from their own unique perspectives deserve better.

I can anticipate several responses to my critique of the global history exam and its DBQ question: teachers need to teach better; these things should be reinforced at home; standardized tests themselves are the problem. These issues have been thoroughly debated and should remain at the core of the debate about the quality of public education. But regardless of the critique, no one can legitimately question the need for learning history. And if we don’t appropriately assess historical knowledge, then why bother teaching it well? The DBQ question on the Global History and Geography exam was bad history. And if we don’t learn our lesson from it now, we’ll be doomed to repeat it.

In the midst of finalizing next year’s city budget, the council managed to pass two bills that target the Department of Education’s bookkeeping. One of them requires the department to disclose more detailed information about students who leave the system without graduation. The second mandates the release of information about students who do not graduate when their high schools close.

Under the first bill, the DOE will be forced to provide more detailed data about student discharge rates, which critics say is overused by schools in order to inflate graduation rates. In 2009, Leonie Haimson, of Class Size Matters, released a report that found discharge rates steadily climbed since 2000. That prompted a state audit that concluded the dropout rate was in fact higher than claims made by the DOE.

Out of 88,612 students from the 2004-2008 cohort, 19 percent – or 17,025 – were discharged and 10 percent – or 9,323 – dropped out, according to the audit.

“This bill will for the first time allow us to know what happened to the thousands of students every year who are discharged from high schools,” Haimson said. “It will make it possible to see if they’re honestly reporting discharge rates.

The DOE vehemently disputes many conclusions from the Haimson report and state audit as being misleading. Since 2002, when Mayor Bloomberg entered office, discharge rates declined 2 percent. Haimson, said spokesman Matthew Mittenthal, “was extremely selective in assembling data to make a case against us.”

Under the second bill, the DOE will be required to report on students at phase out schools who don’t accumulate enough credits to graduate when the school shutters. Specifically, it will provide more information about what happens to the fate of students after the school closes. Critics have said that students displaced by these closures drop out at a disproportionately higher rate as a result.

“I have sharply disagreed with the Department of Education’s belief that phasing out schools is an effective educational policy,” said Councilman Al Vann, a sponsor of the bill. “The passage of this legislation will finally provide the Council and stakeholders with important data on how the phasing out of schools truly affects our public school students.”

At a hearing on the proposed laws in January, an official indicated that the DOE would not comply with the law if passed, citing possible violations of student privacy.

Today, however, Mittenthal confirmed that they would “absolutely comply” with the new law. The law calls for the DOE report last year’s data by Feb. 1, 2012.

As a GothamSchools reporter, Anna Phillips broke the story that Saraceno was accused of padding students’ transcripts with courses they didn’t take and grades they didn’t earn. A city investigation followed. Now that she’s reporting for the New York Times, Phillips is continuing to follow the Lehman story, and today’s update is that Saraceno won’t return to Lehman this fall.

Phillips writes that faculty and staff lobbied against Saraceno in an unsigned letter sent to news organizations last month:

The letter, which was not signed, criticized Dr. Saraceno for being “highly unapproachable” and rarely visiting teachers’ classrooms or observing their lessons.

“Perhaps the most egregious example of Dr. Saraceno’s gross negligence is her advocacy for a weak and poorly executed credit recovery program,” the letter states.

“On several occasions Dr. Saraceno has requested, via her assistant principals, that teachers get on board with grade changes simply because we cannot have students not graduate,” the letter says.

A spokeswoman for the principals union told me that the union could not confirm Saraceno’s departure. “We’ve heard that she might leave, but it’s hearsay,” said the spokeswoman, Chiara Coletti. “She’s a very good principal who was put into a school culture very different from the one she came from, and that can’t be easy.”

Students at Alpha School in East New York gather twice a day to form an 'A' shape and recite their code of respect.

Things are looking grim for Alpha School.

Despite the East New York alternative program’s last-minute attempts to convince the state agency that it had made a wrong decision, Alpha School will not be funded by the Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services next year.

Until last week, the program’s director, Barry Addison, had been in talks with OASAS commissioners and had been told to “sit tight.” But yesterday an agency official called to tell Addison, or Mr. B, of their final decision not to restore funding.

“They said, well, a decision was made, and they had closed their budget gap partly with closing me down,” he said. “There was nothing left for me to say.”

One of the city’s GED Plus programs, Alpha School graduated 32 students with GED diplomas last week. It has also garnered widespread community support, from officers in Brooklyn’s 75th precinct and politicians like State Sen. John Sampson.

Mr. B says he’ll spend the summer trying to find private-sector funds to open the school’s doors again in six weeks.

“It’s not what I do, I just don’t know how to reach out to philanthropists,” he said. “But if I’m going to do anything, I have to reach out.”

Earlier this month, SUNY’s Charter Schools Institute approved a dozen charter schools to open in the city in the fall of 2012. Each of the new schools is planned for a specific school district within the city, but the institute’s announcement gives no indication of whether the schools will pursue public or private space.

The new schools include some unusual arrangements for the city, such as a partnership school with the Children’s Aid Society that will provide social services to students and a school that will reserve 30 percent of seats for students for English language learners. That school is set to open in Elmhurst, Queens, and has as a partner a nonprofit that works with Asian immigrants.

But the list mostly contains schools that replicate models already in place in the city. The sixth and seventh Carl Icahn charter schools are on the list, as are a second Family Life Academy Charter School and a second Manhattan Charter School. The Explore network has been given the green light for another school that would give preference to students zoned for a school the city wants to close; the first is supposed to open this fall, although the lawsuit filed by the UFT and NAACP has thrown that plan into question.

And the Success Charter Network, which already operates seven schools and is set to open two more this fall, had three new schools approved, all for Brooklyn. The network’s first Brooklyn school is set to open in August in the IS 33 building. Students from the network’s first school, Harlem Success Academy 1, are entering sixth grade this fall.

The full list of charters the Charter Schools Institute approved this month is below. On Monday, the institute issued a call for proposals for six additional charter schools, but schools that would be sited in New York City are not eligible.

Graduates of Washington Irving High School toss their caps

The 89-year-old nave of Riverside Church reverberated with Bulldog spirit on Monday, as Manhattan’s Washington Irving High School held its graduation exercises.

The graduates, who filled the vast space with a unified toss of their caps at the ceremony’s conclusion, represented just a fraction of the students who started at Washington Irving four years ago. While graduation data for this year’s class is not yet available, last year Washington Irving’s 4-year graduation rate was just 55 percent, which was an increase from 2009, when its rate was the lowest in the city among traditional high schools. The city has dramatically reduced the school’s size in recent years in an effort to turn performance around.

But the school’s struggles barely registered at graduation, where a handful of top students were recognized for their achievements.

Salutatorian Randy Singh talked about the importance of communication, recounting his own struggles with public speaking. “Look at me now, dad,” he said, to loud applause.

Valedictorian Sobeida Peralta, who came to the United States in 2005 at the age of 15 and learned English with the help of a bilingual dictionary, spoke about the importance of perseverance. Peralta made headlines last year when she was named as one of two city athletes to receive an ESPN Rise Award, for her achievements as a volleyball player. She is heading to Northwestern University, with a scholarship supplied by the Gates Foundation.

Chancellor Dennis Walcott was slated as the opening speaker, but he asked for Peralta and Singh to be allowed to speak first. Then Walcott left the stage to praise them and to walk down toward the graduates, telling them, “You are my bosses.” Principal Bernardo Ascona said students had been accepted at more than 40 colleges and universities and had been offered more than half a million dollars in financial aid.

For her classmates at Boys and Girls High School in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, many of whom have experienced hardships and overcome steep odds on the path to graduation, the title is a metaphor. But Jimenez, a top middle distance runner who is headed to college on a track scholarship, takes the idea literally.

“Basically, life is like a race. You set goals, then stay focused and work hard to achieve them,” she said, explaining her speech.

Jimenez’s life has been less of a marathon than a series of hurdles. She overcame her mother’s mental illness, foster homes, and her own insecurity to graduate from high school at the top of her class. There she joins another student-athlete, valedictorian Folashade Frazier, who will attend the University of Michigan.

Together, the pair provide glimmers of hope at a school that seems perpetually at risk of closure. Absorbing some of the community’s neediest students, Boys & Girls has a poor attendance rate and an even lower graduation rate. Detaching kids from their troubled personal lives is often the first hurdle teachers must clear before they can even begin instruction.

Born in Puerto Rico, Jimenez and her older brother, Nathaniel, were given up at an early age by their mother, who suffered from mental illness. She lived in three foster homes and one group home between the ages of 7 and 12.

But although her life was upended time and again during these years, she says her vision to do something great never wavered.

“I just wanted to be known,” explained Jimenez, whose 94.1 grade point average included two Advanced Placement classes in the school’s honors program.

On the track, Jimenez is nearly as elite. She was a member of the school’s city championship 3200 meter relay team. She is tall and thin with a long and powerful stride and her shy, easy-to-smile personality belies a fierce competitive drive. “She didn’t let anything get in her way from improving,” said her coach Renee Sterrett. “She’s worked so hard.”

Jimenez will run at Wheaton College in Massachusetts and has continued to train this summer. On Saturday, she and Sterrett traveled to Icahn Stadium on Randall’s Island, where she was racing the 800 meters. Sitting in the stands, Jimenez thumbed through the recent plays on her mp3 players and talked about her time in foster care. She struggled to explain how its magnitude has shaped her.

“Everything that happened in my life, it happened for a reason,”  she said, shrugging. “I guess that’s why I’m so determined.”

She wasn’t always that way. She was insecure and damaged, said Melva Fernandez, the woman who adopted her when she was 12. “I could tell that she was not treated how a human being is supposed to be treated,” Fernandez said.

Under Fernandez’s roof, Johanna found stability for the first time in her life and thrived. Fernandez is a tough-love mother who had already raised six of her own daughters. She said Johanna was, at best, a mediocre eighth-grade student.

“When she first came and showed me her report card, I saw it and I said, ‘No, this is unacceptable. That can not happen,’” Fernandez said.

By freshman year, Jimenez joined the track team and dedicated herself to studies. She also joined the dance team and drum line.

“When I saw I was doing good, I felt good,” said Jimenez, who keeps in regular contact with her birth mother. “To me, school is a getaway from all my problems. All the problems I had in my life.”

Her teachers and mentors say they believe her perseverance enabled her to overcome.

“Anything she did she always did to the best of her abilities. She stood out from day one,” Linda Fung, an English honors teacher who taught Johanna for two years. “I can say she’s one of the best students I’ve ever had.”

As part of The Big Fix — the year-long series we’re doing in partnership with WNYC — WNYC’s education reporter Beth Fertig has checked in periodically at Chelsea as its teachers and staff try to move more students toward graduation.

Now, Rosenbloom can cite results, Fertig reports:

Earlier this month, Rosenbloom received the school’s Regents scores: more than 90 percent of the juniors passed their exams in English and U.S. history. And there were similar scores for the sophomores who took the science exam.

“It’s just beyond my wildest dreams,” he said. “To see how well the kids are doing, and the teachers – the pride they’re taking and the pride the kids are taking. I mean, I had two kids yesterday jump in the arms of the teacher when they found out they got 88 and 82 on the exam.”

Rosenbloom and his teachers say investment in learning new instructional strategies made the difference, Fertig reports. But they are split on whether students’ performance should factor into teachers’ evaluations.

Listen to Fertig’s complete radio story on Chelsea High School here. And stay tuned for updates soon from Christopher Columbus High School and William E. Grady Career and Technical High School, the other two schools whose changes The Big Fix project has tracked.

For more than a quarter of a century, the council has assigned some of its discretionary funds to the Teacher’s Choice program, which gives teachers a small amount of money to buy supplies. Even in tough budget years, the council has always directed some funding to Teacher’s Choice: Last year, the program received $9.25 million. The year before, it got $13 million.

But when this year’s list of discretionary expenditures, called Schedule C, was released today, Teacher’s Choice was nowhere to be found. That means that teachers will be on the hook for classroom expenses that previously would be reimbursed. Last year, teachers got $110 each; in 2007, they got up to $220.

Teacher’s Choice isn’t completely out of the running until the council makes its Schedule C expenditures official when it approves the city budget. That must happen before Friday, when the new fiscal year begins, and appears likely to happen sooner, even tonight.

UPDATE: “We’re obviously disappointed in the loss of Teachers’ Choice,” said United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew in a statement. “Our members always dig into their own pockets for the supplies their students need; next year, while the city carries over a multi-billion dollar surplus and millionaires get a tax break, teachers will have to dig even deeper.” The union helped launch Teacher’s Choice in the 1980s and had advocated annually for its continuation.

Most of the education programs that are receiving funds through Schedule C have been on the council’s list before, such as prekindergarten classes and a group that supports middle-school science instruction. One exception is MOUSE, which trains students to maintain computers and other technology in their schools. MOUSE did not get council funding in either of the last two years.

The biggest-ticket item on the council’s education list is school custodial services, which are set to have $3 million restored. The city’s budget plan cut $10 million from school cleaning services, which custodians said would certainly result in schools growing dirtier. The council restored an identical cut last year; in 2009, it added $4 million to the city’s school custodial budget.

The full list of the council’s proposed education discretionary funding choices is below.

Ron Smolkin violated city ethics laws, according to a disposition released today (Credit: NY1 Screenshot)

A high school principal who is accused of sending anonymous hate mail about one of his teachers is in trouble again. This time, he used city funds to pay a secretary to help him with his homework.

Independence High School principal Ron Smolkin violated city ethics laws when he hired his secretary to proofread and edit his personal graduate work, according to a Conflict of Interest Board disposition released today. Smolkin paid her hundreds of dollars out of the school budget for the work, which took place over seven months between 2009 and 2010.

The violation cost Smolkin a one-time fine of $5,000, which will come out of his salary. He made $145,000 in 2009.

According to details of the disposition, the secretary edited 18 of Smolkin’s essays, which were part of his work toward a doctoral degree at New York University. Smolkin authorized payments totaling $764.03 for 39 hours of work, a rate of $19 per hour. He also agreed to pay back the money to the Department of Education.

“The Principal admitted that this conduct violated the City of New York’s conflicts of interest law, which prohibits a public servant from using City resources for any non-City purpose,” read a statement issued by the COIB. Smolkin and a principals’ union lawyer each signed the disposition.

A voice mail left on Smolkin’s phone at Independence High School was not returned. Calls and emails left for the principals’ union were also not returned.

It is the second time in three months that Smolkin’s name has surfaced as the subject of a city probe. Last June, Smolkin allegedly sent an anonymous hate letter to the co-op board that one of his teachers sat on, according to NY1. The letter included personal attacks about the teacher’s private life. The teacher, Michael McPherrin, said he was able to match hand writing from the letter to that of Smolkin.

McPherrin said he became the subject of retaliation after he became the teacher’s union rep at the school and challenged Smolkin’s leadership. The Manhattan District Attorney is currently investigating that case, but declined to comment.

Another city schools employee was named in the COIB report released today. Gregory Cooks, a teacher at PS 9 in Queens, was issued a public warning for attaching gift certificates for his insurance business to holiday cards the school sent home to parents.

The cast of “Guys and Dolls” take their bows

It’s been a full month — and a seemingly endless succession of graduations, end-of-the-year recitals, awards ceremonies and fundraising benefits — since the kids I teach in the South Bronx put on our school’s annual spring musical, the 1950’s classic, “Guys and Dolls.” This year’s rehearsal process served up an especially overwhelming array of challenges and behind-the-scenes mayhem, all intensified by the parallel unfolding of my second pregnancy. (In case you missed them, here are Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of our 100-day countdown to opening night.)

“Well, OK…” you might be wondering, “So, after all of that dramatic build-up … how did the actual show go? (And why has it taken you so darn long to write about it?)”

Well, if you had asked me last week, before the email arrived, I might have heaved an exhausted sigh and launched into what, in the end, would’ve amounted to a sob story.

For starters, I would’ve told you that due to insane scheduling conflicts, our opening night performance was the first time we’d ever had the whole cast together, so it ran more like a dress rehearsal than an actual show, with huge chunks of missed dialogue, brutally slow pacing, and countless costume and prop malfunctions.

I’d have gone on to tell you that the following night’s performance, despite big improvements in overall energy, was still plagued by major problems, not the least of which was a case of vocal strain so intense for one of our male leads that by the second act he could barely talk, let alone sing.

And then I would have hit you with the real zinger and told you that 15 minutes before the sold-out crowd came in on closing night — after the vocally-challenged male lead had been given a cortisone shot in the neck by the only voice specialist in Manhattan willing to treat a young man from the South Bronx with no insurance on a last-minute, walk-in basis, and I was finally letting out a sigh of relief, thinking we were poised to redeem ourselves by putting on the show of our lives — the lighting designer raced up to me breathless and panicked to tell me that the dimmer rack had  blown out and that 85 percent of the lights were now not working at all.

Then I might have told you that when I emerged from the utility closet two minutes later (following a brief but violent explosion of all the built-up tears I’d managed to hold at bay over the preceding four months) I found that the leader of our set crew had transformed a hastily-assembled army of crew kids into an impromptu lighting team who would now have to operate the dimmer rack manually from backstage, each one of them sticking a finger into one of the switches and pressing down hard to recreate some semblance of the original lighting design for each scene, which, though it didn’t yield foolproof results — (halfway through Act II the lights started flickering because Shakeel’s hands went into muscle spasms and he couldn’t keep pressure on his switch) — nevertheless got us through the show.

At this point, I would have confessed to you that by the time the kids took their bows on closing night, jumping and dancing and beaming with pride, all I wanted to do was go home and fall down.

I would have acknowledged that although I put on a brave face over the next few weeks while the students happily reminisced about their accomplishments, I was still internally obsessing over everything that had gone wrong.

In the end, I would have admitted that for the longest time, even the simple act of sitting down to write this blog post felt so physically overwhelming to me that for weeks I haven’t been able to force myself to chronicle what — despite objective signs of positive outcomes and reminders from supportive friends and family that this work is about process not product — still felt to me like a disappointment.

Eighth-grade dancers light up the Havana scene

But if you asked me right now, at this moment, I would have a very different answer for you — all because of a simple email from our photographer that finally allowed me to pull back and catch a glimpse of what we had created from an objective outsider’s perspective.

12th grader Melanie as “Sarah Brown” sings her heart out

The change happened immediately, as soon as I opened the email and clicked the link to the gallery of photos. I moved through the images, my heart started racing, and click after click, I felt the weight and exhaustion of the last six months loosen their grip and spiral off me, leaving a fresh new feeling of excitement in their place.

10th-grader Norberto entertains as “Nicely Nicely Johnson”

I clicked faster, image after image, amazed at the force of this unexpected perspective-shift, flooded with waves of satisfaction and pride …

Because, yes, there may have been lighting problems …

“Adelaide” (12th-grader Brianne) makes her grand entrance

Click.

And yes, there was the cortisone shot, and the crazy scheduling …

Click. Click.

Not to mention the expulsion hearings …

“Adelaide” and her “Hot Box” dancers

The kids crying after being kicked out of the show due to failing grades …

12th-grader Marcus in his stage debut as “Arvide”

The late nights agonizing over whether my decision to give the actor playing Sky another chance had motivated a struggling student to get his grades up and graduate, or taught a slick kid that he could game the system …

Click. Click. Click.

11th grader George, as “Benny Southstreet,” strikes a pose

The guys fly high in “Crapshooter’s Dance”

Yes, there were actors who missed rehearsals because they got jumped in the park …

Because they had to visit family members in prison …

Because their mothers had to work and no one else could look after their siblings …

Because two of their friends were shot and killed at a party on a Saturday night …

Fifth- and sixth-grade future stars wave to their fans

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All of these things are true.

And yet …

Looking at these photographs …

Those truths receded and made room for me to step back, really see at what we accomplished, and remember why we started this program in the first place.

When I look at these pictures …

I see integrity.

I see determination.

Most of all, I see joy.

And last Friday afternoon, after I showed the kids a full slideshow of photographs at our end-of-year wrap-up celebration, I was forced to shift my perspective even further. I found myself surrounded by a roomful of engaged, inspired young people who, even after a long and draining year, were chomping at the bit to get started on summer programming, research shows for next year, and step into leadership roles when I go on maternity leave in the fall.

Listening to them speak about what they had learned from putting on the show, I got a fresh outlook on a process whose value — I can now see clearly — undeniably transcends all of the frustration, heartbreak and exhaustion it may have entailed.

Thomas Sosa, an 11th-grader who before this year had never been in a play before, summed it up well.

“I think the biggest thing I learned this year is that faith in your work goes a really long way,” he said, “especially when there are major challenges you have to overcome to get to that end product.”

Amen, Thomas Sosa.

After a year that tested my faith as an educator in countless ways, I’m beyond grateful to be wrapping up the year on that note.

As always, the students featured in this post agreed to let me share their stories; the views expressed here are my own and not those of my school’s administration.

Special thanks to my dear friend, photographer/videographer extraordinaire, Alejandro Duran (all photo credits).