A Recollection of the Sleep-Deprived Days

Stuyvesant teachers can be unpredictable—they might surprise the class with an assignment that takes an entire night to complete, or they might allow flexible deadlines for a certain project. Even though these teachers have to be authoritative and uphold certain classroom rules, they do have more to share, including the relatable experiences they have had, and the advice they give from once being high school students themselves.

When asked about what characteristics she shares with her students, biology teacher Marissa Maggio replied, “Procrastination.” As a teacher of freshman biology and Urban Ecology, she relates to her students’ motivations of “try[ing] to find that moment to irritate teachers.” She also recounted, “I would very much wait till the last minute, stay up all night and cram [...] redo papers five times, because I didn’t think it was good the first time, [...] [and] obsess over every point on a test.”

For her students, it is hard to imagine that she was once like them. She admitted to “all of the things [she] makes fun of [her] students for,” she said. However, she also understands the struggles Stuyvesant students go through on a daily basis. “I understand where they’re coming from, but it still makes me laugh,” she said.

On the other hand, Mandarin teacher Xue Pan offered a different quality she relates to in Stuyvesant students: being responsible. She tries to be responsible to her students in her teaching and with her materials, just as how a number of her students are responsible for their own actions and academics.

Having attended a specialized high school in China, Pan had a similar experience to Stuyvesant students. She shared, “High school was very similar to Stuy. Students were super competitive. I felt like I was under a lot of pressure and stress.”

With that similar parallelism and training, Pan easily identified with her students. She said, “I can understand how they feel, because [...] I have been there. I can see why someone had a bad day, or why sometimes they shut down.”

Biology teacher Jessica Quenzer also shared a similar experience in high school. Having once being extremely obsessed with grades as many Stuyvesant students are, Quenzer said that she would tell her past self, “Go to parties.”

Up to this point, all of the teachers interviewed fit a category of the Stuyvesant stereotype. Surprisingly, SPARK director Angel Colon did not relate. “I was never like this,” Colon admitted. He further elaborated that his work years at Stuyvesant were more of a “redoing” of his high school career.

Though their high school days are over, these teachers are surrounded by students who have entered the same cycle of balancing grades, friends, and activities. Pan notices all the stress that her students go through, but she confidently said, “I won’t be like, ‘Oh, what would happen to my students?’ I [know] they [are] going to be okay.” She also offered a final piece of advice: “As long as [the students] have faith in themselves and can pick themselves up from where they were left, they will be okay.”

Colon gives his students the same advice. As a counselor, Colon has seen the type of situations students get themselves into. He recollected students having been influenced by both negative and positive things, but even so, “You survive those experiences,” he said.