Hanging With Haber

AP season has just ended, and students who took APs are relieved; and so is the Assistant Principal of Organization, Dr. Gary Haber, who organized the AP tests. But besides administering AP tests, who is Dr. Haber, and what is his role at the school?

Dr. Haber grew up in Middlesex County, New Jersey, where he went through the public education system. He attended Rutgers University, where he studied human biology. From there, Dr. Haber began working as a chiropractor in the Financial District of Manhattan. For a while, he was content with that job, but after witnessing the events of 9/11 first-hand, Dr. Haber decided that he wanted to work with people and help others more directly. “[9/11 was] the one stopping point. You look at your whole life; this could have been over today, being that I was right there. Right there,” he said.

So, when he saw a New York City Department of Education advertisement in the New York Times for math and science teachers, he knew that he wanted to apply. Dr. Haber mentioned that one incentive for applying was he wanted to do something for New York City, especially after the tragic events of 9/11 that had occurred a few years earlier. Dr. Haber explained, “It’s not the same as the Peace Corps, but it felt like I have an opportunity here, and I had the credentials that they want, exactly what they want.”

Dr. Haber was initially accepted into the Teaching Fellows program for a two-year contract but ended up teaching for five years. During those first five years, he taught at the Bayard Rustin Educational Complex, which is better known as the Humanities Educational Complex. Now, the building houses six different public schools, but it only held one during Dr. Haber’s time there. He taught different science classes at the complex, including Living Environment, sustainability, psychology, physical science, and bioethics. Dr. Haber tremendously enjoyed teaching and especially loved teaching freshmen. “People said [that] they wanted the 12th graders. I said, ‘I’ll take the ninth graders.’ They talk the most, but they are so much fun,” Dr. Haber explained. He also noted that students tended to drift away after their freshman year but then return to him their senior year.

Dr. Haber explained that despite the common misconception that teaching is all about a teacher’s knowledge of the subject material, the teacher’s relationship with the students also has a large contribution to his or her overall success as a teacher. On a similar note, his most gratifying experiences were not always related to the material. “It’s not a content thing—it’s about building relationships with young people […] I can teach science, but it’s working with people, developing relationships, developing rapport with people. That’s what makes this so rewarding,” Dr. Haber noted.

In the middle of his years of teaching, Dr. Haber began spending multiple periods a day working on administrative tasks, such as setting budgets, purchasing, and procurement. He loves administration and feels that it is very natural for him. He explained, “Administration or operations is all about aligning resources to get the best possible educational result. It’s all about how you use your resources […] There are so many different constituencies—students [and] parents asking, ‘What do you think is the best possible result?’ and then budgeting accordingly and managing.”

Another reason administrative tasks came so easily to Dr. Haber was because he had previous experience with technological applications, such as Microsoft Excel. Now, almost everybody knows how to use Excel, but at the beginning of Dr. Haber’s administrative journey, that was a rare skill.

After teaching and working as an administrator at the Humanities Educational Complex, Dr. Haber was invited to work as Assistant Principal at the Hudson High School of Learning Technologies by the then-principal of Hudson High School; that principal had previously been directing the Humanities Educational Complex. Dr. Haber worked at Hudson High School for six years.

Dr. Haber was pleasantly surprised when he learned that Principal Eric Contreras was interested in having him interview for a job at Stuyvesant. He recounted, “[Contreras] reached out to my former principal. [Hudson’s principal] said, ‘I have to talk to you. […] Sit down, Dr. Haber […] They asked you to interview to work at Stuyvesant.’ You can imagine; it came out of nowhere for me.” Dr. Haber applied, got the job of Assistant Principal of Organization, and began working at the beginning of the second semester this year.

Though Dr. Haber knew that Stuyvesant was going to be different from the previous schools he had worked at, he was not ready for the culture-shock he would face here. He explained, “There’s no question, the first three weeks I had to find my legs. The title is Assistant Principal Organization and Operations. I have experience with this. But coming into a new school, it’s a different culture. […] There’s a different ethos here. There’s a normalization of serious academics here.” Dr. Haber elaborated that here, it is commonplace and accepted to be a nerd, a situation he had never encountered before. In fact, he noted that he is not entirely comfortable even using the term “nerd.”

As Assistant Principal of Organization, Dr. Haber has many different responsibilities. For one, he manages the budget, procurement, compliance, supervision, and payroll. Another large part of Dr. Haber’s job is managing the AP and Regents testing schedule. For those tests, Dr. Haber explained that it is his job to make sure that everything runs smoothly, therefore allowing the students to achieve their best possible score. He explained, “We try to do everything that we can to ensure the best possible testing conditions, so they don’t have to focus on anything other than what they have to do.” During AP and Regents season, Dr. Haber circulates through rooms, making sure that all problems are being taken care of.

For Dr. Haber, the biggest challenge at Stuyvesant is the sheer number of students. This is still an issue for him even though a job that might normally be done by one person at other smaller schools is split among three at Stuyvesant (Brain Moran, Casey Pedrick, and Dr. Haber). He explained, “If I send out an email, and one percent of the student body responds to me, that’s still a lot.”

Dr. Haber has been learning that even though he wants to, he can’t work on every small issue and problem that comes up. “You have to make decisions and move on to the next decision,” he said. “There’s no time. Based on all the information you have at that time, you make your decision and move forward.”

Despite Dr. Haber’s busy life at Stuyvesant (his typical day begins at 6:30 a.m.), he still tries to make time to spend with his wife and three-year-old son. Dr. Haber described, “Principally, I try to spend my time reading to [my son]. Now, it’s light out. First we exercise, and then we read.” Soon, he hopes that they will be able to make it out to his house in Pennsylvania and visit his parents in the Jersey Shore area. As for spending time alone, Haber loves bicycling and reading.