Bedford Stuyvesant
Listen up kids!
Cheers to Alejandra Palomino, who grew up in Brooklyn, left to study at Franklin and Marshall University in Lancaster, Pa., and returned to teach third grade at Leadership Prep Bedford Stuyvesant, near where she grew up.
Alejandra’s climb up the academic ladder is in a class of its own: She was a straight A student, but discovered that she was woefully unprepared for college when an English teacher said her paper “wasn’t even good enough to grade.”
Undeterred, the plucky scholar studied hard and turned her college career around, making the dean’s list.
She attributes her success to the Uncommon Schools Summer Teaching Fellowship program, which recruits high-performing rising college seniors to spend their summer teaching at one of Uncommon’s 38 schools.
Alejandra rose to the challenge, despite the long hours of training every day, and enjoyed the practical element of the program.
“It wasn’t just theory, but we’d learn something and then the very next day we’d have a chance to try it in the classroom,” she said. “Uncommon, and Leadership Prep are places driven by teacher vision. and I knew I wanted to be a part of that.”
Now the Standing O pal is offering other budding brains a shot at scholastic triumph.
“I was lucky and I worked hard to get better, but our kids shouldn’t have to play catch up when they reach college,” she said.
And that’s why Standing O exists — to give shout-outs to amazing people like Alejandra.
Leadership Prep Bedford Stuyvesant [141 Macon St. at Marcy Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, (718) 636–0360].
