No Yondr Pouches (Yet), No Phone Problems

Troup seventh grader Lizmarie Hernandez eyed the word ​“consume” in her English workbook.

Instead of looking it up on her phone, she flipped to the book’s glossary to learn its definition — and then wrote that down by hand to help herself remember.

Lizmarie undertook that phone-free vocab learning during Wednesday morning at the 259 Edgewood Ave. neighborhood school. She did so as a student in the third-floor English Language Arts classroom of second-year New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) educator Ranisa Sweat.

This year, Troup plans to adopt Yondr pouches — magnetically-sealed devices designed to create phone-free learning environments — amid a statewide and nationwide push to cut down on smartphone distractions during the school day.

Those Yondr pouches haven’t yet arrived at Troup, so they weren’t in Sweat’s classroom on Wednesday. Even without that phone-free technology, Sweat manages to run a classroom where students are not incessantly turning to their phones, as evidenced by Lizmarie’s vocab self-tutelage with the help of a workbook glossary and a pencil.

Sweat said she has not dealt with phone use problems in her classroom. ​“Phones can be useful, and I think because they know they have the opportunity to [use] them in class when needed, there’s no need for them to sneak them. Phones have never been a problem for me,” she said.

Last school year, Sweat, a New Haven native, worked as a substitute teacher at Troup. She is now the school’s seventh and eighth grade English teacher, making use of a Durational Shortage Area Permit (DSAP) as she works toward her full teaching certification.

In Sweat’s 9:40 a.m. second-period English class Wednesday, seventh graders filed in from the hallways and to their classroom’s desk.

This week was the class’s first week of diving into the course’s new Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) Into Literature workbooks. On Wednesday, students worked through Unit 5, entitled ​“Game on!” The students were tasked with writing to the essential question prompt: ​“How do games impact our lives? What do you think?”

They also worked on writing the definitions of the unit’s five new vocabulary words: ​“attitude,” ​“consume,” ​“gold,” ​“purchase,” and ​“style.”

“Get in, get settled. There’s a ​‘do now’ on the board,” Sweat called out to the class of 15 students as they took their seats.

Students greeted Sweat as she asked the students if they ate breakfast and how their first-period class went.

After pencils were sharpened and attention was on the classroom’s white board, Sweat asked seventh grader DJ, ​“Can you read the first part of the ​‘do now?’ ”

DJ read the first four sentences aloud, taking his time to correctly sound out words like ​“diamonds” and ​“pressed.”

Sweat reminded the class that her English class would consist of a lot of writing, talking, and presenting. When she asked them why, Sariyah said, ​“So we can get confidence.”

Sweat responded, ​“Yes, and when you get older, you’re going to have to get used to speaking out loud, so I want you guys to get comfortable sharing your thoughts.”

Next the students began their individual tasks on page 400 of their workbooks. They first answered the unit’s essential question, then used the workbook’s glossary at the back of the book to rewrite the definitions for each of their vocabulary words in their composition notebooks.

As students worked, Sweat made rounds of her classroom to check in one-on-one with each student. She also asked throughout the 45-minute period, ​“Is anybody confused about what they’re doing right now?” She reminded the class, ​“I need to see everybody working.”

When she next asked ​“who needs help?” a few hands were raised. That immediately prompted seventh graders Lizmarie and Janiya, who finished their work early, to voluntarily help their peers.

Sweat reminded the student helpers, ​“You’re not doing the work for them. You’re just putting them in the right direction.”

With 15 minutes of class remaining, one seventh grader called out, ​“I don’t want to write, I hate writing,” while struggling to limit his talking to focus on Wednesday’s task. Sweat offered for the student to sit at her desk to focus better on their own, but the student responded, ​“No, I like sitting around other people.”

Sweat instead worked one-on-one with that student.

Before the end of class, Lizmarie told this reporter that she enjoyed Wednesday’s lesson because it gave her the chance to write about her feelings. ​“I like telling my feelings because nobody really asks about them,” she said. ​“And it helps our teachers understand us outside of normal school work.”

Lizmarie showed off her vocabulary notebook with the new word she learned Wednesday: ​“Consume.” She did so by first spelling out the word in her notebook then rewriting its definition beside it thanks to the book’s glossary.

She concluded that she looks forward to improving her public speaking skills in English class because, due to being shy, she struggles to express herself in group settings.

When asked about how the first days of school have been with Troup’s new requirement to wear uniforms, Lizmarie said her family only learned of the mandated uniform eight days before school started, which was well after they’d already went clothing shopping for the school year. She said while she thinks uniforms are not a bad idea, she has not yet bought a uniform for the school year.

Janiya Smith said she enjoys Sweat’s class because it’s helping improve her spelling. When asked about the school’s uniform policy, she said she likes it and thinks it makes her and her peers more organized.

"This Is Where My Passion Is"

Growing up in New Haven, Sweat attended the former Helen Grant school, Wintergreen magnet school, and Hamden High.

Sweat graduated from Hamden High in 2014 and then attended Morgan State University to study elementary education. After spending time student teaching and observing classrooms in Baltimore, Sweat decided to change her major her senior year. After graduating in 2019, she worked on political campaigns in Baltimore before returning to New Haven — right as the Covid pandemic hit.

She decided her next endeavor would be opening her own hair salon. For four years, Sweat ran her own business doing hair. Last year, she decided to get her foot back into education and began working as a substitute teacher at Troup.

“This is where my passion is, and now I finally felt ready for the classroom,” Sweat said.

At the start of this school year, Sweat let go of running her hair salon as she acquired a Durational Shortage Area Permit (DSAP) to teach seventh and eighth grade English. Meanwhile, she’s pursuing her teaching certification and master’s degree online for secondary education with a focus in humanities.

The DSAP acts as a placeholder for educators like Sweat to be a head classroom teacher while working toward attaining all teaching credentials.

When asked about the difference between getting into education now versus in 2019, Sweat said her age played a major role. When graduating at 21 years old, she said she was still figuring things out and learning about what she enjoyed. While going through a rollercoaster of learning herself, she realized, ​“I didn’t want to project my negative energies on kids just coming to school to learn.”

Sweat said she now feels ready to helm the classroom to build her students’ confidence in writing, presenting, and reading.

As a substitute teacher, Sweat also supported Troup’s Read 180, a reading intervention program. She learned then and continues to see this year that New Haven youth can often be labeled as speaking in ​“combative” or ​“aggressive” ways. But that doesn’t deter her because ​“I talked like that too for a long time.”

“A lot of times kids might come off combative when speaking about something,” she said, ​“but when you understand this place that they’re growing up in, you don’t take it personal.”