They’ve survived the first half of the school year. No, not the students. We’re talking about the teachers here. Particularly those new teachers who are just making their way through the ups and downs of it all for the first time.

In the Lower Hudson Valley, four new teachers have opened their classrooms to The Journal News as part of the “New Teacher Project,” a series exploring the successes and challenges these fresh faces encounter throughout the year.

We visited most of these teachers on the first day of school, a time full of optimism and high expectations.

With winter break ending, spirits are still high, and confidence is building.

These teachers love what they do, and are looking forward to what’s still to come. Saying teaching is more of a calling than a profession, they bring new energy and inspiration to one of the world’s most venerable professions.

“There’s a sense of fulfillment you just don’t necessarily get in other careers,” said Roosevelt High School math teacher Marguerita Street. “At the end of the day, when someone comes up to you and says, ‘Ms. Street! I get it!’ that’s priceless.”

Check out our coverage from the first day of school, complete with photos and videos from the big day.

Jason Horr

PUTNAM VALLEY – It’s the last period of the day, and biology teacher Jason Horr is competing with the triple threat of a sunny afternoon, a snow day in the forecast and a looming holiday recess.

He also had the entire alimentary canal to cover in 40 minutes and an impressive grip on the attention spans of two dozen freshmen.

“The kids are definitely getting crazy,” Horr said after class, having made it all the way to the duodenum without disruption.

The Somers native – he lives in Carmel now – has also made it nearly halfway through his first full year as a teacher. Part-time stints here at Putnam Valley High School last year and in an upstate district two years ago took some of the edge off the experience, but he admits he still feels rookie nerves from time to time.

Three years out of college, he has a youthful appearance that is an asset with students.

“I think I fool a lot of people,” he said. “Then once I start educating, all of a sudden they think I’m older than I am.”

The room is softly lit, but even without harsh fluorescent lighting, requisite science equipment abounds, from lab tables with sinks to a model skeleton. Not so requisite are the Apple laptops nearly every student has open in front of them.

Horr moves quickly through the lesson, entertaining frequent questions but mindful of veering off topic for long. Preparation is key, he said, as is having adequate back-up plans. The idea is to keep the class moving and keep students’ minds occupied for the full period. Less downtime means fewer disciplinary issues.

This class is a little more restless than most, and since this is the day’s final subject, Horr understands they’re fried by the time they get to him. The challenge is to keep them engaged and not bore them.

Horr first tapped his penchant for teaching when he led martial arts classes at age 11 and later in his teens as a fitness instructor, a job he still does. Classroom teaching was a natural progression, not that it’s always easy.

“Some days you can leave here upset and almost overwhelmed,” he said. “I’m an emotional person, but I think that’s also a strength in a way, too, because of my connection with the students. I want them to do well, and I want to help them.”

Kate Moran

NEW CITY – Kate Moran, 70 days more experienced as a teacher than in September, has done away with her shower curtains, folders and carts in favor of technology.

“The shower curtain is gone, the Smartboard is in,” a laughing Moran said. “I’m all about Smartboards.”

Moran, 26, has learned a few tricks since her first day on Sept. 7 as a floating Spanish teacher when she girded her courage around her and pushed a cart containing a shower curtain and paper doodads and games into her first class at Link Elementary School. Clarkstown schools is introducing Spanish to its elementary schools, and Moran is the pilot teacher for the program.

She has no classroom of her own, but walks into each of 19 different classrooms during the week, works with 19 different teachers and knows all the students in those 19 different classrooms from kindergarten to fifth grade. She knows where the clock, the black/white/Smartboard is in each class, which classes pick up concepts quickly and which take more time.

Originally, she kept each class lesson and notes in a separate folder on one of the three carts she was using to haul her teaching gear from room to room. No more. It took too much time to organize when she had five minutes to get from one class to another in the day. Papers got mixed up, notes got misplaced. The carts, too, are gone. She brings her needed papers in a bag, and everything else is done via computer, which also is connected to the Smartboards in the various rooms.

What hasn’t changed, however, is her enthusiasm for the work and her decision to speak only Spanish to her students. The Spanish-speaking part created a school scandal early on, as students – convinced she knew no English – were astounded to hear her in the hallway chatting with the other teachers in English.

“It’s great,” Moran said of her teaching experiences. “The kids are so excited. They surprise me all the time.”

Connor Gillule, 7, a first-grader, said he enjoyed his Spanish classes, which usually happen on Fridays.

“It’s good because we got to do a lot of fun things,” he said. “She teaches a lot of things, and we get to use the Smartboard.”

Jane Gerlich, whose first-grade class was learning about “la oruga muy hambrienta” recently with Moran, said she found the novice teacher an effective educator.

The veteran teacher sat in the back of the classroom absorbing the lesson herself while the students repeated “comio” in a passable Spanish accent after Moran, while she moved her Very Hungry Caterpillar on the Smartboard from pear to plum to leaf.

“I love her. She’s very animated. The kids can’t wait for Spanish each week. If there’s a parent coming in to pick them up early, they refuse to go home if they have Spanish,” Gerlich said. “They pick up a lot from her, and we try to incorporate it in the classroom. They absorb so much it’s amazing.”

Marguerita Street

YONKERS – “You need help and I’m coming!” Marguerita Street says as she shuffles from one group of students to the next, talking the class through questions about fractions and decimals.

It’s a busy day in this young teacher’s Roosevelt High School classroom, and the students are pulling her in every which way.

This lesson is meant to give the children a break from the typical textbook drill, asking them first to estimate how many M&M candies are in their small baggies, then to count them up and express the fraction of red and green pieces.

Next, the students must simplify the fractions and create bar graphs.

The math is tough for some. But it’s even harder for them to resist eating the candies.

“I want them to see and explore these concepts for themselves,” Street says. “I hope they can look back on this day and say, ‘Oh yeah, remember when we did this with the M&Ms?’ ”

Keeping things fun is part of the thrill for this 25-year-old teacher, who said the fulfillment she gets when a student understands a new concept is absolutely priceless. Half of the year is now done, but she’s keeping her eyes squarely on the challenges still to come.

With high expectations for all her students, she said she’s diligent about keeping on top of them.

“When they’re working in class, I ask them 3 million questions. Do you get it? You OK?” she said. “Math is like building a building. If your foundation isn’t there, you can’t build any higher. You can’t advance unless you have the basics.”

So far so good, it seems.

Fifteen-year-old Nathalia Gueorero said Street makes math easy to understand.

“Before, I never used to like math,” Gueorero said. “She makes it fun for us.”

Part of reaching the students on an academic level is reaching them on a personal level, Street said. So she’s told them about her own background, growing up in Yonkers in a low-income single-family home, just like many of her students.

“I respect them, so they respect me,” she said. “They look at me and see that, ‘Wow. Look at what I could do.’ It’s important for me to be a role model.”

Rina Esquivel

PORT CHESTER – What’s the most important thing Rina Esquivel learned during her first few months as a teacher at Park Avenue Elementary School?
That the students are a reflection of her.

“I set the mood,” said Esquivel, checking the Spanish-language shopping lists of students in her bilingual kindergarten class. “If I’m excited, they’re excited. If I’m having a bad day, they’ll have a bad day. A teacher really needs to be energetic and show that learning is fun.”

Those bits of wisdom are coming fast for Esquivel. Finishing up her first semester as a full-time teacher, the Port Chester native is bubbling with excitement over the growth she’s helping to foster in her students.

Teaching a largely Hispanic group in their native language has allowed many of them to surpass expectations in curriculum, said Esquivel, who is Hispanic and fluent in Spanish. Just as helpful, she said, is knowing when to go off-script and try something new.

“I like to give them challenges,” said Esquivel, 25, sipping Gatorade to keep her energy level equal to that of a roomful of active 5- and 6-year-olds. “I do a lot of first grade work, and a lot of them can do it already. It’s amazing.”

The basics of teaching the youngest schoolchildren still holds true, she said: Keep them busy and plan ahead. That’s accomplished by rotating through a series of exercises, including practicing the alphabet and numbers, learning to read and write in Spanish, sing-alongs and crafting art projects with older student “buddies.”

Rigorously sticking to the routine surely creates students who can follow instructions, but Esquivel said she wants to produce independent thinkers. So she has relaxed a bit, allowing students to choose books they want to read and guide some of their own work by keeping track of the lessons they’ve already learned.

In her class, where exercises are taught in Spanish in the morning and English in the afternoon, almost anything can be made into a lesson. For instance, students in the class can choose their own meals for lunch, and earlier in the year, Esquivel would gather orders from each child.

Now, the meal choices are each given a letter, and students must write the letter and their name on a sign-in sheet, practicing penmanship and learning to write and recognize their names. The exercise also helps with attendance.

That’s just a small example of a new teacher working to make the classroom, and the curriculum, her own.