Desi Nesmith, one of our earliest scholarship recipients, is constantly affirming the wisdom of our selection committee in identifying talent and character.
During his 13-year career as a teacher and principal, he has often been recognized for excellence in teaching and leadership. Last fall, he received the most prestigious of his numerous recognitions when he was given the $25,000 Milken Family Foundation Educator Award.
This week he announced at the Bloomfield Board of Education meeting that he is donating 10 percent of his prize to Bloomfield High School for a college scholarship for students who are preparing to become educators.
“When that (Milken Award) happened and all my students got to see it, I wanted to pay it forward,” said Mr. Nesmith, who was surprised by the award at an assembly he thought had been scheduled to celebrate students’s scores on state reading and writing tests.
Mr. Nesmith has served as principal of Metacomet School in his hometown of Bloomfield since September 2011. Since then, he and his colleagues have been recognized for the improvement their students have achieved in state standardized tests.
Mr. Nesmith attended Metacomet School in first and second grades, and he has chosen to name the scholarship in memory of his first grade teacher, Anne Stone Dowdy, who died in 2005.
“She laid down the foundation that game me a love of learning,” he said. “I still remember the things she taught us. She was stern but she loved you. You can’t fake that. She was one of those people you never forget.”
Bloomfield Schools Superintendent James Thompson was pleased and impressed by Mr. Nesmith’s establishment of the scholarship. “It’s a noble gesture on his part,” he said. “It speaks volumes about Desi’s character.”
Yes, it does. Since 2000, when our selection committee chose Desi to receive the Alma Exley Scholarship, we have been privileged to see him grow personally and professionally. He has gone on to have a positive impact as an outstanding teacher and principal.
I am honored that he has agreed to serve as our featured speaker when we honor our newest recipient, Justis Lopez, at our annual reception on May 4. I’m sure he will offer an inspiring message to the future teachers in attendance.
Many of us are troubled by the realization that Connecticut has the nation’s largest educational achievement gap between English-language learners and students fluent in English. While many wring their hands and bemoan this sad fact, Violet Jiménez Sims is trying to do something about it.
Ms. Sims, whom we honored in 2008, has become an advocate for reform of the bilingual education system in Connecticut’s public schools. She served on a panel of educators who addressed this issue at a conference at Central Connecticut State University Feb 27-28. Earlier in February, she spoke at a forum on the topic at the New Britain Public Library.
Most recently, she posted an op-ed essay advocating reform in bilingual education in the CT Mirror online publication. We are reprinting it here.
Ms. Sims taught Spanish and English for Speakers of other Languages (ESL) for several years at New Britain High School and now is a bilingual educator and instructional coach at Manchester High School. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees and a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies from the University of Connecticut and is pursuing her doctorate at the University of Bridgeport.
Congratulations to Violet for working to make a difference. She is one of many Alma Exley Scholars who are having a positive impact in a variety of ways. Following is her op-ed from the CT Mirror. – Woody Exley
By Violet Jiménez Sims
Central Connecticut State University has taken the lead in speaking up for a marginalized sector of our population with the recent conference titled “Dos Días para Transforming Bilingual Education in Connecticut.”
This topic is especially important to the children, parents, and educators across Connecticut, as a recent Hartford Courant article pointed out the shameful fact that our state leads the nation with the largest achievement gap between English Language Learners (ELL) and their peers who are English fluent. According to the article, the gap in Connecticut is 54 percent larger than the national average. Why is this happening? Several reasons.
First, Connecticut state statute limits bilingual education (defined as a program where students receive academic support in their native language) to a maximum of 30 months, even though well-established research shows that students need a minimum of five years to attain grade level proficiency in a second language.
Second, Connecticut does not fully embrace dual language models, the best way for children to reach fluency bilingually. There are only six dual-language schools in the entire state and cities such as New Britain have closed down these research-based programs that are thriving internationally and throughout the rest of the country.
For example, New York currently has hundreds of dual language schools and is expanding by as many as 40 new dual language schools this year. These models are superior because they allow both ELLs and monolingual English speakers to become fully bilingual.
Third, bilingual education in Connecticut is not equitable. For example, affluent suburban communities, such as Avon and West Hartford, offer world language instruction kindergarten through high school. Meanwhile, most ELLs attending Connecticut’s urban districts are at risk of losing their native language as their schools focus on pushing ELLs to acquire English with methods that sacrifice their first language, but do not lead to grade level proficiency; a process known in language acquisition theory as fossilization. Therefore, suburban children have the privilege of becoming bilingual, while our urban students lose their home languages and half-learn English.
Local districts in Connecticut have wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on “get proficient quick” schemes, like Kevin Clark’s English Language Development (ELD) program, which have failed elsewhere and have been challenged by the U.S. Office of Civil Rights.
Proponents of such programs claim that their data shows sharp improvements in English proficiency, but these results are skewed as they use assessments created by the same people that sell the programs and teachers are trained to “teach to the test.” The validity of these programs is highly undermined by assumptions and a lack of alignment to empirical research, or strong theory. Additionally, ELLs are segregated from their English-fluent peers for several hours a day, where they miss the other important academic subjects like Social Studies and Science. These corrupt practices must stop.
Properly educating our youth is beneficial to the entire population. Thank you to CCSU for taking the lead in Connecticut by hosting a much-needed conversation on how to change bilingual education in our state. Over 200 professionals participated. Our children and society depend on this continued valor.
Our selection committee really knows how to pick ’em!
When we selected Desi Nesmith as the Alma Exley Scholar for 2000, we recognized his potential to become an outstanding educator.
Our confidence was reinforced a few years later when he was honored as Teacher of the Year at Mayberry Elementary School in East Hartford.
We weren’t surprised when he received the Promising Young Professional Award from his alma mater, the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut, in 2009.
That was the year he became principal of SAND Elementary School in Hartford. In his first year, he transformed the school from one of the state’s lowest performing schools to one of the most improved. And he was recognized as Best First-Year Principal by the Connecticut Association of Schools.
Since 2011 Desi has been principal of Metacomet School in Bloomfield. Under his leadership, student academic performance has improved dramatically and the achievement gap has been narrowed significantly.
In recognition of his outstanding leadership, the Milken Family Foundation has honored Desi with the prestigious Milken Educator Award, the only one in Connecticut this year. The honor includes an unrestricted $25,000 prize.
The award was presented at an assembly which Principal Nesmith thought had been scheduled to honor the children for their academic achievements. He introduced State Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor, who congratulated the students for reducing the third-grade achievement gap in reading by 19 percent, with reading scores exceeding the state average by 8 percent.
Then Dr. Jane Foley of the Milken Family Foundation caught Desi completely by surprise by announcing that he had been chosen for the prestigious award. (Dr. Foley and Commissioner Prior are with Desi in the photo above.)
After composing himself from the surprise of his life, Desi told the students that not too many years ago, he had been sitting right where they were, and that they, too, could fulfill their dreams and aspirations. (He grew up in Bloomfield and attended Metacomet School for first and second grades.)
It was such a pleasure for me to see Desi receive this much-deserved honor. I have followed his career since he received our scholarship as an undergraduate at UConn. It is abundantly clear that Desi cares deeply about his students and wants every one of them to succeed. Moreover, his inspired leadership is enabling them to succeed.
Seeing scholarship recipients like Desi grow, mature and have an impact in their careers is what makes being involved with the Alma Exley Scholarship Program so rewarding. Everyone who has supported the program over the years can take some satisfaction in knowing they have played a small part in helping to launch the careers of a wonderful group of outstanding educators.
