Student Briefs

McKenzi Barnett

Princeton, W.Va.
Senior in Elementary Education

In the summer of 2017, McKenzi Barnett rebounded and passed basketballs to her first-grade students in the West Bronx. Though the future educator wasn’t in New York City to play basketball, she learned just as much about teaching on the basketball court as she did in her classroom.

“The relationships that I could build with my students while playing basketball were unlike anything I was doing in the classroom,” Barnett said. “By rebounding the ball and passing it back to them, they could see that I cared about them, that I was taking the time to fetch the ball so they could make progress.”

Barnett found herself in the Big Apple as a recipient of a teaching fellowship through the nonprofit organization Practice Makes Perfect. The organization provides a summer learning experience that’s more like summer school than day camp, all with the goal of preparing students for the school year ahead.

“We had an actual curriculum that we followed, and each grade-level was given the curriculum for the next grade that the students would be going into,” Barnett said. “I started on second-grade curriculum with my first graders.”

The city was far from her home in Princeton, W.Va., and the move from her hometown was both an eye-opening and life-changing experience.

“Here, we have the PRT, and it has five stations,” Barnett said. “Going from taking the PRT to the New York City Subway was a big adjustment in itself.”

The subway wasn’t the only cultural shift that Barnett faced when she settled into city life. There were language barriers as Barnett navigated diverse neighborhoods and cultures; she had to learn to live with less space while sharing a small basement apartment with a roommate and a dog.

Then, there were the challenges that came with Barnett’s attempt to grasp the complexities of the New York City public school system. According to Barnett, the city’s system reflects nationwide issues in public education, and those issues were apparent in the large-scale setting of the city.

“We worked with a couple of teachers who were union representatives,” Barnett said. “Seeing how power struggles between administrators and union representatives play into how the school system runs there showed me the reality that is teaching.”

Despite the change in lifestyle, Barnett thrived as the sole teacher of a class of 16 students at P.S. 311. According to Barnett, the opportunity to stand alone at the head of the classroom prepared her for the road ahead.

“I feel so much more confident in the classroom now and in my own abilities and knowledge of curriculum and teaching strategies,” Barnett said. “It was really just a great way to practice everything I’ve learned at CEHS.”

Still, the basketball court behind the school was where Barnett learned the most. Whether she was passing the ball to her students or shooting hoops with a fellow teacher, the sport became a key to greater learning.

“While playing basketball, I had these epiphanies,” Barnett said. “Such a simple thing became my favorite part of the day.”