Educator continues her lifelong career with focus on adult literacy
2:35 PM, Mar. 24, 2012
Article from mycentraljersey.com
Barbara Wiskowski Puglisi remembers gathering her three younger sisters to play when they were children.
“I conducted class,” Wiskowski Puglisi said. “As a child, I always wanted to be a teacher.”
As a teenager, that desire was reinforced by her high-school English teacher, Mrs. Jeanne Nugent.
“She was energetic, enthusiastic, dramatic and loved the written word,” Wiskowski Puglisi said. “What she did appealed to me, and I saw myself in her.”
Some 40 years and one public-school career later, Wiskowski Puglisi brings that same type of energy and enthusiasm to her job as an English as a Second Language teacher in Middlesex County Workforce Development’s Community Learning Center in Edison.
“Teaching is an opportunity for me to learn,” she said. “As a teacher, my students have constantly challenged me, especially now because I teach adults in the ESL program. It is a challenge to communicate some of the basic grammar and vocabulary they need in order to lead a successful life in a totally new environment and secure jobs.”
How it started
Wiskowski Puglisi’s mother, Julia, wanted her daughter to be a teacher, but for a time, she thought she would be a psychiatrist.
“But I couldn’t get my nose out of a book when I was young and I always wanted to write,” said Wiskowski Puglisi, who lives in Bridgewater with her husband, Richard, and their 17-year-old daughter, Genevieve. “Mrs. Nugent also pushed me, in a good way, and it was just natural for me to go the humanities.”
The Irvington native decided while she was in high school that she was going to pursue a career in education. She went to Montclair State University and got her bachelor’s degree in English and her education certification. As a result of a job fair at the university, she got an interview with the Edison school district and a job teaching English in the district’s Thomas Jefferson Middle School. She stayed in the district for 30 years.
Some of those years were spent teaching high school English, primarily to sophomores, she said, as well as teaching to middle-school students. One year, she helped develop a writing skills program for basic-skills students.
“That gave me a taste for what it’s like to teach someone from a different culture,” she said.
When she reached the 30-year mark with the Edison district, she was teaching in middle school.
“I didn’t have quite the same energy, and there were changes going on that were making things more demanding with less appreciation,” she said. “Instead of staying and burning out, I retired while I thought I was still a good teacher.”
Retirement didn’t mean the end of teaching. A friend who also had retired from the Edison district had become the GED coordinator and supervisor of ESL instructors for the Community Learning Center in Edison and told her about a position available in her office. She applied and got the position, and five years later, she is still there, working part-time teaching in two programs.
One is a beginning learner’s program, for students who need to learn the English alphabet and begin to attain some basic knowledge of English. This class has between 10 and 12 students at a given time. The second is an advanced class for students who are more proficient in the language, but need instruction in reading and writing rather than conversation. This class can have between 12 and 15 students.
The open-enrollment ESL classes last about six months and are free, funded by the state. Some students are there so they can find work or get a better job; others because they want to attend Middlesex County College or be able to go on to get a college degree, Wiskowski Puglisi said.
“The people who I have met here are amazing,” she said. “In the past five years, I’ve met professors who have come here to start all over. They’ve left jobs in their own country for an opportunity for a better life here. They struggle with the language but are determined and have a vitality to succeed. They want to become contributors to our work environment. They are working hard to pursue the American dream.”
She also sees a commonality among the successful students she taught in public school and the adult students she teaches today.
“The link between the two is curiosity and the confidence to ask questions,” she said. “That is what has kept me in teaching. All learners have those two qualities in common.”
Challenging times
Hundreds of people use the services of the Community Learning Center annually. According to Carol Bamdad, the center’s supervisor and chief examiner of the GED program, the center served 109 people between August and December 2011, and anticipates serving another 225 through this June. These student-clients come from all over the world — South America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
Some of those clients come from referrals from the state unemployment program. Others are people who simply find out about the program and make their way to its offices on the third floor of the historic Roosevelt Care Center complex off of Parsonage Road.
Funding for the program has tightened over the years; both Bambad and Wiskowski Puglisi are part time, as is another English instructor. Only the math instructor is full time, and Bambad noted that the program was nearly shuttered last summer because of a possible loss of state funding. These instructors are supplemented by several volunteers, including eight from Democracy House at Middlesex County College. These students are matched with the learning center’s clients to help with one-on-one instruction in remedial math, writing and conversation.
“They are a gift,” Bamdad said of the volunteers, as she also offered praise of her colleague’s work.
“Barbara cares about her students and is able to speak slowly and carefully so that they understand her,” she said. “She does it in a way that they get it, and they love her. Everyone comes with a problem and she helps them. She is the best teacher possible.”
Wiskowski Puglisi speaks with pride about the accomplishments her former students have made in getting jobs — and in forming friendships.
“Some of these students come into the classroom with their own perceptions and stereotypes, but they start to break down the barriers themselves,” she said, “like a young woman from Poland who wanted to go to the mall to buy a bear for her boyfriend’s birthday and had help from another student who is Egyptian.”
This teacher wants to make sure that people understand her students and their motives.
“These people are go-getters,” she said. “Their stories are inspiring, and they have provided a gift to us by what they are doing and trying to achieve.
“You know, my grandfather came here from Poland with nothing, and if it wasn’t for his perseverance, I wouldn’t be where I am today, with the ability to have a good job and a good life,” she said. “These students are trying to do the same thing for their families. And they are our future work force.”
When it comes time to retire from this second career, Wiskowski Puglisi doesn’t envision retiring from teaching.
“I'll be a literacy volunteer,” she said. “I’ll always be involved in some kind of educational work. To me, service is the biggest reward.”
An ornament on Wiskowski Puglisi’s desk has the following saying: “In the joy of others, lies your own.”
“That’s how I’ve tried to live my life,” she said. “And that’s what teaching is about.”
Paul C. Grzella is general manager/editor of the Courier News and Home News Tribune. Share your “passion” with him by emailing him at pgrzella@njpressmedia.compgrzella@njpressmedia.com or calling him at 908-243-6601 or 732-565-7215.
Article from mycentraljersey.com