Esther Asibuo Ramos

Through the generous support of the Milman Scholarship, Esther was able to complete her studies in June 2021 and create a special project that enabled students to tell their stories through their music. She incorporated narratives, foundational elements of music, and visual and performing arts in her project by adding students’ musical compositions to their narratives and creating an online portfolio as a performance of students’ work.

The Milman scholarship enlightened me in numerous ways. I have always thought that I embodied the constructivist approach in my teaching, as a reflective practitioner, but this virtual experience has pushed me to trust my students more and allow them to drive their own learning process. I had lessons and plans as a roadmap for where we were going with the project, but the students, in the end, decided that they would rather write their stories and compose and arrange the music themselves to go along with it. Thus, I have learned that differentiation allows teachers the headway that enables students to gain a sense of autonomy and build self-efficacy skills.

Faculty Advisors

• Dr. Jason Noble
• Dr. Penny Prince
  Department: Music, Multimedia, Theatre & Dance

Aimee Grace Embaba

The Milman scholarship provided the necessary assistance for Aimee Grace to pay for her full tuition during the Spring 2021 semester without taking on extra shifts. This gave her the opportunity to focus more on her studies and perfect her Milman project. During the semester, Aimee Grace was able to develop a project filled with illustrations and art of the specimens in the Botanical Garden for her future class of 9th and 10th graders. Students will be able to use what they saw and learn from the field trip to connect with labs done in the classroom. Specifically, students will be able to share distinct traits with one another and try to find common ancestors between flower species.

Aimee enjoyed this process, although it was challenging, she learned so much and it has given her a higher appreciation for teaching. Teachers doing what is necessary to meet their students' needs and having the students leave confident that they are equipped for the next stage of their education is very rewarding. The program has reinforced her strategies to be there for different types of students and she truly looks forward to putting all she has learned into action.

Faculty Advisors

• Dr. Jack Henning
  Department: Biology
  
  
• Dr. Demet Arpacık, Adjunct Professor
  Department: Middle and High School Education

Jennifer Roesch

With the support of the Milman Scholarship, Jennifer developed a curricular unit on counterstory narratives for high school ELA students. Utilizing Gholdy Muhammad’s culturally and historically responsive literacy framework, and aligned to New York’s Next Generation Learning Standards, she created lesson plans in which students: explore the role and features of dominant narratives; learn about counterstory as a technique developed by critical race theorists to counter dominant narratives; analyze counterstory narratives in multiple genres (visual arts, music, dance, spoken word, literature); and use an artistic medium of their choice through which to share their own counterstories. Integrating the arts into this curricular unit gives students more freedom to express themselves while challenging them to think more deliberately about how to choose the materials, genres, and communicative styles that best support their intended purpose and audience.

Jennifer will continue to develop this project over the next year as she begins student teaching and develops her Master’s thesis project. As she teaches this curricular unit, she will engage in cogenerative dialogues with students to further develop and refine the lessons based on their insights. These reflections will inform a Master’s research project in which she hopes to propose using counterstory as a method to incorporate narrative into research writing and to challenge linguistic racism in secondary English curricula.

Faculty Advisors

• Dr. Jessica Yood
  Department: English
• Professor Kim Kawecki
  Department: Middle and High School Education

Angel Sotero

Through the generous support of the Milman Scholarship, Angel Sotero was able to complete his BA in Mathematics and a double minor in Middle & High School Education, & Business Law at Lehman College in May of 2022.

His Milman project incorporated art into math teaching. He did things such as take basic shapes and dimensions to create art. Angel believes that mathematics is also an art form that has been forgotten and replaced with 1’s and 0’s. For example, take the Pythagorean Theorem, which is a fundamental building block in geometry, and apply it to a spiral construction that resembles a snail’s shell which is a square root spiral or Theodorus Spiral. This craft will demonstrate the mathematical relationships in an eye-catching way. Through his project, Angel shared that math students can create something just as beautiful as a painting through innovative teaching techniques that can contribute to the enjoyment of learning.

He also cites his experiences at Lehman College as making him more likely to ask for support and to grow out of his shell. Angel is currently employed as a parent coordinator at the DOE.

Faculty Advisor

• Pauline Mattis

Milman Scholarship Committee Members

• Dr. Penny Prince (Chair)
• Dr. Gillian Bayne
• Professor Deborah Yasinsky

Milman Scholarship Contact

Dr. Penny Prince
penny.prince@lehman.cuny.edu