Our Staff

Brooklyn Generation School is recruiting staff as it grows. If you are interested, please review the job posting.

At the heart of Brooklyn Generation is our exceptional staff of experienced, enthusiastic educators who bring a wide variety of expertise to our school. This dynamic team of professionals works together to provide an exceptional education to all our students.

BROOKLYN GENERATION STAFF

Ms. Bailey received her undergraduate degree in Communications, then went to work for UNICEF, a non-profit organization that supports children’s rights through advocacy and fundraising. This experience contributed to her decision to become an educator. She has spent the last year working as a special education teacher in a District 75 middle school, where she taught literacy enrichment through Shakespeare. Ms. Bailey looks forward to the upcoming school year during which she hopes to learn as much as she teaches.

Ms. Bastien graduated from New York University with a B.A. in English and American Literature and an M.A. in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. She has earned three teaching licenses—English, ESL, and Common Branch—and has taught in New York City public schools for five years. Marie taught English at both Wingate High School and ACORN High School for Social Justice, and spent three years teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) at Erasmus Humanities High School. She used the workshop model and multi-media to instruct her students about various cultures of the world while they learned how to speak, read, write, and listen to English. Ms. Bastien has brought students to New York University to learn about the college admissions process, to Pace University to hear Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson (an African-American astrophysicist) speak, and to see “Bodies: The Exhibition” to learn more about the human body. She believes students should be exposed to the city’s cultural and academic institutions so they can be inspired to visualize what they want to become.

Principal Grey brings significant school start-up and operation experience as a teacher and an administrator in both urban district and small public charter schools. Having started her career as a founding teacher at a charter school in Cambridge, Massachusetts and then working in a new Boston public pilot school, she learned first-hand about the support structures that are critical to attract, develop and retain novice teachers committed to urban education. More recently, she served as the founding assistant principal for a charter school in Boston and the subsequently the founding middle school principal for a charter school in New York. In those roles her focus was on creating a strong culture of collaboration amongst teachers, strong linkages to families and community, and a culture of excellence for the schools at large. Ms. Grey received a Bachelor’s degree in education policy studies from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and a Masters degree in Education Administration, Planning and Social policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Mr. Haber comes to Brooklyn Generation School with a strong background in youth development. Previously, he developed and coordinated a new youth development and academic enrichment program for middle school students with Groundwork, Inc. in East New York, Brooklyn. Before that, he was a Program Director at Fresh Youth Initiatives in Washington Heights, Manhattan, where for four years he designed and implemented community service-based leadership and empowerment programs for neighborhood youth. Additionally, Mr. Haber has focused on arts education and arts-based youth development with the Museum of Children’s Art and East Bay Institute for Urban Arts in Oakland, CA. He has also worked as a therapeutic teacher at the Lourie Center for Infants and Young Children in Rockville, MD, and served as a community arts specialist with AmeriCorps in Ponce, Puerto Rico. A graduate of Tufts University, he received his Master of Social Work degree from the Hunter College School of Social Work.

Ms. Ifill has worked for the Department of Education for the past 13 years, teaching at both the middle and high school levels. She began her teaching career at a middle school in East Flatbush where she spent seven years working primarily with learning disabled students. She spent four subsequent years at a high school in Manhattan where she taught self-contained classes, provided resource room services, and participated in collaborative team teaching. Most recently, Ms. Ifill has worked as a full-time mentor. In this role, she has provided emotional support to new teachers while guiding them through a process of analysis and reflection designed to improve their teaching practices and enhance student achievement.

Mr. Johnson graduated with a B.A. in Government and Politics from St. John’s University in 1991 and began working at The Kew-Forest School, where he worked as a K-12 teacher’s assistant for three years. In 2002, he began teaching social studies for the New York City Department of Education: starting in Bushwick at I.S. 296, then in East New York at I.S. 168 (District 79) as part of the Eight Plus Program. During his tenure at I.S. 168, Mr. Johnson began pursuing a Master of Science in Education, School Counseling. In 2003, he left the classroom to become a guidance counselor for the Second Opportunity Schools program, working in collaboration with a non-profit organization called The Door. Students in this program were on a one-year calendar suspension from their home schools. The program aimed to serve the needs of New York City Department of Education students across the city with counseling and academic intervention. If asked why he chose to become a counselor, the answer would be to help serve youth who have been misrepresented and unaccounted for on a daily basis in our system, providing them with intervention and social services. Today Mr. Johnson holds a Master of Science in Education, School Counseling, and he belongs to professional organizations such as School Counselor Association and American Counselor Association. He aspires one day to open his own non-profit agency and private practice to provide parents with educational and social services and their children with counseling and academic intervention services.

Ms. Odums resides in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and strongly desires to enhance the social conditions of people residing in economically deprived communities. This ambition inspired her to pursue a career in Human Services; in 1997, she earned a Master of Social Work from Hunter College. She has dedicated her career to transforming the lives of at-risk youth by helping them become productive members of society. Her studies in psychology, sociology, criminology, and African-centered social work, as well as her employment at Spofford Juvenile Detention Center, in New York, led her to specialize in working with inner-city youth and their families. With more than 15 years of experience in the field of social work, Ms. Odums has worked with various community-based organizations and mental health clinics where she assisted with program design and training staff to better meet the various mental and emotional needs of this unique population. She is currently an Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Tour College and a mentor/success coach to many youth in the Brooklyn community.

Ms. Okereke was born in Nigeria, and has lived and attended school in Brooklyn for over a decade. She received a B.A. from Duke University and is currently a Teach for America corps member. Teach for America is a non-profit organization that selects and trains dedicated individuals to help achieve significant gains in student achievement. In addition, Ms. Okereke is working on a Master of Education at Pace University. She is very excited to inspire, motivate, and mold the minds of your children this fall.

Ms. Smits-Cornier began her career in 1990 as a legal secretary for Dean Witter Reynolds, Inc., where her responsibilities involved preparing high volumes of legal documentation. In 1997, she left to pursue employment with the Visiting Nurse Service of New York as a survey interviewer, which entailed interviewing patients in their homes about their overall quality of life. In 2002, Ms. Cornier became a school secretary for the New York City Department of Education. She worked for one year at P.S. 94 as the principal’s secretary, then for two years at P.S. 309 assisting both the payroll and pupil accounting secretaries. For the past two years, she has worked at M.S. 143 as both the payroll and pupil accounting secretary. She looks forward to the upcoming school year at Brooklyn Generation School, where she will utilize the many skills she’s acquired throughout her professional career.

JOIN OUR DYNAMIC TEAM

As Brooklyn Generation grows by adding a grade each year, we will be expanding our faculty annually as well. If you are bright, committed and collaboratively-minded, please read more about the Generation Schools model and check out our job posting. If you are still interested, then send a resume and cover letter to jobs@brooklyngeneration.org.