5 Questions for Esther Hernandez-Kramer


When I arrived in the states, I was put in ninth grade at Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn with my 13-year-old brother. They did this without asking me for any paperwork about my schooling back home. It was so dispiriting. I was nearly a grown man taking classes with a bunch of kids.

I couldn’t deal with it.
I was already 18, so in 1988 I left that school and transferred to the old Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn to enter their GED program. However, when I wanted to take the GED test, they wouldn’t let me because they said my English score wasn’t high enough. So, I left again and switched to a different program at the same school. That’s where I met a Haitian teacher who was the first person to ever ask me about my school performance back home. She evaluated me, and I attended summer school and did project work with her. I finally graduated at the age of 20.
She really helped me a lot because, as a January baby, I was at risk of aging out of the public school system.

I worked as a special education paraprofessional at a District 75 school in Brooklyn from 1994 to 2015, and went back to school in the early 2000s. I earned my master’s degree in school counseling at Touro University and became a school counselor at Science and Medicine Middle School in Brooklyn in 2015, where I still work.
My experiences show why it’s important to have teachers from different backgrounds and cultures in the classroom. If it wasn’t for that one Haitian teacher, I wouldn’t have gotten the help that I needed. She took the time to reach out and show me the way because she understood where I was coming from and the challenges I faced.
It’s made me an advocate for my students especially those coming from foreign countries, particularly my Haitian students. I’m always looking for ways to help their families. I make sure that the school follows the right protocols and policies to get them the help they need.
Luckily, we now have policies in place to ensure that what happened to me doesn’t happen to immigrant students anymore. Today, counselors must conduct Individual Progress Reviews, where each child is interviewed separately, and their educational progress is entered into the system. In all my years in high school I never had an interaction like that with a counselor.