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Even the best-laid plans sometimes get derailed for good reasons. In 2001, Maria Soto was well on her way to a high-flying career as an international consultant. Armed with a master’s degree in international commerce and policy from George Mason University in Washington, D.C., she was working full-time as a paralegal, a job that took her to Houston for three months to investigate Enron. Then she went to India for a monthlong study abroad trip, and her well thought out career plan got turned on its head.
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Maria Soto
Photo: Alan Orling
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“I experienced an awakening from the children I met,” said Soto, 26, who is receiving her master’s of science in teaching from Fordham University’s Graduate School of Education. “I encountered small children living in abject poverty, some suffered from polio, some had little clothing, but they struck me as being really happy because they didn’t know anything different.”
After volunteering in an inner-city Washington, D.C., school, Soto knew that she was better suited for work in the classroom than as a consultant, and was accepted in 2002 into the New York City Teaching Fellow Program, of which Fordham is a participating university. Fellows begin teaching full time in hard-to-staff city schools within three months of starting the program. Soto was assigned to Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School in the South Bronx, where she teaches global history to freshmen, repeater students and bilingual students.
“Our students are needy and many are at risk to drop out,” said Rene Cassanova, the principal at Alfred E. Smith. “You have to be able to identify those students and still have great expectations for them. Maria is able to do that and is unique in that she sees her students as her nieces and nephews. Their success is personal for her.”
This summer, Soto is launching a nonprofit company to teach students that a life outside their inner-city neighborhoods is possible. Once her 501c3 paperwork is approved, Soto will begin soliciting corporate donations to fund etiquette and professional development classes, and field trips to Manhattan-area businesses.
“It’s all about exposure,” she said. “When I think about my own experience, I was able to see an end product for my life. My students are operating on faith; they’re striving for the unknown, and there’s a lot of fear. I want to foster a connection between the South Bronx, Manhattan and, eventually, Panama.”
Soto, who was born in Panama, traveled there last summer to tour vocational schools and explore the possibility of bringing her students to the country. They could work on their Spanish, she said, and experience all the benefits of international travel.
“Maria is incredibly dedicated to the success of her students,” said Jane Bolgatz, Ph.D., assistant professor in Fordham’s Graduate School of Education. “In doing research on the needs of bilingual students for a Fordham class project, Maria went well beyond what was required. She interviewed former bilingual students, teachers and experts in bilingual education to gain a better understanding of what her students need to succeed.”
Soto is a member of the first class of New York City Teaching Fellows at Fordham to focus on adolescent students. Fellows move through the two-year program in cohorts made up of professionals from diverse backgrounds. Soto’s 37-student group included four lawyers, a handful of journalists, entrepreneurs and advertising professionals ranging in age from the early 20s to late 50s.
Working in an inner-city school with a large number of students at risk for academic failure is not for everyone. It can be frustrating, said Soto, to watch students continually failing themselves because they can’t see a future.
“You have to make the best of it,” she said. “Yes, the books are beat up, and we have limited resources. But I believe strongly in working with what’s available, because that’s all our students have.”
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