“Don”™t ever lease a car.”
Debra Jacoby looks up from her slow-starting computer ”“ it says “Teacher” on the screen ”“ to advise male students before the start of their Sports and Entertainment Marketing class in the computer lab at Ossining High School. One”™s in the market for a new ride.
It”™s the sort of practical, worldly, extracurricular advice she dispenses with a business teacher”™s omniscient authority in the course of the school day. When “Miss Jacoby” speaks, kids look up from their omnipresent smartphones and listen.
At the high school on the hill in Ossining, Jacoby embodies the business department; she is the business department. The courses she teaches ”“ four subjects in five 41-minute bursts of pedagogical energy per day ”“ are electives. Accounting. Career and Financial Management. Entrepreneurship. This morning the kids in her marketing class will work in teams at writing film scripts.
“This school has a tremendous amount of electives,” she says. “It”™s really an opportunity” for students to explore potential college majors and career choices.
But teaching electives can be risky business, especially in the current state of the state of New York, with its fledgling property tax cap squeezing school budgets.
“There”™s no state mandate for business (education),” says the teacher who two years ago saw her accounting students take first place in the Business Skills Olympics hosted by the African-American Men of Westchester. “Business is one of those that you can just cut.”
“Here they would be cutting the whole business program. I”™m hoping they see the importance of it. I think they do.”
“Miss Jacoby” (in fact she is married and the mother of three boys) knows well the sting of budget cuts. For six years, she was one of 10 teachers in the business department at North Rockland High School across the Hudson. Get laid off, as she did, and you learn the value of self-marketing as a hedge against extended unemployment.
You welcome the guy from the Business Journal to your classroom when he calls. You host the county executive, Rob Astorino, when he asks to address your business students. When the state Department of Education and the Business Teachers Association of New York State cite your business program in Ossining as “an outstanding model for other school districts to follow,” you get out the news that sparks the interest of the county executive”™s office.
“Let”™s take a step back,” she tells her class of scriptwriters. “What is the incentive moment?”
“The climax?” one student shakily asks.
“No, the climax is later.”
“Guys, one of the things about your incentive moment: If your incentive moment doesn”™t happen, the rest of the movie never happens.”
Teacher”™s incentive moment? Having moved in her teen years from Brooklyn to Freeport on Long Island, Debra won an accounting scholarship to Long Island University “because of the accounting class I took in high school. Which is why I teach it ”“ because of the teacher I had in that accounting class.”
First, though, she spent a decade in the business world as a C.P.A. Her career path took her from internal auditing at a bank to a small accounting firm to a midsize firm and then to Ernst & Young. From there she moved on to exclusive work for a client and consulting.
“Teaching was always in the back of my mind,” she says. After moving back to New York from California, she decided she”™d go back to school to study business secondary education “and see if it works out. If it didn”™t work out, I”™ll still be a C.P.A.”
At her previous teaching post, the school”™s Academy of Finance started a tax preparer class to train students as volunteers in the Internal Revenue Service income tax assistance program. In her fourth year in Ossining, she contacted her old boss at North Rockland High for guidance on how to start an e-filing program at her school.
“Especially in this community, we get a lot of low-income residents who especially could benefit from the tax program,” she says. Her students in this tax-filing season have teamed with IFCA Housing Network in Ossining to provide the volunteer service.
All 18 students in her accounting class qualified as advanced preparers in IRS testing. “If someone came in who sold stock” to be reported on a return, “we could do that. If we had someone come in who did an itemized Schedule B, my kids could do that.”
“It was slow last night.” Two residents showed up at the school with tax documents to hand their student helpers. After the first two weekly sessions of the new program, her students had electronically filed 10 returns for residents.
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“Do you have a passport?”
It”™s a business teacher”™s extracurricular query. At the start of her financial management class, a senior named Keith and a friend talk of plans to vacation in Colombia, and never mind the kidnapping risks.
“Oh no!” Keith tips back in his chair in shocked dismay. He does not have a passport. In the six weeks”™ time it normally takes to get one, his family could have paid a handsome ransom and he”™d be safely back in Ossining dealing with a spring case of senioritis.
“You can get it express. I think it costs $150,” his teacher counsels.
Today”™s class lesson for her 22 students: how to calculate percentage changes in the consumer price index, inflation, returns on investment.
“Let”™s go, motley crew,” she tells the Colombia-bound vacationers. “Let”™s get this done.”
Keith uses his iPhone calculator and quickly masters the lesson. “I can”™t wait to get to college,” he proclaims.
“I”™m fighting for you,” says Miss Jacoby, who has written a college recommendation for the bright underachiever. “You”™ve got to step it up, dude.”
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“If someone were to steal one $25 cap per day from Modell”™s, how many hats would have to be sold to replace the loss?”
It”™s teacher”™s opening question to 12 students in her entrepreneurship class. They will pair off to research types of crimes against businesses and what a business owner can do to detect and prevent them.
“You didn”™t tell your mom you”™re going to Colombia?”
Keith takes back-to-back classes with Miss Jacoby. “She”™ll be OK with it,” he says casually.
“Let”™s work on these crimes, not kidnapping,” says his teacher, returning to the day”™s lesson plan.
“You should have more than one way to prevent this crime. There should be several for each one,” she tells her Internet-searching students.
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“Some of them, they don”™t know in high school what they want to do,” Debra Jacoby says over a bag lunch. “After they take my class, they say, now I know what I want to do. For a lot of kids, it just sparks something.”
The teaching spark that drives her classroom sprints can burn out in the course of a school year. “You couldn”™t do it if you didn”™t have that summer break,” she says. “It”™s so all-enveloping.”
“This is my passion. This is what I love. If I didn”™t teach this, I don”™t know that I”™d want to teach.”
In the Ossining school district, “The budget comes out on Wednesday. So I”™ll know Wednesday whether I have a job next year.”
She does.
