MALDEN — After nearly two decades of teaching teenagers the finer points of how to establish themselves in the business world, there is not much that can surprise Debra Buckley.
Even when she was summoned, along with her class of students, to the office of Assistant Superintendent Carol Keenan on the last day of class before winter break, the longtime Malden High School business teacher did not feel there was much out of the ordinary.
“When the assistant superintendent calls, you come,” Buckley said with a smile. “(Ms. Keenan) has a lot of interaction with students in general, so we just came downstairs to the Central Office.”
When Keenan presented her with a gigantic bouquet of flowers as she walked into the office, which was filled with city officials and school administrators, Buckley knew something was up. “She got me!” Buckley said.
In a first for the Malden Public Schools and the region, Buckley was presented the New England Enterprising Educator of the Year Award. On hand to present the award was Jennifer Green, New England director of the global organization Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE).
“We are proud to have educators like Deb Buckley working with students and preparing them for the world through teaching entrepreneurship as she has been doing so effectively for the past 10 years,” Green said to the packed office. “She is well deserving of this award.”
A Business Department teacher at Malden High School since 1999, Buckley was instrumental in ushering in the NFTE program to Malden in 2007 and has taught the class, called “NIFTY,” to hundreds of Malden High students since then.
NFTE was founded in 1987 and has grown from a dropout prevention program in one New York City high school to the largest entrepreneurship education program for youth in the world, educating more than 500,000 students to date.
The organization partners with all the major public school districts in the U.S. to bring entrepreneurship into the classrooms, including Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and more, as well as associated schools in those metro areas. In Massachusetts, NFTE has entrepreneurship programs in schools in Boston, Malden, Lawrence, Lowell, Chelsea, Worcester, Framingham, Quincy, and New Bedford.
NFTE provides a curriculum which is integrated into an entrepreneurship class at the high school level with each school putting their own mark on it to fit their students.
“(Buckley’s) gone above and beyond in the classroom and out of it for these students, hundreds of them through the last 10 years,” said Keenan, who is directly responsible for curriculum and instruction in the Malden Public Schools.
Malden Superintendent John Oteri also praised Buckley. “This award is the culmination of a lot of great work,” Oteri said. “In our world, it is increasingly a global marketplace and the skills they learn in the entrepreneurship class will be very valuable in the workplace.
“With the infrastructure and the hard work of Mayor Christenson and the City Council, Malden has become a hub of business which is using the varied backgrounds and diversity of our residents as a strength. Getting this training here at Malden High School is giving our students a real leg up on the next stage of their journey. We are blessed to have someone like Ms. Buckley leading the way.”
Buckley said she was proud of her students through the years. “We have great kids and they work very hard,” she said. “We have been lucky that the NFTE program has gotten tremendous, consistent support from the Malden Public Schools and I know that will continue.
After the presentation, Mayor Gary Christenson told Buckley and the school administrators the city would continue to support the entrepreneurship program in any fashion it could. “We have gone from 100 summer jobs to 350 jobs in our summer work program and along with internships it would continue to be a natural alliance to promote our Malden kids,” Christenson said.
Green noted that with the New England Award, Buckley would now be the guest of NFTE at a March international seminar in New York. Also, she is now in the running for the National Educator of the Year award.
“I am very grateful,” Buckley said. “Malden kids make the difference and make it all worthwhile.”
