“It was baptism by fire,” Staples social studies teacher Sara Pinchback said of starting her teaching career at Queens Academy High School in New York.

Queens Academy is a magnet school that Pinchback described as catering to students who had been kicked out of their previous high schools. The school also had many students who were coming from disadvantaged homes. According to US News, 75 percent of the students at Queens Academy are on the free or reduced lunch program.

“Many [students] came from home environments where they struggled, and then when they left for school they had to face further adversities,” Pinchback said. “So, 100 percent of their day was facing some adversity.”

When English teacher Daniel Palheiredo first arrived at Staples for a tour, he described a “culture shock” over the amount of freedom Staples students were offered, as they wandered the building at will during their free periods.

“That couldn’t happen at my old school. Fights might break out, stuff might get broken,” Palheiredo said. “In some ways it was like a prison atmosphere really.”

However, despite the bad behavior that would occur, Palheiredo believes that these occasions weren’t necessarily the students’ faults. He says the experience defined him as a teacher, teaching him lessons such as as how to manage a classroom, the importance of empathizing with his parents and not taking things personally.

Jonathan Watnick, a Staples math teacher, also echoed Palheiredo’s sentiments that it isn’t the students that make other high schools so different.

“I think the biggest misconception is people often wonder what it’s going to be like, the difference in the students, but I don’t find the students to be so different,” said Watnick. “The biggest differences are in the facilities and the resources that are available, and probably parent involvement, but the kids aren’t so different.”

However, despite the difficulties of teaching in lower income schools, they provided these young teachers with valuable lessons that they still use in their classrooms.

“My experience instilled the idea in me that every student in my classroom, no matter where they come from, I want to help succeed,” Pinchback said.