Posts filed under ‘our teachers’
Slate Podcast Featuring Bank Street Alumni on Teacher Tenure
Bank Street grad student and admissions blogger John Kuckens writes about three Bank Street alums on Mike Pesca’s the Gist on Slate. Read John’s article and listen to the podcast.
See and hear what our alums Alisa Algava, Ada Rosario Dolch, and Margaret Ryan have to say.
Alumni Award Acceptance speech- Allison Keil ’04
Allison Keil ‘04
2013 BSCAA Distinguished Service Award Acceptance Speech
May 17, 2013
Firstly let me start by saying it is an absolute honor to be here tonight and to be introduced by Frank, a longtime mentor to me is an additional honor.
Tonight feels like a night to be reflective to think about what I have been able to accomplish with the support of Bank Street. But tonight is also a night to share with you some of my hopes and some of my deep worries.
I hope that each of you in this audience can think of a teacher who is partly responsible for getting you to where you are today. I can almost guarantee you that when you think of that teacher you think of how that teacher inspired you to think differently about yourself or abut the world. I bet you can point to experiences you had with that teacher where you were engaged in a conversation or a study that allowed you to think deeply, outside of the box, creatively. Maybe like me it was the books that this teacher suggested I read and the conversations she held in that classroom where we fought passionately for our interpretations of that literature. Again, if you are like me I can almost guarantee you that the experiences that come to mind when you picture that teacher, whoever that teacher was to you, are not memories of that teacher preparing you for a State assessment in 3rd Grade or a multiple choice test in high school. And yes, here lies my worry.
We as a country are losing track of what matters in our classrooms in what arms a child for success. What is most disturbing is we have more answers than we are listening to. We know that creativity, defined as “the production of something original and useful” is essential for success. Reading a recent Newsweek article I found an IBM poll where 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future. Yet when we hold schools “accountable” we base those accountability measures solely on high stakes standardized tests that have nothing to do with creativity or creative problem solving and therefore we completely discourage schools and teachers from considering one of the most important elements of success and how to teach to that.
Please do not misunderstand I am very pro accountability and high standards for students and for schools, however how we hold students and schools accountable matters. We must be measuring across meaningful domains, we must be looking for and ultimately testing what leads to success.
To go one step further we know from research what experiences and modes of instruction lead to creativity and we know that creative thinking can be taught and fostered. We know that creative thinking requires generating unique ideas and then combining those ideas for the best result. We as educators know how to give children these experiences, we know this from places like Bank Street. But we as educators need for accountability systems to catch up to us and to reward and value teachers and schools who give children this type of educational experience, the kind of experiences that we can all point to when we think of that one classroom, or that one teacher or if we are really lucky that one school that gave us this type of experience, the one that helped us become who we are today.
Around the world countries are turning their educational attention to how to teach creativity in school. In this same Newsweek article it highlighted how the The European Union designated 2009 as the European Year of Creativity and Innovation, holding conferences on the neuroscience of creativity and instituting problem-based learning programs—curricula driven by real-world inquiry—for both children and adults. And this article went on to discuss how In China there has been widespread education reform to extinguish the drill-and-kill teaching style and Instead to adopt a problem-based learning approach. Why, you maybe asking is our country going in the other direction – and yes this is the question I am constantly asking myself.
And just to bring this out of the classroom and into the real world, the real world problems we are leaving with our children are vast and will no matter if we prepare them or not require creative thinking and problem solving, how are we going to solve our energy crisis? What can be done to repair the damage we have done to our natural environment? Where can we even begin to address gun violence? These questions do not have simple answers, and we are not given multiple choices to solve these problems – we must teach our children to face multi-faceted problems, to think creatively and to work together. And yes, this work has to be done in classrooms, in schools and across our country.
So, supporters of Bank Street we have our work cut out for us. We as a group have to think creatively to insure that those who have a voice in public school reform and accountability measures for public schools consider the things that we know are important and essential for the success of our children and for our world. Let’s help them catch up.
A Student Teacher’s Journey: Follow this Blog
Follow current Bank Street grad student Karen Hawkins on her student teacher journey
Powerful Interactions
By Judy Jablon and Amy Laura Dombro
Teachers matter. What they decide to say and do each day as they interact with children (or don’t) guides children’s development and learning in all domains. For this reason, we and our friend and co-author, Charlotte Stetson, realized that the teacher had to be at the center of our new book,Powerful Interactions: How to Connect With Children to Extend Their Learning NAEYC, 2011). We focus on the teacher because it is the teacher who makes a difference in children’s lives today and in the future.
Teachers and children interact with each other all day long. Most of these everyday interactions are good enough– they do no harm. And then there’s another category of interactions – Powerful Interactions (PI). These are the interactions in which a teacher intentionally connects with a child to extend her/his learning.
Not every interaction teachers have with children can be — or even needs to be — an interaction that promotes their learning, but research tells us that most of our everyday interactions aren’t all that effective when we consider the reason children are in school – to learn.
In Powerful Interactions we describe three steps for teachers (and teacher educators) that will transform an everyday interaction into a Powerful Interaction (PI). Though we describe each separately, in reality they overlap and may repeat many times during an interaction:
Step One: Be Present. In the first step of a Powerful Interaction, the teacher pauses before the interaction begins to think about and decide if this is the time for a PI. It is this pause to prepare that makes a Powerful Interaction purposeful rather than automatic. The Be Present step gives the teacher permission to take a moment to think.
Step Two: Connect. In a present frame of mind, the teacher is ready to connect with the child. By personally connecting with the child, a teacher communicates, “I notice you. I’m interested in you. I want to spend some time with you.” This often missed and vital step is important because this connection reactivates the feelings of comfort, security, and trust that already exist between the child and the teacher making it the perfect time for a teacher to teach and a child to learn.
Step Three: Extend. With the connection between them, the teacher stretches the child’s thinking and knowledge a little step forward in a way that is just right for him.
They say when you put something into words, you give it life. Being aware of interactions and staying motivated to improve them are keys to having Powerful Interactions.
Teachers who succeed in creating more Powerful Interactions in their classrooms are reflective. They continually ask themselves questions and engage in conversations with others about: What do I want to convey to children? What did I do? Why did I do it that way? How did the child respond? What can I do to make my interaction more effective next time?
A conversation is beginning across the country about Powerful Interactions. Please join in. We hope you will share your comments, questions, and insights with us and others at www.powerfulinteractions.com and/or on our Facebook page.
Faculty Respond to NY Times Block Play Story
On November 28, the New York Times published an article discussing the importance of block play in early childhood education. As long-time advocates of open-ended play, Bank Street faculty submitted a response, which was published on December 2. An expanded version of that response appears below.
As early childhood faculty at Bank Street College of Education, we are heartened that the article of November 28 on block building has brought attention to the importance of blocks as an essential educational material.
Lucy Sprague Mitchell, the founder of Bank Street College in 1916, studied children’s block building as a teacher at City and Country School, and recognized its unique value in the education of young children. Block building then became and continues to be an integral part of the teacher preparation curriculum. Indeed, we are one of the few teacher education institutions in the country that offers a course devoted specifically to block building.
In the current educational climate, opportunities for children to engage in play are being eliminated in many schools, despite the mounting research by neuroscientists, developmental psychologists, physicians, and educators showing the critical role of play in children’s healthy development, physically, intellectually, socially, and emotionally. The benefits of block play flourish only when children are allowed to engage in open-ended, imaginative play and are given the time to explore, experiment and represent their growing understanding of the world.
Signed,
Nancy Cardwell ’88
Betsy Grob M.S. ’70, Ed.M. ’99
Adrianne Kamsler
Nancy McKeever
Michele Morales
Denise Prince
Rena Rice ’77
Salvatore Vascellaro ’75
Sal Vascellaro’s New Book
Sal signing a book at his November 16th book launch at Bank Street
Click here to watch Sal Vascellaro talk about what inspired his new book.
Bank Street alumnus and faculty member Salvatore Vascellaro is the author of “Out of the Classroom and into the World: Learning from Field Trips, Educating from Experience, and Unlocking the Potential of Our Students and Teachers ”
BSCAA Awards Presented to 5 Outstanding Educators
In June, BSCAA honored five outstanding educators; three received Alumni Awards and two were the recipients of Faculty Awards…
Virginia Casper is a developmental psychologist and teacher educator who has worked in higher education and directly with very young children and families. She is a former Director of the Infant and Family Development and Early Intervention Program at Bank Street College and most recently was the Interim Dean of the Graduate School. She has worked in rural South Africa for the last ten years on curriculum development and teacher training with and for early childhood teachers, caregivers and communities. With Steven Schultz, she authored Gay Parents/Straight Schools: Building Communication and Trust (1999) and with Rachel Theilheimer, Early Childhood Development: Learning Together (2010).
Rachel Theilheimer has worked with young children, their families, and teachers in public school, private and public child care, Head Start, and parent groups. She has been a teacher, a group leader, a director, and an educational consultant. For the past twenty-five years, she has taught adults at the pre-GED, community college, bachelors, and graduate levels and conducted numerous professional development workshops. She is professor of early childhood education at Borough of Manhattan Community College. She has published articles and book chapters about teacher education, social justice issues, and infant care in addition to Early Childhood Education: Learning Together with Virginia Casper.
Gayle Cunningham is executive director of the Jefferson County Committee for Economic Opportunity, the Community Action Agency based in Birmingham, Alabama. For many years she also directed JCCEO’s Head Start-Early Head Start program now serving nearly 1900 children in NAEYC accredited centers. Ms. Cunningham was formerly an assistant professor responsible for coordination of the early childhood associate degree program at Delgado Community College in New Orleans, Louisiana. She also served as senior research associate with the CDA revision and expansion project at Bank Street College, and as field representative for the Bank Street College Parent Child Development Center Replication Project. Ms. Cunningham and the JCCEO Head Start program have participated in a wide range of research projects focused on Head Start classrooms and teaching, language and literacy, teacher mentoring and coaching, and child health. She has also served on advisory committees for several national Head Start expansion, research, and evaluation initiatives. These include the Head Start Advisory Committee on Services to Families with Infants and Toddlers, the three Head Start Advisory Panels on Research and Evaluation including the current one, and the Head Start FACES Study. She chaired the NAEYC Commission on Early Childhood Standards and Criteria and has served as treasurer on NAEYC’s Board of Directors. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the CDA Council for Professional Recognition. Recently awarded the NHSA Sargent Shriver Award of Excellence, Ms. Cunningham graduated from Connecticut College with a BA in American history, holds a master’s degree in early childhood education and leadership from Bank Street College of Education in New York, and was a Fulbright Fellow in Ghana, West Africa.
Barbara Sprung, Co-Director of the Educational Equity Center at AED has over 40 years of experience in early childhood education, as a teacher and as an innovator of programs and materials to promote equality of opportunity for children regardless of gender, race/ethnicity, disability or level of family income. Current center projects include: Raising and Educating Healthy Boys, Great Science for Girls, Science: It’s a Girl Thing! and After-School Math PLUS. Prior to joining AED, from 1982-2004, Ms. Sprung was Co-Founder and Co-Director of Educational Equity Concepts, a national nonprofit organization whose mission was to create bias-free programs and materials beginning in early childhood. Ms. Sprung has written extensively about equity in education and is a nationally known speaker on issues of gender equity, teasing and bullying, early science equity, and inclusion. She is the author of Non-Sexist Education for Young Children: A Practical Guide (Citation Press, Scholastic, 1975) a co-author of Quit it! A Teacher’s Guide for Use with Students in GradesK-3 (EEC, 1998), the Anti-Teasing Bullying and Teasing Book for Preschool Classrooms (Gryphon House, 2005) and Supporting Boys’ Learning: Strategies for Teacher Practice, Pre-K-Grade 3 (Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 2010). Barbara Sprung holds a B.A. degree from Sarah Lawrence College, an M.S. in Child Development from the Bank Street College of Education, and is a graduate of the Institute for Not-for-Profit Management, Columbia University.
Gil Schmerler has for 10 years directed the Leadership for Educational Change program at Bank Street, as well as advised and taught within the program. Previously at Bank Street, he was Chair of the Department of Ed Leadership, Director of the Early Adolescence Program, Director of the Center for Minority Achievement, and director of the Bank Street/Chicago Small Schools Study dissemination phase, among sundry other roles. As a member of the IMP Committee, he was instrumental in creating the Collaborative Student Faculty Inquiry as an alternative to the directed essay. He is a founding member of the Program Review Committee, and a former chair of the Writers’ Awards Committee. He was guest editor of Occasional Paper #23 last year: Teacher Leaders: Changing Schools from Within, and continues as an active member of the Occasional Papers Board. Teacher leadership has been a particular area of study and advocacy — and personal dedication. Gil co-founded the Bank Street Teacher Leaders Institute, which brought together teacher leaders from around the city for several years in the ’90s. He consulted in the development of the Teacher Leaders certificate program, affiliated with the Principals Institute. Mostly, he is eager for all Bank Street graduates – not just in leadership programs – to have some meaningful leadership study as part of their regular curricula, since they will invariably be looked to for leadership within their schools. Gil was originally a high school English teacher and has been an administrator in NY, MD, and NJ, in public and independent schools, urban and suburban, alternative and traditional. He has written chapters, books, and articles for the New York Times, Phi Delta Kappan, and TC Record, among others. Gil has a bachelors in English from Amherst College and a doctorate in educational administration from Columbia Teachers College. Gil still derives most of his professional/personal satisfaction from his role as an advisor and his interaction with students, present and past.
From Childhood to Adulthood: A Visit from Stanley
posted by Debbie Stone ‘84, former teacher/co-director of High Valley School
For years I taught with my mentor, Olga Smyth, who had been graduated from Bank Street in 1934, just 50 years before me. Our school in Clinton Corners, NY, which she kept going after her husband died in ‘68, was a wonderful one, and I’ve heard now and then from some of my old students – who I knew from 1968 until High Valley closed in 1986 – how their stay at our tiny (maybe 20 students at the most) progressive and alternative school had helped make them who they had become.
I’d met Olga when I was in nursery school…our families were friends, and she’d been my teacher at the Poughkeepsie Day School when I was four. Before High Valley was a school on its own, it was the boarding adjunct of PDS, and Olga and Julian Smyth had taught (with my mother) at the Day School, hauling two station wagon loads of kids back and forth to school Monday through Friday. They made a home for those kids all through the school year, running a camp for about 40 lucky kids each summer, and working (with my father) for many years at the Vassar Summer Institute, an annual meeting ground for some of the best progressive thinkers and school teachers ever. My two sisters and I (we all became teachers as adults, of course) were close to the Smyths and many of the “Smyth kids,” as we called those boarders, and spent a lot of time visiting, attending and then working at the summer camp, and, in my case, eventually teaching at the school.
So yesterday we had a visit from Stanley, one of those Smyth kids. Stanley lives in Washington State now after years in Kodiak, Alaska. I still live at High Valley, as do Olga’s son and his wife, even though the school has been closed almost 25 years, so I was here to meet Stanley and his wife when they came by on their East coast tour. He was never my student, he is only 7 years younger than I am; but when you’re kids, 7 years is a lot, so I felt extremely maternal (?), sororal (?) educatoral (?)—well, affectionate—as I embraced Stanley. I began to feel I’d always known his wife, heard the extraordinary story of their romance, and got a chance to remember together all the wonderful people we’d known. To see someone you knew in those years between 5 and 15, say, when you’re now in your sixties, is so peculiar. When I was 15, and Stanley was 8, for instance, we felt like different generations. He was a little kid; I certainly wasn’t one of those any more. Now, 50 years later, we are contemporaries. And some of our most beloved fellow former children have died, as well as most of our teachers. We went across the Hudson River to visit Olga, now 97, in the adult care home she has retired to. She questioned Stanley with her trademark combination of sharpness and humor.
All the things I’d meant to get done during spring vacation (from a school where we get to carry on in that old progressive tradition, embraced also by our director, Alisa Algava, who is a much more recent Bank Street graduate) were pushed aside by the visit. Spending time with Stanley was so much more important than doing my taxes.
Debbie Stone currently teaches at The Randolph School, a small progressive school in the Hudson Valley. As a consulting teacher for children with different learning styles and experiences, she focuses on a particular student, or works with large and small groups, benefiting enormously from a chance to work with colleagues who share her enthusiasm for an integrated, alternative approach to teaching and learning.
SAVE THE DATE! May 21st…Back-to-Back Alumni Events
1. The Thirteenth Annual Bank Street College Alumni Awards Ceremony
Friday, May 21, 2010 at 5:30 PM
In the Evelyn Rome Tabas and Daniel Tabas Auditorium
Bank Street College of Education, 610 West 112th Street, New York, NY 10025
Honoring…
- Claudine Brown, Program Director, Arts and Culture, the Nathan Cummings Foundation
- Sandye Poitier Johnson, Principal, Thurgood Marshall Academy, Harlem
- Lee Kogan, Curator Emeritus, American Folk Art Museum
- Katy O’Donnell, Bank Street Graduate Faculty
A reception will follow the ceremony.
2. Jean Schreiber Presents at Bank Street: “Bullies are Created, Not Born: How to Create a Safe and Caring Classroom Community”
Friday, May 21 at 6:30 PM
In the Evelyn Rome Tabas and Daniel Tabas Auditorium
Bank Street alumna Jean Schreiber, a well known early childhood educational consultant, will share the work she does in schools.
3. The Tar Beach All-Class Alumni Reunion
Friday, May 21 from 7:45-9 PM
On the Playdeck at Bank Street College
Join your fellow alumni for wine, hors d’oeuvres and networking.
Please RSVP to LReing@bankstreet.edu for May 21st events.
Join us for the 2009-2010 Bank Street College Alumni Awards Ceremony
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Time: 6:00 PM
Location: The Evelyn Rome and Daniel Tabas Auditorium
Address: Bank Street College of Education, 610 West 112th Street, New York City
The Honorees are:
- Claudine K. Brown, Program Director, Arts and Culture, the Nathan Cummings Foundation
- Sandye Poitier Johnson, Principal, Thurgood Marshall Academy, Harlem
- Lee Kogan, Curator Emeritus, American Folk Art Museum
- Katy O’Donnell, Bank Street Graduate Faculty
RSVP: Lreing@bankstreet.edu or call 212-961-3332
Bank Street: The Alumni Blog 