Professional Documents
Culture Documents
No longer waiting for Superman, Geoffrey Canada, Ed.M.75, continues to fight the good fight for thousands of kids in Harlem through hard work and an intolerance for excuses.
IN THE ZONE
February 2012
Oprah Winfreys day-long visit to the Harvard campus to help Lady Gaga launch her Born This Way Foundation included an Askwith Forum at the universitys historic Sanders Theatre in Memorial Hall. Winfrey sat down for an old-fashioned Q&A with Gaga, focusing on bullying and empowering young people the reason for the event and the foundation. But before the interview, as Winfrey first approached the podium, she said to a screaming, packed audience, What can I say? I know what I can say: Harvard!
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As the program grows, those in the know answer the question:
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Loyd talks frozen eyeballs, quintessential Alaskan footwear, and transformation. Ed.L.D. student Amy
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Hands-on learning is great, but as Professor Paul Harris says, there are many things children need to be told.
Three classmates from the 1950s reunite on the Ed Schools now very different campus to share stories.
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Geoffrey Canada, Ed.M.75, and the Harlem Childrens A spatula, a violin, and a group of kids ready to perform. Thats all Adrian Anantawan, Ed.M.12, needed this past school year. Zone invest in children over time.
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With the help of PBS and Baa Baa Sheep, Sona Chong Jho, Ed.M.97, teaches nursery rhymes and literacy.
al so o f i nt erest
4 6 40 48 49 Letters Appian Way Alumni News and Notes Recess Investing
Questioning homework cant be separated from questioning the use of school time. If students are spending six to eight effective hours engaged in academics, then there is probably little need for further homework. Improve classroom instruction, then limit homework.
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Debate Goes On
From the viewpoint of a seventh-grade junior high student, I think that the idea of no homework (Are You Down With or Done With Homework? winter 2012) would be very interesting. However, I disagree that it would be more constructive than doing [school] work at home. I get the idea that its boring, but it prepares us for life later on. I mean, we will all have our own types of homework in jobs later, right? Why wouldnt homework help? Benn As a former math teacher, I am a big supporter of doing homework as a learning tool. As a parent (of two successful adults), I viewed doing homework as a way to learn academics, responsibility, and time-management skills. It is key to have age-appropriate amounts of homework; both of my children managed to do some beginning in second grade, increasing amounts gradually, and still had extracurricular activities. I was dismayed by the implication that we should be cutting back. It is true the Internet did not exist when my children were young, but homework is necessary and important and parents need to allow for it. The day after I read 4
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this article, The New York Times featured a mother in Connecticut who took her 12-year-old into New York after school to learn how to put makeup on properly. Wouldnt homework be more valuable? Joan Meltzer FitzGibbon, M.A.T.70
Fitz Fits
Fitz, Harvard lucked out getting you in 1963, and also in keeping you around all these years. (One on One, winter 2012) You are one of the all-time good guys. Thatfield Not to be a curmudgeon, but in 32 years of teaching, I sometimes told a student, You might be better off asking someone else. Why? Because the student provided me no information about who they were the other 23 hours a day. Because the student asked for the recommendation 48 hours before the deadline. Because I may have encountered information in another school-related role about the student that would adversely affect their admission chances if included in a teacher recommendation. Seems to me that were their teachers, not their agents. Scott Shiffner, M.A.T.72
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letters
against that perception. Ed. magazine should support them in their efforts. RebeccaSchendel, Ed.M.05
How Brutal
Given the very wide latitude allowed to modern art and architecture, I still feel that Larsen Hall and the entire British School of brutalist architecture are blots on the landscape and the sooner replaced, the better (No Dragons Behind the Moat, fall 2011). RichardSimons,M.A.T.59
Clearing Up Matters
After our last issue came out, we received a few emails pointing out possible errors, both relating to numbers! (Everyone knows some writers arent great at math, right?) In Statistical Significance, following The Associated Press Stylebook, we used the word data as both a plural and collective noun, much to the chagrin of some readers. Also, in the box of alumni statistics on page 46, we noted that our total alumni pool is 24,813 21,138 domestic and 1,710 international alumni.Obviously, those numbers dont add up. (And we dont have 2,000 extraterrestrial Ed School alumni out there as Roxanne Cramer, Ed.M.67, joked.) We do have 24,813 alumni, all tethered to earth. From that pool, we have mailing addresses for 22,848.
Not Helping
I was disappointed to read Into Africa: Phillip Haynes in the fall 2011 edition, as I felt the tone of the article reflected poorly on the caliber of this usually excellent publication. I have worked in Rwandas education sector for nearly four years, so I commend anybody who is willing to devote their time and resources to increase opportunities for Rwandas young people. I have no doubt that Haynes is providing valuable assistance to his host community. However, the article seemed to suggest that, were it not for his arrival, this community might never have built a school or even under-
stood the value of education. This is an antiquated depiction of Africa that does not reflect Rwandas current situation. Rwanda is considered to be a shining example of a New Africa. I have never met a Rwandan who didnt see the importance of education. Families across the country scrimp and save to send their children to school, even if it means going hungry. To depict Rwanda as a backward nation of ignorant people, unaware of the importance of education, perpetuates an oldfashioned view of Africa as a doomed continent in need of Western enlightenment. Every day, Rwandans are fighting
SENIOR WRITER/EDITOR Lory Hough lory_hough@harvard.edu PRODUCTION MANAGER/EDITOR Marin Jorgensen marin_jorgensen@harvard.edu DESIGNER Paula Telch Cooney paula_telch@harvard.edu DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS Michael Rodman michael_rodman@harvard.edu COMMUNICATIONS INTERN Rachael Apfel
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Rachael Apfel Golriz Golkar, Ed.M.07 Marty Lipp Mark Robertson, Ed.M.08 COPYEDITOR Abigail Mieko Vargus PHOTOGRAPHERS Jill Anderson Steve Barrett Rose Lincoln John Loomis Michael Rodman Martha Stewart
ILLUSTRATORS Natalie Kilany Steven Noble Daniel Vasconcellos 2012 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Ed. magazine is published three times a year. Third-class postage paid at Holliston, Mass. and additional offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Harvard Graduate School of Education Office of Communications 13 Appian Way Cambridge, MA 02138
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HGSE www.gse.harvard.edu events www.gse.harvard.edu/news_events/events twitter www.twitter.com/hgse facebook www.facebook.com/harvardeducation youtube www.youtube.com/harvardeducation flickr www.flickr.com/photos/harvardeducation issuu www.issuu.com/harvardeducation foursquare www.foursquare.com/hgse
HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
BRIGET GANSKE
ELENA GORMLEY
JILL ANDERSON
BRIGET GANSKE
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hen it comes to helping young people get to college, practitioners are often left scratching their heads, wondering what went wrong when matriculation doesnt happen. All too often, these same practitioners dont look beyond the traditional areas of college planning: academic prep, information sharing, and financial support. Although these areas are important, writes Mandy Savitz-Romer in her new book, Ready, Willing, and Able, theres a critical element that has largely been missing in college prep: adolescent development. By not taking this into account, she writes with Ed School researcher Suzanne Bouffard, the most vulnerable young people dont just miss the boat; they arent even on the deck. In January, Savitz-Romer, director of the Prevention Science and Practice Program and a former school counselor, spoke to Ed. about adolescent development, college days, and the challenge of writing a book.
dont possess college-going aspirations, or that they lack information about what is required and necessary. Yet, if you look around, there are so many programs designed to promote higher aspirations and disseminate information.
Give me an example.
The growing trend in schools to have college days in which faculty and staff wear college sweatshirts and homerooms are named after colleges. For a young person who thinks, Im not college material, or whose selfdescription doesnt include college student, seeing others with college sweatshirts will not do much to make them believe they could or should go to college. But when these strategies are paired with other efforts that provide students with the support to reflect on multiple aspects of their identities, they are likely to be meaningful to more students.
So its not just that kids lack information or the desire to go to college?
A common presumption has been that low-income, first-generation students
Your Turn
? ??
Holy Book). I laugh each time I hear this and marvel at how much I am starting to believe it. When June arrives, I congratulate her on another wonderful year. You know, you still owe me a prize for being class helper, she says quietly. I had almost forgotten. I hand her a pen and notebook. She steps forward as if to give me a hug. Instead, she lingers for a moment and waves as she rushes off. the scent of jasmIne from the playground reaches me as I gaze out the window of my classroom. This fragrance will forever be linked in my memory to the beginning of a new school year. This year is particularly new for me, as I am now teaching second grade. For my poetry unit, I ask Joana to recite her odes to my new students. She looks down at the floor and clears her throat. Before long, a soft voice delights us with verses on cheese and life in France. We thank her with a hearty round of applause. The next morning, my students hang up their coats and wrap me in a tight hug. It is always hard to tell apart the little hands. But this morning, two hands are bigger than the others. Joana lets go and begins to walks away. She pauses and smiles at me in a way I have never seen before. There is a glow in her eyes, and we wave like two old friends who have always been. Golriz Golkar, Ed.M.07,teachessecond-gradeEnglishattheLyce FranaisLaProuseinSanFrancisco.SheandJoana, nowinsixthgrade,remainfriendswhodiscusspoetry.
SUMMER 2012
DANIEL VASCONCELLOS
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High Hand
What would Kenny Rogers do if he were in charge of a school district budget? Hed know when to fold em, certainly when to walk away. But what if he had to cut his budget again by 5 percent? He could do the usual: print out last years budget and broadly cut everything. Or he could play a card game called Budget Holdem. Recently released by Education Resource Strategies (ERS), a nonprofit that works with large, urban school districts to rethink how best to use resources, Budget Holdem can be played online for free or with a special deck of paper cards. The game allows users to make cuts and add resources in an effort to create an ideal hand that is, a balanced budget that doesnt gut student learning. The idea behind the game is for users to think hard about choices and trade-offs two concepts, says ERS founder Karen Hawley Miles, Ed.M.91, Ed.D.97, that are generally new in education. After users pick their overall budget target saving 2 percent, for example they flip over cards from two columns: investments and savings. Each flip calculates about how much the move would increase or decrease a budget. For instance, flipping a card that introduced a principal residency program to build leadership capacity would increase a budget by about 0.1 percent. Leasing unused space to community groups could save about 0.2 percent. Each card also provides an explanation. As users try out different hands, cards can be unplayed. Some cards also offer ways to invest without adding or saving money, such as encouraging the strongest principals to move to the lowest-performing schools. One of the best outcomes from playing the game, says Hawley Miles, is when a school district begins to think differently from how they had in the past, which is what happened in Memphis, Tenn., one of the first districts to test the game. They feel like they came up with a budget thats very different than they would have otherwise, Hawley Miles says. In addition, by the time the process was over and the budget balanced everyone felt ownership in the decisions that were made. The game also allows users to try scenarios without feeling stuck with a decision, says ERS communications manager Allison Daskal Hausman, Ed.M.93. Approaching the budget in our alternative way lets people suspend reality and feel freer about their options, she says. The game was worked on by several other Ed School graduates, including cocreator Betty Hsu, Ed.M.08, online manager Kristan Singleton, Ed.M.06, and scriptwriter Anna Sommers, Ed.M.91. LoryHough
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Special Collections
Its another one of those tucked-away, hidden gems on campus, a bibliophiles dream. The special collections room on the lower level of the Gutman Library contains, among other materials, about 50,000 volumes of historical elementary and secondary textbooks. Most of the materials range in date from the very old (1800) to the slightly retro (1985), but there are also a few antiquated items from the 1700s, including the librarys oldest American schoolbook, The Schoolmasters Assistant: Being a Compendium of Arithmetic, Both Practical and Theoretical, from 1784.
collection of 19th-century arithmetic textbooks once used in elementary and secondary schools. The yellow bookmarks sticking out of
some are actually thick strips of acid-free paper used for preservation reasons (rather than using the typical adhesive strip on the spine) to indicate a books call number.
collection since June 2006. The best part of his job? Meeting the many scholars who visit the noncirculating collection for their research, as well as arranging, cataloging, and describing the historical material.
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entific class-book, or A familiar introduction to the principles of physical science, for the use of schools and academies, on the basis of J.M.
Moffat. Part 1 (1836) by Walter Johnson, a professor of mechanics and natural philosophy at the Franklin Institute of the State of Pennsylvania.
Mother Goose nursery rhyme books, including Mother Goose Book: A Work and Play Book for Silent Reading, written in 1929 by a former teacher, Emma Miller Bolenius.
These shelves, tucked within the moveable stacks, house public school reports dating
MARTHA STEWART
from the 1830s to the 1940s. Visible here are published annual reports from school superintendents from the state of Ohio.
HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
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my Loyd loved her job. As director of education for a tribal nonprofit organization in Anchorage, Ala., where she oversaw teachers, counselors, and family advocates who served more than 1,100 Native American K12 students, Loyd felt challenged and rewarded every day. And she came to love her adopted state the people, the beauty, and XTRATUF boots, what she calls quintessential Alaskan footwear. She wasnt looking to leave, especially after adopting her daughter, at least not to start a regular graduate degree program. But Loyd also realized there were limitations to her learning and leading. I kept hitting walls that I knew I could tear down or climb over, if only I had the right tools in my toolbox, she says. I just didnt have the right tools yet. And then one day, as she was scanning an e-newsletter from the Harvard Native American Program that she regularly received, she saw her tool: the Ed.L.D. Program. I immediately knew I wanted and needed to be a part of it, so that I could become a more effective leader into the future. In July 2010, she and her husband sold their house and most of their belongings, packed the Honda CR-V, and with their five-year-old daughter and two elderly dogs, drove 5,000 miles towards that future.
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MARTHA STEWART
Better sport during the very long road trip to Cambridge: r You r Your five-year-old daughter 3 Biggest adventure:
She saw the adventure and beauty in each day. I grumbled about my sciatica and sleeplessness.
You speak:
Backcountry hut-to-hut ski trip in February, the coldest month in Alaska. We had to breathe on one anothers eyes to defrost them.
You worked this summer at the Department of Education as part of the Ed.L.D. Program. Two differences between Alaska and Washington, D.C.: 1. D.C.s
English and Spanish; ancient Greek and French in their written form; a few German phrases (my husband is German). I wish I spoke my native language, Zui, or my daughters native languages, Yupik, Iupiaq, and Gwichin Athabascan.
Biggest misconception about Alaska: r Its always cold and snowy r The capital is Anchorage r Its totally dark for most of the year r Other: Igloos. 3
oppressively hot summer climate. 2. Direct service work versus policy-based work.
Favorite Leader:
Frances Perkins Why? Devoted to social justice, Perkins tackled the most daunting problems of her time and radically restructured society through the New Deal to solve them.
We dont live in them, though hunters sometimes build them as temporary shelters.
River guide. Growing up in the high desert alongside the Rio Grande, I have a deep reverence for water and a particular love for rivers.
Little-known talent:
My year-three residency and my interests are now at the state level in education reform. Why? Were asking states to do more with less. I see a lot of room for possibility and growth in states capacities for leading transformation in the sector. States are where the action is, the greatest lever for moving the sector.
Whats next?
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Id always wanted to see moose and the northern lights, and I was curious to learn more about Alaska Native cultures.
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parents decided the violin might work. With the help of a team of biomedical engineers at the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital in Toronto, a custom-made adaptive device called a spatula was designed just for him. The piece attaches just below the elbow, allowing Anantawan to clip on the bow. He fingers the strings with his left hand. Although the learning curve was steep at first, Anantawan quickly fell in love with his violin, in time establishing himself as a rising star in classical music, as TheGlobeandMailonce wrote. He attended the Curtis
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study alongside nondisabled students. Working primarily with the schools music program, Anantawan got the job through the Ed Schools Field Experience Program. It was a huge commitment for a full-time student, but right away, Anantawan knew he had to work at the Henderson. The first time there, I was floored by the commitment that the teachers make, Anantawan says. The way they put together lesson plans, the way they work with kids in the classroom. And the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) model is great for different ways of engaging different learners. An incident in March reminded him of why hes so committed to working at the intersection of education, special needs, and music. As the kids were rehearsing a play for black history month, he and the staff brainstormed ways to include a girl with cerebral palsy. They realized they should let her do what she loved best: clapping with the portable communicator she uses. Every time I see her, shes trying to bring my hands together, in hopes that Ill start clapping, Anantawan says. Very much like a musician, she enjoys recognition. With the help of a paraprofessional, the girl learned the rhythm and tempo of the songs. If you could measure engagement based on someones face, he says, this girl had it. With graduation around the corner, Anantawan now hopes to design a UDL curriculum for teachers, especially music teachers, to use in public schools. Hed also like to see the music program at the Henderson as developed as it is expand even more. Id love to create an instrumental afterschool program, he says. One that combines traditional instruments like what else? the violin with adaptive music technologies. I really want to create not only a meaningful music program, Watch clips from Anantawan says, but the documentary, also one that is accesThe Story Behind sible for students from the Notes, and the margins. a recent Harvard Gazette video. LoryHough
Overheard
Youre playing too loud. Youre playing too loud. Youre playing too loud.
Jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, speaking to a crowd in Askwith Hall in February as part of his two-year lecture series at Harvard. To illustrate a point about educators needing to better collaborate and trust one another, Marsalis told a story about how, when he was in his mid-20s, he toured with a bunch of former members of Duke Ellingtons band. The men, in their 70s and 80s, constantly told the younger musicians to turn it down and play softer. It was the only way, they said, that people could really hear one another.
Institute of Music in Philadelphia and the music school at Yale, studied under Itzhak Perlman, played for President George W. Bush and Pope John Paul II, and performed at the Kennedy Center and with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. And since last September, he has spent every Thursday, all day, with his violin at the William H. Henderson Inclusion Elementary School in Boston, where disabled students
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Snooze or Lose
Their message to kids was clear: Get some sleep. When students in Lecturer Rick Weissbourds January term module were asked to create an intervention for at-risk children, one team knew it had to be something that was doable not just for themselves ISTOCKPHOTO.COM (J-term classes last just two weeks), but also for the already-burdened Boston Public Schools they were targeting. And they knew that for anyone to be interested, their project had to address a real problem. So they proposed a comprehensive yet straightforward campaign that encourages elementary students to turn off the televisions, put down the caffeinated sodas, and get to bed. As Bethanne Bower, Ed.M.12, says, Sleep deprivation is a problem everyone can relate to. For students, its especially problematic. One study of elementary-aged students reported that three-quarters watch television as part of their bedtime routines. Another study of fourth- and fifth-graders showed that after decreasing sleep by one hour a night from the recommended 10, test scores dropped. Sleepdeprived students struggle to pay attention, focus, and be creative. Sleep deprivation can also lead to behavioral and emotional problems and, in some cases, health issues. So Bower, along with Kennedy School students Cris Garza and Erin Wang, created a campaign using the slogan, Snooze or Lose: Its 8 p.m.! Lets jump in bed with a book! The plan included working with three groups: families, schools, and cities. With families, they would provide basic information about the importance of sleep and recommendations for helping elementary-aged children sleep better, such as practicing relaxation techniques and removing sleep stealers from bedrooms televisions, computers, and game systems. They would promote consistent bedtime routines that include reading and keeping a sleep log. With schools, the idea was to form a partnership to help educate parents and students, as well as develop a sleep curriculum tailored toward each grade. With city officials, they would create a public service campaign to raise awareness of the issue within the broader community. Each of these groups would be linked. All three of these components must collaborate with each other, so that students get the sleep they need to be successful in school, says Garza, who remembers teaching days when his exciting and wellprepared lesson plans were no match for the fourth-graders who came to class exhausted. This project gave me a chance to work on the institutional and behavioral roots of the issue. The students are also hoping to recruit community partners like ReadBoston or Childrens Hospital Boston to help spread the word, as well as local celebrities and sports players who would be on billboards and in ads. And it may just happen. Just as the J-term was ending, all of the students in Weissbourds module presented their projects to Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, superintendents from Boston and Cambridge, and leaders from local nonprofits. City officials were very positive about the interventions, says Weissbourd, Ed.D.87, and have followed up with him on several, including Snooze or Lose. Garza says that as they were giving their presentation, he, Bower, and Wang sensed interest. Given that the public officials and other leaders in the room are hardworking people and most likely sleep deprived, they were still engaged throughout the presentation, he says. We knew they were interested in Snooze or Lose when we completed the presentation and, rather than ask us questions, they proceeded to debate amongst themselves the merits of a campaign, what a potential campaign could look like, and how to handle related issues, such as nutrition. LoryHough
Big News
In March, Harvards Faculty of Arts and Sciences unanimously approved the creation of a new interfaculty Ph.D. in education. The new degree, which will start in fall 2014, will be offered by the Ed School and Harvards Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
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onmybookshelf
Currently reading: A literature book from my high school days that I found while visiting my parents. Its titled Literature:Structure,Sound,andSense. The thing that drew you to it: I wanted to be reminded of my teen years and to take a glimpse into my cognitions then. The notes I left in the margins allowed me to gauge how my perceptions have changed with the years. Book youve read over and over: TheBridgeby Heinz Janisch and Helga Bansch. Its a childrens book Ive been reading repeatedly to my baby son, Evan. Its never too early to teach about collaboration, and TheBridge teaches a valuable lesson on yielding and coexisting peacefully. Favorite spot to curl up with a good book: The rocking chair in Evans nursery. I can keep an eye on my son as he sleeps while I enjoy some me time with a good book.
STEVE BARRETT
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early 58 years after Brown v. Board of Education, desegregation policies seem to be moving in the wrong direction, write the authors of Integrating Schools in
a Changing Society. Over the course of the past two decades, a series of court cases including a 2007 Supreme Court decision that struck down voluntary integration policies in Seattle and Louisville, Ky. have created tough barriers for public schools attempting to pursue integration. In their book, Erica Frankenberg, Ed.M.02, Ed.D.08, and Elizabeth Debray, Ed.M.92, Ed.D.01, share concern for this steady drift toward resegregation and the implications it may hold for the American education system. Bringing together the voices of leading scholars in education policy and related fields, this comprehensive volume comprises 18 essays that offer thoughts about the dangers of the steady rise in segregation, how current policies are fundamentally mistaken, how resegregated schools are failing, and what alternatives American educators, policymakers, and advocates should consider. Divided into four parts, the book assesses the current climate in light of the past, reinforces the key benefits of racially integrated schools, examines strategies that help to pursue multiracial integration and equity within schools, and discusses a variety of case examples. Together, the essays in Integrating Schools highlight new ways for the American public education system to counter persistent racial and socioeconomic inequality and reverse the course policies have taken since the decisions of Brown. The compilation represents an effort to propel the discussion forward, allowing policymakers to become aware of potential options. This book was designed to show what new evidence exists about integrated education and its relationship to equality of educational opportunity; what the political prospects are; what we know about new policy alternatives, including using socioeconomic status; and what the federal role could be in encouraging such options, write Frankenberg and Debray. We strongly believe that, at the beginning of the 21st century, schools remain a powerful tool for attaining individual opportunity and a thriving multiracial democratic society.
hich of the following best identifies Kurt Cobain: lead singer of the band Nirvana or five-time winner of Wimbledon? Easy, right? Not for the students of Walden
Middle School, an all-black, low-income, urban public school where Associate Professor Meira Levinson taught for several years. And in her latest book, No Citizen Left Behind, Levinson argues that these students are not alone. As the number of schools serving poor, urban, de facto segregated populations is steadily increasing, more and more students are deprived of exposure to mainstream or dominant cultural capital. According to Levinson, it is this kind of knowledge that is empowering, especially given the unequal distribution of economic, political, and cultural power in the United States. But it goes deeper than that. When it comes to school reform, a current wave of rhetoric and recent changes in federal education policy, including the No Child Left Behind Act, have put the spotlight on the academic achievement gap. However, Levinson warns, the civic empowerment gap is equally important. The failure of schools to prepare students to exercise basic rights as citizens is depriving them of the knowledge and skills to redefine power relations through public, political, and civic action. Drawing on her experiences as a political theorist, an urban middle school teacher, and an education scholar, Levinson investigates the widening civic empowerment gap and offers ideas on how to close it. Each chapter begins with a short anecdote from her personal experiences in the classroom, followed by relevant commentary, ideas, and suggestions. Not only does this place concrete examples within a larger context, but it also provides readers with valuable lessons and tangible insight that sketch a blueprint for an ideal civic education. In No Citizen Left Behind, Levinson argues that a truly egalitarian society starts with civic empowerment both in and out of the classroom. More than just tweaking the curriculum, schools should seek to exemplify the democratic process that most inner-city children rarely have the opportunity to witness firsthand. Democratic governance relies on participatory citizens, Levinson writes. Therefore, the civic empowerment gap harms all Americans because it weakens the quality and integrity of our democracy.
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chools are often associated with a number of different teams: football, debate, chess, quiz bowl, and the list goes on. But teacher teams? As a relatively new concept
in the realm of education, the idea of teacher teams may be unfamiliar. However, Vivian Troen and Senior Lecturer Katherine Boles, Ed.D.91, argue that teacher teams may be the most crucial team a school can have. In their latest book, The Power of Teacher Teams, the pair draws attention to this invaluable network of educators, professionals, and administrators, claiming that, when executed correctly, teacher teams may hold the power to transform schools in such a way that they can offer a more successful and effective learning experience. Divided into two parts, the book begins by laying the foundation with a succession of six chapters that outline the unique nature of teamwork within an educational setting. Then, shifting gears, the remaining eight chapters engage readers with eight different case studies that offer real-life examples of how teacher teams actually function, what is successful, and what problems can be expected to arise as teams develop. Allowing readers to reflect on the experiences of others, these cases represent the heart of the book, raising penetrating questions while simultaneously offering comprehensive insight and valuable lessons that teachers, administrators, and other educational leaders may take with them and apply in their own professional development. In light of recent research indicating that very few teacher teams are actually effective, this book seeks to reverse the trend. By developing a framework for effective teacher teams that includes five criteria leadership, task focus, collaborative climate, structure and process, and personal accountability Troen and Boles provide school leaders with the tools needed to navigate this relatively new terrain and to make effective teacher teams a reality. Filled with advice and practical methods for rethinking the practice of teaching, The Power of Teacher Teams highlights teacher collaboration that can help transform the culture of schools into communities of learning that foster and value teacher leadership. Briefs written by Rachael Apfel
OTHER BOOKS
Born Under an Assumed Name: The Memoir of a Cold War Spys Daughter Sara Mansfield Taber, Ed.D.87; 2012 Building Good Schools: Tools for Principals Silvina Gvirtz and Ivana Zacarias, Ed.M.09; 2012 Common Sense: The Missing Link in Education Reform Paul Hoss, C.A.S.83; 2012 Developing Essential Understanding of Expressions, Equations, and Functions for Teaching Mathematics in Grades 68 Gwendolyn Lloyd, Beth Herbel-Eisenmann, and Associate Professor Jon Star, Ed.M.93; 2011 From Classroom to White House: The Presidents and First Ladies as Students and Teachers James McMurtry Longo, C.A.S.90, Ed.D.94; 2011 Making Assessment Matter: Using Test Results to Differentiate Reading Instruction Associate Professor Nonie Lesaux and Sky Marietta, Ed.M.08, Ed.D.12; 2012 A Match on Dry Grass: Community Organizing as a Catalyst for School Reform Associate Professor Mark Warren and Lecturer Karen Mapp, Ed.M.93, Ed.D.99; 2011 Paradise Redefined: Transnational Chinese Students and the Quest for Flexible Citizenship in the Developed World Associate Professor Vanessa Fong; 2011 Teaching and Its Predicaments Visiting Professor David Cohen; 2011 Trust Me! I Can Read: Building from Strengths in the High School English Classroom Sally Lamping and Ed.L.D. candidate Dean Woodring Blase; 2012 Trusting What Youre Told: How Children Learn from Others Professor Paul Harris; 2012 (see page 36) Writing Immigration: Scholars and Journalists in Dialogue Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, Associate Professor Vivian Louie, and Roberto Suro; 2011
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Why a new degree focused on education leadership? When the Ed School initially started talking about the possibility of adding a new degree, they knew it was time. Major changes had been happening in the education world during the past few decades. As Professor Robert Schwartz, C.A.S.68, noted, Old boundaries and definitions of the school district are changing. And so the Ed School would change, too. A second doctorate would be added. But this one would be different, the-first-of-its-kind-in-the-nation kind of different. Now in its second year, this new degree, the Doctor of Education Leadership, or Ed.L.D., is steeped in practice like a J.D. or M.D. It includes a brand new, innovative curriculum that is grounded in education, but also includes much-needed policy and management training. During their third and final year, students are in a residency onsite with partner organizations pushing the boundary in education reform. This twoway pipeline culminates not in a formal dissertation, but in the creation of a professional reform project for the partner (see sidebar, page 29). 20
ED.
Why Ed.L.
the
And the main idea behind the degree? Long before the first cohort of 25 students left their full-time jobs and arrived on campus, the idea was ambitious and clear: The Ed School was not going to develop leaders for the education system as it currently exists. It was going to develop leaders who will define the education system of the future. Throughout the years, our goal at the Harvard Graduate School of Education has been to prepare leaders with the skill sets, habits of mind, and dispositions to act in order to transform the education sector, says Dean Kathleen McCartney. With the introduction of the Ed.L.D. to our suite of degree programs, we are now poised to do much more. Transforming the sector is an ambitious goal, but through the work of our alumni, as well as our partners, we will succeed. To make this happen, those involved in the planning of the degree knew that the entire program needed to be different, that they had to think outside the box when it came to what was taught, who was accepted, and how it would be funded
SUMMER 2012
.D.
(the program is 100 percent free for accepted students). For starters, a critical and intentional decision was made to connect the rigorous academics that you would expect from a doctoral program to the world of practice not something previously integrated into a program at this level. As a result, the curriculum is concentrated in three basic areas: leadership and management (focused on real behavior that goes on in organizations), teaching and learning (focused on how successful learning and teaching happens and how to recreate it), and understanding and transforming the sector (focused on the history and politics that surround the sector). A fourth area, called Workplace Lab, includes personal executive-coaching sessions for students and intensive, team-based projects using case studies, simulations, and field-based work. One of the most innovative pieces of the program is the interdisciplinary teaching model. However, interdisciplinary in the Ed.L.D. Program doesnt mean students simply take courses at other schools. Instead, recognizing that education leaders cant limit their expertise to just education, the
Ed.L.D. fully incorporates faculty from the Business School and the Kennedy School in the first-year core curriculum. Early on, these faculty also helped develop the curriculum and continue to collaboratively teach classes. The students, who all come with amazing credentials (see sidebar, page 24), also get that this new program is, first and foremost, a human capital initiative. Thats why when they arrive on campus, they are energized, ready to push themselves. They come willing to question assumptions their own, each others, and the sectors as Executive Director Liz City, Ed.M.04. Ed.D.07, points out. The hope is that the students, clustered in small groups of only 25 each year, will build a cohort for life, a close network of leaders who are ready and equipped to transform the education sector as superintendents, chief academic officers, chiefs of staff, commissioners, executive directors, and more. So why a new degree focused intensely on leadership? We asked a small handful of the many people involved with the program to help fill in the answer.
HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
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FALL 2005
MAY 2006
McCartney submits academic plan to Harvard President Larry Summers.
Plan includes proposal for a new degree and argues that top education leaders need a unique interdisciplinary skill set that integrates instructional leadership, management, and policy.
SPRING 2006
McCartney recruits Professor Robert Schwartz to be her academic dean. Academic plan is approved. Wheels are in motion for Ed.L.D.
Schwartz is charged with spearheading the planning for the new degree program.
Much time and planning went into the new Ed.L.D. Program. Heres a brief look at how it all progressed.
The seed is planted.
Acting dean Kathleen McCartney and her senior team begin conversations about leadership in education and the possibility of starting a new degree.
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SUMMER 2012
An anonymous donor endows the Herbert A. Simon Professorship in Education, Management, and Organizational Behavior at HGSE, which is later given to Professor Mark Moore in 2009.
What impact will this degree program have on entrepreneurship in the sector?
To a large extent, the work of improving educasystematically about their work in a way tion right now is redesigning classrooms, that fosters new approaches, thoughtful schools, processes, tools, and incentives so initiatives, and gives them the ability that learning can be responsive to the to engage and manage entrepreindividual needs of all students. This neurs in their work. kind of design work is a contact sport Second, Ed.L.D. students it demands intensive collaboration who wish to pursue an entrebetween educators, administrators, preneurial career, whether nonprofits, funders, and curriculum nonprofit or for-profit, by proand tool developers. viding important tools and serIt is challenging work for people in vices to schools and districts, these different areas to develop a comwill develop a much deeper mon language and to find each others understanding of the systems common goals and values; too often, and processes that exist in K12 promising projects crumble in the face education that they want to imof mutual distrust and misunderstanding. prove or replace, and are better Since the Ed.L.D. Program brings stuat finding points of leverage that dents with ambitions in all of these areas, will make a big difference for my great hope is that the interactions educators and students. within our cohorts help model this proThird, Ed.L.D. students who Lecturer, cofounder of Wireless Generation cess, and create tight, trusting networks wish to build and operate new of professionals in all of these areas who schools will have a richer tool set can work together to improve the K12 experience. for designing highly effective educational environments and In addition to this bonding between different types of will able to take advantage of the best techniques that are educational innovators, there are a few specific things that being developed in the field.rough all of these efforts, Im the Ed.L.D. Program has the opportunity to accomplish in confident that the Ed.L.D. Program and more importhe near term: tantly, its graduating cohorts can help turn entrepreFirst, Ed.L.D. students who intend to pursue manageneurship in this sector into a powerful, integrated force that rial leadership of districts, state education departments, or makes concrete, steady progress in improving the learning policymaking agencies will be able to think more boldly and experiences of children everywhere.
Gregory Gunn
FALL 2006
SPRING 2007
FALL 2007
Leadership Degree Work Group expanded to include HBS, HKS.
Renamed Exploratory Committee. Kegan becomes the chair. New faculty members include Stacey Childress (HBS), Mark Moore (HKS), and the Ed Schools Nonie Lesaux, Thomas Payzant, Harry Spence, and Lee Teitel.
An anonymous donor endows the Henry Wyman Holmes Professorship of Education Leadership at HGSE.
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Impressive Credentials
A sampling of jobs held by current students prior to starting the Ed.L.D. Program:
director special
headmaster Urban Science Academy director school redesign, Detroit Public Schools lead classroom teacher
Southwest Baltimore Charter School new site development, Teach For America
Mark Moore
JANUARY 2008
SPRING 2008
SEPTEMBER 2008
MAY 2009
Harvard Corporation votes to approve the Ed.L.D., a new credential within higher education.
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JUNE 2009
SEPTEMBER 2009
DECEMBER 2009
Student recruitment begins. Wallace Foundation pledges $10 million dollars for Ed.L.D. fellowships.
More than 1,000 applications pour in for 25 slots.
New York Times columnist Bob Herbert writes about the degree.
Two weeks later, the Times writes a second story about the program.
25
In my prior work as a mentor for new teachers in a highneeds school district, I was often amazed and humbled by the impact that the creativity of passionate teachers, when combined with thoughtful planning and reflection on their practice, had on the students they served. My work with these brilliant and dedicated teachers proved to me beyond a doubt that high student achievement, even in the face of daunting economic, organizational, and social obstacles, is not unattainable, nor are the obstacles facing schools and teachers intractable. The success that my colleagues and mentees achieved provided me a window into what is possible when the behavioral patterns, systemic dysfunctions, and entrenched ideologies that impede progress are faced with a creative, solutions-oriented mindset and a shared vision about teaching and learning. However, I witnessed firsthand the limitations imposed upon the creativity, energy, and professionalism of individuals when I was working across schools within a system. Comments from the central office administrator such as, If you want to be a creative teacher, you need to go teach in another district, typified the limited nature of the organizational approach to solving problems of practice. This problematic reality gave me a new appreciation for the role that leadership plays in either transcending or exacerbating the behaviors, dysfunctions, and ideologies that dampen student achievement. It is within the immense possibility of transcending these impediments to progress on a large scale that I found my inspiration to apply for the Ed.L.D. Program. Transforming the impediments to progress in urban education is both the opportunity and challenge of our lifetimes. I was, and
Current Ed.L.D. student, cohort 2, former lead mentor, New Teacher Center
continue to be, excited to explore the frontier of possibility that exists when the brilliance and creative energy of a dedicated teaching force is met with an organizational leadership willing and able to harness and expand, rather than constrain and curtail, its desire to work with students and communities to maximize the potential of every child. I came to this program to learn from a diverse group of experts to develop the skill set necessary to be the kind of leader able to empower collaboration, productive conflict, and shared purpose. I believe that Harvards comprehensive approach toward educational leadership affords a unique opportunity to integrate the most current scholarship and practices from education, business, and policy in order to develop as both an educational and an organizational leader.
Ryan Stewart
FEBRUARY 2010
AUGUST 2010
SEPTEMBER 2010
OCTOBER 2010
Harvard President Drew Faust praises the new students and the degree.
I love the Ed.L.D.because its about building human capital to build human capital. Its about that line of inheritance where we bring togetherextraordinary individuals. And we say were going to invest in them because they are going to invest in others.
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What are the most important skills that the Ed.L.D. students will need to be successful education leaders?
and move people to where they need to be. Leaders also need to be aware of how political the work becomes the higher you move in an organization. What was political at a micro-political level when I was a classroom teacher or a person working in a central office expanded tremendously when I became chief of staff in New York and then deputy chancellor. This really prepared me for what it meant to be a superintendent in Baltimore. The scale of the work, the intensity of the gaze, the scrutiny, the need to constantly serve and respond, and to think through how things connect it magnified enormously when I became a district superintendent. My sense is theres an enormous need to prepare people for what that means once youre in the arena. Of course, underlying everything, theres always a need for a leader to understand him or herself. There are nonnegotiables, there are triggers. You need to understand the triggers, the areas of weakness, and understand how those elements are significant at every single moment, but also how they can either help or hinder the work in relationship to a community. Leadership, at some level, is always a process of managing oneself in relationship to others. Thats an enormous aspect of the work since the personal authority of the leader is always the most important currency. Personal authority becomes a tool for building a team, for making others serve the mission of the institution. Thats the key to the work. Last, Ive been lucky in my career in having great mentors. Theres a need to connect with people who have the experience and the goodwill to support one in the work. The Ed.L.D. Program has thought through this. It asks: How do these leaders-in-training benefit from the many, many people who are really rooting for effective leadership in education?
NOVEMBER 2010
JANUARY 2011
FEBRUARY 2011
MARCH 2011
Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of D.C. schools, meets with Ed.L.D. students.
Other visitors include Joel Klein, former chancellor of New York City schools, and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
As part of data curriculum, students consult with real-world education organizations to help them make strategic decisions with data.
Organizations include district teams from San Antonio, Texas, and Evansville, Ind., as well as teams from SchoolNet and the Massachusetts Department of Education.
Cohort 2 is selected.
Foregoing long breaks, students spend their J-term touring effective schools systems around the world.
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APRIL 2011
Harvard Graduate School of Design collaboration.
SUMMER 2011
AUGUST 2011
DECEMBER 2011
Cohort 2 arrives on campus. Cohort 1 students work at high-level education summer jobs.
Range of job sites include state and federal departments of education, school systems, and nonprofits. They open new schools, craft policy and curriculum, and shadow superintendents. 32% men, 68% women, average age 32, average work experience 10 years.
Students from cohort 1 collaborate with GSD students to create proposals for ideal school buildings and learning environments for the 21st century.
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SUMMER 2012
Why did Teach For America choose to partner with the Ed.L.D. Program?
Through shaping the thinking and action of high-potential education leaders, the Ed.L.D. Program will help ensure that many more of our nations children have the educational opportunity they deserve. In our experience, wherever we see truly meaningful change in education whether in the classroom, at the school or district level, or in the policy arena we see transformational leaders, and Harvards program is helping to develop just that. Our partnership with the Ed.L.D. Program includes both recruiting Teach For America alumni into the program and hosting a resident on our staff. Teach For America alumna Lizette Suxo, Ed.L.D. cohort 1, for example, is leveraging the program to build on her experiences as a kindergarten teacher in the South Bronx, N.Y., and as the founding principal of Bushwick Charter School, which is part of the Achievement First Network. One of Lizettes favorite parts of the program is the coaching around
Third-year Residencies
A few of the partners that students in the first-year cohort will work with during their upcoming residencies:
Big Picture Learning Chicago Public Schools Denver Public Schools Iowa Department of Education Khan Academy
Founder, Teach For America
leadership style. She says, Coaching has offered us an incredible opportunity to learn more about ourselves, our leadership styles, and our patterns. People like Lizette, who have the conviction, insight, experience, and determination required to make change happen, are pursuing the Ed.L.D. to become even stronger leaders on behalf of the kids we serve. We are pleased to partner with Harvard to support the development of the transformational educational leadership we need. Ed.
Wendy Kopp
Teach For America Los Angeles Unified School District National Board for Professional Teaching Standards New York City Department of Education Touchstone Education
JANUARY 2012
MARCH 2012
Cohort 3 is selected. Placements for cohort 1s third-year residencies, which begin in July, are announced.
During their third and final year, students will return to Harvard periodically for intensive workshops.
APRIL 2012
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An insiders take on the secret behind the Harlem Childrens Zones determined success.
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(L) A student gets free dental care. (R) Promoting the healthy kitchen and farmers market.
ts not the first question visitors ask, but you can see it in the darting eyes as folks walk through the halls teeming with students and staff. Whats the secret? they want to know. How can Harlem Childrens Zone (HZC) get thousands of poor children to succeed academically where hundreds of programs and billions of dollars have failed? Visitors want to see the curriculum, the lesson plans, the data. They wonder if anyone can replicate HCZs work without our charismatic CEO Geoffrey Canada, Ed.M.75. And, of course, a few folks are just plain suspicious and wait with knife and fork in hand for any morsel of bad news to satisfy their insatiable cynicism. Well, there is a secret (spoiler alert): its hard work over the long haul. The Harlem Childrens Zone Project targets a 97-blockarea of Central Harlem with an interlocking network of education, social service, and community-building programs for children, from birth through college, and the adults around them. As the communications director of the agency for the past eight years, my favorite description of the agency is from a friend: They do everything but come and wake you up in the morning. The truth is, I learned, that the staff would to that, too, if thats what was necessary. At HCZ we talk about a pipeline of services, but it is actually two parallel pipelines: One for children who go to our K12 charter schools; the other for children who live in the neighborhood and go to traditional public schools. Both start with our early education programs. We have outreach workers scouring the neighborhood, looking for pregnant women and parents of young children for The Baby College, a nine-week series of workshops that teach a range of parenting skills. Its a great program, but the outreach workers use all sorts of enticements free childcare, a weekly raffle, free diapers to get parents in because we want all of them, the good and particularly the bad. Then we have our hooks in them and them in our database hopefully for the next 20 years or so. Whatever It Takes is the title of Paul Toughs excellent account of the organizations work, and it has become the informal motto of the staff, who say it with a smile and a roll
of the eyes as they dive into the latest crisis. And the crises come with stunning regularity since we work with more than 11,000 children, many of whom face daily drama that would make grand opera seem drab by comparison. Were trying to create a community where children are our permanent interest, says Canada, and a child who has struggled is connected to a series of adults who stay with the child over long periods of time. This idea that were investing in children as a team over time is central to our work. At HCZ, we just shake our heads when people criticize Head Start, for example, by saying it doesnt make a difference for children ultimately. What do people expect when ontrack four-year-olds are tossed into substandard schools for the rest of their academic career, and with a battery of other disadvantages, including the ever-present threat of violence? Although HCZ has been fortunate to receive glowing press attention, the coverage has sometimes highlighted our charter schools and obscured our work with children in traditional public schools. In fact, the original business plan of the HCZ Project did not include charter schools. When the opportunity arose, Canada, who had watched public schools fail for decades, jumped at the opportunity to deliver a great school to large numbers of poor children. The result was Promise Academy I, which opened in 2004, and Promise Academy II, which opened in 2005. We make the same guarantee to children in traditional public schools, he says. If you stick with us, you will get into and through college. Today, HCZ works with all seven of the traditional public elementary schools in the Zone, serving more than 2,400 students. We also work with more than 900 middle school students who dont attend our charter school and 1,080 Harlem high schoolers. More than 700 students from these afterschool programs are now in college. While some have painted Canada with a broad brush as anti-union, he is simply opposed to anyone and anything that does not put children first. That commitment defines him in the fields of politics and policy, but also makes him a relentless, no-excuses manager. If my mother worked here and she messed up, Canada once told a staffer, Id fire her. This year marks a milestone for the Harlem Childrens Zone Promise Academy I charter school: It graduates its first class of high-school seniors and all of them will be going to college in the fall. Recently I sat down with Principal Marquitta Speller in her office, which typically clatters with the daily drama and comedy of teenagers, and we looked through a list of her seniors. I asked what would have happened if these kids had not won the school admission lottery six years ago. We have 62 seniors, she says, ruefully shaking her head. You would have maybe five that on their own would say, OK, Im doing this, Im going to college. I dont have a crystal ball, she continues, but if they didnt have these services, they would not have made it. A few would have become pregnant. Some A Baby College session. boys would have been locked up.
The school runs a longer school day and year, but that is just the beginning of the difference from a traditional school. There is an onsite health center that offers students free medical, dental, and mental-health services. There is a social work team, a comprehensive afterschool program, freshly made healthy breakfasts and lunches, a range of incentives to reward good efforts. But what it took to get some of this first graduating cohort to cap and gown illustrates why HCZs wraparound services, applied over the long term, were essential. Theres Tameka, a special education student who was shot in the face while walking home through a playground in seventh grade. She and other students received counseling after the shooting, and staff made sure she stayed in school to get the academic help she needed despite the stigma of being left back due to the weeks she missed. As a senior, Speller says, she jumped 320 points on her SAT because she had developed this determination. When Tyler arrived at the Promise Academy in sixth grade, he was a pudgy class clown who was at the bottom academically of a cohort that was 75 percent below grade level in English and 60 percent below grade level in math. While the staff immediately knew Tyler as a student who was more dedicated to getting attention for bad behavior than applying himself, they soon learned the reason: his home life, which in his case was a euphemism. His mother vacillated about keeping him in her home and so he bounced among family members, including his dad, who was struggling with drug addiction. Tyler had an epiphany during an extended stay with family outside New York City. He said that seeing his family that summer mired in a desolate world of crime, drugs, and unemployment made him realize the type of life that I want isnt one spent in the basement of my mothers house with kids I cant support and an education that would leave me unqualified to even be a manager at McDonalds. The lightbulb that went on was powered by the repeated messages he got from the staff, particularly one teacher who became a father figure to him. Tyler said the teacher joked with him but made clear there was also a time to buckle down and work toward his dreams. He returned an earnest, hard-working student, looking to change the people and the world around him. As he tries
to make up for lost time, he says, I wish we had more time here. I wish there were a 13th grade. The lightbulb moment came even later for Crystal, another senior whose mom has struggled with crack addiction since before Crystal was born. Crystal arrived at the school behind academically, struggled with low self-esteem and hopelessness, and had a penchant for being involved in every beef that erupted among her classmates. But staff stayed with her through every crisis. A turning point, Speller says, was when Crystal was selected for a trip to Boston in 11th grade. She was fantastic, Speller says. That may have been one of the first times she heard something positive associated with her name. On the trip, she visited a college campus for the first time. Suddenly, all the admonitions to get on track coalesced in her mind, and she realized there was an achievable and worthy goal within her reach. Shes going to struggle in college. I already know it, Speller says. In all honesty, shes a student who will be in my life for the rest of my life. Fortunately for Crystal, HCZ has a College Success Office (CSO), which continues our support of students when they go to college. The CSO became part of the pipeline when staff realized that our successes were sometimes dropping out in college; it helps students with everything from time management to getting internships. Speller compares her time in Harlem with her prior school experience in Brooklyn. Same kids, same issues, she says. But different resources make a huge difference, including staff with a genuine interest and love and passion for the kids and community. If I had this in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Id have the same results. People from outside the community may think that the only difference between a middle-class child and a poor one is money, but life in a devastated community is a minefield of potential setbacks for children. There is a toxic gangsta wannabe street and popular culture that encourages behavior that is ultimately self-destructive. There are ill-prepared schools, the threat of violence, inadequate health care, lack of resources for out-of-school time. Sometimes there are parents who are the very opposite of nurturing.
HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
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I think we are gathering a body of evidence that suggests the impact of really negative parenting is extremely damaging to a childs learning capacity, emotional stability, and cognitive development, says Canada. But, he adds, HCZ has the responsibility to educate children, no matter what kind of parents they have. One of the saddest examples is Javier, currently a seventh grader at Promise Academy II. Javier started at the school in first grade and was already really way below grade level, according to Principal Kathleen Fernald, but each year seemed to reveal a new problem. At the end of third grade, because his mother could not adequately care for him, he was placed with foster families around the city. But the school officials fought to have him placed with his mother again so that he would have the consistency of the Promise Academy. He needed us desperately, Fernald says. One teacher took his uniforms home and washed them since his mother was not doing so. At one point, when asked about his weight loss, he said he was often walking to school because no one was waking him up in time to get the bus. At another point, a fire in his building forced his family into a homeless shelter. Despite it all, Javier began to slowly make progress academically and began to improve his social skills. In sixth grade, he told Fernald that he had just seen his father for the first time in years; He had been released from prison. Hes a survivor, Fernald says. Last August, Fernald recalls, she was looking at the grades for the statewide math exams that had just come in and she stopped when she saw Javiers. Though it was late at night, she called Javiers teacher, tears welling in her eyes, to give him the news: Javier had earned a 4, designating him highly proficient. This child will still struggle, Fernald says, getting teary again. But if he continues to perform at this level, college will be a reality. The whole cycle of poverty for this family will change. HCZs work with traditional public schools does not have the same number of hours each day as our work with 34
ED.
our charter school kids, but the dedication is the same. Last year, more than 95 percent of the seniors in HCZs four high-school afterschool programs were accepted into college, helped with everything from SAT preparation courses to tutoring to counseling. We track retention rates to make sure that children move from program to program through college. We have a database with basic information on every participant. And our academic case management system assigns a staffer to every HCZ student from fifth grade up to not just solve problems but prevent them; to make sure they get what they need, whether its grief counseling, chess lessons, or a weight-loss regimen a Zone defense, so to speak. Denise enrolled in a karate class at an HCZ middle-school program as an overweight fifth-grader who was having trouble at her school socially. I was an insecure child, recalls Denise, who is now 17, chatty, and obviously very comfortable in her own skin. I couldnt relate to anyone. She lost 20 pounds, but, more importantly, learned she had allies to push her to improve academically, socially, and to widen her world view. Gradually, she says, I realized that theres not that much difference between me and the next person, and we just have to help each other out. Matriculating to the Zones TRUCE Arts program for high school students, Denise learned how to express herself in several creative disciplines. I see things differently, she says. After taking photography here, I see things She holds up a small pad of paper and turns it slowly in front of her. Its all about light. So I see light in everything. When students dont have that experience, they dont see light in everything. The longterm relationship and trust that Denise had developed with HCZ staff over the years was key when her family split due, in part, to domestic violence. They encouraged me to make a change, not just dwell on it, she says, noting she went on to make an award-winning public-service announcement on domestic violence. Although the Harlem Childrens Zone Project is too new to have produced adults who have come through the pipeline, there are young people who grew up within the organization, stretching back to the time it was called Rheedlen. James Washington, who is now 30, has spent 15 years in the agency. Although he was a respectful boy, he was an indifferent student and drifted into an ad-hoc apprenticeship in the neighborhood drug trade. A neighbor told Washington about a job at the agency. In those days, young go-fers were taken under the wing of the older staff around them. They were employees, but they also were youths who needed to be saved from the street. They were regularly quizzed on school, their plans for life, and were given the loving kick in the metaphorical butt when necessary. At one point, Washington recalls, he decided to take a year off before going to college. When Canada found out, he delayed a Board of Trustees meeting just to talk to the teen. He let me have it, Washington says. He recalls saying to himself later: They really care about what I do with my future. Maybe I need to start caring about my future.
SUMMER 2012
Washington went on to college and worked as a teachers assistant through HCZ. Seeing how the children took to him, Washington says, I found the thing that I wanted to get up in the morning and do every day. When he didnt have a computer, a program director let him use hers after hours. When he had a crisis, he had HCZ elders with whom he could talk. Now an assistant director, Washington has become a mentor to several tough cases himself. All I needed was someone extra to care about me, Washington says. [Kids are] reaching out to folks to put effort into them and they may be making it more difficult by being disrespectful or doing all types of crazy things but they just want someone to make the effort. At the end of the day, its just about really hard work and making sure every child gets the attention they need, Washington continues. I tell my staff all the time: The most dangerous thing in the world is a bored child. To be very successful in this work you have to be on a mission, and part of that mission is that you have to be deeply concerned and care for young people, Canada says. But the care cant be the evaluative tool that you use to determine whether or not your strategy is successful. We are determined to have hard evidence that this care and this love are being translated into significant growth in measurable ways in our children, Canada says. As the agency grew, he says, it had to be fierce in the pursuit of the truth, which sometimes meant telling staff a shiny new strategy was actually not working. Today, HCZ has a six-person evaluation department that creates, monitors, and evaluates criteria for each program. The data feedback loop became a monster, Canada said recently at a meeting of HCZs senior managers. He acknowledged that trying to put order into the chaos of poor childrens lives is difficult at best. But acknowledging the difficulties does not mean accepting them. The thing about a wake-up call, he said, is you have to wake up. The unforgiving evaluations, the intolerance for excuses, the talk of saving lives: These are the ever-present reminders that Canada and the staff are a band of rebels fighting against the corrosive culture of poverty laying siege to the families just outside our four walls. Its as if Canada has lashed together anyone and anything in the neighborhood willing to fight the good fight, pulled in resources from outside to stop the gaps, then began ushering children in to the safety within and the hopes of a brighter future. Canada reminds his managers that the agency, as it breaks new ground in the field, will always struggle with breakdowns. We have to fix the bike while riding it, he jokes, then adds with a laugh that doesnt diminish the timbre of determination in his voice, Well get there on a wobbly bike. MartyLipphasbeenthecommunicationsdirectoratHCZfor eight years. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Star-Ledger,andtheHuffington Post.
f the secret to the Harlem Childrens Zones success is hard work over the long haul, the same can be said about the success of its leader, Geoffrey Canada. Born in the South Bronx in 1952, Canada grew up in poverty with a single mother, three brothers, and a father he saw maybe once a year. His block was ruled by tough kids known as the Young Disciplines who taught Canada how to fight. At one point, he carried a knife and a gun. He had his first child when he was only a sophomore in college. Money was always an issue. But as Paul Tough writes in his book, Whatever It Takes, about Canada and the Harlem Childrens Zone, Canada had something growing up that a lot of other kids in the neighborhood didnt: a mother with a couple years of college under her belt who realized that education doesnt only happen in school. As a result, she bombarded her sons with books and educational experiences before they could even walk. Eventually, Canada realized he wanted to be an educator, especially for poor kids. After four years at Bowdoin College and a year at the Ed School, Canada taught in a Boston public school. He moved back to New York in the early 1980s to run the Rheedlen Centers for Children and Families, which focused on truancy prevention and antiviolence training courses for young people. Rheedlen eventually became the Harlem Childrens Zone. These days, the success of the Harlem Childrens Zone goes hand-in-hand with Canadas success, which, for a guy running an education nonprofit, has come in some surprising places. A starring role in an American Express commercial and the documentary hit, Waiting for Superman. Interviews with Charlie Rose, Jimmy Fallon, Anderson Cooper, Tavis Smiley, Oprah Winfrey, and Stephen Colbert (twice). Segments about him on NPRs This American Life and, more recently, Saturday Night Live. A Richard Avedon portrait in the New Yorker. A Time magazine honor: one of the 100 most influential people in 2011. Still, Canada remains grounded. He also hasnt strayed from his original goal to help kids in every aspect of their lives, from the way their families raise them to the way they are taught in school. As he told an audience at the Ed School in March when he came to accept the schools highest honor, the Medal for Education Impact, People wonder why I supply all these supports to these kids. I found out early on in my career that this other stuff is important as human beings. Its important to all of us, he said. Why would it not be more important to these kids
Ed.
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Professor Paul Harris new book looks at how children learn, who they trust, and why even a beloved wizard seems too magical to be real.
Harry Potter?
A
re children more Marie Curie or Margaret Mead when it comes to learning? Are they little scientists who learn best by experimenting and figuring things out for themselves, or little anthropologists who need to listen, observe, and rely on what others tell them? Progressive educators who emphasize learning by doing would likely say Marie Curie. Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for example, in writing about education and children in Emile, said, Let him know things not because you have told him, but rather because he has understood it for himself. Let him not learn science; let him invent it. Italian educator Maria Montessori, whose child-centered learning theories are used around the world, once said that when it comes to educating children, the teacher, or directress as she was called, should give a hint, a touch just enough to get the child started. The rest develops of itself. Or does it? After years of research, Professor Paul Harris argues that children need more than just a hint or a touch in order to learn about many things. As he writes in his new book, TrustingWhatWereTold:HowChildren Learn from Others, There is a profound limit to the role that first-hand experience can play in cognitive development. For example, how would a child know about a city or country never seen or visited if someone hadnt told him or her about it? Or have an understanding of the past that dinosaurs once roamed the world! or the fact that Harry Potter isnt real? How would he or she grasp that germs exist, or the tooth fairy or Santa Claus, for that matter?
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Children learn all sorts of things that are opaque to them by being little Margaret Meads, Harris says, by listening to what others tells them what he calls testimony. A dominant metaphor for young childrens cognitive development is that the child is a scientist who does handson experiments, such as with things that float versus sink, and revises his or her ideas about the world like a scientist, Harris says. By contrast, anthropologists dont do experiments, certainly not on the culture they are studying; rather they master the language, observe carefully, and engage in long conversations with trusted informants, especially when they are puzzled. Children, like anthropologists, are trying to make sense of the culture they live in, including its beliefs and values. And it basically starts, he says, once they are able to combine their understanding of language with their powerful imagination. Once you put these two things together, you have a child who can listen to a scene he or she has never seen and build it in their minds, Harris says. They can imagine unobserved things. No other species is capable of this, as far as we know. For example, by 13 or 14 months, children show clear signs of being able to understand references to an absent object or person and are willing to alter their ideas based on what someone tells them. In this way, Harris says, children accept information that runs counter to their own ideas. He describes a scene where a toddler is told that a toy left behind is no longer in the original place. Without actually seeing the toy being moved, the little girl nevertheless looks for it in a new spot. She understands that what she thought about the toy isnt necessarily true another persons testimony could provide an update. In another example, Harris talks about a 22-month-old girl who asks one night where the moon is. She is told that the moon is asleep; it isnt out. A month later, when the adult asks the girl where the moon is, the girl replies, Moon sleeping. She hasnt seen for herself that the moon is actually asleep; she learned and accepted this fact from another persons testimony. Harris initial interest in this work grew out of his earlier research on imagination. He found that in using their imaginations, children not only think through and act out fantastical possibilities they have never experienced being a pirate looking for buried treasure or an alien flying through space but they also, surprisingly, use their imaginations to think about real events and things that are not visible, like death or germs. In a series of experiments with 4-, 6-, and 8-year-olds, Harris and his team of Ed School research students asked children about familiar things, such as tigers and wolves. They were also asked about made-up creatures no one had ever seen, such as flying pigs. The children all agreed that
tigers and wolves exist. No one believed there are flying pigs. The children were then asked about scientific things most had never seen, even in pictures, like germs. Based on the flying pig responses we dont believe what we dont see children should have said germs also dont exist. However, since children do learn from what others tell them, from testimony, all of the children said that everybody believes in germs. At some point, the children had been told about germs germs exist or wash the germs off of your hands! and had trusted the person who supplied the information. Another way to think about this, Harris says, is to think about the history of medicine. During the 1800s, microbiologist Louis Pasteurs claims about the harm of germs were contested, particularly by doctors, and so the general public didnt think much about the role germs played in the transmission of diseases like cholera. Today, the role of germs in spreading illness is widely accepted by doctors and parents and so, Harris says, assertions made by other people are childrens main guarantee that germs really do exist. This cognitive leap that children make helps them understand that other people are an important source of information, Harris says. They understand that they need other people to make sense of the world. Once that leap is made, they then realize its worth asking questions, often an endless stream of questions. Questions, of course, have been controversial when it comes to learning. In TrustingWhat YoureTold, Harris tells a story about developmental psychologist Jean Piagets response to his daughter, who, after twirling around and around and feeling dizzy, asked her father if his world was turning around, too. What do you think? Piaget replied. His daughter, frustrated, shouted back, You always ask me that! Piaget clearly wanted his daughter to figure it out for herself. He feared, as others often do, that when children ask questions, they will unthinkingly defer to adult authority, Harris writes. They will not check or test the answers they receive. However, this strikes Harris as simplistic. If a young child is puzzled about why it gets dark at night, he says, its not as if they are going to start figuring out the rotation of the earth. Plus, as Harris discovered, children dont blindly defer to adults. Often, they think about what they have been told and then ask more questions. This is especially true when, in response to an original question, children are given an adequate explanation, such as birds can fly because they have wings (when the child asks how birds can stay in the air), as opposed to a vague answer like I dont know. Harris found that trust is not automatic for children. They not only monitor the messenger, starting when they are babies, but as they get older, they also often question the content.
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In a series of experiments with 4-, 6-, and 8-year-olds, Harris and his team of Ed School research students asked children about familiar things, such as tigers and wolves. They were also asked about made-up creatures no one had ever seen, such as flying pigs. The children all agreed that tigers and wolves exist. No one believed there are flying pigs.
In several experiments, teachers gave 3- to 5-year-olds information about an unfamiliar object from a hardware store. Both teachers one known well by the students, the other not known well made up names and information about the objects. All age groups equally showed a strong preference for the answers given by the familiar teacher. This type of early selectivity is all but universal among children growing up under normal rearing conditions, Harris writes. This early profiling of people reliable, not reliable means that caregivers offer much more than a secure base for autonomous exploration, Harris writes. What they say about the world may or may not be internalized and become part of the childs conception of the way things are. What happens when the person providing the information is harder to gauge? Kathleen Corriveau, Ed.M.03, Ed.D.10, an assistant professor at Boston Universitys School of Education, worked with Harris on several studies, including one that looked at this question. We found that under these circumstances, 3- and 4-yearolds look to other peoples reactions for guidance, she says. They are more likely to accept an informants claim if it is endorsed by other people, even when those other people leave. As children got older, researchers found that the track record of the person providing the information started to take on more importance. The more often they were accurate, the more they were trusted. When using stories to figure out how children differentiate real from fiction, Harris found that by the age of 5 or 6, children believe the protagonist of a story is not real if the story includes magic or fantasy. Despite actor Daniel Radcliffe being human, most children understand that the character Harry Potter isnt. If a story doesnt contain magical or fantastical elements, however, children generally have no trouble believing a protagonist is real. This helps children sort out information about people they have never met, Harris says. How, then, to explain religious stories which often include things that dont ever happen in real life, such as the parting of the sea? Harris assumed that childrens magic detector would go off, indicating that this kind of event couldnt really happen. Instead, he found that children are often willing to accept the miracles or the extraordinary powers of God, perhaps because religious stories are often presented as real, especially in religious households. So, we end up with a paradox, Harris writes. On the one hand, young children have their feet on the ground they spot the magic in a fairy story and classify it as fiction. Yet they spot the miraculous in religious claims and accept it as fact. In this sense, children do sometimes defer to others, even when it conflicts with the information they have gathered for themselves and even when it may not be in their best interest. In the third part of my book, and perhaps the most controversial, I argue that childrens willingness to listen to other people and trust them makes them susceptible to all kinds of things, Harris says. They are creatures of their culture. Theyll swallow, for better or for worse, the assumptions of the culture. With this in mind, Harris says he didnt write his new book to revamp early education in the United States. I wrote it, I suppose, more because there are longerterm issues at stake. My hope is that the impact will be on my colleagues interested in early childhood development. I hope that researchers will increasingly see young children as capable of learning as much via dialogue as from hands-on or discovery learning. Corriveau also sees practical implications for educators. For example, the findings on children being more trusting of information supplied by someone they know could improve hiring practices and policies in preschools and elementary schools. In particular, given the high rate of teacher turnover, she says, the information shows that children might be at a disadvantage when learning from a relative stranger. In addition, teachers can learn things they should and shouldnt do in the classroom, she says. One is easy. When teachers say something incorrect, young children view them as inaccurate, she says, so even joking errors should be avoided. Harris says he hopes the book will be helpful for teachers and parents, too, by calling attention to the critical importance of sustained dialogue in nurturing childrens curiosity and in encouraging them to ask questions. And he stresses that his research isnt either/or. Hes not saying the Montessori way is wrong or that you shouldnt encourage children to explore and learn for themselves. And just as children should be encouraged to question their own firsthand knowledge, they should also be encouraged to question the knowledge they gain from others. Still, he says, its important to recognize that for our little anthropologists, the testimony of other people is likely to be just as important as firsthand experience for setting such reflection in motion. Ed.
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llen Gordon Reeves, Ed.M.86, didnt set out to become a career and workplace expert. She never expected she would be consulting to individuals and institutions across the globe. But today, as a writer, consultant, and frequent guest on national television and radio shows, Reeves finds that her advice is often in high demand. A former member of the famed Hasty Pudding Theatricals, she has also dabbled since her undergraduate days in the entertainment industry, creating and performing in TALK SHOW, a series of live, improvised performances in New York. To top it off, she is the outgoing president of the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA), a title that came after volunteering for the HAA for nearly 30 years and chairing almost every HAA and parallel Radcliffe College Alumni Association committee since she graduated from Harvard College in 1983.
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JILL ANDERSON
Harriet Hoffheinz, then at Radcliffe Career Services, the greatest career counselor one could hope to have and now a friend, recommended that I start by taking a course at the Ed School when I told her I wanted to help people one-on-one with their writing. I was hooked; I registered for the masters program after that. I worked in the Irony and Sarcasm Group with [Professor] Howard Gardner and Ellen Winner at Project Zero. No kidding.
One of my favorite Hasty Pudding memories was when Ella Fitzgerald was named Woman of the Year in 1982. She sang a few songs including A Train for us just the cast and crew and the Krokodiloes in the upstairs bar of the old Hasty Pudding Theater and I remember thinking, this lady is really good. Then I realized I had heard her sing before, and suddenly I thought, wow, I know who this is: ItstheladyfromtheMemorex commercial. All I can say is, my musical knowledge has certainly evolved since.
Its not a surprise then that you were involved with the Hasty Pudding Theatricals. Best memory?
How does your education background fit in with your creative side?
people who could make that happen, that would be the greatest thing. Being involved with the Harvard Alumni Association lets me try to do that in a tiny way. As the old Radcliffe College commemorative litany so aptly expressed, to be even so small a part of so great a thing is greatness itself, and thats how I feel about Harvard.
Before my book, Can I Wear My Nose Ring to the Interview?, came out in 2008, I had never been on TV. Then, suddenly I was on all the time, making guest appearances on shows such as The CBS Early Show, CNNs YourMoney, EXTRA, and ABCs Money Matters, and I discovered a real affinity for the medium.
Teaching is performing. I never understood how much of what I loved about teaching came from the performance aspect. I took a course with Vernon Howard on art and education, but until I studied at Second City and until I began doing television and finally created my own live show, I hadnt made the connection. My desire is not only to perform and have an audience, but also to teach people things about themselves and the world around them that they didnt know they knew. As a teacher, my goal is to find the adult in the child and the child in the adult, and I think thats also the essence of performance and play.
The mantra of my book, which is the essence of my role as a teacher and as this years president of the HAA, is: Stop looking for a job (or whatever youre looking for) and start looking for a person. The right person will lead you to the right job or opportunity. Everything we need is usually right under our noses and in our own communities, but we need to reach out, and we need to learn how to reach out in the right way.
I love connecting people and meeting people. I always say: If there are two alums in a room, its a reunion, even a virtual one. If I could meet and talk to every single person in the world, and hear what theyre looking for or hoping for in life and introduce them to the
Sure. But I dont want to regret putting it in print now, so my advice about bad advice is: forget about it and move on. Rachael Apfel 41
1963
Marjorie Malley, M.A.T., published Radioactivity:AHistory of aMysteriousScience in August 2011. The book was one of Amazon.coms top 10 books for 2011 in both the science and history categories.
organization produces statewide surveys and original research that introduce high-quality, neutral information into the fog of partisanship and ideology.
author Dorothea Martin believe are more important to success than IQ scores. Learn more at www.glolar.com/store. Maxwell currently lives in Tirana, Albania. (See profile page 45.)
senior-level counsel to clients on special projects. Marshall previously served as chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for more than a decade. Frances Mervyn, Ed.M., a community mental health expert and teacher and dean at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, received the 2011 Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman Award. Nominated by a former student, Mervyn received the honor at a ceremony at the Carter Center in Atlanta on January 7, 2012.
1967
William Maxwell, Ed.M.64, C.A.S.65, Ed.D., completed the first trials of a thinking-skills test that ranges far wider than the traditional IQ or personality test. The University Level Test of Reasoning Abilities measures 21 traits such as curiosity, imagination, and achievement drive, many of which he and his co-
1969
Margaret Marshall, Ed.M., has rejoined the firm of Choate, Hall & Stewart LLP in Boston as senior counsel. She will work part time and focus her efforts on the firms extensive community outreach, pro bono, and diversity programs, mentoring junior lawyers, and providing
1966
Gary Hart, M.A.T., was elected board chair of the nonprofit Public Policy Institute of California, a think tank devoted to Sacramento politics and policy. The San Franciscobased
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SUMMER 2012
1979
Ron Kronish, Ed.D., was inducted into Miami Beach Senior High Schools Alumni Association Hall of Fame last November along with six other distinguished graduates from a variety of fields, including medical research, music, psychiatry, law, and civic service. Rabbi Kronish was honored for his noteworthy work in the field of interreligious dialogue and education throughout the world, including his achievements as founder and director of the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel.
offers the remedy of individualized instruction, which he implemented after his first year teaching in a traditional classroom and practiced for the duration of his career.
1989
Elizabeth (Duffy) Schaper, Ed.M., is currently working as the superintendent of schools in West Boylston, Mass.
1984
Philip DiSalvio, Ed.D., was appointed founding dean of University College at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, in 2011.
1990
Gail Shapiro, Ed.M., has revived a former career as a professional organizer and is happily weeding through other peoples offices, closets, collections, and kitchens to help them create harmony, efficiency, and systems that work (www.gailshapiro.com).
1975
Stephen Barker, Ed.M., was selected head of school at Friends Academy in North Dartmouth, Mass., after an extensive search. Barker had been working as interim headmaster of Friends prior to his permanent appointment.
1985
Donald Berger, Ed.M., has been appointed the new head of school at Cape Fear Academy in Wilmington, N.C., effective July 1, 2012. He currently serves as head of school at Cary Academy in Cary, N.C.
1981
Rick Apling, Ed.D., retired from the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress, where he was a legislative analyst for 20 years. Prior to retiring, he began teaching English for speakers of other languages to adults, which he has continued since his move to Tucson, Ariz., with his wife, Debby. He would love to hear from friends and former classmates (rapling@gmail.com).
1993
Debra Bright Harris, Ed.M., recently completed her doctoral degree in higher education administration at George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development. Her dissertation was titled PioneeringWomen:BlackWomenasSenior LeadersinTraditionallyWhite CommunityColleges. She was also appointed as a commissioner on the Montgomery County (Md.) Commission for Women and currently serves as an advisory board member for the community college division of NASPA, an association that supports student affairs administrators in higher education. She resides in Silver Spring, Md., with her 13-year-old daughter.
1986
Sara Hoagland Hunter, Ed.M., recently published her ninth childrens book, The LighthouseSanta, illustrated by Julia Miner.
1976
Janet Kahn, Ed.M., has been appointed a member of the national Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health. She is currently a research assistant professor at the University of Vermonts College of Medicine, a position she has held since 2002.
1988
Roland Smith, Ed.D., was selected to receive the 2012 Professional Achievement Award from the National Association of Presidential Assistants in Higher Education. He currently serves as associate provost for diversity and inclusion at Rice University in Houston. Prior to joining Rice in 1996, he was executive assistant to the president of the University of Notre Dame. Eleonora Villegas-Reimers, Ed.M.84, Ed.D., was given the Latino Excellence in Education Award by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick in October 2011. She was honored for her work as board member of the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care, supporting children and families on the state level.
1982
Shah Navasart Sanentz, Ed.M.82, is president of Navasart Language Consulting LLC, a linguistic services company specializing in the Armenian/English language pair and dedicated to providing translation, interpretation, ESL instruction, and editing solutions on a customized basis. Navasart Sanentz continues to compile his bilingual (American EnglishWestern Armenian) dictionary in his spare time.
1977
Donald Kennedy, Ed.D., has been the director of planning for the nonprofit New England School Development Council since his retirement as a superintendent of schools in 2000. Recognizing his work in leading teams of educators to assist more than 200 school districts across the six New England states, he was honored in May 2011 with the Cooperative Leadership Award from the National School Development Council, only the third time this national award has been presented.
1994
Maria Dominguez Gray, Ed.M., was named the first female executive director of the Phillips Brooks House Association at Harvard. Dominguez Gray had served as deputy director of the student-run, public service organization since 1999.
1983
Paul Hoss, C.A.S., recently published a book, CommonSense: TheMissingLinkinEducationReform. It chronicles the problems with the ubiquity of whole class instruction in our schools and
1995
Susan Graham, Ed.M., is director of school relations for CODiE Awardwinning AcademicMerit. She works with
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been recognized by the city and the commonwealth of Massachusetts for its partnerships and noted for the college admittance success of its students. Eileen Mackin, Ed.M., recently founded SmART Schools LLC with her husband, Robert Mackin, in Portsmouth, N.H. With funding from the New Hampshire Charitable Trust and support from the Rhode Island Foundation and the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, SmART Schools is a K12 whole-school reform initiative that provides daily opportunities for all students to engage in the arts and demonstrate skills, knowledge, and understandings in and through the arts.
LEISE JONES PHOTOGRAPHY
ship and elected public offices, marrying public and private sectors for effective community development.
2002
Dan Peppercorn, Ed.M., is an eighth-grade teacher and social studies curriculum coordinator. He is a former all-state athlete and coach who performs improv, makes films, and is working on a humorous novel. His latest book, Creative AdventuresinSocialStudies: Engaging Activities & Essential QuestionstoInspireStudents, was recently published.
1998
Steve Stein speaks at a fundraiser for the Boston Debate League.
2004
Manuel Rustin is recognized with the Milken Educator Award at a school assembly.
2003
Emily Mello, Ed.M., was named director of education and public programs at the Miami Art Museum, a modern and contemporary art museum. In this role, she will oversee educational programming that reaches nearly 35,000 people and will plan for the greatly expanded educational offerings that will be available when the museums new facility in downtown Miamis Museum Park opens to the public in 2013.
1998
Steve Stein, Ed.M., works as executive director of the Boston Debate League. In January, he was inducted into the Gold Key Society at the Barkley Forum for High Schools at Emory University in Atlanta for his commitment to urban education and success in building a large and effective urban debate league in Boston. Christopher Tucker, Ed.M., was named executive director of Garden Court on De la Vina, an affordable housing project for seniors in Santa Barbara, Calif. He previously worked at Garden Court from 1999 to 2004 as its first executive director. Tucker most recently worked in development at Bridgepoint Education in San Diego and volunteered with Orphans International in Haiti.
MILKEN FAMILY FOUNDATION
school districts to implement FineTune, Assessments21, and Literary Companion, a suite of online professional-development, assessment, instruction, and learning solutions designed to help schools implement the common core state standards in reading, writing, and language. Erik Gregory, Ed.M., is director of the Organizational and Leadership Psychology Program at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology. In the newly created position, which he began last summer, Gregory oversees masters degree programs in organizational psychology and executive coaching and will soon launch a new doctoral program in leadership psychology, which he believes is the first of its kind in the country.
Gerard Robinson, Ed.M., was named education commissioner for the state of Florida. Previously, he was Virginias secretary of education.
2004
Leigh Fitzgerald, Ed.M., was named executive director of Hawaii Technology Academy, Hawaiis largest charter school serving students on the five islands. She joins the academy after seven years as one of the founding faculty and administrative members of Maui Preparatory Academy. Manuel Rustin, Ed.M., was recently awarded a Milken Educator Award, which includes an unrestricted $25,000 prize, from the Milken Family Foundation. Rustin works as a social studies teacher at John Muir High School in Pasadena, Calif. Read a recent story about Rustin on the Ed Schools website.
1996
Danielle Boyd Heard, Ed.M., has been selected as head of school for the Nashoba Brooks School in Concord, Mass., effective July 1, 2012. She currently serves as assistant head of the school.
1997
Meg Campbell, C.A.S., was appointed a member of the Boston School Committee by Mayor Thomas Menino. She is the founder and executive director of the Codman Academy Charter Public School in Dorchester, Mass., which has
2000
Jennifer Anastasoff, Ed.M., was elected to the board of directors of the Junior Statesmen Foundation. She is a founding CEO of Fuse Corps, a venture for social change that aims to bring together entrepreneur-
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SUMMER 2012
hat is your true calling? That is one of the questions a student entering the Global Academy for International Advancement (GAIA) must answer
before he or she is admitted. This knowledge, says William Maxwell, Ed.M.64, C.A.S.65, Ed.D.67, is the basis for success at the school he moved from Arizona to Tirana, Albania to start. The first class of students is slated to begin in September 2012. The seed for GAIA was planted in 1964 when Maxwell was an Ed School student. Professor Anne Roe urged the incoming doctoral class to design a model school for the 21st century. I thought, Wow, what a great challenge, Maxwell says. It suggested that sports be central in the curriculum. [This] was a heresy at the time in every scholastic and academic institution on the planet, except behind the Iron Curtain, where sports were turned into a propaganda tool. Still, the idea stuck. Almost 50 years and many professional achievements later including serving as the first principal of the first postsecondary institution in southeastern Nigeria and founding the International Conference on Thinking Maxwells academy in which both athletics and academics are emphasized is becoming a reality thanks to an invitation from the National Olympic Committee of Albania, a country that is among the 100 nations that have never won an Olympic medal. Albanias Olympic and ministerial leadership recognized the powerful morale boost an Olympic medal would [give] a nation coming out of centuries of despotic rule, Maxwell explains. The academy which Maxwell likens to Platos academy seeks to create well-rounded and successful student-athletes. Students begin their training at home from age 3.5, then at age 12 become full-time residents at GAIA. At the end of six years at the age of 18 or so students will have earned a high school diploma and a bachelors degree. Each day consists of three hours of classroom lessons and three hours of athletics, and students spend at least six hours a week working with their hands in activities such as gardening and woodworking. Students also spend two hours in individual and group study. When working in groups, Maxwell says teams coach, tutor, encourage, and inspire one another. The usual negative effects of peer pressure are transmuted into a very powerful positive force. For students, failure is not an option, says Maxwell. In fact, parents are given a guarantee: At the end of the program, their child will be admitted to one of the worlds top 100 graduate or professional schools and/or make his or her nations Olympic team. If neither is accomplished, any tuition paid is refunded. Failure isnt an option for Maxwell either. Having invested his and his wifes life savings into the start-up of the academy, he has more than just his reputation at stake. Still, hes confident that the students chosen to enroll will lead his long-planned academy to success. Everyone is born with at least one outstanding talent, usually more than one, which is ones true calling, he says. My true callings include a high intuition to find talent. Marin Jorgensen
THE UNIVERSITY OF ADVANCING TECHNOLOGY
2005
Colleen Richards Powell, Ed.M., has been promoted to the position of chief external relations and communications officer for the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority. In this role, she will provide creative leadership both internally and externally to
develop and direct community, government, and business outreach; media; and marketing programs.
2006
Yansi Eraslan, Ed.M., continues to serve as the president of zel Ege Lisesi, a K12 school in Izmir, Turkey.
Janey Pearl, Ed.M., joined Stand for Children Arizona, a nonprofit committed to improving education for all kids, as communications director. She worked previously as senior advisor to Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, where she was responsible for English and Spanish media relations, working on education issues, and serving as a
liaison to the Latino, immigrant, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered communities.
2007
Maria Blanco, Ed.M.01, Ed.D., was named associate dean for faculty development at Tufts University School of Medicine.
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Silicon Valley, Calif. Edmodos goal is to help educators harness the power of social media to customize the classroom for every learner.
2008
Kate Grenci, Ed.M., has been a house manager at an adolescent girls semi-independent residential program with Child and Family Services, a social services agency in Rhode Island, since August 2011. In addition, she joined the Community College of Rhode Islands Office of Opportunity and Outreach Access program in February 2012. Access is federally funded, providing one-on-one support to students who are the first in their family to attend college, are low-income, and/or have a documented disability. Priya Nalkur-Pai, Ed.M.03, Ed.D., recently joined The Boda Group (bodagroup.com) as leadership coach and principal. The firm works with leaders and teams within organizations to help them operate more effectively and strengthen leadership capacities. She continues her life and career coaching practice as managing director of AMP Coaching, LLC. She and her husband welcomed a baby girl, Anjali, in July 2011. Life is grand with all these new changes, she says!
ADRIA PEADEN
Krina Patel, Ed.M.01, Ed.M., Ed.D., is a Boston-based nutrition expert. In January, she organized a food walk in the walled city of Amdavadis, India, as part of her Stir a Memory workshops. The project focuses on stirring up memories of foods people grew up with in order to help them reconnect with their roots.
2009
Christopher Eide, Ed.M., recently married Bree Dusseault, Ed.M.07, and he is still in disbelief that she said yes. The couple met studying schools in New Orleans. Together they are cofounders of EduDrinks, a monthly gathering of individuals across Seattle interested in education. Eide is the founder and executive director of Teachers United. He was recently named to the inaugural class of Aspen Institute Teacher Leader Fellows.
Kathleen Castillo-Clark, Ed.M., was recognized last November by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards for having achieved National Board Status in the certificate area of early and middle childhood literacy: reading-language arts. She and her husband Scott have recently relocated to Chicago and were expecting their first child in February. Bree Dusseault, Ed.M., recently married Christopher Eide, Ed.M.09.The couple met studying schools in New Orleans. Together they are cofounders of EduDrinks, a monthly gathering of individuals across Seattle interested in education. After founding two schools in New Orleans, Dusseault is now an executive director in Seattle Public Schools.
Rich Reddick, Ed.M,98, Ed.D., was recently selected as one of four Outstanding Young Texas Exes for 2012 by the University of Texas-Austins alumni organization. Individuals are nominated and then selected by a committee, based on their having made significant achievements in their careers and service to the university. He is an assistant professor of higher education administration at UT-Austin where hes been doing research on many topics, including a study of junior faculty dads that has received coverage in InsideHigherEd and The Chronicleof HigherEducation. Brandon Wong, Ed.M., recently joined the Edmodo team as an engagement manager working directly with schools and districts. Edmodo is an education social media start-up in
2010
Eric Oberstein, Ed.M., was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album for producing Arturo OFarrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestras 40 Acres andaBurro.
1 4 8
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Register with the HAA (alumni.harvard.edu) to access the main Harvard alumni directory
3 7
www.gse.harvard.edu/alumni_friends.
10
harvard.edu or 617-496-3605.
SUMMER 2012
BFFs
Amid a world of constant change, little is guaranteed to remain the same. However, for four Ed School alumni from the 1950s, one thing has stood strong: their friendship. From secondary school to college to graduate school, no matter how much their lives have changed, Barbara Cage, Ed.M.54; Xonnabel Clark, Ed.M.54; Rosetta Sanders, Ed.M.55; and June Sanchez, Ed.M.54, supported one another. They continue to do so today. It began as a young friendship in New Orleans, where Cage, Sanchez, and Clark all attended secondary school together at Gilbert Academy. It matured and expanded when all three transitioned to nearby Dillard University. It was there that they welcomed Sanders to the group after all four became sorority sisters. And while graduation from Dillard marked a time of major change for the women, it did little to pull them apart. Instead, all four were selected to be part of a small group of six Dillard graduates to attend the Ed School under a program sponsored by the Fund for the Advancement of Education. According to Clark, going to Harvard together made their bonds stronger. For June, Barbara, and I, it would be our first big move away from home and from New Orleans, she recalls. But because we were friends, we felt like we had our own support system. Nearly six decades later, that system of support is still strong and the women remain close. Last September, they decided to have a mini-reunion in Cambridge, where Clark and Sanders still live. Cage, who moved to Virginia, also came. Sanchez had hoped to, but had to stay in New Orleans to care for her 95-yearold mother. Their visit to the Ed School campus was eye-opening the campus has completely transformed from the one they came to know, relocating from Lawrence Hall and Palfrey House to Longfellow Hall and Appian Way. Their old classrooms no longer exist, replaced by Harvards Science Center. As the women walked around, they were reminded of their initial arrival at the school, exactly 58 years prior, in September 1953. Much has changed since our year of matriculation, Sanders says, but our recent mini-reunion rekindled a feeling of belonging and pride for overcoming the culture shock we felt when we first arrived, and [reminded us] how we quickly adjusted and became a support group for each other. Walking into classrooms in Longfellow Hall, Clark says they could not help but be overcome with awe as they took in the modern arrangements and new technologies. The scene immediately brought an exchange of smiles and comments as we remembered our much smaller classrooms with oval-shaped tables and Harvard-style arm chairs in Lawrence Hall, she says. My, how times have changed! Rachael Apfel
Watch a video of the women reunited at the Ed School.
inmemor y
Juanito Maramara, Ed.M.22 Harold Michal-Smith, Ed.M.28 Ruth Nerboso, GSE47 Marcie Caplan Greenberg, M.A.T.49 Arthur Jonas, GSE53 Ray Friend Bentley, M.A.T.54 Alice Kinnamon, Ed.M.55 Eleanor Jaquinet, Ed.M.56 Barbara-Joan Anderson Moseley, M.A.T.56 John Przybyla, M.A.T.56 Edith Pennock, Ed.M.58 Frank Randall Powers, M.A.T.47, Ed.D.58 Ronald Scott, C.A.S.58 Leonard Godfrey Jr., Ed.M.61 Frances Turgeon, M.A.T.61 William Joseph Cullen, Ed.M.62 Jesse Victor Hopper, Ed.D.62 Herman Eschenbacher, Ed.D.63 Margot Uman Kenney, Ed.M.63 John Hopkins, Ed.M.64 Mary Helen Callahan, M.A.T.66 Judith Growe, M.A.T.70 Gordon Hull III, Ed.D.73 George Bennett Halperin, Ed.M.79 Joan Harte, Ed.M.79, C.A.S.80 Eugene Kinasewich, Ed.M.67, Ed.D.81 Erin Phelps, Ed.M.74, Ed.D.81 Claire Kolbe, Ed.M.88 Laurie Naparstek, Ed.M.89 Kazue Imanaka, Ed.M.92 Loutfallah Georges Chedid, Ed.M.04
r eces s
MICHAEL RODMAN
William Trueheart, Ed.D.79, then-president of the nonprofit Reading Is Fundamental. Bohannon, who has since started a lifecoaching business, says choosing to hold books was inspired by Professor Kurt Fischer. My classes with Kurt made me acknowledge the importance of metaphors and symbols, she says. I wanted our actions as a group to convey what the Ed School was about in the same way the globes conveyed a message about the Kennedy School. Pina, now vice president for institutional advancement at the University of Hartford in Connecticut, is proud that this tradition is still going strong. The fact that so many classes after us have continued this practice is inspiring to me, she says. I think of how weve been able to emphasize the importance of childrens literacy to so many kids and families, and Im even more proud to be associated with the Ed School. LoryHough
CATHERINE WALSH
SUMMER 2012
in v es ti n g
hen the members of the class of 2012 arrived on campus last fall, little did they know that a special gift awaited them.
ing their gift in honor of a favorite former teacher or professor. Those educators are recognized on the class gift website and with a personalized certificate. Faux also hopes that by participating in the class gift campaign this year, her classmates will begin considering their long-term commitment to the school. By carrying forward the same spirit of giving to the HGSE Fund as alumni, we can continue to help future classes through financial aid, Faux says. Mark Robertson, Ed.M.08
which graduating students raised more than $25,000 for unrestricted financial aid for the next class. Most important, 67 percent of graduates made a contribution a record since the class gift program was instituted at the Ed School in 1998. Announcing the gift at last years convocation, class gift chair Michael Clarke, Ed.M.11, thanked his classmates and acknowledged the power of paying it forward in education. Think of the message that you have sent to next years class by contributing to financial aid for them, Clarke said. You are saying that despite your student loans, or that you are still looking for a job, you care enough about the future of education to lend a helping hand to the people on the next rung of the ladder. In the class gift programs early years, gifts were designated to specific projects, such as the video events monitor in Gutman Library or the student lounge area in Conroy Commons. However, in recent years, class gifts have been designated for unrestricted financial aid for incoming students, one of Dean Kathleen McCartneys top priorities. The program has also come to stress not just how much is raised, but also participation, encouraging all graduates to contribute whatever amount they are able. In 2011, three masters cohorts Higher Education, Learning and Teaching, and Special Studies achieved 100 percent participation. The 2012 class gift team wants to take this generosity one step further this year by setting a goal of 100 percent participation by all graduating students. The 2012 class gift chair Alison Faux, Ed.M.12, says that to encourage contributions, the committee is stressing both paying it forward and paying it backward. The class gift does two great things, Faux says. It helps us support next years class, just as we were supported by the
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class of 2011. It also helps us reflect on those who helped us get to this point in our careers. One way the program enables the latter is by asking students to applaud an educator by mak-
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Harvard Graduate School of Education Office of Communications 13 Appian Way Cambridge, MA 02138
Wheres Ed.?
In February, Ed. caught supermodel Tyra Banks smizing at the last issue of the magazine. Banks was in Longfellow Hall meeting with Dean Kathleen McCartney before she headed back to her dorm yes, dorm on the Harvard Business School campus, where she was finishing the Executive Education Owner/President Management Program. Rumor has it that back in the dorm, Banks immediately changed into her new Ed School sweatshirt. Smize.
JILL ANDERSON