Bread Loaf
Coalition for Essential Schools
Jonathan Kozol
NPR: This I Believe
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
Sept 19 2010 NYT Magazine
The Education Issue
The whole magazine section this week is relevant, but my favorite thinking was from Jaron Lanier.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
September 2010
It is kind of unbelievable to me how the call of the Shofar resonated for me this year. The season began on Labor Day weekend with Sarah's bat mitzvah. I learned at that Shabbat service that the Hebrew root for the word labor is the same as the word for prayer. I watched in awe as Sarah "performed" her mitzvah with such grace, dignity, poise, and insight. In some ways, the service demonstrated all that we would want for our students: after a year of intense study and practice, the chance to enact the practice in a ceremony, which, through its studied structure, enables the subject to create and experience the authentic truth of the study -- and in so doing, impart that truth to the community. Through our work, we pray. In the work, there is prayer.
It is a season of beginnings. I am about to begin the year (or have begun, but feel that I just beginning now) of clinical practice as a teacher. I brought in a bag of apples from the bat mitzvah to the CWE and as I looked at them on the table, so many images converged: of course the apple for the teacher, the harvests, the tree of knowledge, the apple computer -- all of it. I was glad to be able to provide those apples.
And then, last night, as Yom Kippur services were about to end, together we read a poem from the High Holidays Siddur (probably what I should have had Uncle Jeffrey read at the bat mitzvah. I feel that I have been searching for this poems for months).
Coming Up on September
Marge Piercy
White butterflies, with single
black fingerpaint eyes on their wing,
dart and settle, eddy and mate
over the green tangle of vines
in Labor Day morning steam.
The year grinds into ripeness
and rot, grapes darkening,
pears yellowing, the first
Virginia creeper twining crimson,
the grasses, dry straw to burn.
The New Year rises, beckoning—
across the umbrellas on the sand.
I begin to reconsider my life.
What is the fruit of my resolve?
I turn from my frantic white dance
over the jungle of productivity
and slowly a niggun slides,
cold water down my throat.
I rest on a leaf spotted red.
Now is the time to let the mind
search backwards like a raven loosed
to see what can feed us. Now,
the time to cast the mind forward
to chart an aerial map of the months.
The New Year is a great door
that stands across the evening and Yom
Kippur is the second door. Between
them are song and silence, stone and
clay pot to be filled from within myself.
I will find there both ripeness and rot,
what I have done and undone,
what I must let go with the waning days
and what I must take in. With the last
tomatoes, we harvest the fruit of our lives.
Self-Portrait: Myself as Teacher
Betsy Gitelle
Professor Joy Blom
ENGL 571
September 16, 2010
As a candidate in the MAT program at Montclair State University, I have been asked to contemplate the Center of Pedagogy’s Portrait of a Teacher on a number of occasions. The first time was for my admissions essay, and subsequently I was asked to reflect on the portrait in specific classes -- learning theories, the social dynamics of teaching and learning, teaching writing to basic writers, and, most recently, in a class about the sociocultural approach to education. Throughout my experience at Montclair State, I have been reminded that a key to learning is to see how an overarching idea or construct can effect an entire mode of inquiry. I think that the Portrait is supposed to create that overarching context for us as we become teachers. When I think of how to construct my own portrait, I see that I need to incorporate my educational philosophy with the best practices from my content area, English, while keeping myself as practitioner always in focus – for better or for worse.
From the educational philosophy perspective, a year into the program, on the continuum from traditionalism to constructivism, my philosophy is rooted on the extreme end of social constructivism. I definitely believe in activating students’ prior knowledge, building scaffolds, creating learning communities, encouraging metacognitive awareness, and connecting learning to real-world experiences. I am very interested in how emotions and self-awareness affect learning. My educational philosophy makes me aspire to be more of a “verb” than a “noun” as a teacher, more tied to process than to product.
As an “English Major” I have often thought about what it means to create a portrait of a teacher, and the best way to construct one. Although I do admire and appreciate each and every one of the twelve items that comprises COP’s Portrait of a Teacher, and see that the more I study these items, the more they reveal, a question about form persists: Is a list of items adequate? What do we call the items? How do we know what is an appropriate number of items to include? Is each item a standard, a strand, characteristic, a call to action, or all of these? How do we create a portrait that is at once comprehensive, accessible, multi-faceted and dynamic? Most importantly, how do we create a portrait that evolves (I am now unable to push away the thought of Wilde’s “Portrait of Dorian Gray”) and that can accommodate change and growth? Should the portrait be expressed in a multimodal way, or is a textual description adequate?
Now, for this class, we are asked, finally, to write our own portrait, presumably to help us visualize and imagine the very best kind of teacher we can be, so we can better become that teacher. I think I like this idea because it gives you a framework for making decisions and prioritizing – if you know what the organizing principle is – the mission or the mantra, you can fit the details in and decide what to do at any given moment. My portrait thus becomes a list of intentions or promises to myself, and the overarching construct would be reciprocity: give and take. I love the idea of reciprocity because it suggests a movement back and forth, a respectful balance. It suggests teaching as learning and learning as teaching.
My portrait becomes a list of intentions to become the best reciprocator I can be – and here is the beginning of the list – not yet prioritized, and raw. My self portrait is based on a set of pledges to myself to be and to become the best possible partner in reciprocal, iterative relationships. My portrait is a list of imperatives:
Professor Joy Blom
ENGL 571
September 16, 2010
As a candidate in the MAT program at Montclair State University, I have been asked to contemplate the Center of Pedagogy’s Portrait of a Teacher on a number of occasions. The first time was for my admissions essay, and subsequently I was asked to reflect on the portrait in specific classes -- learning theories, the social dynamics of teaching and learning, teaching writing to basic writers, and, most recently, in a class about the sociocultural approach to education. Throughout my experience at Montclair State, I have been reminded that a key to learning is to see how an overarching idea or construct can effect an entire mode of inquiry. I think that the Portrait is supposed to create that overarching context for us as we become teachers. When I think of how to construct my own portrait, I see that I need to incorporate my educational philosophy with the best practices from my content area, English, while keeping myself as practitioner always in focus – for better or for worse.
From the educational philosophy perspective, a year into the program, on the continuum from traditionalism to constructivism, my philosophy is rooted on the extreme end of social constructivism. I definitely believe in activating students’ prior knowledge, building scaffolds, creating learning communities, encouraging metacognitive awareness, and connecting learning to real-world experiences. I am very interested in how emotions and self-awareness affect learning. My educational philosophy makes me aspire to be more of a “verb” than a “noun” as a teacher, more tied to process than to product.
As an “English Major” I have often thought about what it means to create a portrait of a teacher, and the best way to construct one. Although I do admire and appreciate each and every one of the twelve items that comprises COP’s Portrait of a Teacher, and see that the more I study these items, the more they reveal, a question about form persists: Is a list of items adequate? What do we call the items? How do we know what is an appropriate number of items to include? Is each item a standard, a strand, characteristic, a call to action, or all of these? How do we create a portrait that is at once comprehensive, accessible, multi-faceted and dynamic? Most importantly, how do we create a portrait that evolves (I am now unable to push away the thought of Wilde’s “Portrait of Dorian Gray”) and that can accommodate change and growth? Should the portrait be expressed in a multimodal way, or is a textual description adequate?
Now, for this class, we are asked, finally, to write our own portrait, presumably to help us visualize and imagine the very best kind of teacher we can be, so we can better become that teacher. I think I like this idea because it gives you a framework for making decisions and prioritizing – if you know what the organizing principle is – the mission or the mantra, you can fit the details in and decide what to do at any given moment. My portrait thus becomes a list of intentions or promises to myself, and the overarching construct would be reciprocity: give and take. I love the idea of reciprocity because it suggests a movement back and forth, a respectful balance. It suggests teaching as learning and learning as teaching.
My portrait becomes a list of intentions to become the best reciprocator I can be – and here is the beginning of the list – not yet prioritized, and raw. My self portrait is based on a set of pledges to myself to be and to become the best possible partner in reciprocal, iterative relationships. My portrait is a list of imperatives:
- I will try to be honest in all that I do.
- I will try to be courageous and take the high road when I have a choice.
- I will try to be considerate of others’ needs and expectations.
- I will try to maintain my boundaries – physically, socially, emotionally.
- I will try to keep my students’ best interest at heart.
- I will try to get to know each student, their family, their community.
- I will try to be aware of my biases and unpack them.
- I will try to be inclusive.
- I will try to stay present in the moment.
- I will try to find the strength in each student.
- I will try to find the unique qualities of each student.
- I will try to see each student’s unique qualities as essential to our group.
- I will try to demonstrate how individual and group work work together.
- I will try to work with my students to make community goals and personal goals.
- I will try to understand how each relationship works within the context of the classroom, and our widening spheres of the school, the community, the county, the state, our country, our continent, our world.
- I will try to explain why learning about the world is useful and makes life better.
- I will try to show how being honest and open can simplify life and make it better.
- I will try to be clear about my expectations.
- I will try to be clear about maintaining high standards.
- I will know the scope of the content area I am teaching.
- I will do my homework on time.
- I will try to keep an open mind.
- I will try to stay humble.
- I will try to be aware of my cognitive, emotional, and physical states.
- I will try to model good behavior.
- I will try to model my own learning experience.
- I will engage each student as an ambassador to their world.
- I will try to engage each student as being valuable to me.
- When I make mistakes I will try to learn from them.
- When I make mistakes, I will ask my students to help me learn from them.
- I will try to distribute the power in the class.
- I will use assessment tools to help students learn to learn.
- I will understand the purpose and goal of each instructional moment.
- I will make the classroom community safe and nurturing.
- I will stay true to distinguishing what is a privilege and what is a right.
- I will allow choice wherever there is room for choice.
- I will help students understand their role as thinkers and communicators.
- I will use technology in an appropriate and efficient way.
- I will try to stay current in my field.
- I will collaborate with other teachers and administrators to help each student become the best he can be.
- I will keep revising my list of I wills.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Schedule, Fall 10
class | ||
Monday | 10-5 | 5:30 -6:45 |
Tuesday | 11-1:30 | |
Wednesday | 1-2:30 | |
Thursday | 10-5 | 5:30-7:45 |
Friday | 1-3 |
Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
CWE 10 -12:30 and 1 -5 | TFL CURR-526 11-1:30 Room 226 Lincoln School 101 Beech Street Kearny, NJ 07032-2753 | CWE 10 -12:30 and 1 -5 | ||
CWE 1 - 2:30 | CWE 1-3 | |||
ENGL 571 UN 1143 5:30 - 6:45 | ENGL 571 UN 1143 5:30 -7:45 |
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