BA and MA in Education and Licensure Programs
What's most interesting for me is human change. People becoming larger human beings than before. Children growing. Families negotiating. Adults on the move. Values broadening. Artistic and intellectual interests widening. Expanding our capacity to be socially conscious and concerned. World aware. Wanting to contribute. Wanting to create community.
Seeing us human beings--myself, too--stretch our repertoires of skills, interests, and pleasures. Our ability to have fun. To love. To be compassionate. Empathetic. To become increasingly strong in ourselves. Increasingly able to think for ourselves, yet aware of others' perspectives as well. Thinking critically and confidently, standing on our own--independent, strong, self-assured yet sensitive. And of course, as an educator, being able to contribute something, even just a bit, to such changes. Because none of them comes automatically. They take effort on our own parts. Nurturance from others.
I'm a developmental psychologist and a teacher-educator. I know about curriculum development. About program development. About teaching writing. About administration. My recent teaching has been at Vermont College with the Adult Degree Program, a program almost exactly like ours. Created in the progressive tradition at Goddard in 1963, it moved to Vermont College in 1981. I was that program's dean and also taught in it at Goddard. I've been chair of a local school board. I've experienced educational politics...in lots of ways! Before college teaching, I was an English teacher in secondary schools--public, private, suburban, city. I've done research on the process of writing. In 1970 I helped to co-found the first alternative school ever to operate within a public high school--The Cambridge Pilot School in Massachusetts.
"Growth" is a key word for most progressive educators. As I said, I like to see students grow and develop. To live up to high expectations. I love alternative environments for learning--Goddard and The Pilot School, for example. I've worked with poor kids from inner-city Boston. African-Americans and white students as well as with adult students. It's been exciting. Being here is exciting. As are you. I look forward very much to talking with you.
Educational Background: Ed.D., Curriculum and Learning Environments, Harvard University.; MA in English and Education, Harvard University; and AB in English Literature and Psychology, Union College.
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