Education Commons^™

Facilitating Student Documentary Projects Toward 21-Century Literacy And Civic Engagement, Steven Goodman

Occasional Paper Series

The author describes how he uses video making as a way to engage students in high-needs schools. Goodman believes video making projects can help counter the ways minority students are made invisible by school curriculum and the culture of testing. More importantly, creating video documentaries allows students to use multiple literacies and does not exclude those who struggle with the written word.

Preparing Teachers For High-Need Schools: A Focus On Thoughtfully Adaptive Teaching, Arlene Mascarenhas, Seth Parsons, Sarah Cohen Burrowbridge

Occasional Paper Series

Differentiated instruction, or thoughtfully adaptive teaching, helps teachers successfully meet the needs of students in under-served schools. Teacher education institutions can do their part by forming partnerships with high-needs schools so teacher candidates can gain experience in a supportive environment. Along with providing a solid grounding in pedagogy, teacher education programs need to help candidates develop their own vision of teaching. Vision is seen as a way for teachers to remain true to their core values, and as a way to stay focused on how to do the best for all of their students.

The Right To Learn: Preparing Early Childhood Teachers To Work In High-Need Schools, Julie Diamond, Fretta Reitzes, Betsy Grob

Occasional Paper Series

Three teacher educators trained in the 1960's reflect on how to ensure educational equity in high-needs schools of today. The article starts with a description of the education the writers want for all children, and outline the processes and practices needed to sustain it. This is followed by a discussion on how schools of education can equip teachers with the values, understandings, and strategies they will need to achieve these goals.

Commentary, Marjorie Siegel

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Commentary, Susan Freeman

Occasional Paper Series

Commentary, Martha Foote

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Toward Meaningful Assessment: Lessons From Five First-Grade Classrooms, Laura Kates

Occasional Paper Series

A case study of six first grade teachers' responses to a performance assessment mandated in New York City Public Schools from 1998 to 2003.

The New Orleans Reformed Public School System: National Model?, Raynard Sanders

Occasional Paper Series

The author describes what happened to the New Orleans Public Schools after Hurricane Katrina.

Racing To The Top: Who’S Accounting For The Children?, Celia Genishi, Anne Haas Dyson

Occasional Paper Series

The authors argue that teachers are accountable not to some narrow “top” but to the rhythms and rhymes of their developing students.

Accountability And The Contemporary Intellectual, Greg Dimitriadis, Marc Lamont Hill

Occasional Paper Series

Analyzes the language and values that have framed the accountability movement.

From Access To Interaction, Daniel Atkins

Occasional Paper Series

Atkins calls on educators to see beyond access to identify “core moments” for child-centered experiential learning in inclusion classrooms. He warns that “[t]he process of scaffolding the child’s inclusion in the activities or interactions of the day can too often become conflated or confused with the process of scaffolding the child’s physical ability to gain access to those activities or interactions.”

Overcoming Barriers To Coteaching, Seamus O'Connor

Occasional Paper Series

Seamus O’Connor, a high school special education teacher, shares a story of bridging a divide. He takes a clear and honest look at the evolution of his relationship with his coteaching partner, Carol. In doing so, he explores themes of equity, trust, and negotiated differences in building a collaborative classroom.

Inclusion: What Came Before, Judith Lesch

Occasional Paper Series

Judith Lesch’s firsthand account of her teaching experiences from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s takes us on a journey through the evolving approaches to inclusion.

Front Matter And Introduction, Valentine Burr

Occasional Paper Series

The writers in this issue of Occasional Papers advocate for models of inclusion that support children’s capabilities and challenge systemic inequities based on ableism and cultural biases. They examine the complex and changing nature of collaboration between general and special educators in inclusion settings. Underlying these essays, though not always explicitly stated, is recognition that the fields of special education and disability studies can deepen and inform each other.

Selected Works By Harriet Cuffaro, Miriam Raider-Roth, Jonathan Silin

Occasional Paper Series

Selected works by Harriet Cuffaro.

An Inquiry Into The Pedagogical Implications Of Dewey’S Ecological Thinking, Simon Jorgenson

Occasional Paper Series

My primary purpose is to (re)examine Dewey in the context of contemporary conceptions of ecology and environmental education. With this in mind, I will focus primarily on what Dewey has to say about the natural world, beginning with his general philosophy and moving through several of his educational works.

Caroline Pratt: Progressive Pedagogy In Statu Nascendi, Jeroen Staring

Occasional Paper Series

This article explores two themes in the life of Caroline Pratt, founder of the Play School, later the City and Country School. These themes, central to Harriet Cuffaro’s values as a teacher and scholar, are Pratt’s early progressive pedagogy, developed during experimental shopwork between 1901 and 1908; and her theories on play and toys, developed while observing children play with her Do-With Toys and Unit Blocks between 1908 and 1914. Focusing on her early and previously unexplored writings, this article illustrates how Caroline Pratt developed a coherent theory of innovative progressive pedagogy.

The Experience Of Working And Learning Together, Jane Clarke

Occasional Paper Series

Before describing some remarkable learning experiences that stand out from her most recent observations of and conversations with teachers, the author shares three film clips of children which demonstrate some activities that can become an important “habit,” as children engage daily in outdoor activities using simple, open-ended building materials.

When Unit Blocks Came To Gardaborg, Kristín Einarsdóttir

Occasional Paper Series

Unit blocks have probably been used in some Icelandic preschools since 1950 or 1960, but a turning point occurred when one of the author's teachers from the Iceland University of Education (Fosturskoli Islands), Jonina Tryggvadottir, returned from studying with Harriet Cuffaro at Bank Street College in New York City.

Thinking Through Early Childhood, Jonathan Silin

Occasional Paper Series

Working against the grain of history and contemporary assumptions about the nature of the field, the author makes a counterintuitive argument that decenters the child and brings forward the adult in early childhood education (ECE).

Introduction: Living A Philosophy Of Early Childhood Education - A Festschrift For Harriet Cuffaro, Miriam Raider-Roth, Jonathan Silin

Occasional Paper Series

This issue of the Occasional Paper Series is a Festschrift in honor of Harriet K. Cuffaro, a Bank Street College faculty member from 1968-1998. A Festschrift—a volume reflecting the values, theories, and passions of a senior scholar in a field—seeks to offer scholarship that builds on these contributions. Harriet Cuffaro has touched and shaped more lives of teachers, scholars, and colleagues than we can possibly count. A teacher in her soul, and an esteemed scholar of John Dewey, Harriet has “unfolded and connected” essential Deweyan ideas and made them accessible and meaningful in the lives of teachers. …

Toward A More Loving Framework For Literacy Education, Clio Stearns

Occasional Paper Series

In this provocative and moving essay, Clio Stearns, a Bank Street educated teacher, toggles back and forth between moments with her young daughter who daily grows more attached to books and moments with her fifth grade students who remain disconnected from her carefully chosen texts. Refracted through a psychoanalytic lens and a deeply caring heart, Stearns’ description of her classroom practices offers a canny account of all that she must give up in order to see through and past her students’ resistance. In a surprising turn of events she learns to join with her students as they become curious …

Changing Through Laughter With “Laughter For A Change”, Laurel J. Felt, Ed Greenberg

Occasional Paper Series

This paper describes systematic observation, research, and analysis of Laughter for a Change (L4C)’s 2011–2012 after-school improv workshop, revealing the program’s multiple impacts. Our data suggest that improvising creates a “safe space,” a supportive context in which participants feel empowered to take risks and play freely.

Building After-School Islands Of Expertise In “Wrestling Club”, Victor Sensenig

Occasional Paper Series

This paper examines a public library that channeled and enhanced children’s expertise through a program called Wrestling Club. It shows that by validating children’s interest in a nonacademic topic, librarians can motivate them to willingly take part in authentic reading and writing practices. The paper also suggests how a high-interest subject such as professional wrestling can become a vehicle for academic development.

Time For A Paradigm Shift: Recognizing The Critical Role Of Pictures Within Literacy Learning, Beth Olshansky

Occasional Paper Series

Broadens the definition of literacy with the help of children’s drawings and conversations. The author shows how the social practices of literacy are enacted in and through the visual.

Theorising Through Visual & Verbal Metaphors: Challenging Narrow Depictions Of Children And Learning, Sophie Rudolph

Occasional Paper Series

Through a rich description of how young children use drawing to express their emerging understandings of the world, Rudolph disrupts narrow definitions of the child as learner.

Art Education At Bank Street College, Then And Now, Edith Gwathmey, Ann Marie Mott

Occasional Paper Series

Takes readers through the history of art education at Bank Street College to show the innovative and child-centered approaches that continue to challenge dominant educational thinking.

Seeing Meaning, Barry Goldberg

Occasional Paper Series

Artist Barry Goldberg’s essay, Seeing Meaning, in which he narrates his personal experiences working with young children, exposes the limitations of words and suggests the possibility of a responsiveness from adults that serves to open and sustain creative thinking.

The Affective Flows Of Art-Making, Bronwyn Davies

Occasional Paper Series

Invites readers to consider the transient and surprising things that occur for both adult and child within the rhythmic flows of art making.

Entering The Secret Hideout: Fostering Newness And Space For Art And Play, Shana Cinquemani

Occasional Paper Series

Describes the transformative nature of negotiated spaces between the school and children’s self-initiated drawings.