Education Commons^™

New York City Pre-K Leadership Study, Veronica Benavides, Faith Lamb-Parker, Sheila Smith

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

Presents key findings from a study of New York City pre-K leaders that evaluated how leaders support teachers and what factors help or hinder leaders’ efforts to positively impact learning for all children.

Learning To Look, Looking To Learn, Karen Rothschild, Marvin Cohen, Babette Babette Moeller, Barbara Dubitsky, Nesta Marshall, Matt Mcleod

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

In order to plan and implement lessons that will be effective for a wide variety of learners, teachers must assess what students know and how they know it. They must also know students’ academic strengths, challenges, and preferences. Careful observation of what students do and say as they work provides a rich source of data about both their knowledge and ways of learning. We highlight three strategies we use to help teachers refine their understanding of individual students:

(a) building teachers’ skills in observing without making judgements; (b) teaching teachers to use a shared, neurodevelopmental framework through which to view …

District-Wide Instructional Initiative Framework, Jessica Charles, Tracy Fray Oliver, Doug Knecht, Emily Sharrock

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

Describes the Bank Street Education Center's District-wide Instructional Initiative Framework, a tool that guides the Center's partnership work with school districts who are engaged in a process of instructional improvement. The Framework was developed out of research on district improvement, organizational development, school leadership, and professional learning, as well as the Center's own experience implementing large-scale district reform in the largest school district in the nation: New York City.

Promoting Shared Decision Making Through Descriptive Inquiry, Rachel Seher, Cecelia Traugh, Alan Cheng

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

This article describes the process through which faculty members at City-As-School, a progressive public high school in New York City, recently began to use descriptive inquiry to more fully actualize one of the school’s core values: a commitment to “democracy as a way of life” (Dewey 1939, 2).

Learning To Teach: Observing And Reflecting, Nancy Nager

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

This video series, “Learning to Teach,” provides a platform for professional development in early childhood education. It introduces viewers to compelling early childhood classroom footage accompanied by facilitated discussions about observations and teaching practices. You will get a hands-on look at how beginning teachers learn to closely observe children and engage in reflective conversations about children, materials, the classroom environment and themselves.

Descriptive Inquiry At Bank Street: Building Intellectual Community While Responding To Accreditation, Jessica Charles

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

Over the 2016-17 academic year, Bank Street Graduate School faculty and staff participated in a school-wide Descriptive Inquiry process to examine their programs and pedagogy. As part of the process, faculty met regularly to share their practices and to strengthen their well-established programs in teacher and leader preparation, museum education, and child life. Dean Cecelia Traugh initiated this process, drawing on her extensive experience implementing Descriptive Inquiry in higher education settings, in order to help faculty reflect on their practice, improve program quality, and build organizational coherence.

About Prepared To Teach, Bank Street College Of Education

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

Learn more about Prepared To Teach and our work around sustainable funding for teacher preparation.

The Restaurant Study, Jessica Charles

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

Bank Street faculty and staff regularly work in partnership with public schools to support teachers and leaders sustain and strengthen their progressive educational practice. At Midtown West, a public elementary school founded in 1992 as a collaboration between parents in New York City’s District 2 and Bank Street faculty, Peggy McNamara has worked as a coach and thought partner with teachers across every grade.

Over the course of developing and teaching one signature Midtown West curriculum unit called The Restaurant, we followed Peggy and the teachers as they made teaching decisions to engage and educate students through a study of …

Structures & Supports: Building A Throughline Approach To District Partnerships, Jessica Charles

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

Bank Street College is committed to collaborative, systematic district reform that supports every layer of the school system so that districts are able to thoughtfully plan and implement large-scale instructional improvement initiatives to achieve maximum impact on student learning. The Bank Street Education Center “Education Center,” has developed a “Throughline” approach to district reform, designed to support districts across the system to foster conditions that enable schools to act as units of change and embed strong instructional practices through teacher leaders and teams.

12 Museum Theorists At Play, Marian Howard, Lauren Appel, Nicole Ferrin, David Vining, Katherine Hillman, Marissa Corwin, Berry Stein, Nicole Keller, William Elliston, David Bowles, Tiffany Reedy, Kathryn Eliza Harris, Liat Olenick

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

Introduction by Lauren Appel
1. Learning by Do-weyan, by Marian Howard, with Nicole Ferrin
2: Dewey Defines Himself and Education, by David Vining
3. Benjamin Ives Gilman: Arts in People’s Lives, by Katherine Hillman
4. John Cotton Dana: The Social Construction of Museums, by Marissa Corwin
5. Piaget in the Art Museum: Constructing Knowledge Through Active Engagement, by Berry Stein
6. Lev Vygotsky: The Social Aspects of Learning, by Nicole Keller
7. Paulo Freire: Literacy, Democracy, and Context, by Nicole Keller
8. Maxine Greene: Aesthetic Education, by Lauren Appel
9. Howard Gardner and Multiple Intelligence Theory: A Practical Application of …

Challenging The Norms: Democracy, Empowering Education, And Negotiating The Curriculum, Joshua Sean Thomases

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

Discusses the principles of a democratic classroom, and how implementing these principles can create a powerful environment where extensive and in-depth learning truly happens.