Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons^™

“That's Quite A Tune”: An Interview With Bruce Springsteen, Mark T. Kissling

Occasional Paper Series

Greetings from State College, Pennsylvania.

My name is Mark Kissling. I am an assistant professor of education at Penn State University. I’m also the guest editor of the Bank Street Occasional Papers Series issue #40 titled, “Am I Patriotic?” The purpose of the issue is to complicate how we think about and enact patriotism, with a particular focus on how teachers teach and students learn about patriotism.

So how does this relate to Bruce Springsteen and the interview that you’re about to hear?

In mid-December of 2008, I spent two days at the Woody Guthrie Archives—then in New York City, …

A Note From The New Editor-In-Chief, Gail M. Boldt

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Learning And Teaching The Complexities Of Patriotism Here And Now, Mark T. Kissling

Occasional Paper Series

Last June, the day before the Philadelphia Eagles franchise was scheduled to celebrate its Super Bowl victory at the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump revoked the invitation.

The majority of the players had made clear that they would skip the event. Instead of attending the presidential spectacle, they planned to celebrate elsewhere in Washington, D.C., including by touring the nearby National Museum of African American History and Culture (Nakamura & Lowery, 2018). In place of the event, the President led a ten-minute “Celebration of America” on the White House lawn that featured the playing and singing of the national …

Life After The Civil War: A Fifth-Sixth Grade Curriculum To Address Post-Emancipation Discrimination As A Way To Provide Background For Lingering Inequality, Debbie Nehmad

Graduate Student Independent Studies

As part of the coursework required for EDUC 517, I decided to address an extensive gap in my own knowledge of U.S. history: the aftermath of the Civil War and Emancipation for newly freed slaves. This work felt imperative to me because of the uptick in visible racism and violence against the black community coupled with feelings that I could not respond intelligently to racist and judgmental comments I would hear from members of my community. This project includes a researched analysis of the problematic mentalities I observed and aims to address them proactively by helping middle school students develop …

Experiential Knowledge And Project-Based Learning In Bilingual Classrooms, Adriana Alvarez

Occasional Paper Series

Culturally and linguistically diverse children deserve sophisticated and dynamic biliterate learning opportunities that integrate the children’s life experiences and keen intellects. Dynamic learning in early childhood classrooms, including progressivist pedagogical approaches like project-based learning, has been shown to facilitate academic achievement as well as high-level learning capabilities including critical thinking, agency, problem solving, and negotiation (Adair, 2014; Bell, 2010; Hyson, 2008; Katz & Chard, 2000). Too often, culturally and linguistically diverse children are offered learning opportunities that fall short of helping students achieve their potential or of validating their life experiences (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Nieto & Bode, 2008; …

No Room For Silence: The Impact Of The 2016 Presidential Race On A Second-Grade Dual-Language (Spanish-English) Classroom, Sandra L. Osorio

Occasional Paper Series

“¡Quiere sacar a todos los suramericanos! Quiere quedarse con solo los blancos,¹ shouted second grader Salvador² to his classmate Victor. They were supposed to be reading Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin, but somehow the conversation had turned to the then presidential candidate for the Republican Party, Donald Trump. That was how Trump and his rhetoric entered our dual language classroom.

Far too often, the voices of students of color, their experiences, and their lives are not validated in the classroom. When Salvador and Victor’s conversation about Trump erupted, the teacher and I—the teacher …

Introduction: A Vision For Transforming Early Childhood Research And Practice For Young Children Of Immigrants And Their Families, Fabienne Doucet, Jennifer Adair

Occasional Paper Series

This special issue of the Occasional Paper Series describes practices and policies that can positively impact the early schooling of children of immigrants in the United States. We consider the intersectionality of young children’s lives and what needs to change in order to ensure that race, class, immigration status, gender, and dis/ability can effectively contribute to children’s experiences at school and in other instructional contexts, rather than prevent them from getting the learning experiences they need and deserve.

Editor's Note, Jonathan Silin

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Teaching Juan Rodriguez: Enacting Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy In Elementary Social Studies, Natalie Kuhl

Graduate Student Independent Studies

A fourth grade social studies curriculum and corresponding rationale are presented on the topic of Dominican historical figure Juan Rodriguez, his appearance in the Hudson harbor in 1613, and his legacy as captured by the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute in upper Manhattan. Curricularized racism in education and the responsibility of teachers to correct entrenched curricularized racism is addressed in undertaking the writing of an original curriculum centered on the known scholarship of Juan Rodriguez. As a relatively unknown historical actor and a free man of color from colonial La Española (modern-day Dominican Republic), his story is leveraged to help Dominican …

Schooling For And With Democracy, Douglas R. Knecht

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

Given the current challenges facing our democracy in the United States, the role of public schools in forming habits of democratic practice in our citizenry is as important today as ever. To explore this urgent topic, the author interviewed 13 leaders of 10 New York City public schools committed to educating for and with democracy. Six patterns of beliefs and practices emerged from the conversations, including commitments to intentionally developing informed, empathic, inclusive, inquiry-minded, confident, vocal, and involved citizens through parallel democratic structures for both adults and students. A seventh pattern was also identified; however, it took the shape of …

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).

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.

Towards The Creation Of The Civil Rights Museum Of New York City, Taylor Koczot

Graduate Student Independent Studies

In this study the author explores the many reasons why a museum devoted to the Civil Rights Movement should open in New York City. This work examines and delves into the very early stages and ideas that go into the creation of the museum, which include finding a need and purpose as well as envisioning what the institution has the potential to do and become. Koczot begins with a discussion of her own interests in the subject, including her experiences in the South and as an educator in New York City. The author moves on to discuss the city’s connection …

Small Schools And The Issue Of Race, Linda C. Powell

Occasional Paper Series

Bank Street College of Education, in conjunction with the Consortium on Chicago School Research did a study of small schools in Chicago. This paper examines one element of the findings in depth - the interaction of race and school size. Powell argues that small schools are by their very nature an anti-racist intervention.

Walking The Tightrope Of Visibility, Leigh Patel

Occasional Paper Series

This essay cautions projects of visibility that are twinned with intersectional analyses. Arguing for a deliberate rupture in schooling’s categorical logics and a historical analysis of the cultural force of individual identity, I caution that the individual identity tendencies of modernity hold some risks for the substantial and long-standing imperatives of intersectional analysis. I ground this argument in Audre Lorde’s work and how it is often sampled insufficiently.

Black Girls Are More Than Magic, Gloria J. Ladson-Billings

Occasional Paper Series

Despite the current interest in "Black Girl Magic" this essay argues that what Black women have accomplished and endured is more than mere magic. Instead, they reflect a dogged determinism to work toward liberation of all people. That determination has been in the forefront of human liberation for centuries.

Untying The Knot, Charisse Jones

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Where Our Girls At? The Misrecognition Of Black And Brown Girls In Schools, Amanda E. Lewis, Deana G. Lewis

Occasional Paper Series

Black and brown girls remain too often at the margins not only in society at large and in our schools but also in our research and writing about schools. Herein we argue for careful consideration of the specific ways that their raced and gendered identities render these girls vulnerable and put them in jeopardy so that educators and scholars do not become complicit in their marginalization. We focus on dynamics of invisibility and hypervisibility. While these dynamics may seem to be diametrically opposite, both involve the process of what scholar Nancy Fraser (2000) calls “misrecognition” (p. 113).

Under Surveillance: Interrogating Linguistic Policing In Black Girlhood, Pamela Jones

Occasional Paper Series

Abstract

The youngest of Black girls are scrutinized for their language choices and surveilled on the basis of their ability to shift out of their vernacular and into Standard English (SE). In this essay, I revisit my own Black girlhood (Brown, 2013) to interrogate how those in schooled contexts compelled me to deny the “skin that (I) speak” (Delpit, 2002, p. xvii). Using intersectionality as my theoretical frame (Collins, 2000), I arrive at new understandings about resisting multiple oppressions and consider possible interventions at the school level.

Keywords: Black girlhood, intersectionality, African-American Language (AAL), identity, code-meshing.

Perhaps A Black Girl Rolls Her Eyes Because It's One Way She Attempts To Shift Calcified Pain Throughout Her Body, Fahima Ife

Occasional Paper Series

This essay describes a unique undergraduate survey of African American literature—titled "Black Girl Magic Across Time & Space"—designed to celebrate rather than punish expressive Black girlhood and womanhood.

Not Only A Pipeline: Schools As Carceral Sites, Connie Wun

Occasional Paper Series

Conversations surrounding school discipline have largely focused on the ways that schools and their punitive policies have funneled students into the criminal justice system through the school to prison pipeline. Recently, there has been an increase in scholarship from scholars who argue that schools are not only funneling students into prisons, but that schools and prisons operate as a nexus – the two working symbiotically to discipline and punish students of color, predominantly Black male students (Meiners, 2010; Sojoyner, 2013). Drawing from these analyses, I argue that schools are characterized by multi-layered disciplinary landscapes that operate as carceral sites onto …

Introduction: Reading And Writing The T/Terror Narratives Of Black And Brown Girls And Women: Storying Lived Experiences To Inform And Advance Early Childhood Through Higher Education, Jeannine Staples, Uma M. Jayakumar

Occasional Paper Series

Staples and Jayakumar introduce this issue of the Occasional Paper Series that speaks to the #SayHerName social justice initiative. The movement aims to expose the experiences of Black and Brown girls and women who are subject to police violence in society and various violences in schools. In response to this movement, this issue includes stories of Black and Brown women from early childhood education through higher education.

From Preparation To Practice: Designing A Continuum To Strengthen And Sustain Teaching, Sharon Feiman-Nemser

Occasional Paper Series

This paper was written to stimulate discussion and debate about what a professional learning continuum from initial preparation through the early years of teaching could be like. Drawing on a broad base of literature, the author proposes a framework for thinking about a curriculum for teachers over time. The paper also considers the fit (or misfit) between conventional approaches to teacher preparation, induction, and professional development and the challenges of learning to teach in reform-minded ways and offers examples of promising programs and practices at each of these stages.

Kids Make Sense... And They Vote: The Importance Of Child Study In Learning To Teach Responsively, Frederick Erickson

Occasional Paper Series

A lecture that discusses the "developmental-interaction" perspective and practice that has become the hallmark of Bank Street. Erickson builds upon the relations of mutual influence among students, teachers, and learning environments, and taking account of the relations between local practice within the small-scale "here and now" interactional ecosystems of immediate learning environments and the workings of culture, language, and society across more distal connections in social space and time.

"Noise Level Zero" And Other Tales From The Bronx, John Wolfe

Occasional Paper Series

Wolfe reflects on his journey of teaching in various settings, teaching him what public education should and should not be. He compares his experiences at two public schools in the Bronx with very different approaches to public education.

Steady Work, Tom Roderick

Occasional Paper Series

Roderick's remarks made on the occasion of receiving an honorary doctorate from Bank Street College of Education in 1999. He speaks about his steady work in conflict resolution programs, because there is always a need for conflict resolution in a world where conflict is natural but violence is taught.

Introduction: Steady Work And "Noise Level Zero", Frank Pignatelli

Occasional Paper Series

Pignatelli introduces two narratives by Tom Roderick and John Wolfe that test our belief in public education as a special space where American society holds fast to its promise to vanquish inequity, to assure equal opportunity, and to nurture a kinder, more just citizenry.

It Should Not Be Left To Chance: Ensuring A Good Education For All Our Children, Ellen Condliffe Lagemann

Occasional Paper Series

This essay suggests that progressive education is equivalent to good education. Condliffe Lagemann poses the question: What do we need to do to ensure that good education becomes more universally available than it is today? The answer lies in developing a new science of education, one that better integrates research, practice, and policy, and does a better job of educating the public about education.

Introduction: It Should Not Be Left To Chance, Jonathan G. Silin

Occasional Paper Series

Silin introduces an essay from the annual Barbara Biber lecture, speaking to the importance of progressive education, and the flaws regarding the standardization of learning.

Introduction: Letters From Abroad, Linda Levine

Occasional Paper Series

An introduction to a series of essays by educators who reflect on their choices to live and work in other parts of the world. They offer a provocative range of personal and professional explanations for seeking out the strange and unknown.