Ed.
the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education Summer 2013
Schools Turning Around What happens to progress when improving schools hit the three-year cliff?
saying goodbye to Kathy | a coastal school | floppy shoes
Maung Nyeu
the appian way
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Ed.
• Summer 2013 • www.gse.harvard.edu/ed
January 21, 2013 After helping to organize debate-watching parties at the Ed School leading up to the 2012 presidential election, Habib Bangura, Ed.M.’13, noticed how excited students were about politics and, in particular, about President Obama. “I figured folks might be interested in attending the inauguration if Obama were to win,” he says, and so he proposed to the Student Government Association (SGA) that they sponsor a bus to the inauguration ceremony in January. Bangura, a senator in the SGA, became the lead organizer for the trip and, with the help of other SGA members and the school’s Office of Student Affairs, rented a charter bus, collected money, and planned all of the trip’s logistics. In the end, 53 people affiliated with the school (mostly students, with a few family members) attended on that cold day in January. Included was Maung Nyeu, Ed.M.’13, a teaching fellow, who snapped this shot of 2013 Ed School master’s students Sheryl Chen, Arlene Pang, Julia Beck, and Lynn Yang (l–r) jumping for joy at the National Mall with the Washington Monument in the background. Harvard Graduate School of Education
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contents summer 2013
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How did a Black Hawk helicopter pilot who spent 15 months in Iraq end up at the Ed School?
22 As Dean Kathleen McCartney leaves to take over the presidency of Smith College this summer, a look at the many ways she has influenced the Ed School.
38 At the Coastal Studies for Girls program in Freeport, Maine, Edith Aronson, Ed.M.’97, is helping teenage girls from around the country learn to love science, leadership, and the wilds of the Pine Tree State.
30 With thousands of public schools facing the end of their three-year School Improvement Grants from the federal government, what is being done to prevent backsliding from any progress made?
16 After 28 years running the Gutman Library, John Collins is retiring, with a fishing pole in one hand.
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Kenya native Anne Awuor, Ed.M.’13, came to the Ed School to find answers for her son and herself, with the goal of improving teacher training in her country.
a l s o of i n t e r e s t 4 6 42 48 49
Letters Appian Way Alumni News and Notes Recess Investing
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We love getting your letters. Real letters on paper, letters though email, and your thoughts on Facebook or our website. (Ok, they’re all real letters.) No matter how you like to communicate, we would love to hear what you think about something you’ve read or seen in the magazine. So talk to us — in 150 words or less.
It was a pleasure to read Margaret Marshall’s story (“Holding Court,” winter 2013). I have followed her career with special interest. Robert Kennedy telephoned me after his trip to South Africa in 1966. At the time, I was director of admissions and financial aid at the Graduate School of Education. Senator Kennedy asked if I would be interested in helping college students who were trying to get out of South Africa. I offered to do what I could if the students could get to the United States. I was not sure what was going to happen, but a few months later, students began to arrive in Boston from South Africa. When I asked the students how they got to the United States, a typical response was “I’m not sure.” (Was the CIA involved?) I never spoke with Senator Kennedy again, but I received two letters from him about South African students, the last letter dated March 6, 1968, three months before his death on June 6. Congratulations to Margaret Marshall for everything she has achieved. — Jerry Harvey, M.A.T.’58, Ed.M.’62
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• Summer 2013 • www.gse.harvard.edu/ed
Allophilia Coined
The coinage of the term “allophilia” would open up a whole new debate on how difference is looked at (books, Us Plus Them, winter 2013). This has all [the] potential to evolve into a whole new branch of study by itself. For nations like India, it may be pertinent to explore how a better understanding of the positive response to difference could help educators address the challenges of diverse settings in education. — Alfred Devaprasad With all the hate and atrocities associated with hate that we have witnessed in our time, it is disappointing that the focus of study has been so negative. I guess we all just needed Todd [Pittinsky] to put pen to paper, coin “allophilia,” and give us some direction. — Teresa Habacker
Math Matters
The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) sets a national curriculum for required mastery by topic by grade. This raises the bottom for content in this country, an admirable achievement given the diverse standards by states (“Do the Math!” winter 2013). Though the CCSS gives standards for mathematical practice that focus on learning math through understanding and critical thinking, states and schools are so focused on raising the content level that the principles are secondary.
Until we see the tests in 2014, we will not know how much of the CCSS exam is content driven and how much requires critical thinking. What really is the big change with CCSS in “how and when math is learned and taught in our public schools”? Ed. magazine gives as examples of the new approach using Khan Academy or teaching PEMDAS. Neither of these require critical thinking. But you mention the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) 1989 standards. These standards, which have been adopted by Korea as their national curriculum, unlike the CCSS, frame content with understanding. Their supporting materials show by example how to use critical thinking to develop mathematical concepts and understanding. In 2014, we will learn if the the CCSS has achieved the same goal that the NCTM standards did in 1989. — Sharon Hessney, Ed.M.’97
I live on the Iowa–Illinois border, and am engaged with mathematics teachers and state-mandated curriculum on both sides of the Mississippi River. The Common Core has brought more topics, not fewer. It has also brought more prescribed rigidity to the reasoning process. I completely agree with [Associate Professor Jon] Star’s statement that “each successive generation,” for well over 100 years, has made claims that it is moving toward the development of meaning in the classroom. If the Common Core Standards represent this generation’s claim, then I can’t agree with the suggestion that “we’re getting better at articulating what we mean by meaning.” One need only look back a half-generation to find a more coherent model. — Mike Egan, Ed.M.’98
How can you reach us? Easy as:
1 letters@gse.harvard.edu www.gse.harvard.edu/ed or the 2 school’s Facebook page magazine 3 Ed. Harvard Graduate School of Education 13 Appian Way Cambridge, MA 02138
editor in chief Lory Hough lory_hough@harvard.edu production manager/editor Marin Jorgensen marin_jorgensen@harvard.edu Senior designer Paula Telch Cooney paula_telch@harvard.edu designer Angelina Berardi angelina_berardi@harvard.edu Communications intern Rachael Apfel
Corporate interests that send jobs overseas are hard at work in the “ed reform” movement. They are trying to create profit in the nonprofit area of education and are doing very well. Creativity and math scores are both moot when the bottom line of profit is in the equation. The collegetrained American graduate is likely to live with his/her parents and be a barista for a very long time unless something critical changes in how the American economy is structured. It is unfortunate that we, the taxpayers and the people whose children are being affected and hurt by these harmful policies, have not yet “done the math” to put the brakes on a “reform” movement that is driven by a skillful engine of mendacious PR and fueled by unbridled cupidity. — Norah Dooley
tom kates
letters Breaking News! The day this issue of the magazine was going to press, Harvard President Drew Faust announced that Professor Richard Murnane will serve as acting dean of the Ed School, starting July 1 until a new dean is appointed and in place. Congratulations, Professor Murnane!
Conflicting Interest
We should teach them nutrition and how to balance it properly, and then how to produce their own food (“Conflicts of Interest,” winter 2013). After that they need to be well sheltered and assured that their future is going to be bright and that they have to be prepared with knowledge. In my humble opinion, once these basic needs are
assistant dean of communications Michael Rodman michael_rodman@harvard.edu contributing writers Jill Anderson Rachael Apfel Katie Gibson Paul-David Perry, Ed.L.D. photographers Jill Anderson Kathleen Dooher Martha Stewart Matthew Weber
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fulfilled, they will be ready for self-actualization although that rule may slightly differ in various cultures. Otherwise the benevolence of our approach may not last for long. — Alex Sage How come language issues can be more pressing than having decent meals, transportation, decent schools, and a teacher trained for teaching (“Reflections from the Field: TimorLeste,” winter 2013)? I am sorry, but the reflections hereby depicting opinions against the mother language project are full of prejudice. We know better than anyone else how precious our languages are. I speak five Timorese languages, proudly. We don’t need foreigners to tell us what to do with them. — Alexandre Fernandes
illustrators Robert Neubecker Daniel Vasconcellos copyeditor Abigail Mieko Vargus © 2013 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Ed. magazine is published three times a year. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Harvard Graduate School of Education Office of Communications 13 Appian Way, Cambridge, MA 02138
aclickaway HGSE www.gse.harvard.edu events www.gse.harvard.edu/news_events/events twitter www.twitter.com/hgse facebook www.facebook.com/harvardeducation youtube www.youtube.com/harvardeducation issuu www.issuu.com/harvardeducation foursquare www.foursquare.com/hgse Harvard Graduate School of Education
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kathleen dooher
appian way lecturehall Assistant Professor David Deming Such as?
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conomist David Deming has always been interested in long-run outcomes — how one thing affects another over an extended period of time. These days, he’s jumping into a new research project based in Texas and Massachusetts that looks at the impact of high-stakes testing on outcomes other than the actual test scores. For the most part, he says, the past decade of research on the accountability movement in education has focused on two things: whether or not the tests increased academic achievement, and how high-stakes testing has led to certain behaviors such as teaching to the test or manipulating the data. The problem is that neither of these really answers the question that may, in fact, matter the most: Does school accountability improve how students fare long after they’ve graduated (or not graduated) from high school? Deming recently spoke to Ed. about test scores, a five-year award he was given to conduct the research, and digging deeper.
Why not just look at test scores? Test score gains are hard to interpret. Do they really represent gains in student learning? Do they help students in the long run? Are students more likely to attend college or earn more as adults? NCLB and state accountability policies mandate standardized testing, and there are all sorts of benefits to that. But we shouldn’t only care about test scores. We need another way to judge.
I’m using administrative records from K–12 schools through the Texas Schools Project, linked across the years to college records and quarterly earnings records. The records include every public school student in the state from 1991 to 2011, so many of those students are now in their 20s and early 30s. We are looking at the impact of raising high school students’ test scores on their attainment and earnings, later in life.
That’s a lot of data. It’s complicated, but it’s what I know. For me, the data is the more comfortable part of the project.
What’s the more uncomfortable part? The qualitative work. I’m trying to push myself. I’ve been interested in this question for a long time, and I think I can answer it, but I can’t do it from 30,000 feet, only looking at data.
What will you do? I have only started the work in Texas, but I will eventually visit schools in Massachusetts to get information for the second phase of the research. The goal is to find pairs of high schools that have similar student bodies but produce different outcomes. One may be good at raising test scores, but only average at sending children to college. The other may be good at sending kids to college but not good at test scores. Or maybe they have both: high test scores and high college attendance.
What are you trying to figure out? I want to see if you dig deeper, can you figure out if the difference is because of how they responded to test pressure? High schools face a fundamental tension between preparing students for the high school exit exam and preparing them for college. You might think this
would force difficult tradeoffs. Yet some schools have found ways to have their cake and eat it, too.
Could there be other reasons for the differences — better guidance counselors at one school or outside mentors for students? Yes. That’s why I will start with many schools and then eventually hone in on the pairs that look like good comparisons. Sometimes what looks like a good comparison in the data turns out to be less than ideal.
Why go into the schools in Massachusetts? Why not just analyze the data like you’re doing in Texas? I know how to do that already. This is an adventure, and it’s going to be fun for me. Even if I don’t do a very good job (distinctly possible), I am going to learn a lot, and it will help me ask the right kinds of questions in my future research.
As someone interested in long-term outcomes, what’s your prediction for the long-term outcome of this research? Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
Thanks to the William T. Grant Foundation, you’ll be spending the next five years working on this. By the time you’re done, your oldest daughter, Maia, will be in the second or third grade. Does that seem crazy? Yes, and she loves to tell me how long it takes to count to my age. My wife gleefully plucked my first gray hair yesterday. Why is everyone around me reminding me that I am getting old? — Lory Hough
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CAREER SERVICES The school has maintained a strong connection to Chicago, with heavy recruiting of our students every year by employers. This past semester, 114 organizations from Chicago posted positions with the Ed School. Many of the positions are with Chicago Public Schools, at local colleges and universities, and at various education-focused organizations.
CURRENT STUDENTS Tommie Henderson, Ed.L.D.’13, has spent the last year working for UChicago Impact, an educationbased nonprofit. Second-year doctoral student Eve Ewing is conducting research that looks at the impact of environmental racism in Chicago.
ontheground Chicago Appian Way is, without a doubt, a pretty short street. But its size doesn’t define the Ed School’s reach, which goes way beyond this tiny section of Cambridge. On the Ground is a feature in Ed. that focuses on one of the many places around the world where we’re doing good work as a community. In this issue we look at the Windy City.
ALUMS Many Ed School graduates live and work in
PELP
Chicago. Among them: Dennis Holtschneider,
Now celebrating 10 years, the Public
Ed.D.’97, president of DePaul University;
Education Leadership Project (PELP)
Tim Knowles, Ed.M.’96, Ed.D.’02, professor
was started as a joint project of the Ed
at the University of Chicago, director of the
School and the Harvard Business School.
university’s Urban Education Institute, and
The idea was to see how management
recipient of the 2011 HGSE Alumni Council
could help public schools improve student
Award; Steve Raudenbush, Ed.D.’84, professor
performance. The project initially teamed
at the University of Chicago and chair of the
up with nine urban school districts,
Committee on Education; David Greene,
including Chicago. Every year since 2003,
Ed.M.’91, Ed.M.’94, Ed.D.’02, executive vice
a team from Chicago has come to Harvard
president of the University of Chicago; and
to work with our faculty and with other
Sonya Anderson, Ed.M.’01, Ed.D.’05, vice
districts. Secretary of Education Arne
president for national affairs at the Ounce of
Duncan was part of the first Chicago PELP
Prevention Fund, a nonprofit that gives kids
team, when he served as CEO of Chicago
living in poverty a chance to get a high-quality
Public Schools.
early education. There are also many alumni working in Chicago Public Schools.
Principal Pipeline
PPE
In an effort to expand the number of high-caliber principals in Chicago Public
In May 2012, Professor Tom Hehir, Ed.D.’90,
Schools, a collaboration was started in 2007 between the Ed School, Teach
and Lecturer David Rose, Ed.D.’76, ran a special
For America (TFA), Chicago Public Schools, the Chicago Public Education Fund,
weeklong session on universal design for learning
and the Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation. Called the Principal Leadership
(UDL) for about 300 staff in Chicago Public Schools.
Development Program, the collaboration allows former TFA graduates to earn
“The district is moving forward on UDL and has
master’s degrees at the Ed School before becoming principals in Chicago
committed significant resources to this,” says
schools. After graduation, participants continue with ongoing professional
Hehir, who worked with Deputy Superintendent Jen
development through the Ed School’s PPE institutes.
Cheatham, Ed.M.’06, Ed.D.’10. Hehir says they also helped the district recruit a new chief officer of the Office of Special Education and Supports.
appian way
A Starting Point She knew, the moment the door to her son’s classroom opened, that her trip to the schoolhouse that afternoon had become a turning point. Anne Awuor, Ed.M.’13, originally intended to get to the bottom of why her young son, Ryan, was still struggling with reading. Then she saw the teacher. The teacher had been one of her students at the National Teachers’ College in Nairobi, Kenya, where she was working as an English lecturer. “The irony was almost comical,” says Awuor, a recent graduate of the Language and Literacy Program. Not only had she taught this woman, but also she had just endorsed graduation certification for 1,000 other elementary school teachers and knew that none of the graduates were equipped with the skills needed to help kids, like her son, who struggled with learning disabilities. “I returned home with a humbler mien than I thought I would ever assume,” Awuor says. She also asked herself an important question: “What am I going to do about it?” She initially turned to the Internet, devouring everything she could on learning disabilities and related teacher training, often printing out useful information and sharing it with Ryan’s teacher. And although she was doing it to help her son, who, she now realizes, has dyslexia, she began to understand the problem was much bigger than that. “I discovered that shortcomings at our college’s teacher preparation program were symptomatic of similar struggles encountered in similar programs throughout Africa,” she says. She also had to face the “unmentionable” aspect — even talking about learning difficulties is often frowned upon in her community. “It’s a struggle for me to even talk about this story,” Awuor says. “It’s different in Kenya than it is here.” She decided that the only way to get a full understanding of the issue, and then figure out a way to improve teacher preparedness in Kenya and
across Africa, was to leave and go to graduate school. “Harvard accepted me,” she says. “That was the first sign that I was doing the right thing.” Before leaving for the United States, though, she decided to start a reading clinic at her house on Sunday afternoons for Ryan, his friends, and children from the neighborhood who also needed help. “I thought, Why teach him alone?” she says. “And we can’t expect the teachers to do everything.” The informal group, free of judgment and full of support, she says, was slowgoing in terms of improvements, but during the five months that they met, every child made gains in spelling and word recognition. Now in Cambridge, Awuor has spent the past two semesters focusing not so much on being a reading specialist — her initial goal — but on teacher support and training, as well as policy. “I have expanded [my focus] into policy issues — how policy can play a role in improving teacher quality that I feel will eventually trickle to how teachers are trained in specific subject content and teaching methods,” she says. As a student, she was also able to spend time during her practicum at an elementary school in Cambridge, which completely opened her eyes to the possibilities for students with learning issues. “My mind was blown away,” she says. “Wow! They have interventionists? Reading interventionists? Even behavior interventionists?” At Commencement, her son — her dashing and charming son, she says — will be in the audience, watching his mother get her diploma. And when she looks back and sees Ryan, she says she’ll know that the hard work (and the cold winter!) will have been well worth it. “My son was a personal reminder of the impact that poor teacher preparation has on individual students, and I felt called upon to do something about it,” she says. “Teacher quality matters. That’s where we should start.” — Lory Hough
Star Bright One Ed School alum and one current student were named rising stars by Forbes “30 under 30” in education. Zakiya Smith, Ed.M.’07, director of postsecondary innovation at the Center for American Progress, was a senior advisor for education at the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Obama. And Jefferson Pestronk was working as director of special initiatives at the U.S. Department of Education before becoming a student in the Ed.L.D. Program.
more online
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Program: Technology, Innovation, and Education Program Tool for Change: Technology Hometowns: Chicago and Ranong, Thailand
studybreak Pearl Phaovisaid, Ed.M.’13
martha stewart
I
n person, there’s a quietness to Pearl Phaovisaid that seems a stark contrast to what one might expect from a West Point graduate who spent 15 months in Iraq, flying more than 200 combat hours on the aircraft she chose to master: the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. She admits that she’s definitely an introvert, but she says, “There are quiet professionals wherever you go.” And in some ways, the Army actually made sense for her after high school: She knew she wanted to help others. Since then, this Chicagoborn daughter of first-generation Thai immigrants has done just that, particularly in Ranong, the small village in Thailand where she was raised for many years, in part by her aunt, a teacher. After West Point, Phaovisaid went back to the village to teach basketball — one of her passions — to adolescent girls, and self-defense to lowincome women who had moved to Bangkok, often alone, for work. She also traveled the country, through the U.S. Embassy Speakers Program, and spoke to Thai students and monks about American classroom culture, English, and Buddhism. Now, with a year of the Ed School behind her, she is looking at ways that technology — and a small academic scholarship program that she started while in Iraq for three high school seniors each year — can help students all over Thailand improve their lives.
more online
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Ed.
• Summer 2013 • www.gse.harvard.edu/ed
appian way Your three Petch Intanin Scholarships are:
One piece of technology you can’t live without:
• One for excellence in academics • One for excellence in art • One for excellence in athletics
At West Point, why pick the Black Hawk? It’s funny; I don’t even own a car! But I was very ambitious. I also wanted to be where the action was.
r Smartphone 4 r Laptop r DVR
Why? Living without my laptop would
seriously dampen my productivity. If I ever got stuck on an island with electricity and wi-fi, I would be just fine as long as I had a laptop with me.
Your favorite authentic Thai dish: Lemongrass soup. It’s coconut based and hard to get right.
One lesson your aunt taught you: Teaching is a demanding profession.
Scariest part about flying Black Hawks: Hovering. Why? It looks so peaceful, but there are a lot of motor skills involved.
You’re a big basketball fan. Who’s your current favorite player? r Carlos Boozer r Paul Pierce 4 Jeremy Lin r r LeBron James Why? I admire his humility and faith. He’s a great team player. He’s also an underdog who constantly worked against the odds. It’s nice to see someone like that make it.
If you were coaching an Ed School faculty b-ball team, which faculty would be your starting five? Point guard: Monica Higgins Shooting guard: Joe Blatt Small forward: Karen Brennan Power forward: David Dockterman Center: Chris Dede
Eventually you’ll go back to live and work in Thailand because: So many people are doing great work in the United States. I’d make a bigger difference there, in Thailand.
It occurred in flight school when we transitioned from flying in the daytime to flying at night. This training consisted of a few weeks of unaided flight — no night vision goggles. As you can imagine, operating a helicopter in a three-dimensional plane is challenging enough when you have full range of vision. Trying to accomplish that same task when you can’t see very well is quite unnerving for a novice aviator.
Your height, on a good day:
Daniel Vasconcellos
You said every pilot has a “come to Jesus” moment. What was yours?
5 feet 2 1/4 inches.
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courtesy of the Kauffman Foundation
Camera Ready Hear It Here Check out this fun, illustrated video with Senior Lecturer Kay Merseth, M.A.T.’69, Ed.D.’82, put out by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and posted on the school’s Facebook page.
v go to gse.harvard.edu/ed/extras
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Ed.
• Summer 2013 • www.gse.harvard.edu/ed
It’s January 2, just a week after Christmas, and the dozen students sitting in a classroom in Larsen Hall are being asked to reach into a black Harvard tote, dubbed “the bag of fun,” and pull out an object. While most of their classmates are still on winter break, recuperating after the fall semester, these students are about to spend the next 30 seconds selling their “education object” to one another. “Think about what works in a sound bite,” says Matt Weber, Ed.M.’11, the school’s digital strategist, who is coleading the exercise. “In the future, you may be interviewed for 20 minutes, but the news agency is only going to use 15 or so seconds. You need to be concise. This isn’t a thesis.” One by one, the students stand in front of the class and sell. A black stapler. A plastic spatula. An Old Spice deodorant stick. There are lots of laughs and a few clever pitches. But even with this silly ice breaker, the students realize something important: Speaking in front of the camera isn’t as easy as it looks. It’s the first of many lessons they will learn over the course of three meetings for STS-15: Developing Your Media Presence, one of the school’s 11 new special topic seminars added to the Januaryterm course roster. The seminars are short, lasting from one to three days,
Manny Lamarre, Ed.M.’13, and Mark Robertson
with little or no homework, and offered free to current students. Also unique is that the seminars are less academic and more hands-on than a typical Ed School course — learning how to speak in front of the camera or how to write a good op-ed (with Adjunct Lecturer Nancy Sommers), for example. They are meant to give students concrete tools to use out in the real world. “The origins of STS-15 actually came out of a practical need we’ve encountered when filming students over the years,” Weber says. “Many just weren’t confident being on camera and communicating their personal or institutional narrative.” As he tells the students that January morning: “You can do awesome at Harvard, get an amazing job, but then you freeze the minute you’re on camera. We want you to feel comfortable when someone puts a camera in front of you.” After the object exercise, the students watch short video clips of educators (all with Ed School connections) being interviewed in real life. “These videos show you that Ed School people go on to be rock stars,” says Mark Robertson, Ed.M.’08, communications manager in the Office of Development and Alumni Relations, who is co-teaching the seminar with Weber. The students offer their observations: One professor was incredibly
appian way
matthew weber
Making Matters relaxed, one alum didn’t make eye contact, the word “um” was overused. For every observation, there is advice from Weber and Robertson. “Instead of saying ‘um,’ which is a breath out,” Weber says, “take a breath in.” And then, the students get a chance to take practice runs — first in front of an iPad connected to a pulldown screen in Larsen Hall, and then the next day, the “Big Show,” as Weber calls it, when they meet in the school’s media lab, complete with full lighting, a green screen, and professional video camera. In the media lab, on day two, the students arrive camera ready. Taking earlier advice from Weber and Robertson, none are wearing white (too much contrast) or complicated patterns (too distracting). Someone asks if they should write out a script ahead of time. “Generally, that’s a bad idea,” Robertson says. “Instead, have a few bullets points in mind that you want to make sure you don’t forget.” For the next three hours, the students take turns speaking in front of the camera, some seemingly not nervous, others needing four or five takes. To one another they throw out encouragement — “That was so good!” — and to Weber and Robertson, they ask lots of questions. “Should I move my hands?” (Do what is most natural.) “Am I talking too fast?” (Usually, yes.) Students are urged to try new things — sit if they normally stand, take a slight pause before delivering the last few lines. From time to time, Weber throws out an unexpected “gotcha” question in an effort to simulate what it might be like when confronted by an actual reporter. Robertson tells them to practice being on camera at home with friends, using Skype or smartphones. Ed.L.D. student Andrew Frishman tells the group that he was once terrified of speaking in public but eventually got more comfortable after doing an internship at an oceanographic research center where he had to give a daily seal talk to the crowds of visitors. Even still, on that second day, after several clean takes, he stumbles a bit. “I’m really paralyzed,” he says. “It’s really scary.” And then he nails it. As he walks away from the camera, he looks at his classmates and shakes his head. “I’m not a golfer, but I’ve heard that if you try too hard to hit it, you mess up,” he says, as much to himself as to the others. “That’s what I was doing — more trying too hard.” online — Lory Hough
In the offices of Project Zero, tucked behind the main desk, are a couple of tables covered with art supplies: colored paper, markers, funky scissors. The hope is that visitors will spend time at the tables, making whatever they want from the materials. And although the project sounds fun, there’s also real purpose: to learn more about tinkering. It’s part of a multiyear research project called Agency by Design recently launched by Project Zero, in conjunction with a group of K–12 educators in Oakland, Calif. Tinkering is one part of the larger project, which is trying to understand how design thinking (a way to approach problems that is peoplecentered, creative, and involves tinkering and prototyping) and maker thinking (a DIY way of thinking by making) impact education. Both processes are becoming incredibly popular, with everyone from entrepreneurs making prototypes for products to tinkering-types meeting in community hackerspaces to work on personal projects to little kids building robots out of Legos. The first part of the Project Zero project, based in Cambridge, is figuring out what solid research is already out there related to design and maker thinking. The team is also interviewing people involved in these worlds — designers, artists, and tinkerers. The second part of the project involves collaborating at four California schools, using hands-on activities in the classroom that have students and teachers examining objects and even redesigning them. Through these efforts, the team hopes to better understand how these two processes apply to education. Initial research has shown that design and maker thinking have the potential to make kids more interested in learning, promote hand-mind expertise, and boost knowledge in STEM subjects. The team is particularly interested in seeing how young people can begin to not only identify “design” in the world around them, but also understand that they can be active in making changes, starting, perhaps, through tinkering. “A young person might notice that a coffee cup is designed,” says Lecturer Shari Tishman, Ed.D.’91, director of Project Zero and the project’s principal investigator. “We want to help them look at a coffee cup and think, ‘I could do something different.’ We’re hoping they see themselves as players. To learn that they are part of the world that changes things.” — Lory Hough
v learn more at makingthinkinghappen.wordpress.com
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Education Reform, Parent Style In one room, Sofia is cutting out pictures of Italian masks to put on a poster. Her plan is to make her own mask, too. Across the hall, Gus is playing chess with a classmate while other students are also doing their work — some on laptops, others huddled in small groups. Two girls are reading books while stretched out on big, blue beanbag chairs pushed underneath the huge windows that fill the room with winter light. It’s the hour before lunch, and the students are working on their personal learning contracts. The contracts have become the hallmark of a small new school in Massachusetts created not by a nonprofit network or a private foundation, but by an unlikely team: six parents who felt it was the only option for their soon-to-be middle schoolers. When the idea first began percolating, in 2007, all of the families, including Janice Rand Vaughn, Ed.M.’94, and her husband, David Vaughn, had at least one elementary-aged child on an individualized education program (IEP). After trying various special education programs in the public schools in their towns, the three families had all landed at the same private elementary school just outside Boston that specialized in small classes and social-emotional learning. They loved the school, but, unfortunately, it ended after the fourth grade. What would happen when their kids reached middle school? Jokingly at first, they talked about starting their own school. And then the conversation got serious. “We said, why not build our dream school?” says Vaughn, who previously served on the founding board of a charter school in Boston. “This school could be anything we wanted it to be.” For a year, they visited other schools to see how they work, talked to educators, and read research. They considered going the charter school route, but decided there wouldn’t be enough flexibility for what they wanted to try. So they spent more time raising money for a private school and eventually worked out a deal with a local Greek church to rent space. And they brought in Bill Wilmot, Ed.M.’06, former head of a charter school, to lead what would be called the Tremont School, which officially opened in September 2011 for grades five and six. The goal is to add a grade each year, through high school. Although the school welcomes children with learning differences, the founders stress that this is not a special needs school. “We were three families, each with one child with learning differences and one without,” says Rand Vaughn, whose day job is at the Harvard Kennedy School and who, like the other founding family parents, volunteers at the school and is represented on the school’s board of directors or related
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committees. “Our hope was to create a school that was inclusive and effective for a wide variety of kids, reflecting the reality of our own families, as well as the society at large.” There is also a razor-sharp focus on individualized attention and what it means to be part of a community — something from which all students would benefit. “This is a place where kids are taken for who they are,” she says. “That sounds trite, but it’s not necessarily the norm for all kids. But being taken for who you are can be a miracle, for the kids and for the parents.” At Tremont, Wilmot says, differences don’t set students apart from one another. “Every kid needs help,” he says. “We look at the challenges and strengths of every kid and ask, ‘How do we use the social environment of the school to help?’ How can we use this theme or that theme to support each child?” One way they do this is by not focusing on standardized tests or a set curriculum that every student follows at the same time. There are no letter grades, and learning revolves around something called the Living Curriculum, which is heavily project-based and personalized for individual learning styles. “The teachers are great about coming up with ideas, and we’ll say, ‘Does it pass the Liam test?’” Wilmot says, referring to one student. “We try to think of the polar opposites in the classroom and what will work for both of them while still being thoughtful of the broader goals.” Students spend five-week blocks focused on themes, such as elections or Europe, which are integrated into every subject. The unit on place included drawing maps using coordinates, looking at how geology defines political and cultural boundaries, and reading novels in which setting plays an important role. And it all ties back to the personal learning contract, a one-page grid made by the teachers, outlining assignments and expectations for the week. Students carry their contracts with them throughout the day and take responsibility for making sure tasks get completed, whether at school or at home. One hope is that students will learn to manage their own studying, rather than waiting for teachers to tell them what to do. It also allows students to pick and choose what to do when. If a student focuses better on math in the morning, that’s when she does math, even if other students are reviewing spelling words with a friend or doing independent reading. This approach may seem unconventional, at least compared with most school settings, but Rand Vaughn stresses that the approach is, in fact, helping to create what many educators today say is critical: 21st-century learners.
appian way
“What are we looking for in 21st-century skills?” she asks and then lists some of the skills commonly touted: problem solving independently and in teams, being flexible and taking into consideration other perspectives, managing time, building self-discipline, using creativity. “That’s happening here, in a natural setting. Everyone talks about education reform, and it’s actually happening, right here, at the Tremont School.” — Lory Hough
v learn more about the school at www.tremontschool.org
Students at the Tremont School spend the day learning in different ways. In these photos (top, clockwise): working on designs when SparkTruck visited the school; tracing a map of Europe; getting into character while studying the Middle Ages; using 3-D printers in the SparkTruck; observing the landscape at Great Brook Farm State Park in Carlisle, Mass. Photos courtesy of the tremont school
a p im
ag e s
A Medal for Meredith
James Meredith being escorted to the University of Mississippi in 1962.
James Meredith, the first African American to enroll at the University of Mississippi, will be awarded the Ed School’s Medal for Education Impact at the Convocation ceremony on May 29. Meredith, a key icon of the civil rights movement, said the award was the first he had accepted in 50 years, despite being honored many times for his bravery in standing up to racism. Dean Kathleen McCartney says of Meredith, “His courage and determination cannot be overstated.” Meredith’s initial application to Ole Miss was rejected twice before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favor and the university had to admit him. The day he was set to register for classes in 1962, hundreds of protestors tried to block his way. A riot broke out while President John F. Kennedy spoke to the country about what was happening. Two people were killed and 35 U.S. marshals were shot. Bob Dylan wrote a song about the incident called “Oxford Town,” singing, “He went down to Oxford Town. Guns and clubs followed him down. All because his face was brown.” Marshall successfully registered the next day and graduated a year later with a degree in political science. Three years later, Meredith was again in the spotlight when he was shot by a sniper during the March Against Fear, which started in Memphis, Tenn., and ended in Jackson, Miss. Civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Stokely Carmichael, then-chair of the influential Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), walked for Meredith while he was in the hospital.
more online
He’s been
He’s been the
faculty director for the Special
28 Bookish Years Later
mar
tha
stew
art
When it was announced earlier in the academic year that John Collins would be retiring after nearly three decades as the head honcho in Gutman Library, we knew there had to be lots of numbers connected to his time here. We couldn’t catalog them all, of course, but we will more online circulate a few. 16
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Studies Program since 2007
He has worked for
4 deans here, starting with Patricia Albjerg Graham
married
for
42 years 1 wife 2 children 6 grandchildren 0 pets to
and has
,
,
and , currently (although over the years, he has had dogs, cats, horses, chickens, and even a crow)
He lived in
2 years
Iceland for during his tour in the Navy
appian way
“
your turn
What we need, I think, is more cynicism and distance.”
Reville-ation
— Frederick “Rick” Hess, Ed.M.’90, talking during an EdCast about how so many people involved in education policy and reform are uniformly passionate and committed, which can be good, but it can also be problematic: You’ve got all of these people, he says, “screaming that they know what’s going to work for kids.” Instead, we need more people operating as the “ball bearing” in the middle of the debates, he says. Hess, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a blogger, and a prolific author, was at the Ed School in January to take part in an Askwith Forum looking at the futures of education reform.
In January, Massachusetts Secretary of Education Paul Reville was named professor of practice and joined the senior faculty. Prior to his service for the commonwealth, Reville had been director of the Ed School’s Education Policy and Management Program and, since 1997, a lecturer and senior lecturer.
v what do you think of hess’ comment? let us know by commenting at
He earned
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www.gse.harvard.edu/ed/yourturn
He’s visited
24
Boy Scout merit badges
countries on
and Eagle Scout rank
(and will add Australia during retirement)
5 7 of the
continents
collection volume the year he started (1985–86) was
152,,000 220,000 ;
Today it tops
A true fisherman, his new
He’s had
187 student advisees
Gutman’s
since 1986
postretirement office will be a
He
runs
20 30 miles to
a week
28’ Albin
named The Enigma, docked off Cape Cod 17
atob Paul-David Perry, Ed.L.D. Candidate
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I was walking into the guidance office, college acceptance letter in hand. I saw Donnell and Curtis in the lobby. We gave each other daps. Beyond being my friends, they represented the “other half” — the more than 50 percent of kids in my high school who lived in poverty and weren’t lucky enough to be tracked into the gifted program. On my way out of the office later, I overheard one of them say to another counselor, “So, what’s up with this S-A-T thing? We gotta take this before we can go to college?” My heart sank. But I kept walking away. Two months later, graduation came. I got my diploma and along with it, three certificates stating that I had scored advanced on the state standardized tests. No Child Left Behind. The irony of the name was not lost on me. Walking out of that auditorium on graduation day, I left Donnell and Curtis behind. I got into education because I wake up every morning deeply conscious of how my own life story very nearly embodied the American Nightmare rather than the American Dream. I got into education because I know what it feels like to be left behind and to leave others behind in order to get ahead. I will remain in education until it is no longer a game of the chosen vaulting ahead of the unchosen. I will continue working until we’ve built a radically new and equitable system that moves us all forward, together. — Paul-David Perry is an Ed.L.D. student and a member of the school leadership team at TechBoston Academy in Boston.
Daniel Vasconcellos
My shoes were talking. My uncle was furious. There I was, a first-grader in my gray dress slacks, my pressed white button-down shirt, my sleeveless maroon vest, and, of course, my clip-on tie. And on my feet were those talking shoes. I can’t remember if they were black or brown, but I remember how floppy they were and how cool I thought that was. They reminded me of the Pac-Man arcade game. What I didn’t understand was the deeper message that my floppy shoes might convey, a message that my uncle would never allow, because I was his to protect. He had every right to be mad. They had enough on their plate with me as it was. My father and his partner — whom I called “Uncle” because it got me beat up less — had adopted me from a drug-addicted white mother living on welfare who carried me to term while in prison. My black biological father disappeared and never took responsibility for my existence. My adoptive parents would give me a reasonably middle class life. I would work in the family store learning my numbers on the cash register. I would play baseball and climb trees. I would be student council president. I would do what no one in our family had done before: go to college. But before that, there was this matter of the shoes. And there my parents were, two gay, white men with a brown baby being sent to school with floppy shoes. He’s gone now, my uncle. Brain cancer. When he passed, my heart felt so heavy that all I could do was lay down. I knew that one of my parents, the main advocate for my education, had left and would not be coming back. He never got to see how successful he was as a parent. He never got to see the boy he raised head off to Harvard. But I often try to imagine what he was thinking in that moment so many years ago. Here’s my best guess: This poor child is the only black boy in that classroom, and we’re paying good money for his Catholic school education, and here we are sending him to school with shoes like this. This is unacceptable. We eventually ran out of money for that Catholic school, and I was sent to the local public middle school. Suddenly, I went from being the most colorful child in the class to being just another brown face in the multiracial crowd. I remember the pushing and the jostling through the crowds of kids. I recall how some kids lived in garages tucked into alleyways on the east end of town, the place that my father didn’t like me going, but where I hustled through on my bike, curious as ever. I remember all of the accents swirling around me. Most of all, I remember what it felt like to leave friends behind. I was placed in the “gifted” program, which carried me through high school. Again, I was one of the few brown faces in our accelerated classes. It was April of my senior year, and
onmybookshelf
Assistant Professor Gigi Luk Currently reading: The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge. Impressive stories and a lot of inspiration. Doidge is a great writer and there is no technological jargon in the book. It is a great knowledge-translation piece.
Favorite book from childhood: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (a.k.a. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) I am ashamed to admit, I have never read… Reflections on Language by Noam Chomsky.
Reading ritual: I used to use the corresponding receipt as bookmark for each book. Now I usually buy books from the Internet and just use any piece of paper handy as bookmarks. Favorite spot to curl up with a good book: Before having kids, I liked to curl up on a couch and read until I could not keep my eyes open. Now, I can only read on my bed right before I fall asleep. — Marin Jorgensen
jill anderson
The thing that drew you to it: I am interested in learning about the mechanisms behind brain resilience from medical cases. From these cases, perhaps we can identify ways to enrich development or design intervention that is sensitive to individual differences.
Favorite book you were asked to read for school: For language arts in high school: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. And, I know this is weird, but I really enjoyed reading Statistical Methods for Psychology by David Howell. This book is still on my bookshelf in my office!
Harvard Graduate School of Education
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books
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Cage-Busting Leadership
Leadership Against School Violence
Portraits of Promise
Frederick Hess
Gus Frias
Michael Sadowski
In Cage-Busting Leadership, Frederick Hess, Ed.M.’90, argues that educational leaders often find themselves “caged in” by various policies, rules, regulations, contracts, and case law. Worried that this is threatening the quality of education in the classroom, Hess uses stories from educators that demonstrate how these barriers can be broken in order to cultivate powerful learning environments and drive real improvement.
Each year in the United States, there are hundreds of acts of crime and violence on school grounds. In Leadership Against School Violence, Gus Frias, Ed.M.’94, addresses these challenges, explores the struggles that are common among schools in high-risk communities, and presents research-based findings demonstrating that effective school leadership and a safe school climate are essential to improve student achievement.
What factors contribute to the success of high-achieving immigrant students in the United States? In Portraits of Promise, Michael Sadowski, Ed.M.’95, Ed.D.’05, looks to answer that question, using the stories of successful immigrant students to highlight the kinds of support and resources that allow students to engage positively with school culture and reach their full potential.
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The Road Out: A Teacher’s Odyssey in Poor America Deborah Hicks In The Road Out, Deborah Hicks, Ed.D.’88, writes about her experiences trying to help a group of troubled girls coming of age in poverty in urban Cincinnati, Ohio. A journey of hope and discovery, Hicks outlines how, in the face of disappointment and despair, she helped these girls cling to their desire for better futures through literature, empowerment, and personal communion.
Square Peg: My Story and What It Means for Raising Innovators, Visionaries, and Out-of-the-Box Thinkers L. Todd Rose and Katherine Ellison A onetime high school dropout, Todd Rose, Ed.M.’01, Ed.D.’07, is now a lecturer at the Ed School. In Square Peg, Rose uses his experiences as a jumping off point for discussion about talented students that are being left behind and — incorporating research in neuroscience, psychology, and education — provides insight into how today’s dropouts could be tomorrow’s innovators.
v to read the full list of books featured in this issue, go to
gse.harvard.edu/ed/extras
v if you’re part of the ed school community and you’ve recently published a book, mail us a copy or let us know at
booknotes@gse.harvard.edu — Briefs by Rachael Apfel Harvard Graduate School of Education
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A
Kathy Story
As our outgoing dean gets ready for a big move across the state, a look at using power for good, the nexus, and why everyone calls her by her first name. By lory hough
kathleen dooher
W
hen Dean Kathleen McCartney leaves in June to take over as president of Smith College, she’ll take many things. A Diego Rivera fresco print given to her by Professor Fernando Reimers. A picture with the Dalai Lama, taken during his “Educating the Heart” visit to Harvard in 2009. A pink ceramic heart made by her two daughters when they were little that says, “I Y you.” There will, no doubt, be a beige Ed School baseball hat (or two) and a couple of takeout pizzas from the Commons to eat on the 90-minute drive west to Northampton. And, after 13 years at the Ed School, eight as dean, there will be lots of memories. There are also many, many things that McCartney leaves behind. Asked to name a few, several people in the Ed School community talked about the academics — notably, the fact that she pushed through not just one but two new doctoral degree programs, and that she moved faculty and students to think about how their work will not only be admired by other academics, but will actually have an impact on real kids, real teachers, and real schools. But without fail, every person interviewed for this story also talked about the personal, using words like approachable, empathetic, wonderful, friend, and family to describe a woman whom they have worked for, learned from, and strategized with. And without fail, every person had a “Kathy story” to tell. A time when she went above and beyond during a personal crisis, or when she made a phone call when a form letter would have been acceptable. When she stopped to chat about Mad Men or the Red Sox or ask about a new baby.
Daphne Layton, Ed.M.’89, Ed.D.’92, saw this dovetailing of the personal and professional repeatedly over the years working with McCartney. Layton, the senior associate dean for academic affairs, says that when McCartney and a small team started brainstorming the grand ideas that would become the Ed.L.D. Program and the new Ph.D. Program, McCartney brought clear direction to the table and a real strategy for moving in those directions — actions you might expect (although not always get) from a dean. But she says McCartney brought other things that made these nearly Herculean tasks possible. “She’s intensely loyal and she valued our input,” Layton says of the process. As a result, “there’s an enduring commitment among the members of her team and many members of the faculty.” On Kathy’s first day as dean, staff surprised her with McCartney t-shirts
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Included is Professor Bob Schwartz, C.A.S.’68, who was there at the genesis of the Ed.L.D. idea. “A day or so after Kathy was appointed dean, I got a call from her assistant, who said Kathy wanted to meet,” Schwartz says. “I was pretty sure she was going to say, would I chair a committee to lead the development of the [Ed.L.D.] program? I went to her office, sat down, and she said, ‘I’d like you to be my academic dean.’” Surprised, Schwartz reminded her that he wasn’t an academic. McCartney said she could handle that but needed someone from her office with his skills (and his Rolodex) to lead the project. He told her there had to be other people and mentioned one name in particular. Schwartz says she looked at him and said, “I already tried that person and got a ‘no.’ It was classic Kathy transparency! The rest is history.” Schwartz accepted the offer and served as academic dean for five years while helping to get the fledgling Ed.L.D. off the ground. He says during that planning time, there were bumps in the road, especially when it came to getting buy-in from some faculty and raising huge amounts of money, but McCartney never backed off. “There were lots of points when someone who was fainter of heart would have,” he says. “But we are both glass-half-full people. We sailed around and didn’t take no for an answer. I think [Harvard President] Drew [Faust] would say she was surprised at Kathy’s persistence, too.”
Meeting the Dalai Lama in 2009
Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer
yet she took the time to send me this, and it was heartfelt. I never thought I’d have that — a fearless leader who was an empathetic leader, as well.” More than anything, the message this sent to Maldonado was that McCartney epitomized community — a sentiment echoed by many. “Her actions say, ‘We’re all together and we’re really no different from one another,’” Maldonado says. “This theme of community that she continues to exemplify, that really resonates.” It also resonates with another student, Nancy Gutierrez, Ed.L.D.’13. She says she has felt this sense of community at the Ed School, fostered by McCartney, many times during her three years here, starting when she and the other inaugural group of Ed.L.D. students arrived in 2010. McCartney started asking them for detailed feedback: How was the program working? What could the administration do differently? Better? She made it clear that the students’ feedback was important. A year later, when Gutierrez became cochair of the annual Alumni of Color Conference, McCartney again asked questions and offered support and feedback. “My team and I were encouraged when we left Dean McCartney’s office after our first meeting,” she says. “She listened. She challenged our thinking, and then she said, ‘Dream big. Create a plan. And I will do everything in my power to help you realize it. We’re in this together.’” That kind of personal connection, that sense that the Ed School is an “us,” not just a “me” and a “you,” is what McCartney’s executive assistant, Beth Berg, found with her. During her 12 years at the school, she has worked under four deans, and says she instantly connected with McCartney. “We’re both from Medford, [Mass.,] both from similar families.” she says. “I loved the other deans that I worked with, but right away, I felt such a friendship with Kathy. She’s going to leave a handprint on everyone’s hearts here. She’s leaving friends. Everyone feels they can talk to her.” Layton says that’s because McCartney is “real.” “What you see is what you get,” she says, which extends to how she’s addressed, insisting that everyone call her Kathy. Erin O’Connor, Ed.M.’01, Ed.D.’05, now an assistant professor of early childhood education at New York University, saw McCartney as family, not just her advisor.
actions say, ‘We’re all “ Her together and we’re really no different from one another.’” Schwartz says he has no doubt that at times McCartney had reservations about some of the things he was doing as academic dean. “But I never felt like I was ever in danger of being undercut,” he says. “She was incredibly supportive. I never felt anything less than fully empowered. Once she rolled the dice, she stuck with it.” And she has stuck with her students, too, especially during troubled times when they needed more than just an advisor or an academic leader. In 2011, a little more than a year after starting the Ed.L.D. Program, Karen Maldonado, Ed.L.D.’13, found out she had stage 4 lymphoma. Despite the intensity of the program, she decided not to drop out — and McCartney fully supported her. “She was there making sure I had all the resources I needed,” Maldonado says, “but she still held me accountable.” She also sent Maldonado a book, When Things Fall Apart, by Pema Chödrön, an American Buddhist nun. “She left a note in the book that said this is a piece of literature she goes back to when there are challenges in her life. This is a woman who, I imagine, has major responsibilities as dean,
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“Kathy has been like a mother to me,” she says. “She came to visit me only days after [I had] my daughter and knit her a blanket that is a treasured keepsake of our family. My daughter carried it around with her for years.” She also took both O’Connor and her roommate in when, as students, their apartment burned down. And the help didn’t stop when O’Connor graduated. McCartney continues to help her as she advances in her own teaching career. “Kathy is always a phone call away,” O’Connor says. “For example, when I got difficult revision comments on an article after I graduated and started teaching, she spent two hours on the phone one night with me helping me respond to the critiques and reworking my paper. She wasn’t even an author on it.” Yet despite the emphasis on the personal and the familiar — the soft powers — Berg says it never lessened their respect for their boss.
Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer
At the opening of the new cafe
“If we didn’t truly respect Kathy the way we do, we’d never work as hard as we do,” she says. “The long hours, the early mornings. We’re a team.” McCartney is “no pushover,” emphasizes Layton. “We always joke that she uses her powers for good.” This includes funding major renovations to the school’s campus, most notably, turning the first floor of Gutman
Her Expertise Before becoming dean at the Ed School, Kathy had already developed a well-earned reputation as one of the nation’s foremost experts in childcare and early childhood education. Here’s a look at some of her major academic contributions and accomplishments in these areas.
4She spent 13 years as a faculty member at the University of New 4 Over the years, she has received many honors. She is a fellow Hampshire before coming to Harvard in 2000, including four as director of the UNH Child Study and Development Center, a lab school that includes both childcare (infants through kindergarten) and academic training for UNH students.
4When it comes to the classroom, McCartney has taught courses in human development and psychology, early care and education, child development and the family, mother-child attachment, elementary education, and psychology of adolescence through film.
of the American Psychological Society, the American Psychological Association, and the American Educational Research Association. She won the Distinguished Contributions to Education in Child Development Award from the Society for Research in Child Development in 2009. In 2012, she was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. This past year, she was honored with the Harvard College Women’s Professional Achievement Award and was elected to the National Academy of Education.
McCartney has also been a prolific writer, publishing more than 150 4McCartney served as a principal investigator for the National Insti-4 articles and chapters on childcare, early childhood education, bullying, tute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, the most comprehensive national longitudinal study of early childcare.
4McCartney has been a board member of many child-related organizations, including Parents magazine and the Center for
Childhood Creativity. She also served on a number of high-profile child development expert panels, including the Committee on Developmental Outcomes and Assessments for Young Children, which produced the 2008 National Academies study, Early Childhood Assessment: Why, What, and How.
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and poverty. Her edited volumes include The Blackwell Handbook of Early Childhood Development (with Deborah Phillips, 2006) and Best Practices in Quantitative Methods for Developmentalists (with Margaret Burchinal and Kristen Bub, 2006). In addition, she has contributed to the public discourse, writing op-eds on early education, Head Start, education reform, and education policy.
4 In 2006, she was part of an Ed School team working with Mexican President Vicente Fox and the Mexican government to evaluate four education programs created under Fox, including preschool reform.
we didn’t truly “ Ifrespect Kathy
During her time as dean, Kathy liked being social. She read books at the school’s annual Halloween party, took pictures with kids in Israel, and celebrated the Boston Bruins’ Stanley Cup win in 2011 with staff
the way we do, we’d never work as hard as we do. The long hours, the early mornings. We’re a team.”
Library into a desperately needed cafe and student center hub that has truly brought the whole school together, and making sure that every classroom renovated during the past few years was done using green, sustainable materials. McCartney also made it a priority to forge strong ties with the rest of Harvard in ways the school hadn’t before. This included deep partnerships with the Kennedy School and the Business School for the Ed.L.D. and various PPE programs, as well as the new Ph.D. partnership with Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Larry Bacow, the former president of Tufts who recruited McCartney (a Tufts graduate) to serve on Tufts’ board of directors, says these partnerships are more than symbolic. For students, they provide exposure to areas outside of education that are critical to understand — areas like policy, business, and law. These partnerships also helped the Ed School become a major player at Harvard. “Kathy has worked collaboratively with other deans to identify resources that support the school’s mission,” he says. “In the process, HGSE has become an important player in Drew’s One Harvard vision.” Says Faust, “Kathy McCartney has strengthened the Ed School in every possible dimension: The faculty and student body is energized; the academic vision is clear; the school is better integrated within the wider university community. The school is exceedingly well positioned for the future, thanks to her leadership.” Another area where McCartney has used her powers for good is financial aid: All Ed.L.D. and Ed.D. students receive guaranteed fellowships (three years for Ed.L.D., Harvard Graduate School of Education
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whole now is greater than the “ The sum of its parts. That, I think, will be
seen as her greatest achievement when the history of the school gets written a hundred years from now.”
five years for Ed.D.) while aid for master’s students has increased from $2.5 million per year to $6.2 million over the past eight years. For Sky Marietta, Ed.M.’08, Ed.D.’12, the increase in financial aid spoke volumes about McCartney’s commitment to good research. When she was accepted into the Ed.D. Program in 2005, the year McCartney was promoted from acting dean to full dean, funding was only for one year. McCartney changed that to three, later adding an option for two additional years if a student submitted a dissertation proposal by the end of the fourth year. In the fall of 2009, by the time Marietta’s husband, Geoff, started the program, he, along with everyone in his cohort, received five years of funding. “Within the span of four years, the funding went from one year to a full five years,” Marietta says. “That is an extraordinary change in support within a very short time period. Combined, Geoff and I have received nine years of funding and counting. I think the increase has gone a long way to creating a doctoral program where students can focus on their research, rather than on meeting financial obligations. This shows Kathy’s commitment to students and her hard work to recruit the most talented future researchers and support them in accomplishing their career goals.” Another important commitment that McCartney made after she became dean was to urban education, in part with the faculty she recruited, and in particular with the creation of the Urban Scholars Fellowship. The program provides full tuition in one of the school’s 13 master’s programs for about 14 educators each year who are working in urban school systems. It’s a “reward to people who have worked in urban public schools,” McCartney said in 2006, after the first group of scholars arrived. Matt Welch, Ed.M.’07, a teacher in Boston and Chicago going back to 2002, was one of them. His wife was already a student at the Ed School when he applied, and he 28
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assumed getting in — and finding a way to fund a second tuition bill — was impossible. And then there was a voice mail message from McCartney. Not her assistant, but from McCartney. And a phone number. “I went home and told my wife, and she looked at me as if the president of the United States had called,” Welch says. “I said it must be to say I got in, but she said they do that by email. So the next day, I called back and was put right through to the dean. She said, ‘Are you sitting down?’ I was at school, in an empty classroom, luckily. She told me not only did they want me to come, but come for free. I just about fell over.” That fellowship, he says, changed the whole trajectory of his career, which included a Ph.D. in education and today, a job with a nonprofit called City Connection, based at Boston College, which partners students in Boston with existing city services. “The dean calls you and tells you that you’re a teacher, an urban teacher, and we think that’s important enough that we’re going to make a significant investment in you; that’s a really meaningful thing,” Welch says. “Especially for someone working in a profession that doesn’t really get respect. It’s something I haven’t forgotten.” McCartney’s advice was also career-changing for current master’s student Mary Tamer. Tamer had spent her entire career as a writer and had interviewed McCartney several times for Ed. magazine. During one of those interviews, during a time when she was thinking about going back to school and focusing on her passion, urban education, she asked McCartney if she thought she should apply to one of the master’s programs at the Ed School. Without hesitating, McCartney said yes and told her the Education Policy and Management Program made the most sense. Tamer later looked at the program description and realized McCartney was spot on.
Her Dean Deeds Here’s a quick look at some of Kathy’s top accomplishments as dean.
Faculty growth
of education, situated at the nexus of practice, policy, and research.” He adds that in her own work as a developmental psychologist, with a focus on early Creation of the Ed.L.D. Program childhood development, and with the First new degree program at the school since 1935. promotion of certain programs or the hiring of certain faculty, “Kathy has Creation of the Ph.D. Program modeled for the school, for the university, First students arrive in 2014. and many educators, how to apply this triple perspective across the educational Creation of the Urban Scholars Fellowship landscape.” Providing full tuition to teachers from urban schools. The result is that “Kathy leaves behind a much more vibrant and Financial aid and fellowships increases energized HGSE than she inherited,” Major increases for master’s, Ed.D., and Ed.L.D. students. says Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, a former professor at the Ed School and the Creation of a new cafe and student center current dean of the UCLA Graduate First floor of Gutman turned into a much-needed cafe and student center. School of Education and Information Studies. “Her immense talents, derived, Staff engagement increase inter alia, from being a scholar of child Staff engagement at the Ed School increased from 55 to 86 percent, as development, led the faculty into greater reflected in an annual survey across Harvard, moving us from last to first coherence and sense of purpose. The among Harvard schools. whole now is greater than the sum of its parts. That, I think, will be seen as her LEED awards greatest achievement when the history Four LEED project awards for renovations across campus. of the school gets written a hundred years from now.” Creation of endowed chairs And she did it all, Gardner adds, Four new chairs added. without turmoil. “With some leaders of accomplishments, there is blood on the ground, or at least several broken eggs,” he says. “But in Kathy’s case, she has secured “What is so telling about this moment is that Kathy these and other achievements while gaining the good will seemed to know exactly what direction I should pursue, and respect of individuals across the campus and, indeed, in and she was absolutely right,” says Tamer, who later went educational circles far and wide.” on to become an elected member of the Boston School And then, in true academic style, Gardner offers an Committee. “When the time did come to apply in 2010, I “interesting bit of data” to illustrate his point. asked for a letter of recommendation from Kathy, which she “For the first few years of Kathy’s presidency, people kindly provided for me. I will always be grateful for her infrom other parts of the Harvard campus would say to me, sight, which was certainly better than my own.” Now, having ‘How is your new dean doing?’ But in the last few years, the spent the last year at the school as a student, Tamer says she same people have said to me, ‘I hear that you have a very has really seen McCartney’s commitment to urban education good dean.’ And they are right!” and “all that she’s done to provide Boston’s schools with critiSo what does McCartney cal research and human talent. She will be sorely missed.” leave behind? All of this — Want more? It’s this understanding that real students, teachers, and the academic achievements, Test your knowledge of schools matter that has shifted — in a quiet, but significant the personal connections, the Kathy with the crossword way — the Ed School’s vision during McCartney’s time “Kathy stories” remembered. puzzle on page 48. here. As Professor Howard Gardner says, that vision “helped The eggs unbroken. That is Ed. all of us understand the unique role of a graduate school her legacy. Core faculty from 59 to 76. Core faculty of color: from eight to 20. Tenure-track faculty: from 10 to 22.
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Turnaround
time
Since 2010, federal School Improvement Grants have given some of the nation’s lowest-performing schools and districts significant funds and flexibilities to shake things up — and many have. But what happens when the clock strikes three years and the grant ends? A look at what some of our graduates are doing to answer that question.
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By Lory Hough
our third-grade reading teachers are sitting around a table in Principal Mairead Nolan’s office at the Trotter School in Boston. It’s 2:15 p.m., a gray afternoon, with newly fallen snow blanketing the streets. The team is gathered for their weekly progress meeting. Each teacher has come prepared to talk about a student who is struggling. The first girl they discuss has improved a bit in the past few months. Her guided reading level moved from a J to a K, but her teacher says she’s working so hard to decode the words that it’s affecting her comprehension. Nolan, Ed.M.’97, listens patiently, and then starts asking questions: Is she stuck on sight words? Are you doing repeated reading? Is it mostly multisyllable words? The other teachers ask questions, too: Can she find a word within a word? How are her words per minute? And then the girl’s teacher throws out one more thing, something he recently noticed that may not mean anything: The girl stopped wearing glasses. For the next 10 minutes, the team talks about options for this teacher, such as finding a pair of free glasses if the student needs them, downloading books on tape if she has an iPod, and increasing her listening center time. They set goals and agree to talk again about this third-grader in six weeks. For the next hour, the other teachers present their students and get similar feedback. This level of intense monitoring of struggling students didn’t happen at the Trotter a few years ago, at least to the extent it’s happening now. But ever since becoming a federally funded turnaround school in 2010, these meetings have become cherished time for the teachers and, according to Nolan, one of the key reasons their elementary school — once one of the lowest achieving in Boston — has seen significant gains on test scores. Teacher morale is up, too, along with parent participation and a host of other markers of “success.”
illustrations By Robert Neubecker
But there’s a potential problem. The Trotter was in the first group of schools back in 2010 to receive the funding — called a School Improvement Grant (SIG) — under the Obama administration. The administration’s thinking was that the grants, given to states to distribute to schools, would be temporary, a way to jumpstart thousands of the nation’s lowest-performing schools by infusing an initial $3.5 billion. And this wouldn’t be a light-touch approach to reform. Schools had to be willing to dramatically shake things up and follow one of four tough models: turnaround, transformation, restart, or shutdown. As Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told a crowd at the Building a Grad Nation Summit in March 2012, “We could not continue to tinker. Children only get one chance at an education.” The first year, out of 15,277 eligible schools across the country, 1,228 schools received funding. With the grant came good things: extra cash — as much as $2 million per school per year — as well as the flexibility to try new things often restricted under union rules, like an extended school year. But there was also a time limit: three years. For the Trotter, this is the final year. Like other administrators in her position, Nolan is now faced with a dilemma: How do you keep the school’s positive momentum going without the added funding and flexibilities? How do you not backslide? “That is the $3 billion question,” Diane Rentner, deputy director at the Center on Education Policy, told District Administration magazine. Ultimately, writes Rick Hess, Ed.M.’90, in his Straight Up blog at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, the answer lies in thinking of the SIG grant as a “springboard, not a crutch.” But where does a struggling school start? How do you not repeat the mistakes of the past? As author Laura Pappano writes in her 2010 book, Inside School Turnarounds, “Turnaround … is not a result but a process.” Across the country, Ed School alumni are involved in that process. Here’s a look at five of them.
MAIREAD NOLAN , ED.M.’97 One area that many involved in school turnarounds say is critical to success in turning around a persistently failing school is changing the culture. As President Obama told students at SIG-funded Miami Central High School in 2011, money alone isn’t going to do the job. “We also have to reform how things are done. It isn’t easy to turn around an expectation of failure and make that into an expectation of 32
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excellence. In fact, it’s one of the hardest things you can do.” At the Trotter, Nolan, with 65 percent new staff under the turnaround model, was determined to change the negative school culture, which regularly included fights in the classroom and the fire alarm being pulled. “It was a chaotic place,” she says. “Something out of a movie.” The old way of dealing was to focus on infractions and impose consequences. Instead, they realized that if a kid is acting out, he or she has an unmet need. “Our job is to figure out what the need is,” she says. Now they follow a new plan called the Peaceful Schools Climate Initiative, focused on students and staff developing social skills and creating respectful relationships. During that first year, the school moved quickly on other changes, too. The rarely followed dress policy was enforced. (Nolan even wears the uniform every day.) Teachers created detailed routines for the classrooms. And the front office found a stable groove: When they started year two of the turnaround, it was the first time in nearly a decade that the front office had no turnover. “People noticed that we were no longer fly-by-night,” Nolan says. As a result, “there was a real shift. The kids felt like they were in a learning community.” Teachers felt the shift, too. Professional development time jumped from 30 hours per year to 130. Nolan also brought in experienced teachers and coaches. “The funding was enormously helpful, but I think as important was the ability to hire anybody I wanted,” she says. “That can’t be underestimated.” In many districts, principals have limited input in the hiring process. Some teachers came through an initiative run by a nonprofit, Teach Plus. Called Turnaround Teacher Teams, or T3, the initiative places experienced teachers in turnaround schools in Massachusetts. Karen Loughran, Ed.M.’98, a 10-year classroom veteran, is a T3 coach in her second year at the Trotter. She works with other teachers on curriculum decisions and in figuring out how to effectively use data. The collaboration seems to be paying off. In 2011, T3 schools as a group outperformed 89 percent of all schools in the state in elementary math. Nolan stresses that for the Trotter, the first year was crucial — something Jesse Dixon, Ed.M.’08, a consultant with the Office of District and School Turnaround under the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, has been seeing in other turnaround schools. “In three years, you can do a lot. You may not have the school completely turned around, but you now have the right people on the bus, you have new systems in place,” he
The Model Options Every school receiving a SIG grant has to follow one of four models created by the Department of Education. They include:
Transformation replace principal, implement a mandatory set of strategies such as extended learning time, add more professional development, and revamp instruction
Turnaround
replace principal and no less than 50 percent of staff, implement a new governance structure, and revise or replace instructional program
Restart
turn the school over to a charter or education management organization
Shutdown close the failing school and send kids to a higher-performing school
says. “A lot of this is done in the first year. By the third year, you’re humming.” In Massachusetts, about two-thirds of schools in turnaround adapted significant changes in the first year and then used years two and three to imbed those changes. The other third saw the first year as transition time and “they’re not as far along in their journey,” Dixon says. Before her SIG grant ended, Nolan, in her foresight, applied to become an innovation school — a public school in Massachusetts that has more autonomy and flexibility than a traditional public school. The school will operate as an innovation school for five years, starting with the 2013–2014 school year. “It’s not that we want to do anything dramatically different as an innovation school,” Nolan says. “We made those changes as a turnaround, but we want to maintain what we’re now doing.”
ASHTON WHEELER CLEMMONS , ED.M.’09 Like the Trotter, Oak Hill Elementary in High Point, N.C., was also in the first group of schools approved for the SIG grant. Principal Ashton Wheeler Clemmons knew that one of the first things she had do was reach out to families. “When I first came to Oak Hill, we canvassed the neighborhood in small groups of staff members to ensure we spoke to every family,” she says. “We made sure families knew when school started and how much we care about student success. This was key in transitioning the relationship between school and families.”
Nowadays, teachers at the school are expected to communicate with parents about something positive at least once a month. When discussing a concern with families, they must provide strategies parents can use. Teachers hold high expectations for all students and confront every excuse. The school also got a facelift, with more lights added and murals painted on the walls. “These things cost little or no money,” Clemmons says. They also approached the process strategically, focusing their efforts not on the unproven, but on research-based ideas that have proven to improve student outcomes, she says. “The three key ones for us are focused planning time, quality teachers, and an extended day and year,” she says. “We thought, we have an opportunity to get funding, what does the research show makes the most sense?” With teacher quality, specifically, she says it helped that they followed the turnaround model. Under this model (followed by 20 percent of schools in the first round of funding), the principal had to be replaced and the entire staff released with the option to reapply. The new principal could hire back no more than 50 percent of the prior staff. Clemmons initially started as assistant principal and was able to help hire 85 percent of the staff — something she saw as a positive. “From the start, we had a staff that knew what was expected,” she says. “For us, it wasn’t so much changing the culture, but re-establishing the culture. Most people coming in were not part of the past culture, where parents didn’t trust the school.” And parents had good reason — Oak Hill had the distinction of being the lowest-performing school in the district, with only 24 percent of students scoring proficient on state reading exams in 2008 and 39 percent testing proficient in math. Having a dynamic, positive principal on board also helps. “The leader has to be able to say, ‘This is where we’re going and if you’re not on board, this may not be for you,’” Clemmons says. “We’re all in this together, but having a strong leader is critical.”
JEFF RILEY , ED.M.’99 In January 2012, Jeff Riley was brought in as receiver of the beleaguered Lawrence Public School district in Massachusetts. Just a few months earlier, the district was designated by the state as a level 5 — the most severe accountability level. Riley had a past record of helping Harvard Graduate School of Education
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troubled schools, including a Boston middle school that went from almost being shut down to one of the top performers in the city. With Lawrence, however, the challenge was greater: He was being asked to fix an entire low-performing district, not just one or two schools. “Most people I talked to told me not to come, not to do it, that it was too far gone,” Riley told CommonWealth magazine in 2012. But he came, with a plan. Instead of doing what had been done (unsuccessfully) in the past with state takeovers, with the state imposing district-wide rules, he was going to give 34
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each school, including the five receiving SIG grants, significant responsibility for getting themselves back on track. For example, he wanted every school to extend learning time, but he let them decide how that gets done. “It could be a longer school day, a longer year, or summer time,” Riley said at a panel discussion on turnaround schools held at the Ed School last December. “I’m giving them options, not just a set check list.” Of course, Riley knows that even the best-prepared school might need extra help, so one of the hallmarks of his turnaround effort has been to partner schools with community groups and education experts. Referred to as “lead partners” in the SIG world, outsiders can bring in fresh ideas or cost-effective programming. Lead partners can be nonprofits, for-profits, or charter management organizations. Some states, like Illinois, require all SIG schools to work with a lead partner. Most make it optional. Riley brought in several nonprofits. Community Day Charter and Up Academy each oversee a school. MATCH Charter School provides 50 tutors to two of the city’s high schools. Phoenix Charter Academy started an alternative high school targeting Lawrence dropouts. Nationwide, partnerships at turnaround schools have not come without controversy. Will progress last only as long as outside groups are involved? Is too much money going to consultants? The federal government does not stipulate how much districts can spend in this area, but one investigation last year by The Denver Post found that in Colorado, for example, consultants took home 35 percent of the state’s $26.6 million SIG kitty. In Lawrence, with only a year under his belt, Riley isn’t ready to talk about results — he suspects the process will take five to seven years. But he’s confident. “I am more optimistic now than when I took the job,” Riley said in an interview to the Lawrence Eagle Tribune in January. “Lawrence Public Schools are laying a foundation and coming back.”
GARA FIELD , ED.M.’04 Gara Field, principal of Pleasant View Elementary School in Providence, R.I., is not only optimistic, she’s really excited. Her school is finishing its first year under the transformation model, and she can already see change. “This is, by far, the most challenging thing I’ve done,” she says, noting that this is also her first job as a principal, “but we’ve got the pieces of the puzzle.” Is she worried that the three years will go by too quickly? “Time alone isn’t the answer,” she says. “It’s how you use it.” So far, a big chunk of time has been spent, like for Clemmons, in engaging parents. And it seems to be working. “There were three PTO members when I arrived at the school in the fall of 2011,” she says. “Currently, there are 15. When we were in the process of writing our school improvement plan for transformation, hundreds of parents attended the planning meetings.” They knew, she says, that the stakes were high. She also used the flexibility of the transformation model to “help teachers get back their craft,” she says. “Teachers often feel they’re held back. We need to stop thinking like that.” The school has added time to the school day (a requirement for all turnaround and transformation schools), including 70 additional minutes for teachers, which allows more time for prep, meetings, and teaching. Field also created “dream teams,” where teachers help one another. One example was to change the schedules for preK teachers. Initially, preK teachers came in late morning and taught
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just preK students. Now, they come in at 8 a.m. and help K–5 teachers until their younger students arrive. The result, Field says, is that there’s a different feeling in the building. “All the kids see the preK teachers in the hallways, and they’ve gotten to know those teachers,” she says. “It was a whole faculty investment. We’ve placed value in relationships. No significant learning occurs without significant relationships. Our faculty now comes early and stays late. We’re here with a shared purpose and a shared vision.” Already, she has seen how improved relationships have positively affected students. “In grades three to five, I have not had a single suspension. That’s a significant change,” she says. “The kids are more engaged. There’s still misbehavior, but in terms of the severity, it has lessened. Attendance has also improved, especially in the older grades.” Field also decided to focus on improving technology, but the SIG money wasn’t enough so she applied for a significant technology grant from the state (slightly more than one year of her SIG grant). They now they have iPads and SMART Boards in every classroom. “We didn’t even have wireless in the building,” she says. “Now, teachers can reach kids in new ways. This gives students the opportunity to connect to data, have multimedia experiences, and allows for targeted, small-group learning. If we didn’t have this extra money, we could have made cultural changes, but we would never have had the funding for infrastructure to do the work.”
We also have to reform how things are done. It isn’t easy to turn around an expectation of failure and make that into an expectation of excellence. In fact, it’s one of the hardest things you can do.” — President Barack Obama Harvard Graduate School of Education
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DENISE JUNEAU , ED.M.’94 In Montana, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau has approached turnaround differently. For starters, the state closely partners with individual schools receiving SIG grants. It started by reaching out to all the stakeholders — parents, unions, school administrators, students, and teachers — and letting them know they were not alone. “We created a unique model,” she says. “I went out and constantly met with the stakeholders and told them that we’re in this together. That we’re here to celebrate their successes and that we’ll also be there for the tough times. It helped develop trust. It said we are not here to take over or shut you down. We’re here to work with you.”
Tiers States determine which schools are the lowest performing and arrange them in tiers. Tier I schools, especially the bottom 5 percent, are the highest priority for SIG funding.
Tier I: Any Title I school in improvement, corrective action, or restructuring that is among the lowest-achieving 5 percent of Title I schools in improvement, corrective action, or restructuring in the state OR the five lowest-achieving such schools OR a high school that has had a graduation rate below 60 percent over a number of years
Tier II:
Any secondary school that is eligible for, but does not receive, Title I, Part A Funds, that is among the lowestachieving five percent of secondary schools or the 5 lowestachieving secondary schools in the state that are eligible for, but do not receive, Title 1 funds OR a high school that had had a graduation rate that is below 60 percent over a number of years
Tier III: Any Title I school in improvement, corrective action, or restructuring that is not a Tier I school
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Reaching out to parents in new ways was particularly critical in isolated, remote areas of the state, one of the least populated in the country. This included having school members go into the community and using SIG money to hire liaisons — positions that didn’t previously exist. “At one school, every teacher has gone on a home visit,” she says. “At another, as a result of the community liaison person now assigned to each school, a PTA was started. It was the first time at that school that parents got together to talk about issues.” Because of the great distance between cities and towns, focusing on the local is critical, Juneau says. “In terms of sustainability, one strength for us is that we’ve hired people to work with the schools who are from the community, so they’ll continue to be there, even after the grant ends,” Juneau says. “They’ll continue to understand the importance of this work.” There have been challenges. Finding qualified principals to replace the ones who had to leave under the transformation model was tough. Juneau says she would have preferred to work with the existing principals. Shutting down schools (the least utilized of the four models) was not an option. Not only can it be demoralizing for a community, but in rural areas, there would be no place to move displaced students. Juneau says even having access to nonprofit groups like City Year is impossible. “We’re lucky if there’s a Boys & Girls Club near a community,” she says. Like many others, Juneau decided to look for additional funds beyond the federal money, particularly for a critical need not covered by the SIG grant: mental health issues. She was able to secure an additional $600,000 state grant. “These are high-poverty areas that need a lot of assistance,” she says. “Mental health has to be a piece of these reforms. It’s basic student needs. You can do all you want with instruction and curriculum, but if you don’t address these issues, that other stuff isn’t going to work. Here, there are students attempting suicide. There are a lot of heavy issues that kids are dealing with.” Teachers, too, need help. “Remember, these communities are really small, isolated, and rural,” Juneau says. “Teachers are dealing with secondary trauma every day.”
RESULTS
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Last November, the Obama administration released what they called an “early snapshot” of the first-year data. It showed that two-thirds of schools receiving SIG funding saw gains in math and in reading, with the biggest gains at elementary schools. A third of SIG schools had declines in achievement. Duncan said of the results, “There’s dramatic change happening in these schools, and in the long-term process of turning around the nation’s lowest-performing schools, one year of test results only tells a small piece of the puzzle.” In February, the Trotter received good news. In 2012, third-grade students in warning on the state’s standardized test in reading dropped to 15 percent, compared with 24 percent last year and 39 percent in 2008. Fifty-two percent of thirdgraders were proficient or proficient plus (the highest level) in reading, up from 20 percent in 2011 and 6 percent in 2008. In North Carolina, Oak Hill Elementary was named High Progress School of the Year in 2012 by the state. State test scores also jumped: 86.9 percent were proficient in math last year, compared with 39 percent in 2008. In reading, 49.9 percent were proficient last year, compared with 24 percent five years ago. Fields also celebrated in February when their state’s test scores came in. Although they were shooting for 3- to 4-percent gains each year of the SIG grant, schoolwide, math proficiency went up 6 percent and reading went up seven. Fifth-grade writing proficiency increased 14 percent. Schools in Montana have progressed less quickly and still lag behind state numbers but are improving. The percentage of 10th-graders in four SIG schools scoring proficient or above on state tests in 2011 was 12.5 percent, compared to 0 percent in 2010. The percentage in the lowest category, novice, dropped from 50.7 in 2010 to 38.8 the next year. Juneau says moving ahead will be difficult, and she has asked the federal government for a one-year extension for schools. Still, she sees progress. “These communities have held together and some things can’t be measured,” she says. “People are starting to feel good about their schools. That’s success. A school board member being able to reach out to a school board liaison and ask a question. That’s success. The barriers between parents and schools breaking down. That’s success.”
In terms of sustainability, one strength for us is that we’ve hired people to work with the schools who are from the community, so they’ll continue to be there, even after the grant ends. They’ll continue to understand the importance of this work.” — Denise Juneau, Ed.M.’94 Nolan, too, defines success in other ways. One afternoon, for example, she was observing a fifth-grade room. The students were bent over their books, a story called Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. “It was one of those moments when you wish someone was with you,” she says. “All of the kids were marking the pages with Post-it notes, with a thought on each page. They were having conversations without the teacher being there. I was flashing back to when I first came to the Trotter, and this just didn’t occur. Children engaging in meaningful conversations about books is really powerful for me. This doesn’t show up on test scores, but it’s exciting.” Ed. Harvard Graduate School of Education
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Photography and Story by Jill Anderson Inside an historic yellow home set back from the road in Freeport, Maine, 15 teenage girls introduce themselves and collectively start to snap their fingers, part in appreciation and part in welcome. The energy is contagious. “You will know how to snap [your fingers] once you leave here,” one girl warns with a smile. At Coastal Studies for Girls (CSG), there is neither angst nor the bored stares one might expect from teenagers. Instead, these girls are engaged, mature, and talkative, and they care about receiving the best education possible. In fact, the latter is what brought these sophomore girls from around the country to attend the nation’s first-ever residential science and leadership semester school for girls. Incorporated in 2005, the 16-week, tuition-based program has become the “life’s work” of Edith Aronson, Ed.M.’97.
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Opening spread: The boots, Edith Aronson, and the school Opposite page: A group banner, life in the dorms, and a singalong with a teacher This page: Writing, reading, and a field trip to see Eartha, the world’s largest rotating globe, located in Yarmouth, Maine
hey are wonderful kids and have a spark because they took the leap to come here,” Aronson says, noting that many of the 15 students discovered the school on their own. “They have this need for self-discovery, and we fuel that fire. We give them a set of tools that they can take back to their own schools and their own lives.” Aronson’s involvement with the school began one summer evening around a campfire as she listened to fellow educators dream about what a school could be. It was there that Pam Erickson spoke passionately about a school focused on science and leadership for high school girls. Erickson, who would go on to start CSG and currently serves as its executive director, hoped to address the plentiful research that documents how teenage girls’ interest in science and math drops off around sophomore year. Aronson perked up with interest. “Pam’s vision was so compelling. I was hooked,” she says. Still, the former public middle school teacher was hesitant to take on the initial role of founding board chair. Despite coming from a family of philanthropists, it was a huge shift in gears. “It’s been great, but the role is not the role of the educator,” she says. “I love teaching. I love working with kids. I love working with other teachers. I have to work pretty hard to stay out of classrooms.” The CSG classroom experience is unique. The Coastal Marine Ecosystems course, for example, relies heavily on using the neighboring ocean and surrounding wild. There are rigorous courses in math, English, foreign language, and history as well. The girls also take a leadership adventure course, designed to cultivate a deeper connection between themselves, others, and the natural world in order to explore their roles in leading change to create a more economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable future. “If I had done this when I was 15, I would’ve had 30 more years of the kind of passion, success, and gratitude that I feel now,” says Aronson. “I tell the girls often how they are getting a head start on what a lot of women struggle to find much later in life.” The all-girls environment adds a special element to their learning. The girls live, sleep, and attend classes together within the same house, where they learn to support one another. Many of the students cite fewer distractions in the all-girl environment. “It’s nice to get the all-girl school where no one judges me,” says Chiara, a student from Ouray, Colo. All girls from across the country are invited to apply for the fall or spring semester of their sophomore year, and the school includes students from public and independent schools, as well as those who are homeschooled. Now with 83 alums in the world, the members of the first cohort are nearing the end of their freshman years in college. And Aronson’s work has evolved, now focused on transitioning the school from startup to mature nonprofit. But her eye remains on the real prize. “From an educator’s perspective, every kid in the country deserves an experience like this one,” she says. “Boys and girls; blacks, whites, and everything in between; wealthy and poor. All kids deserve an educational experience that proves to them that they are valued in the world and that, collectively, they have the passion, creativity, and responsibility to make positive change in the world.” Ed.
Program: Ed.M., Human Development
research areas: Life courses from pregnancy through childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, and mid-life; the influence of reproductive transitions on life course trajectories; class, race, and ethnic disparities in education and health and designing interventions to reduce these disparities; prevention efforts targeting parenting, schooling, community, housing, and work-family balance.
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Ed.M.’70, is a professor of child development at Teachers College and the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, and is director of the National Center for Children and Families. She has been named the recipient of the 2013 HGSE Alumni Council Award. courtesy of teachers college
noteable Jeanne Brooks-Gunn In a career of varied interests, early childhood is at the top of the list for Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Ed.M.’70. That’s why when President Barack Obama spent much of his 2013 State of the Union address talking about the subject, she took notice. “The fact that Obama was speaking about early childhood education and wanting to do more to serve more children is music to my ears, to all of us who are interested in disparities by class and by race and making sure that kids get to school ready to learn,” says Brooks-Gunn. Although, as a life-course developmental psychologist, she was particularly interested in the president’s emphasis on the first five years of a child’s life, as a designer and evaluator of early childhood programs, Brooks-Gunn is now curious about how his focus will affect future policy. Having been involved in many evaluation efforts of federally funded programs, including Early Head Start, Head Start, and the National Evaluation of Home Visiting, Brooks-Gunn knows that any new program put in place, whether it is universal prekindergarten or something else, needs evaluation. “Given focus, can we design effective programs and how do we evaluate them? For whom are they effective?” she asks. “I am very interested in taking what we learn 42
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from our big interventions and improving the programs that exist. If you’ve done your research, you can get hints about how we can make things effective. This makes evaluation research very exciting.” Also exciting is being awarded the 2013 HGSE Alumni Council Award, which she will accept during the Ed School’s Convocation in May. “I’m thrilled and surprised,” Brooks-Gunn says. “I am so honored that I am receiving this award. The Ed School made a huge difference in my life. The Ed.M. Program and its faculty gave me exposure to different ways of looking at children and families and allowed me to find the area I wanted to focus on: making a difference in children’s lives through policy and practice.” Brooks-Gunn remains optimistic that her focus — and the president’s — will continue to make that difference. “I spend a lot of time thinking about disparities in children and what we can do to alter that state of affairs and at what stage of life these interventions would be most effective,” says Brooks-Gunn. “Early childhood seems to be a time at which one can intervene and change trajectories and have long-term effects. … We’d like to reduce disparities as early as possible.” —Marin Jorgensen
alumni ne ws and notes 1959
Allen Ivey, Ed.M.’57, Ed.D., was keynote speaker at the American Counseling Association convention in March 2013, discussing the relationship of neuroscience to counseling. He has written or coauthored more than 40 books translated into 22 languages. He is a distinguished university professor (emeritus) at the University of Massachusetts and a courtesy professor at the University of South Florida.
David Swanger, M.A.T.’64, Ed.D., has been professor emeritus of education and creative writing at the University of California–Santa Cruz since 2005. As the current poet laureate of Santa Cruz County, he is called upon to read and discuss poetry in schools and libraries, at meetings of civic groups, and to commemorate public occasions. Swanger also teaches at the city’s homeless shelter, work that he calls “difficult and humbling.”
Dorothy Kerper Monnelly, Ed.M., recently published her second book of black and white photography, For My Daughters, inspired by the poetry of her mother. In June 2013, she will be exhibiting 11 photographs in the traveling exhibition, Fragile Waters, about the fragile and precious quality of our water resources.
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Daniel DeNicola, Ed.M.’68, Ed.D., has authored the book Learning to Flourish: A Philosophical Exploration of Liberal Education, a comprehensive theory of liberal education, developed dialectically with advocates and critics, philosophers, and educators through the centuries.
Bob Rosenfeld, M.A.T., had his book Statistics for K–8 Educators published in July 2012. This book grew out of his work with the Vermont Mathematics Initiative, a professional development program for teachers housed at the University of Vermont.
1966
Karen Williams Pullen, M.A.T., had her debut mystery novel, Cold Feet, published in January 2013. Mystery writing is Pullen’s fifth career, after teaching math, motherhood, engineering, and innkeeping. She lives in Pittsboro, N.C. For more information, visit karenpullen.com.
1970
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Ed.M., is a professor of child development at Teachers College and the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, and is director of the National Center for Children and Families. She has been named the recipient of the 2013 HGSE Alumni Council Award. (See previous page.)
Leda Schubert, M.A.T., saw her children’s book Monsieur Marceau: Actor Without Words honored as the Orbis Pictus Award for the Best Nonfiction Book of 2012. The award is given by The National Council of Teachers of English.
1973
Samuel Meisels, Ed.M.’69, Ed.D., was named the founding executive director of the University of Nebraska’s Buffett Early Childhood Institute to begin this June 2013. Meisels will make the move to Nebraska from Chicago, where he has served as president of the Erikson Institute, a graduate school in child development, for more than 10 years. John Merrow, Ed.D., was named winner of the 2012 Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education in September 2012.
1975
Ada Demb, Ed.M.’72, C.A.S.’73, Ed.D., is now emeritus faculty at The Ohio State University, College of Education and Human Ecology. Her book, Daring the Doctorate: The Journey at Mid-Career, was released in December 2012.
1977
Randie Gottlieb, Ed.M., recently published the book Teaching Unity: A Guide for Parents and Teachers with Learning Activities for Ages 8–12.
1978
Barbara Frederick Defoe, Ed.M., retired from Boston Public Schools after 30 years of service. Elise Manley-Frangos, Ed.M., graduated from the University of Massachusetts–Lowell Graduate School of Education in May 2012. She is the assistant superintendent for the Old Rochester Regional School District in Massachusetts.
1983
Renu Rose, Ed.M., is the founder and director of SAGE Center for Gifted Children in Boulder, Colo., and Santa Barbara, Calif. — a resource, consulting, assessment, and educational services center to support parents of gifted children seeking guidance.
1984
Tina Henderson, Ed.M., is cofounder of the Girls Center, an organization offering online and afterschool advice and support to teenage girls, touching on topics like self-awareness, body image, relationships, fitting in, and authenticity through creative activities such as yoga, self-portraiture, poetry, and role playing.
1987
Azzedine Downes, Ed.M., is the new president and CEO of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, an international nonprofit dedicated to rescuing and protecting animals around the world based on Cape Cod. He served as the organization’s executive vice president for the past 15 years. Hariclea Zengos, Ed.M., is the associate dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences at
the American College of Greece. She has been living and working in higher education in Greece since 1989.
1988
Guru Kistnasamy, Ed.M., is in private practice as a psychologist in South Africa. He would love to hear from other students.
1991
Donna Burton, Ed.M., is about to complete her Ph.D. in public health after 20-plus years working in community mental health as a clinician, clinical director, and executive director for nonprofits. She was appointed to a faculty position at the University of South Florida and is now teaching and doing research. She writes, “I am thoroughly enjoying the transition from practice to academia.”
1995
Frederick Birkett, Ed.M., pubished his second book, The Military Parent’s Guide to Public, Private, and Charter Schools. He is an instructor at the University of Hawaii–Manoa, College of Education, Institute of Teacher Education. He teaches methods courses and provides field placement to graduate students seeking their master’s degrees and teacher certification in Hawaii. Yi-Fang Evonne Chow, Ed.M., lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan. After teaching for a couple of years, she is currently working as an editor and writer of online course materials.
1996
Carol Pelletier Radford, Ed.D., leads Project SUCCESS: Mentoring in Action Massachusetts! in collaboration with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. The goal of this Race to the Top program is to retain quality teachers and increase success for students through effective mentoring.
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Top 10 Ways For Graduates to Stay In Touch
1 Volunteer 2 updates 3 Submit classnotes Register 4
Attend Askwith Forums on campus or watch them streamed live.
on various alumni committees and programs such SAMI, AAA, or the HGSE Fund. to alumni.harvard.edu and to classnotes@gse.harvard.edu.
with the HAA at alumni.harvard.edu to access the main Harvard alumni directory and receive Harvard-wide news.
5 Network with classmates 6 Subscribe 7 Follow the school 8 Listen to EdCasts 9 Contact 10 Read Ed. and other alums on Facebook and LinkedIn.
to the Ed School’s events calendar and e-newsletters at gse.harvard.edu/alumni_friends. on our Facebook and
Twitter pages.
with education thought leaders via iTunes, Facebook, and the school’s homepage. the alumni office at 617-496-3605 or at gse_alumni_relations@harvard.edu. ,every single issue, front to back.
1997
Heather Leah Ryerson Fountain, Ed.M., received the Council for Exceptional Children, VSA Peter J. Geisser Special Needs Art Educator Award from the National Art Education Association for her exceptional contributions to art education. She is an associate professor of art education and curriculum chair of Kutztown University’s undergraduate art education program. (For a profile, visit www.hvrd.me/14ACRYV.) Donald Heller, Ed.M.’92, Ed.D., dean of the College of Education at Michigan State
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University, has been named to the board of trustees of DePaul University in Chicago. His threeyear term on the board, which serves as the school’s governing body, started in the fall of 2012.
1998
Ted Myers, Ed.M., is senior director of science and technology at the Miami Science Museum. He recently completed a threeyear project on the use of virtual worlds for climate science education for the National Science Foundation’s Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program. Re-
• Summer 2013 • www.gse.harvard.edu/ed
cently, he secured funding from Best Buy Children’s Foundation to open a museum-based Teen Tech Center, a member of Intel Computer Clubhouse Network. Takafumi “Taka” Shimizu, Ed.M., was promoted to professor at Sophia University in Tokyo. He is a coauthor of the Lighthouse English–Japanese Dictionary, which was recently published for Japanese students of English.
1999
Kelly Rain Collin, Ed.M., started Healthy Minds Consulting seven years ago to work with families needing support to advocate for their children’s special education needs. The firm provides educational services for the Juvenile Mental Health Court in Los Angeles County, consultation to the Westside Regional Center/ UCLA Psychiatric Clinic, and training to the Los Angeles area mental health providers on baseline educational advocacy. Tuuli Pesonen McElroy, Ed.M., is the coordinator of cooperative education/internships at Massasoit Community College in Brockton, Mass. She is involved in setting up the Center for Experiential Learning and creating the internship program from the ground up. Rebecca Petersen Mauri, Ed.M., is a research director at edX, leading the Gates-funded community colleges pilot of MOOCs that are being adapted for on-campus use.
2000
Jessica Kagle, Ed.M., is the founder of Kestrel Educational Adventures in Gloucester, Mass., an organization that offers custom-designed, place-based natural history programs to many area schools. She is also a seventh-grade science teacher at the Glen Urquhart School in Beverly, Mass., where her students are raising endangered baby turtles and designing and maintaining a year-round vegetable garden.
2001
Billie Gastic, Ed.M., recently published The Education of the Hispanic Population, a collection featuring the work of more than a dozen Latino scholars — both early-career and established — applying their research expertise to investigate and clarify the educational experiences of Latinos in the United States. Janine Hetherington, Ed.M., is as senior advancement officer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Previously, she was executive director of an international nonprofit that stimulates local economies by developing bicycle tourism and director of institute advancement at a day school in the Berkshires. She also writes, “I found the love of my life in Ben Klompus, Ed.M.’01, and am living ‘happily ever after.’” Matthew Knoester, Ed.M., recently published the book Democratic Education in Practice: Inside the Mission Hill School through Teachers College Press.
2002
Beth Holland Boardman, Ed.M., is working with Justin Reich, Ed.D.’12, at EdTechTeacher. The organization hosted 500-plus educators for the first National iPad Summit in November at Harvard and expected 700-plus in April for the second summit at Georgia Tech.
2003
Rachel Edelman Schechter, Ed.M., just finished her Ph.D. in child development at Tufts University and is a senior research associate at Lexia Learning. Eiko Kato-Otani, Ed.M.’90, Ed.D., was elected president of Osaka Jogakuin University in 2012. Kato-Otani has been working for reforms at the school, including in information technology and educational approaches.
Emily Cain, Ed.M., was elected to the Maine State Senate after completing four terms in the Maine House of Representatives. Additionally, she has been named vice-chair of the New England Board of Higher Education, of which she has been a member since 2005. Kristen Engebretsen, Ed.M., is the arts education program coordinator for the Americans for the Arts Organization. In this role, she works with the Arts Education Network and its elected council to ensure the advancement of arts education throughout the country. Sheeba Jacob, Ed.M., has published, with coauthor Danica Hendrickson, Ed.M.’06, a 24-chapter high school social studies textbook and teacher’s guide on global issues and sustainable solutions. Eve Larner, Ed.M., was named vice president of external affairs and executive director of the Westchester Community College Foundation in Valhalla, N.Y.
2005
Brooke Mosay Ammann, Ed.M., is the director of the Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Immersion Charter School in Wisconsin. Recently, her first- through fifth-graders started a maple sugar camp after a snowshoeing expedition in the woods, and her preschoolers did the school weather forecast for the school news — all in the Ojibwe language. Ellen Godena, Ed.M., is a clinical social worker in the Lunder Inpatient Neurosciences Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She helps patients and families cope with diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative disorders, traumatic brain injury, stroke, aneurysm, and brain cancer. Jessica Pierce, Ed.M., is finishing her first year as a lead
and language arts teacher at the Community Alternative Learning Center in the Forest Grove [Ore.] School District. She is working to develop a projectbased, expeditionary, artsintegrated, and truly alternative curriculum. Emily Sadigh, Ed.M., was selected as a 2012–13 TogetherGreen Conservation Leadership Fellow to apply biomimcry, a new science that uses nature’s models to solve human problems, to organizational innovation. Sadigh completed the Biomimicry Institute’s certificate program in 2012 and will be teaching environmental peer educators in Alameda County, Calif., how to apply lessons from nature to their conservation network. Michael Sadowski, Ed.M.’95, Ed.D., published two books in the winter of 2013: In a Queer Voice: Journeys of Resilience from Adolescence to Adulthood and Portraits of Promise: Voices of Successful Immigrant Students. (See page 20.)
2006
Danica Hendrickson, Ed.M., has published, with coauthor Sheeba Jacob, Ed.M.’04, a 24-chapter high school social studies textbook and teacher’s guide on global issues and sustainable solutions. Chrissy Howard, Ed.M., is head of school at Seven Hills Charter Public School in Worcester, Mass., at which huge improvements in student achievement have been achieved since restructuring to extended day/ extended year. She volunteered at Safe Passage/Camino Seguro in Guatemala City over April vacation. Wenli Jen, Ed.M., is currently serving on the PBS SoCal community council, Los Angeles Country Adolescent Health Collaborative, and Rosemead Educational Foundation. She recently published a chapter in the Asian American anthology, Miso for Life.
courtesy of liz byron
2004
Going the Extra Mile: 155 to Be Exact
She googled “toughest race on earth.” When Liz Byron, Ed.M.’08, found it, she decided she had to do it. Not for herself, but for her students at the Gardner Pilot Academy in Boston. The sixthgraders had to share just four laptop computers among nearly 50 students and Byron wanted to do something about that. So this past April, for six straight days, she ran 155 miles across the Sahara desert in a race called the Marathon de Sables, in sand storms and 100-degree weather. She carried all her supplies — and an issue of Ed. — on her back. Her goal? Not only to finish the race, but to raise money to buy more laptops — enough so that every student was able to use one while at school. Did she do it? Watch a video shot of Byron in Boston, just weeks before the big event, and then check back with the fall issue of Ed. to get your answer.
Donna Macusi Vivar, Ed.M, is an advisor at the University of California–Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design (CED) and was recently awarded the Chancellor’s Outstanding Staff Award. She is also the program coordinator for the CED Admissions Ambassador Internship, a program she founded in 2011, which leads undergraduate admissions outreach efforts for the college. Heidi Whitford, Ed.M., is an assistant professor in the department of organizational learning and leadership at Barry University in Miami. Her specialization is higher education administration.
2007
Alex Wilson, Ed.M.’95, Ed.D., has been involved as an organizer, web administrator, and one of many spokespersons of Idle No More, a movement that educates people about indig-
more online
enous concerns and environmental protection around the world. For more information, visit idlenomore.com. Rodolfo Rivarola, Ed.M., is the academic director of the executive MBA program at IAE Business School in Argentina, working to deliver a four-year project to change the program curricula to one fostering faculty innovation and participant engagement. He is also on the school board and is the academic director of program development and innovation.
2008
Carina Omoeva, Ed.M., is senior education specialist at FHI 360’s Education Policy and Data Center. She encourages educators and researchers to check out the online resource for education data at www.epdc.org.
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2009
Lindsay Meade Bigoness, Ed.M., recently began a new position as senior assistant dean of admission at Princeton University. She previously spent four years at Harvard College admissions. Shannon O’Brien, Ed.M., founded a boutique agency called Whole U. (wholeu.info), advising people on living balanced, purposeful lives. As an image, career, and life strategist, O’Brien connects clients to people, careers, and projects.
2010 Maxie Glass Harnik
2010
Elizabeth Carroll, Ed.M., is a lecturer in Yale’s Education Studies Program. Currently a doctoral candidate at the Ed School, Carroll moved to New Haven, Conn., in 2012 to begin researching the New Haven public school system.
jill anderson
Maxie Glass Harnik, Ed.M., married Evan Harnik in July 2012. In attendance at the wedding were several Harvard graduates including Matt Rowen (HLS), Michael Neff (HLS), and Charles Harris (GSD).
2012
Amanda Hobson, Ed.M., is a first-grade master reading teacher
Novall Khan
at Sanders-Clyde Creative Arts School in Charleston, S.C., and a teacher fellow for StudentsFirst. She fought for StudentsFirst to expand into South Carolina by directly appealing to its founder, Michelle Rhee. Read about her experience at www.studentsfirst.org/ blog/entry/teaching-in-south-carolina. Janhvi Maheshwari Kanoria, Ed.M., is currently working as the director of the office of Sheikha Hind al-Thani, in the Ministry of Education, attempting to reform and improve the education system in Qatar. Molly Levitt, Ed.M., has started BrightLoop, an edtech company that helps teachers to use qualitative observations to better work with their students. Majo Obregón, Ed.M., founded a daycare in Mexico City that combines the Reggio Emilia approach with Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory. Adam Seldow, Ed.M.’03, Ed.M.’08, Ed.D., was awarded the Virginia State Education Technology Leader Award in November 2012. He has continued to work with Professor Chris Dede to support Harvard research
inmemor y Lee Bartlett Jr., GSE’46
John Harrer, GSE’60
Edward Francis Mackin, Ed.D.’68
Lillian Russell Putnam, M.A.T.’46
John Orr, C.A.S.’60
John Davies, Ed.M.’69
Jeanette Cutts, Ed.M.’49
Frank Brown, Ed.M.’52, C.A.S.’61
H. David Fish, Ed.D.’69
Edward Gibbs III, Ed.M.’49
Ann Fessenden Clymer, M.A.T.’61
Judith Haley Murphy, M.A.T.’73
Neale Reinitz, GSE’49
George Gossom Jr., Ed.M.’62
Barbara Jackson, Ed.D.’70
Martha Grenzeback, Ed.M.’52
Walter Koetke Jr., M.A.T.’62
Sandra Broomfield McCray, M.A.T.’70
Dana Eliott, Ed.M.’56
John Newton, M.A.T.’62
Roland Dowell, M.A.T.’66, Ed.D.’71
Nancy Luce, M.A.T.’57
Abigail Eaton Roberts, M.A.T.’62
Dirk Ballendorf, Ed.D.’73
Kenneth Brummel, Ed.M.’59
Grace Kinsey Katz, Ed.M.’63
Raymond Castro, Ed.D.’76
Beverly Busching, Ed.M.’59
Peter Ourusoff, M.A.T.’64
Anthony King, M.A.T.’71, C.A.S.’72, Ed.D.’76
Winifred Griffin, GSE’59
Ellen Ishkanian, M.A.T.’65
Constance Wilson Collins, Ed.M.’79
Edward Hinckley, Ed.M.’59
Richard Fairgrieves, Ed.M.’65
Samuel Robinson II, Ed.M.’88
George Richard Jonelunas, Ed.M.’59
Rita Jones, Ed.M.’66
Alicia Hau Rosa, Ed.M.’85, Ed.D.’89
Rosalind Froug Sommer, Ed.M.’59
Thomas Hart, M.A.T.’67
Arlene Ackerman, Ed.M.’93, Ed.D.’01
Alpheus Rodman Streeter, Ed.M.’59
Dorothy Spencer O’Connor, Ed.M.’67
Karen Ann Wiener, Ed.M.’07, Ed.D.’11
in the Chesterfield County (Va.) public school district.
2011
Ben Banman, Ed.M., began a private behavioral consulting service for families and children with autism — the first if its kind in the province of Manitoba, Canada. He is hoping to enlist undergraduate psychology practicum students to lower the cost of applied behavior analysis services for families who are either ineligible or underserved by our public system. Garron Hillaire, Ed.M., works as an educational software architect at CAST on research
projects, ranging from iPad games and to multimillion-dollar center research grants focusing on technology and analytics. He cofounded Learning Analytics Boston and trycyclegames.com — now working on its second casual mobile educational game. Daniel Morales-Armstrong, Ed.M., is the assistant director of ENLACE, a STEM- and college-preparatory out-of-school program for high-achieving Latino students (grades 7–12) from the Bronx. He was a member of the first graduating cohort of ENLACE in 2006. Maura Wolk, Ed.M., is an instructional designer who
helped develop I-Ready, an online diagnostic and instruction program that helps students pinpoint precise areas of weakness and close the gap to catch up to grade level. Wai Meng Yap, Ed.M., is a deputy principal in a secondary school in Singapore. He is attending a principalship training program to learn school leadership skills.
2012
Novall Khan, Ed.M., recently programmed and published the iPhone application ThoughtCloud, which promotes healthy stress reduction through a
mindfulness-based approach and was designed using a universal design for learning framework. For more information, visit www.novall.org. Megan Marcus, Ed.M., founded FuelEd Schools one month after graduating last year. Its mission is to strengthen teacher preparation, quality, and retention by equipping teachers with the social and emotional competencies essential to building relationships in schools.
v send updates and photos to classnotes@gse.harvard.edu
Where’s Ed.? 2
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Where’s Ed.? In this issue, Ed. sees sunny skies, sunny stars, and sunny flowers. Don’t you want to shine, too? Email high-resolution images with background information to classnotes@gse.harvard.edu. 1 Peggi Watson, Ed.M.’76, in Israel. 2 Jazz legend Wynton Marsalis caught up with Ed. when he visited the Ed School. 3 Julie Lineberger, Ed.M.’82, in front of the Annapurna Mountain Range in Nepal.
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Crisscross Kathy Kathy was always a big supporter of Ed. magazine, especially Recess, the one-pager that comes at the end of the magazine and looks at something connected to the Ed School that is fun or lighthearted. Whenever we were brainstorming ideas for a new issue, her first question was usually, “What do you have for Recess?” and would then give us two or three great ideas she had been thinking about. With this in mind, we thought it was only fitting that Kathy be the Recess star in this issue, her last as dean. See answers on opposite page.
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2 A duck’s beak, or the name of her husband. 3 The B-52s song she can’t escape. 6 Where you might find her on a warm afternoon this summer. 10 Her undergraduate major at Tufts. 11 The one answer Kathy expects to be on this crossword puzzle. 13 Newspaper that named her one of 30 most innovative people in Massachusetts in 2011. 14 She has two of these, her prized possessions. 16 Chair she holds here. 19 A Susan Orleans topic, or Kathy’s favorite flower. 21 Favorite snack. 22 Acronym for the university where she taught before Harvard. 23 Profession of her husband.
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Her teacher of what instrument set her up on a date with her husband. Character from a popular kids’ book and movie series that Kathy mentioned in a recent Convocation speech. They lived on the second floor of her family’s house when she was growing up. Where she got her Ph.D. Will Smith said they just don’t understand, or the popular magazine that Kathy advises. Town with her favorite beach. Where we all want to go, or the pond behind the president’s house at Smith. Caribbean island where she worked from 1980–1981 as a child psychologist. Number of years working at the Ed School. Friday he’s in love, or the school Kathy will soon call home. A certain Sesame Street book, a favorite of her daughters, features this furry monster. She’s lived in houses, apartments, and condos, but never one of these.
in v es ti n g
Daniel Vasconcellos
Class Gift Campaign: Two Deans Challenge Students As she prepares to head west to Smith College, Dean Kathleen McCartney is working to leave her successor a gift: a strong base of financial support for future students. And she hopes that HGSE’s soon-to-be alumni will help lead the way. McCartney has issued a challenge as part of the HGSE Fund’s 2013 class gift campaign: If 80 percent of the class contributes, McCartney will contribute $2,013 in their honor. When Administrative Dean Jack Jennings heard of McCartney’s plan, he offered to match her gift with $2,013 of his own, bringing the matching pledge total to $4,026. “I was thrilled,” says class gift committee chair Evan Walker, Ed.M.’13, of the double challenge pledge. “It’s incredible to be so strongly supported by our top administrators. Students have been very humbled by the deans’ generosity.” Last year, the class of 2012 achieved 76 percent participation in its class gift campaign, building on the success of the class of 2011, which achieved 67 percent participation. For the last four years, class gift funds have been earmarked for unrestricted financial aid, helping ensure that future classes will receive support for their studies at the Ed School. The gift campaign also involves a friendly competition among programs. In 2012, three master’s cohorts — Higher Education, Learning and Teaching, and Special Studies — achieved 100 percent participation. Throughout McCartney’s time as dean, she has made financial aid a top priority, more than doubling aid for Ed.M. students, increasing guaranteed funding for Ed.D. students from one to five years, and ensuring three years of fellowship funding for Ed.L.D. students. McCartney praised donors who help cover the costs of an Ed School degree. “No one pays the full cost of studying here,” McCartney says, reminding students that the Ed School’s endowment covers only about 30 percent of annual operating expenses. Even with funding, a Harvard education doesn’t come cheap, as McCartney says. “I know many of you have made
significant financial sacrifices to study here,” she wrote to students in a March appeal. This is why she also told students that it’s not the size of the gift that matters — it’s the act of giving. McCartney urged alumni to join students in giving to the Ed School, saying, “If our 25,000 alumni each contributed $100 to the annual fund each year, we would have an additional $2.5 million in financial aid money.” A gift of $50 or $100 may not seem like much, but the cumulative power of such gifts can be transformative, she says. — Katie Gibson
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To read Ed. online, go to www.gse.harvard.edu/ed.
matthew weber
You never know who you’ll find visiting an Ed School class. In February, Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund and a former aide to Martin Luther King Jr., was a guest in The Workplace Lab for System-Level Leaders, a class for first-year Ed.L.D. students taught by Senior Lecturer Deborah Jewell-Sherman, Ed.M.’92, Ed.D.’95. Before leaving Cambridge, Edelman (who visited the school again in March to receive the 2013 Medal for Education Impact) was also a guest during an EdCast (her second since 2011). She talked about school violence and protecting children, and even had time to read through an entire issue of what we know must be her favorite magazine, Ed.