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Nominate faculty for the Weiss Award for Excellence in Teaching. (Read More)

Attend the Education Alumni Luncheon May 1st . (Read More)


Events and Activities


Wednesday, April 7th Book Talk with Professor Tatyana Kleyn

Prof. Tatyana Kleyn
Professor Tatyana Kleyn

Professor Tatyana Kleyn will hold a talk on her newly released, co-authored book, "Teaching in Two Languages: A Guide for K-12 Bilingual Educators" on Wednesday, April 7th from 5-7pm in NAC 4/220B. The event, which will be followed by a reception, will feature an overview of the book, practical advice for teachers and teacher educators, and a Q&A session about the book topics and the state of bilingual education. All are invited.


Tuesday, April 14th The Doyle and Alba Bortner Distinguished Speaker Series in Urban Education: Professor Amy Stuart Wells

Professor Amy Stuart Wells

The first speaker in this series is Professor Amy Stuart Wells, professor of Sociology and Education at Teachers College-Columbia University. Professor Wells presentation is entitled: "Metro Migrations, Racial Segregation, and School Boundary Lines: How Separate and Unequal Educational Opportunities Defy Efforts to 'Lift All Boats' via the Standards and Accountability Movement". Her research and writing has focused broadly on issues of race and education and more specifically on educational policies, such as school desegregation, school choice, charter schools, and tracking, and how they shape and constrain opportunities for students of color. She is the recipient of several honors and awards, including a 2001-02 Fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation's Scholars Program; the 2000 Julius & Rosa Sachs Lecturer, Teachers College-Columbia University; and the 2000 AERA Early Career Award for Programmatic Research. The event will be held in the Faculty Dining Room, 3rd floor of the North Academic Center from 5:00-6:15 with reception to follow immediately after. All are invited.


Wednesday, April 21st “Surviving Your First Year Teaching: 'Effective
Classroom Management Strategies that Create Safe, Nurturing, and
Productive Classroom Communities'”

Professors Beverly Falk & Jesus Fraga
Professors Denise McLurkin & Jan Valle

Professors Jesús Fraga (Bilingual Education and TESOL), Beverly Falk (Early Childhood Education), Jan Valle (Childhood Education), and Denise McLurkin will conduct an interactive workshop and presentation on Effective Classroom Management Strategies that Create Safe, Nurturing, and Productive Classroom Communities. Come and learn best practices, strategies, and management techniques to make your classroom environment immediately more productive and rewarding for you and your students. This session will be on Wednesday, April 21, 2010 from 5:00 pm-7:00 pm in NAC 1/203. Registration is required and space is limited. Register at bilingual@ccny.cuny.edy no later than Wednesday, April 14th 2010. Light refreshments will be served. Alumni welcome to share their personal stories.


Tuesday, May 1st Education Alumni Awards Luncheon

This year’s CCNY Education Alumni Awards Luncheon will be held on Saturday, May 1st at the National Arts Club in New York City. Please plan on attending and help us honor our 2010 Distinguished Partner in Education– Mr. Josh Weston and our 2010 Distinguished Educator– Dr. Guillermo Linares. We will also be honoring CCNY Alumni who are Outstanding Teachers and Administrators in elementary, middle and high schools. Mail your check for $85 for each luncheon ticket to: Alumni Association of CCNY, P.O. Box 177, New York, NY 10027. Call 212-234-3000 for additional ticket information. For questions contact Dr. Bruce M. Billig at: bbillig@ccny.cuny.edu. For the Awards Luncheon Invitation, click here. To read more about the Luncheon from Dr. John Lee, click here.


Technology Workshops in April/May

Dr. Sheila Gersch

Dr. Sheila Gersh will offer the three separate technology integration workshops described below (on a space available basis) at no cost. Each workshop is from 8:30 am to 3:00 pm. Please contact sgersh@ccny.cuny.edu for room information and to register. Workshops are designed for School of Education students, faculty, staff, alumni and teachers in collaborating schools.

Wednesday, April 14th “Preparing Instruction for and Using the SmartBoard” Engage your students by using the SmartBoard. Bring online resources into your classroom and learn to create lessons and activities based upon SmartBoard’s NoteBook 10 software.

Tuesday, April 27th “Engage your Students with Digital Stories” Use computer based multimedia tools to tell powerful stories or highlight important instructional ideas. Plan, storyboard and prepare a digital story based on a personal experience or a poem. Plan and produce a digital story introducing a science unit. Find images on the Web and publish your digital stories using PowerPoint, MovieMaker and/or PhotoStory.

Wednesday, May 19th “Using PowerPoint Presentations in the Classroom” Enhance your PowerPoint presentations with sound, images, animation, narration and video. Explore different ways of using PowerPoint and find PowerPoint resources online. Develop a PowerPoint presentation for your students. Learn to guide students to do their own PowerPoint presentations in order to share their project results and other work with their classmates.

Tuesday, May 25th “Using WebQuests with Your Class” Explore the WebQuest library of resources and learn the process of creating a WebQuest. Create a WebQuest for your class to do.


For Other Events At CCNY See: http://www1.ccny.cuny.edu/current/events/index.cfm

For Directions to the Campus See: http://www1.ccny.cuny.edu/prospective/about/directions.cfm


News and Notes


Acting Dean Doris Cintron featured in Education Update

Acting Dean Doris Cintron was recently interviewed by Education Update. To see that article click here.


Publications and Grants

Prof. Valle
Professor Jan Valle

Professor Jan W. Valle has co-authored with David Connor: Rethinking disability: A disability studies approach to inclusive practices, a new volume in The Practical Guide Series--a book series dedicated to mentoring novice teachers in the field. Each chapter opens with a question posed to the authors by students in their graduate education classes and closes with a series of questions to promote individual reflection and/or discussion within venues such as a school-based study group, faculty meeting, professional development workshop, or education course. Grounded in Disability Studies theory, Rethinking Disability addresses three broadly defined aspects of inclusion. The first section asks the reader to pause and reflect upon the origins of his or her knowledge about disability and the beliefs and values that undergird it; the second section describes how to create and sustain classrooms in which all children can participate and the third section presents disability as an aspect of diversity to be represented, talked about, and celebrated in the classroom and the community.

Professor Valle also has four chapters and two journal articles in press and will be travelling to Ghent, Belgium in May to present at a conference.

 

Professor Shira Eve Epstein

Professor Shira Eve Epstein entered a learning partnership with the Kettering Foundation to study how civic education is understood and experienced by secondary teachers and students. She is presently working with a group of seventh grade teachers as they consider the possibilities of centering local civic issues in their curriculum and promoting students' research, deliberation, and writing about them. Such curricula address issues related to urban development, environmental justice, inequity in schools, and the list goes on.

Professor Epstein’s new project builds on her prior work on social action literacy projects. This past fall, she published an article that illustrates how these projects can stimulate students' political imaginations while scaffolding opportunities for literacy development. You can find it in English Journal – a National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) publication. This upcoming spring, she will present a paper at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual meeting on how youth workers from non-profit organizations can support social action and civic engagement in schools. She looks forward to pursuing future projects that illustrate how teachers and students take action around relevant social problems during the school day.

 

Professor Emeritus Sigmund Tobias

Professor Emeritus Sigmund Tobias (with T.D. Duffy) recently edited Constructivist instruction: Success or failure? published by Routledge, Taylor and Francis (2010). He also authored or co-authored two chapters in that book: 1) An eclectic appraisal of the success or failure of constructivist instruction and 2) The success or failure of constructivist instruction: An introduction. An excerpt of the volume's first review by Thomas C. Reeves published in the March-April, 2010, Vol. 50, No. 2, issue of Educational Technology concludes: "… the bottom line is that I highly recommend this book to everyone in the field of educational technology, regardless of their 'bent' for or against constructivist learning environments. (Read More)


Education Alumni Sponsored Interactive Education Jobs Conference


On Thursday, March 11th, 2010, the Education Alumni of the Alumni Association of CCNY, proudly presented a Conference entitled "Getting a Job in the Age of Accountability: Finding an Education Position in this Recession", a well-received event, attended by more than 150 undergraduate and graduate education students as well as alumni. The Conference was an interactive group experience, co-sponsored by the CCNY Leadership Program. It featured a panel of education experts, student generated FAQ'S, small group discussions with feedback, and distribution of helpful employment resource materials.

The many participants were warmly welcomed by Dr. John Lee, President of the Education Alumni Association, Dean Doris Cintron, Acting Dean of the School of Education, Dr. Joyce Coppin, Distinguished Lecturer, Educational Leadership Program Head and Ms. Renee Pollack, Education Alumni, Board of Directors. The hopeful and upbeat atmosphere shaped by real-life stories as well as the CCNY alumni, guest panelists, faculty and leadership students facilitating roundtable discussions focused on a wide range of practical employment strategies. Important information, ideas, suggestions and answers to FAQs were recorded and reported by each table and will be made available on the School of Education web site.

The timeliness of the topic, expert advice and lively exchanges clearly resonated positively with participant attendees as indicated in their written evaluations which will serve as a road map for future planning. Kudos to all who joined forces to plan and present this relevant, practical and inspiring event to benefit aspiring teachers begin their educational careers.


“In Defense of Children” Conference Offers Inspiration

 

On March 13, 2010 over 400 people braved what Con Edison called "the worst storm in 30 years" to attend "In Defense of Childhood: Play and Active Learning in Urban Schools," an all-day conference convened by Beverly Falk, Professor and Program Director of the Graduate Programs in Early Childhood Education and William Crain, Professor in the Psychology Department. The conference was organized in response to educators' growing concerns about how our society's increasing demands for academic achievement are restricting opportunities for children to have the active experiences that research has shown is what they need in order to learn. The conference offered research about how children learn, teaching strategies to support effective learning, and tips for how to advocate for schooling and policies that best nurture children's development.

Funding to present this free event was provided by CCNY Interim President Robert Paaswell and the CCNY Auxiliary Enterprise Corporation, the CCNY School of Education Retired Faculty Association, and the non-profit children's educational materials company Community Playthings. Co-sponsors also included The Alliance for Childhood, the New York City Early Childhood Professional Development Institute, and the Child Development Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. The conference keynote was given by Joan Lombardi, Deputy Assistant Secretary and Inter-Departmental Liaison for Early Childhood Development, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Morning and afternoon workshop sessions included engaging presentations from representatives of the American Museum of Natural History, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Media, the Bronx Zoo, the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, the CCNY School of Architecture, the CUNY Graduate Center, and many others, including CCNY School of Education faculty and graduates.

Attendees reported that they took away hope and inspiration from the day as well as a feeling of "knowing that when I enter the teaching field, I will become part of a community that strives to provide the best learning opportunities for children.”


Help us Identify Excellent SOE Professors

Established last year through a gift to the School of Education from former Professor Alfred Weiss and his wife Miriam, the Weiss Award for Excellence in Teaching seeks to recognize excellence in teaching by School of Education professors. This year the award will be based both on your nominations and by the end-of- term teacher rating data that is routinely collected. Your participation in helping us select this year’s award recipient is important to us. Your nominations will be kept confidential. To nominate School of Education professors that you feel were excellent, please take a few minutes to respond to our brief online survey at SurveyMonkey. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2YDNC6F . Responses must be received by April 15th.


Retired Faculty News

Four retired faculty members have formed the City College School of Education Retired Faculty Association in an effort to reconnect retired faculty with the School of Education and encourage them to contribute their ideas and resources to further the work of the School of Education. From time to time, CONNECTED will publish a piece entitled Retired Faculty News.

From Alfred Weiss (CCNY ’45; retired 1986): “I am a member of several NGO committees at the UN--mainly family, ageing and mental health. Also, I’m getting around to several plays, operas and concerts. Now, following the dire straits in Haiti and trying to be of some help--if only to donate to organizations. Of course the continuing interest in our School of Ed and helping as best I can and I continue to work as a psychotherapist”.

From Julie Rosen (retired 1990): “For the last few years I have been studying both psychology and finance. For the average investor there is a lot of financial noise which causes confusion. It is not only important to know how to read a balance sheet, but it is also as important to know yourself. This is not emphasized in the world of investing because experts want you to rely upon their advice. So, I want to pass along an important piece of information - don't assume you know yourself as an investor. Your fantasies can get you into trouble. In June I will be 75 and I am very mature for my age.

From Norman Shapiro (retired 1995): “Retiring early allowed me to stay on at City College where I continued to work full-time on grant supported projects for the Center for School Development. I’m also involved in developing resources for the School of Education and writing/editing CONNECTED, which is sent to nearly 10,000 students, faculty members, alumni, staff in surrounding schools and friends of the School of Education”.

From James Shields (retired-1998): “Since retirement, I have served as a Project Coordinator, in the Center for Educational Outreach and Innovation (CEO&I) at Teachers College Columbia which has involved coordinating the TC Book Talks; developing lifelong learning courses on "Sacred Architecture and Education" and a "Great Spiritual Book Series," Visiting Professor to give the yearly Comparative and International Education course and a member of the Alumni Council starting in the 1990s. I also organized a three part series, funded by the Tokyo Foundation, for university administrators from around the world, on "Internationalizing Higher Education", an outreach series on "Sacred Architecture and Art and Cultural Meaning", and a study trip abroad centered in Umbria, Italy”.

From Sigmund Tobias: Lora and I live happily in the Berkshires, about 15 minutes from Tanglewood… the summer cultural capital of the country… with recitals, lots of theatre, dance, three world class museums, and excellent restaurants.… Lora takes many courses, and I take an occasional one, at the Osher Life Long Learning Institute up here. We also organize the Distinguished Lecture series for the Institute, scheduling about a lecture each month. .. I ski two or three mornings a week in the winter, and we take several trips a year totaling about a month. I have a mainly honorary connection with the Educational Psychology program at SUNY Albany, work with some students and faculty, and get to campus about once a month. I speak occasionally about the refugees who fled from the Holocaust to China following the publication of a paperback version of my memoir (Strange Haven. A Jewish Childhood in Wartime Shanghai, Univ. of Illinois Press, 2009).


April’s Web Sites of Interest

  1. http://learningscience.org/index.htm a “free and open learning community for sharing newer and emerging tools for teaching science” has a lot of free, interesting resources for science teachers.
  2. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/03/07/magazine/20100307-teacher-videos.html#/readingaloud The New York Times Magazine Section of March 7, 2010 had a much discussed article entitled “Building a Better Teacher: Can Good Teaching Be Learned?. This site takes you to the article and provides a set of brief video examples of what Doug Lemov argues are good teaching techniques. In April, according to the article, his book “Teach Like a Champion: The 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College” is being released.
  3. http://dir.yahoo.com/education/journals/ This Yahoo directory links you with twenty seven online education journals. If you search “online education journals” you will find many more, for example the following find for refereed journals- http://marauder.millersville.edu/~curricul/Refereed.htm

To Our Readers: Please contribute some of your favorite and useful web sites to: connected@ccny.cuny.edu.

Volume 6 #1 of The New Educator is Now Online
www1.ccny.cuny.edu/prospective/educator/theneweducator/upload/ToC61.pdf

 


Accepting Applications for Fall 2010

The CCNY Graduate School of Education is currently accepting applications for the fall 2010 admissions period.

Application Program Deadlines:

  • Early Childhood Education - April 15th
  • Childhood Education - closed
  • Bilingual/TESOL/Bil Special Ed - closed
  • Science Education - April 15th
  • Social Studies Education - April 15th
  • Art Education - April 15th
  • Mathematics Education - closed
  • Educational Theatre - March 15th
  • English Education - April 15th
  • Special Education - April 15th
  • Educational Leadership - June 30th
  • Literacy - April 15th

For information on programs and requirements, we invite you to visit http://www2.ccny.cuny.edu/prospective/education/newprograms.cfm or e-mail your questions to edgradadm@ccny.cuny.edu.


Send your comments on CONNECTED to connected@ccny.cuny.edu

Calendar of Events at City College | CCNY School of Education