Curriculum Reflections

I am a seasoned and a highly creative, collaborative professional, and the only reason I have not been on the job market for some time is because I found St. Luke's when I first moved to New York City. This wonderful school afforded me the opportunity to remake the history curriculum and innovate in the areas of technology and community service. I also had the right conditions in which I could serve the larger New York City and global community in human rights and artistic endeavors. The school provided a platform for professional and creative growth that I might not have had in a larger institution. In addition, I wore many hats within the school. I undertook a number of administrative roles, although St. Luke's is too small for me to have held a particular post. You can see a list of these roles in my resume and in my online portfolio. In a bigger school, there is no doubt that I would have been a curriculum coordinator, a department chair, a dean, or a community service director. Incidentally, I have never been interested in leaving the classroom. I also would most surely have taught one or more high school courses, as I have always been a specialist in adolescence, as much as I have been passionately devoted to history. I am therefore interested in teaching a high school course in the future should this possibility arise, although I am firmly committed to the importance of middle school education. When I was in Japan this summer working with two former students, now in high school, on a history project with Japanese high school students, they both asked why I didn't teach high school. I told them it was because only "the chosen" could handle middle school! However, I knew I was restless for some sort of change.

I am proud of my accomplishments in and outside of the classroom. With the support of grants from St. Luke's School, I have collaborated with my brother on several award-winning films, two in Vietnam, and one more recently about migrant workers in Florida, which I produced and translated. This film was just chosen for the juried portion of the Ann Arbor Film Festival this month, the longest-running independent and experimental film festival in North America. This film project began with my collaboration with Amnesty International and the Speak Truth to Power project. It became an ongoing part of our curriculum as our students wrote countless letters of advocacy over the years; workers from Mexico and Guatemala visited my students on our annual Human Rights Day, affirming our school's commitment to the United Nations Millennium Goals to eradicate extreme poverty locally and globally, both through this kind of advocacy and in the food pantry service work I coordinate.

I am confident that my intellectual preparation and pedagogical experience are very compatible with any new curriculum I would need to adapt to or create. As a young woman, I had planned to work in politics and the foreign service, and my coursework led me to international studies and travel, including internships not only in the U.S. Congress but also at the British Parliament in London. While living in Europe, I also spent time in the Soviet Union, and on my return, I double majored in political science and history, with a specialization in the Cold War/socialism/Soviet Union, the Middle East, and Latin America. Midway through graduate school, I decided that education was more suited to me than politics. I also received the Truman Scholarship, a four-year fellowship for public service, and it was teaching that I settled on to fulfill that requirement.

I have taught a wide range of subjects to middle and high school students and have a strong background in world, European, and American history. I believe in depth as well as breadth; in fact, I am increasingly convinced that depth is more important. Even the new A.P. U.S. history exam has been revamped to reflect this orientation. In our recent studies of the Renaissance in Grade 7, I shared excerpts from Machiavelli's The Prince; earlier in the unit, I hosted an Italian poet who not only read from her own work but also dissected The Inferno and read a portion of Dante's 14th century text to us. With 8th graders, I also do a study of revolutions and decolonization, comparing the independence of the 13 Colonies, India, and Algeria. Recently, some of my former students in high school emailed me during the revolution in Egypt, commenting about how this unit had prepared them for understanding the events in Cairo. My curriculum includes an in-depth history of Islam, augmenting Euro-centric studies of the Middle Ages with a global look at this period; our studies include a visit to congregational prayers at the mosque at 97th Street. This year, the Islam curriculum culminated in social media websites about human rights in the Middle East, coincidentally at the same time as the current revolutions in the Arab world. Later this year, our partnership with a high school that serves immigrant student in Queens will be featured in a film on PBS; this relationship has enhanced our studies of human rights, current events, and immigration. I also have a strong and abiding passion for American history, especially for the Constitution. All my 8th graders can dissect it line by line; they completed extensive projects on landmark Supreme Court cases on juvenile rights. I fervently believe that all middle school students need a firm grounding in American civics. I have been a consultant for Facing History and Ourselves, and I am committed to my discipline as a field in which critical thinkers and writers are trained as the ethical decision-makers of tomorrow. At a workshop I organized at my school last spring, and in travels this summer, I worked with some of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In August, I also made a presentation to the Japanese national teachers' union about how history teachers need to use complex primary documents that may even provoke controversy, challenging students to think and feel deeply if we are to make a better world. The dialog that ensued with my fellow teachers was one of the most inspiring of my career.

I am very interested in adapting my curriculum and pedagogy, and this year has been a breakthrough one for me, from adding Noodle Tools (just last month), to building websites with my students (in January), to adding a Twitter account (just last week). These technologies, and the accompanying pedagogies that are really not so new but are now made more powerful, enable me to serve a wide range of students and allow all young people to experience success. I am dazzled at how many new experts I now have in my classroom; students and teachers must collaborate on both content and skills, working together to create the learning environment. In addition to digital innovation, I still believe that the core of what a history teacher does is to teach thinking, writing, reading, and research skills, using the best technologies and practices available. I recently read a report from NAIS about 21st century schools, and how we as independent school educators should be in the vanguard, adapting and changing because the world is changing. I think both middle school and high school educators should be at the forefront of those changes, not just teachers in the elementary school. Independent schools can and should be the laboratory of best practices, and I am intrigued about the possibility of working in an environment that encourages excellence, celebrates diversity, and demands that each student develop a sense of purpose about his or her place in the world.