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Dean
Jon Snyder: Transforming Teacher Education at Bank Street
by
Sybil Maimin
In
a recent conversation with Education Update, Jon Snyder,
Dean of the Graduate School of Education at Bank Street College,
enthusiastically described two current initiatives, the Kerlin
Science Institute and Teachers for a New Era, that illustrate
Bank Street’s mission to “discover the environments in which
children grow and learn to their full potential, and to educate
teachers and others to create these environments.” Founded
in 19l6 during the Progressive era when reform in education
was a popular goal, Bank Street has continued to seek a “better
type of education” that is “child-centered, humane, and interactive.” Its
innovative approaches influence thousands of teachers and students
through its graduate school of education, model School for
Children, and countless collaborations and partnerships with
schools and colleges. Dean Snyder has contributed to the dialogue
through his research and extensive writings on teacher development,
exemplary practices, and assessment.
Funded
by an endowment from Gil and Sally Kerlin, the Kerlin Science
Institute seeks to improve the teaching of science by, first,
equipping teachers with a sound grounding in subject content
and, then, helping them discover how to most effectively convey
this knowledge to students. Each year, a different science
discipline is taught. This first year focused on physics. The
17 participants—teachers from around the city, teachers from
the Bank Street model school, and Bank Street graduate students—immersed
themselves in a rigorous three-week, eight-hour a day, summer
physics course taught by Professor Richard Steinberg of City
College. In a follow-up, year long, once a month practicum,
the teachers are exploring how to best teach the subject; each
will develop a 3 to 4 week new unit on physics. Why physics
for the inaugural program? Dr. Snyder explained that middle
school standards have a great deal of physics and that in interviews
he discovered a “subculture of physicists interested in experiential
learning.” One of the summer experiments, utilizing convex
and concave mirrors, dealt with light—how does it get reflected,
how does it bend. The questions then posed of teachers was:
where would you place reflectors and solar heating panels on
a house and why. It is hoped that the Kerlin program, which
emphasizes subject content as the entry point to teaching science
and inquiry-based learning, will become a model for melding
hard science and pedagogy.
In
another exciting initiative, Bank Street College is proud to
be one of 11 sites chosen (the only one in New York) for Teachers
for a New Era (TNE). Funded by the Carnegie Foundation, with
help from the Ford, Annnenberg, and Rockefeller foundations,
TNE seeks to define good teaching and learning and develop,
in a systematic way, proven, excellent teacher education programs.
Data collected from actual classroom observation of exemplary
teachers with track records of success will be compared with
current theory and teacher education models. Good teaching
involves being able to achieve concrete goals as well as articulate
abstract principles. A successful student who gets a “right” answer
will also understand underlying relationships. “Educators need
to be more systematic and rigorous in the collection of hard
data,” underscores Dean Snyder. Based on investigations of
actual classroom practice, assessments over time of graduates’ impacts
on student achievement, and input from subject matter specialists,
teacher-training models will be transformed to produce better
teachers and students. “One of the exciting concepts we’ve
proposed and implemented blurs the distinctions between professors
and teachers in a district. In Region 9, a Bank Street professor
becomes a school faculty member. There is a sharing and clustering
of resources. Coaches wear two hats: they are mentors to teachers
as well as teachers for children. “Institutionally, significant
changes are happening,” exclaimed the dean. This is an exciting
time for Bank Street. Keep tuned.#
Education
Update, Inc., P.O. Box 1588, New York, NY 10159.
Tel: (212) 477-5600. Fax: (212) 477-5893. Email: ednews1@aol.com.
All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express consent of
the publisher. © 2003.
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