Innovator Spring 2011

8/6/2019 Innovator Spring 2011

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innovatorSPRING 2011

In ThIs Issue

Takig Lessos fom Medical Educatio

Supply ad Demad i Matematics Educa

Te Pomiece of Commuity Colleges

…ad moe.



Dean’s note 1

the whoLe Is GReateR than the sUM oF

Its PaRts 2

new teachInG InteRns PLeDGe to UPhoLD

ethIcaL obLIGatIons oF teachInG 8

woRKInG both sIDes: 10

sUPPLy anD DeManD In MatheMatIcs eDUcatIon

the eLePhant In the RooM: 14

coMMUnIty coLLeGes anD hIGheR eDUcatIon

coMMUnIty coLLeGe InteRDIscIPLInaRy

ReseaRch FoRUM 18

stUDyInG teacheR/stUDent InteRactIons In

coMMUnIty coLLeGe cLassRooMs 20

onLIne teachInG Lessons FoR

In-cLassRooM ReaDInG Lessons 22

aLUMnI PRoFILe: DennIs LIttKy 2

cLass notes 27

snaPshots 28

awaRDs

UntIL next tIMe 32

IN thIS ISSue

2

14

24

10

On ThE COvEr: Photos by Kathryn Young, Mike Gould, and Mike Mouradian



U N I V E R S I T Y O F M I C H I G A N S C H O O L O F E D U C A T I O N 1

Tis winter at the School o Education, we completed a

year-long strategic assessment and planning process. We

have decided on the core priorities that will shape our

agenda or the coming decade and guide our development

as a proessional school o education. Troughout all that

we do, we are committed to the study and improvement o

educational practice, and to the advancement o diversity and

equity. Tese two commitments anchor the nature, ocus, andgoals o our academic programs, our scholarship, and the

leadership we seek to provide.

Seeking to improve education practice entails working in

real settings—with practitioners, in schools and in other

education settings, as well as with policymakers and others.

We work in schools and on campuses to provide training or

our students; we also work in these settings as we engage in

design and research. For us, this is the analog to the “clinical”

portion o the medical school’s work. Practice is undamental

to our academic programs, our research, and our leadership

as education scholars and proessionals. As such, it cuts across

all that we do.

Our aculty and students are deeply and increasingly involved

in practice—or example, through work in schools or the

teacher education program; new partnerships with schools,

districts, and community colleges; integrated summer

programs or children and proessionals; collaborative

research projects together with practitioners; proessional

programs or university leaders rom other countries; service

as members and chairs o national panels and commissions;

consultants to policymakers and practitioners; and a host o

other projects.

DEAN’S NOTE

Challenging our commitment to diversity and equity in

education are contradictions embedded in our society and

culture that reect themselves in education and its outcomes.

We live in an increasingly diverse and deeply inequitable

society. So, on one hand, we seek to develop ways to work

to support and make usable the positive educational and

social resources o diversity. On the other hand, we also aim

to redress the inequities that result rom social, cultural,and economic dierences. Diversity is both an asset and the

source o deep societal and educational inequities, and we

think it is crucial that our work take active and deliberate

account o both.

Tis issue o Innovator reects these two core commitments.

Our ocus on educational practice is demonstrated in

the articles on the Learning and eaching the Disciplines

through Clinical Rounds project, “Te Whole is Greater Tan

the Sum o Its Parts,” and on the Case Studies o Reading

Lessons (CSRL) program, “Online eaching Lessons or In-

Classroom Reading Lessons.” Our work on diversity and

equity is highlighted in the articles on the Algebra Project,

“Working Both Sides: Supply and Demand in Mathematics

Education,” and on community colleges, “Te Elephant in the

Room: Community Colleges and Higher Education.” Please

let us know your reactions to what you read in these pages,

and thank you or your support o our work.

DEBORAH LOEWENBERG BALL



2 W W W. S O E . U M I C H . E D U S P R I N G 2 0 1 1

From let: School o Education teaching interns Jonathan Blaha, Nicholas Olson, Angela Jeon, and feld instructor Michelle Nguyen,

who is a doctoral student in educational studies.




Sum of its parts

Each September, throughout the United States, thousands o brand-new teachers

step into their very rst middle school or high school classrooms. No one,

not the novice teachers nor their veteran colleagues, not the school districts,

and certainly not the parents o their young students, wants the teachers to be

anything other than ully trained and prepared. But how does a new teacher, who

may have just received her bachelor’s degree two or three months previously,

enter the classroom ready and able to teach eectively?

eachers are exceptions to the orthodox opinion regarding those earning liberal

arts bachelor’s degrees. Tese degrees are generally not considered vocational—

instead, it’s thought that they provide broad knowledge across a spectrum:

science, mathematics, English, history, etc., combined with deeper expertise in a

major eld. And even though a bachelor’s degree is a prerequisite or many jobs,

most employers understand that the newly graduated employee is going to need

additional job-specic training and will continue to learn—and that they may

not reach their ull potential or some time. It’s a time-honored system in which

the ocus is on workers’ potential, rather than on their current abilities.

The

Whole is greater than the

The Learning and Teaching the Disciplines through ClinicalRounds project produces better teachers by connecting—

and improving—disparate parts of teacher preparation.




But we can’t apply this model to teachers. Te stakes are too high and

we cannot allow children to be at risk while new teachers learn how to

teach. It is crucial that beginning teachers be responsible practitioners.

Te traditional solution or teachers has been to incorporate in-the-

classroom training as part o their undergraduate degrees. In most

teacher preparation programs, students serve as student teachers in a

classroom during the nal semester o their undergraduate program.

One problem with this strategy is identied by Deborah Loewenberg

Ball, William H. Payne Collegiate Chair, Arthur F. Turnau Proessor,

and dean o the School o Education: “An enormous aith is placed on

‘learning rom experience,’ despite substantial empirical evidence that

experience is an unreliable ‘teacher.’”

Bob Bain, associate proessor in the School o Education and in the

Department o History in the College o Literature, Science, and

the Arts, and aculty chair o secondary teacher education, laments

what he sees as a ragmented system. “ypically, university teachereducation is a non-systemic system where prospective teachers learn

their content in one place, pedagogy in another, and learn to apply

these in a third. In most programs, the burden o building coherence

and developing programmatic meaning, o making connections

between their work in their content courses, in their proessional

education courses, and in the classroom, is on those who are least

capable—the preservice teachers.”

In 2005, Bain and Elizabeth Birr Moje, Arthur F. Turnau Proessor

and associate dean or research, began a program that has brought

together the teacher preparation elements, creating a unied

experience in which the students learn about and experience explicit

components o teaching.

Te project, Learning and eaching the Disciplines through Clinical

Rounds (commonly known as the Rounds Project), has signicantly

revamped the preparation o secondary history and social studies

teachers—and the improvements in the Rounds Project are spreading

to the preparation o teachers in other disciplines. What may be

surprising is that what has become a revolutionary redesign began as

a modest renement.

LITERACY IS CENTRAL TO ALL LEARNING

Both Moje and Bain have been secondary teachers. Moje taught high

school history and science, or seven years, Bain taught high school

history and social studies or 26 years. In their classrooms, both

How does a

new teacher

enter the

classroom

ready and

able to teach

effectively?

Elizabeth Birr Moje




A good history

teacher isn’t

just a historian,

nor just an

instructor, but a

complex blend

of both.

saw challenges and opportunities with literacy, specically, with the

challenges students aced in making sense o inormation presented

in texts and encoded in language.

In their high school teaching, Bain and Moje observed that students

who could read prociently in some domains were sometimes

challenged in others. When the students were allowed to choose their

reading materials, they were typically procient and engaged readers.But i the same students were asked to read a history textbook, or

read a primary source such as the Federalist Papers, then they oen

altered. Moje says “I struggled with how to engage my students in

deep, careul text reading, and I became ascinated with why they

didn’t seem to engage with the texts in the ways I thought they should,

and in ways that would allow me to teach what I needed to teach.”

“Literacy is everything,” says Moje. “Instruction in any domain

involves teaching, whether teachers or young people, about oral and

written language and knowledge production and representation in

the disciplines. Good subject-matter instruction involves providing

access to the ways that members o the disciplines represent knowledge

through language.”

In Bain’s case, in addition to his concerns with his students’ use

o texts, he also noticed a literacy problem or teachers related to

segmentation o elds. “When I was working in classrooms, I ran into

teaching problems and ound that the literature that history teachers

typically read didn’t help,” he says. He sought answers outside o his

discipline and ound the pedagogical help he needed. Tis served as

a reminder o what he had learned in his own teacher preparation

program—that teaching is a combination o elements. A good history

teacher isn’t just a historian, nor just an instructor, but a complex

blend o both.

ogether, Bain and Moje designed a program to integrate more ully

literacy teaching practices into history and social studies teacher

education.

FROM LITERACY TO PROGRAM REDEVELOPMENT

At the School o Education, Moje and Bain became acquainted

and discovered their shared interest in the centrality o literacy instruction in learning the disciplines. And, in 2005, they set out

to develop stronger ties across experiences in the teacher education

program that would sharpen preservice teachers’ understanding o

and capacity to help adolescent readers and writers comprehend and

compose complex texts o the subject areas.

Bob Bain




Tey began with data collection, assessing students’

understanding o content, literacy, and teaching practices.

What they ound was both good news and bad news.

Te good: the students in the teacher education program

were having great experiences. Te bad: the experiences

were disjointed and not well connected with each other.

In response, Moje and Bain developed cross-course and

cross-semester coordination o curricula and activities,

creating a spiraling program o study that allowed

instructors in one course or eld experience to reer to and

build on lessons learned in another.

One pivotal step was to strengthen disciplinary oci within

the program, including the reinvention o the general

literacy course as discipline-specic. Te general literacy

course became ve subject-specic courses that ocused

on literacy teaching practices in history/social studies,

literacy teaching practices in mathematics, and so on. Te

discipline-specic literacy course served as an introduction

to the next semester’s discipline-specic teaching practices

course that had been part o the program since its inception.

o develop, maintain, and capitalize on curricular

coherence across courses, semesters, and eld experiences,

Bain and Moje run weekly meetings o the instructors o

ve dierent courses (which include eld experiences)

in the secondary teacher education program. At one

recent meeting, or example, lesson plan evaluations were

discussed—all students, as part o their rst- and second-

semester student teaching, must prepare lesson plans or

their instruction and have them closely evaluated by the

program. In the course o the discussion, it became evident

that were dierences in the assessments and how they were

evaluated across semesters. Te instructors discussed the

central concepts underlying the assessments and worked

together to develop common criteria that would become

progressively complex as the students’ knowledge and

abilities advanced. Tese criteria would be uniormly

applied rom one instructor to another and rom one

course to another, creating a consistent connection

where connections were previously implicit and up to the

teaching intern to make.

In addition to programmatic issues, the meetings

provide a orum where problems or challenges relating to

individuals or small groups o students can be addressed.

Some students do well with their School o Education

coursework but nd unexpected difculty as leaders

o high school classrooms. In the weekly meetings, the

instructors pool their knowledge, both o the individual

and o the interventions that have been used in similar

past situations. Usually, they are able to devise supports

or the students that enable them to be successul. But on

the rare occasion that they cannot, in good conscience,

recommend a student or state teaching certication, they

counsel the student to nd an alternative to teaching that

is a better t or the student. Tey do this reluctantly, and

only as a last resort, but the standards must be met. Moje

says her bottom line is, “Would I want this person teaching

my daughter?”

TAKING OUR MEDICINE: ADOPTING BEST

PRACTICES FOR PROFESSIONAL TRAINING

Many proessions have developed protocols or training

novices and enabling them to learn and polish theirskills. Hair stylists must complete classroom and on-

the-job training beore becoming certied. rades, such

as plumbers and electricians, have ranks related to skill

and experience: apprentice, journeyman, and master. But

medicine is the eld with a structured training system that

is best adapted to teachers. Because o the similarities

between practice in medicine and education, Bain and

Moje decided to use the medical model as a guide or

urther developing their innovation.

In medicine, students become interns once they havecompleted their classroom training but beore they

are licensed to practice medicine. Tey continue their

education, usually at hospitals or clinics, with on-

the-job training under the close supervision o an

attending physician. Tey spend time in various medical

specialties—emergency medicine, pediatrics, etc.—during

which the attending physician instructs the students in

all procedures, provides eedback, and ensures that the

patients receive responsible and appropriate healthcare.

eacher preparation has long taken a similar approach—student teachers are taken into schools and classrooms

where they experience on-the-job training under the

supervision o an experienced cooperating teacher. But

Moje and Bain thought that teacher preparation would

benet rom a more rigorous application o the clinical

model.




o guide the development o clinical education experiences,

they ocus on a small set o vital teaching practices,

including selecting and using texts o instruction, planning

or instruction, assessing students, and developing student

writing, among others. Tey have also sought out a group

o practicing teachers who are highly skilled with these

practices o teaching, and very eective in the classroom.

Tey chose the teachers and the schools with care to

provide the teaching interns with a breadth o experiences.

In addition, they recognize that there are myriad skills

eective teachers must learn, and multiple contexts in

which to ply those skills. raditionally, teaching interns

have worked in just two or three classrooms. Bain and Moje

have instituted “rotations,” in which the teaching interns

rotate through the classrooms o master teachers who have

been careully selected to model particular aspects o the

practice o teaching, such as selecting and scaolding text

o instruction eectively.

New titles or all participants have been adopted to reect

the proessional approach to training. “Student teachers”

are called “teaching interns” in this model, to reect their

proessional stage and role. o represent the new roles

played by the classroom teachers who are demonstrating

methods and approaches and helping to teach the interns,

Bain and Moje reer to these teachers as “attending

teachers,” aer the clinical model in teaching hospitals

where attending physicians work closely with residents and

interns. Attending teachers are encouraged to intervene in

ways that support the growth o teaching interns.

ASKING MORE OF ATTENDING TEACHERS

Te attending teachers who participate in the Rounds

Project are asked to relate to the teaching interns in their

classrooms in dierent ways than have been typical or

supervising teachers and student teachers. Historically,

supervising teachers observe and evaluate student teachers

and give their eedback hours or even days later. In theRounds Project, Bain and Moje ask the attending teacher

to careully interact and guide the teaching intern in real

time, while the teaching intern teaches the young pupils.

Bain summons the medical model to explain: “Te

attending physician is a teaching physician as well. Te

attending physician would not allow the patient to suer

so that the intern can try something—the physician would

intervene. We’ve been discovering that our cooperating

teachers would allow our students to do things, or not

require them to do things, to be cooperative or nice.”

eaching is a solitary practice or many teachers. Few

good models exist o practicing teacher/novice teacher

interactions. Some teachers are overly cautious about

doing anything that might reduce the intern’s authority. In

the eyes o the students, the intern must be seen as Te

eacher, and veteran teachers oen are reluctant to weaken

this perception.

“We adopted the terminology used in medical rounds to

convey to the people that we work with in the eld that we

expect them to intervene,” says Bain. On a recent visit to a

classroom, Moje and Bain modeled how to interact with a

teaching intern during a lesson without undermining her

authority. Although some teacher educators might worry

Ninth-grade teacher Tom Hoetger o Cody-Detroit Institute o Technology is one o the attending teachers participating in the Rounds Project. Hoetger

engages and guides teaching interns with a particular ocus on assessing

secondary students’ reading and writing skills in history.

In this rotation, teaching interns work with Hoetger and School o Education

feld instructors to assess secondary students’ skills in reading and writing,

and then work on ways to oer productive eedback to the secondary stu-

dents. Such close working relationships with attending teachers like Hoetger

have contributed signifcantly to the success o the clinical rounds reorm.




New Teaching Interns Agree to Uphold

the Ethical Obligations of TeachingOn September 8, 2010, the orty-seven new undergraduate teaching-interns in the school’s elementary teacher education program

participated in an investiture ceremony at the School o Education. The interns were given lists o nine ethical obligations o teaching and

discussed these beore participating in a ceremony in which they were given name badges to wear throughout their program.

The ethical obligations o teaching are a product o research and deliberation within the Teacher Education Initiative, our ongoing

comprehensive project that is redesigning how teachers are prepared or practice at the University o Michigan, as well as building

knowledge and tools that will inorm teacher education more broadly. The obligations include demonstrating commitment to every student

working continuously to improve instructionalcompetence, and ensuring equitable access

to learning in the classroom.

Prior to the ceremony, Elizabeth Davis,

associate proessor and aculty chair o

elementary teacher education, called upon

the interns to wear their badges as symbols

that they accept the ethical obligations and

commit to supporting all children in learning.

Later, Davis charged the interns to wear their

badges whenever they are in their schools.

“Your name badge serves so that others

know who you are and it also serves as a

reminder to yoursel about this role that

you’re taking on, and the responsibilities and

obligations that you have as a teacher. The

badge helps everyone who sees you know

who you are and what you’re doing.”

that intervening would be seen as interering, evidence

rom Moje and Bain’s experience suggests something very

dierent. For example, teaching intern, Crystal King, rom

Redord, Michigan, recently wrote o her clinical experience

at Cody High School: “Te support and suggestions you

oered us helped make our lesson plans successul and

I think to a certain degree we really got through to the

kids. I can condently say that they can make connections

between the material and their own lives, and i it wasn’t

or your suggestions during our rst WWII lesson, I’m not

sure we would have accomplished that!”

MORE AND PARTICULAR EXPERIENCES WITH

GREATER COHESION

Te interns work in classrooms in public and independent

schools in urban, exurban, and suburban locations, and

with a variety o grade levels. Te Rounds Project places

interns in ve dierent classrooms in ve dierent school

settings over two semesters, enabling instruction andpractice in both context-specic eatures o teaching as well

as with the social, cultural, and developmental dimensions

o educating adolescents.




Te topics the interns learn about in their School o

Education classes are coordinated with the ocus o their

current rotation. Te interns take what they learn in their

university classrooms and immediately put it into practice

in the middle schools or high schools; then they return to

the university classroom to discuss their experiences. In

the nal semester, the interns develop cases rom their

experiences. Tey then participate in a case conerence

with their peers and eld instructors to identiy the issues

and develop eective strategies or managing the issues.

Te cases also serve as assessments o the Rounds

Project. Te cases are shared with all instructors in the

program to show what the graduating interns identied as

challenges—together with the solutions or responses that

were generated during the case conerences. In this way,

the challenges are incorporated into the curriculum.

Also adopted rom the clinical model o proessional

preparation, the Rounds Project has implemented

“handovers,” in which the instructors rom one semester

document the interns’ activities, practices, and learning,

and counsel the next semester’s instructors on interns’

developing proessional competence and learning needs.

Handovers work at two levels: As the interns go through

their rounds, they share inormation on the students

they’ve been teaching with their intern peers. For example,

i students completing a rotation have learned how to work

with a particular student who has trouble with English,

the interns can share their strategies or working with this

student with the incoming interns who are just beginning

their rotations in that classroom.

Similarly, the instructors create descriptions and

assessments o the teaching interns that ollow the student

rom one course to the next. Combined with interns’ sel-

assessments and documents rom the attending teachers,

this inormation allows the new instructors to tailor

their course material or the needs and strengths o the

incoming cohort.

EXPANSION AND A SURPRISE ENDORSEMENT

Moving orward, Moje and Bain will continue to assess

and rene the Rounds Project and expand the model to

the preparation o secondary teachers in other disciplines.

As the Rounds Project has grown in complexity and

scope, rom its beginnings as a project to integrate literacy

teaching practices more ully into subject-area instruction,

to a major restructuring o the program that prepares

secondary history and social studies teachers, the demands

upon Bain and Moje’s time have increased. Both are active

scholars whose research demands that they collect data

in communities and classrooms across the country. In

addition, both have demanding administrative duties (Bain

is aculty chair o secondary teacher education and Moje is

associate dean or research) and academic duties (teaching

and advising graduate students), which they combine

with their work on the Rounds Project. Each week, both

visit, observe, and work with the teaching interns at the

school sites, in addition to their in-school continuing

development and coordination o the Rounds Project.

Teir aspirations are high, and they are exploring external

unding options to allow them to build a development and

research inrastructure to support the Rounds Project.

One resource that has helped to make possible all they’ve

accomplished is the addition o Rounds Project alumna

Jennier Speyer, AB ’07, CER ’07. She was a student

in the rst cohort to experience the disciplinary literacy

course in social studies. Aer graduating, she served in the

Peace Corps in Kazakhstan or two years, teaching English

and organizing proessional development seminars or

local teachers. Tese experiences in the Peace Corps

increased her interest in teacher education and led her to

return and serve as the project manager or the Rounds

Project.

In November 2010, the National Council or Accreditation

o eacher Education released a report titled “ransorming

eacher Education through Clinical Practice: A National

Strategy to Prepare Eective eachers.” Tis report

suggests that teacher preparation should ollow a clinical

model and include stronger collaborations with schools

and cooperating teachers. Moje and Bain believe the

authors o this report got it right—aer all, it recommends

the strategy that is implemented in the Rounds Project.

Story by Robert BrustmanPhotos by Mike Gould



1 0 W W W. S O E . U M I C H . E D U S P R I N G 2 0 1 1

How do you take a group o poorly prepared high school

reshmen who don’t care or school generally—and or

mathematics particularly—and transorm them into

engaged mathematics scholars? And do this quickly

enough that they can achieve college-entrance scores on

standardized math tests as high school juniors?

Algebra Project ounder Bob Moses knows that there are

answers to these questions. He himsel is proo, having

been placed in a “rapid advance” class in his Harlem junior

high school in which he completed three years o school in

two-and-a-hal years while developing his lie-long interest

in mathematics.

Te ‘how’ is the work o the Algebra Project and is being

implemented in 11 states. Currently, our participating

schools are being studied, including Ypsilanti High

School, where researchers rom the School o Education

are collaborating with the Algebra Project to support the

program and to study the eorts and results.

MATHEMATICS LITERACY AS A CIVIL RIGHT

Te Algebra Project is committed to helping low-income,

underserved students increase their mathematical skills

and attend college. It also has broader aspirations: beyond

simply engaging the students, the hope is to energize them,

WorkingSupply and Demand



U N I V E R S I T Y O F M I C H I G A N S C H O O L O F E D U C A T I O N 1 1

Both Sides in Mathematics Education

to help them recognize that learning mathematics is key

to gaining social and economic access and, ultimately,

gaining control over their uture. Further, the hope is to

support a grass-roots social movement in which students,

parents, and community members come together to

demand quality education in their schools; and in which

the graduating students become education advocates and

mathematics literacy workers.

Moses, a lie-long civil rights activist and organizer who

worked courageously to register and energize black voters

in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer o the Civil

Rights era, believes that this is a vital next step or Arican

Americans to become equal participants in American lie.

Indierent students must become active learners or their

own sakes, because education generally—and mathematics

particularly—are prerequisites or engaged and prosperous

lives.

Most colleges and community colleges have quantitative

requirements. Many o these schools also oer remedial

courses or students who don’t have sufcient mathematical

knowledge to be successul in college-credit courses, but

remedial education is not without consequences. Tus, the

Algebra Project college-enrollment goal is not simply to

enable students to be admitted to college; it is to provide




students with sufcient mathematical knowledge that

they can be admitted to college and immediately enroll

in college-credit-level mathematics courses—no remedial

education required.

While all students need quantitative literacy, the Algebra

Project specically targets students who are not doing well

in school and who are in danger o missing out on the

opportunities allowed by acility with mathematics. Te

Algebra Project, Moses says, “is an alternative or students

who are currently not making it well through the system...

it’s an alternative to remediating them or orgetting about

them, and an alternative which is asking those students to

take on some risk themselves, and double-up on their math

and create a culture in their classrooms, among themselves,

which is a learning culture around their math.”

Tis ormation o a “learning culture” is a major goal o the

Algebra Project and a key dierence between this and other

high school mathematics programs. Moses sees education

as having both supply and demand sides. Most education

initiatives take the supply-side approach by oering

dierent programs, curricula, or pedagogy. Moses, rst and

ever a community activist, believes that real improvement

will come rom the demand-side, when the students, their

parents, and members o the community value and insist

upon mathematics literacy. Te Algebra Project isn’t just

about a dierent way o teaching mathematics to high

school students; it’s about how to engage and energize

students—academically struggling students—so that they

will commit to doing more mathematics than their non-

Algebra Project peers.

ENACTING AND ASSESSING THE

ALGEBRA PROJECT

Te cohort projects, including the School o Education

collaboration at Ypsilanti High School, are implementations

o the Algebra Project. A cohort o reshmen students

were identied and they are receiving Algebra Project

instruction throughout their our years o high school. Tegoals o this collaboration include working to support a

grass-roots implementation o the Algebra Project and a

study o the eorts and eects.

Te desired outcomes or the cohort include entry to

college and the students’ becoming mathematics literacy

workers.

THE SECONDARY MATHEMATICS LABORATORY

One component o this Algebra Project cohort is a program

during the summer months. In the summer o 2010, the

second summer o the Ypsilanti cohort, Moses and the

primary investigators rom the School o Education, Mark

Tames, assistant research scientist, Laura Roop, director

o outreach, and Deborah Loewenberg Ball, William

H. Payne Collegiate Chair, Arthur F. Turnau Proessor,

and dean o the School o Education, decided to emulate

the successul Elementary Mathematics Laboratory and

initiate a Secondary Mathematics Laboratory (SML).

Like its elementary predecessor, the SML was an ambitious

undertaking that worked on multiple levels. For the

high school students, it provided concentrated, ocused

mathematics instruction—the students met and worked

on mathematics all morning, each weekday, or two weeks.

Moses was the instructor each day, and his goal or the

SML was a condensed version o the overall goals o the

Algebra Project—in two short weeks he wanted to make

Bob Moses (let) with two students during the Secondary Mathematics

Laboratory.




signicant progress both in the students’ mathematical

abilities and in orging a learning community among the

students.

At a dierent level, the SML allowed or the observation and

study o Moses’s instruction, o the students’ receptiveness,

and o their work. Te classroom was designed with seating

or researchers, teachers, and other interested community

members around the perimeter. Each day’s classes were

videotaped or later analysis. Everything every student

wrote down was captured or inclusion. “Te idea,” says

Roop, “is to study teaching observation and the collection

o records o practice...in the observation o the work

unolding over the session, there’s a real opportunity or

proessional learning.”

“For the Algebra Project to be successul,” says Tames,

“it needs to be clear what’s involved in the teaching. Telab class was a way to draw out and develop language

and engage a community more explicitly with what is an

Algebra Project pedagogy.”

For Moses, the ocus was on the 24 students he taught

or two weeks: “I wanted to help the students make a

commitment and, i possible, make some concrete strides

towards a learning community.”

He rejects the idea o the teacher as a “police person” in the

classroom, directing and enorcing order. Rather he seesthe teacher as the knowledge resource and as a acilitator.

HIDDEN MATHEMATICS

One o the keys to engaging the students is to lead them

to see mathematics in everyday lie. “Te Algebra Project

is student ocused,” says Moses. “In most math classes the

students, i they’re engaged at all, are engaged in trying to

gure out what the teacher is thinking. We are trying to get

into the minds o the students themselves and you’re not

going to do that through mathematical symbols written on

paper...so we search or some normal experiences, things

that the students might take or granted and thereore eel

comortable being experts about.”

One example is a trip, rom which a student can develop

a trip-line, and rom that trip-line can develop key

mathematical concepts—order, ractions, speed, and more.

“Te important idea,” says Moses, “is to get them involved

in an education experience in which they can be the experts,

because it’s their trip.”

One o Moses’s students described this as “hidden math.”

Each day, the Secondary Mathematics Laboratory had

between 20 and 50 observers, including secondary

mathematics teachers, mathematicians, School o Education

students, and a number o people rom the State Department

o Education.

With the mathematics instruction lling their mornings, the

aernoons were given over to a range o activities designed

to give the students exposure to the university. Te students

toured the campus, used the pool and athletic acilities, and

worked on dance choreography and writing.

REVISIT, REVISE, REDO

Moses, with his ocus on this small group o students, says

that their rst summer program was successul: the students

made signicant progress towards eeling comortable

sharing their thoughts, and with showing respect towards

other students who wanted to share their thoughts. “Tey

began to manage a culture in which any student could stand

up and announce to the other students that they wanted

to discuss something that they had worked on...and the

students would stop what they were doing and give that

student their attention. I, as the teacher, did not have to call

or attention or make an announcement. Students were able

to orchestrate this on their own.”

In addition to the progress made by students, the Secondary

Mathematics Lab produced useul high quality recordings

o what happened in the class. Tese records will be used in

teacher education and proessional development as well as

or urther research on teaching.

Story by Robert BrustmanPhotos by Mike Mouradian




Te President o the United States, Barack Obama, has

challenged the nation and set a goal that by 2020, the

U.S. lead the world in college graduates. Further, he said

that every American should have at least one year o

postsecondary education or job training.

Clearly, community colleges have critical contributionsto make i we are to hit these targets. Indeed, President

Obama has directly addressed the institutions: On October

5, 2010, he called upon community colleges to produce 50

percent more graduates by 2020.

Faculty and students at the University o Michigan School

o Education are engaged with community colleges in

numerous ways, including research partnerships with

community colleges that look at teaching methods, various

student behaviors, students’ post-community college

outcomes, and more.

COLLEGES OF THE PEOPLE

Richard Alred, associate proessor emeritus, has taught

in, held leadership positions in, consulted with, and

taught about community colleges or more than our

decades. While today’s community colleges trace their

origins to a late 19th century adult education movement

called Chautauqua, beore becoming popularly known as

junior colleges, Alred says that the post-WWII rumanadministration provided the stimulus that eectively

renamed the institutions as community colleges and

initiated construction o many new schools.

“Tese were to be ‘colleges o the people,’” says Alred.

“Tey were charged with making learning opportunities

more accessible, regardless o a student’s social class or

economic status. Te undamental idea was to provide

access to postsecondary training and education to students

with high school diplomas or GEDs, and adult learners.”

And this is what they remain today, according to Assistant

Proessor Peter Riley Bahr: “Community colleges are open-

door institutions. When we talk about community colleges,

we’re talking about publicly unded schools that have an

open admission policy—they admit nearly everyone.

Tey provide aordable college-going options with strong

academic quality, and their enrollment is surging.”

Tey dier rom our-year institutions in a number o

ways. While a community college’s associate’s degree in a

liberal arts eld can be quite similar to the rst two years o a bachelor’s degree in the same eld, community colleges

oer vocational courses and certicates, as well as classes

or adult learners who aren’t pursuing a credential, but

who simply want to learn. “Community colleges are more

ocused on teaching than are our-year institutions,” says

Susan Dynarski, associate proessor, School o Education;

associate proessor o public policy, Gerald R. Ford School

o Public Policy; and associate proessor o economics,

College o Literature, Science, and the Arts. “Te two-year

colleges see their mission as educating students, while the

our-year colleges also see research as a top priority.”

RESPONSIVE TO LOCAL NEEDS

In addition to being providers o opportunity, Alred

credits community colleges as being the astest moving and

most exible o higher education institutions. When a local

industry, such as automobile manuacturing, needs people

with particular skills, community colleges train instructors

and provide classes, either in the manuacturing plants, at

the schools, or both.

Tis type o workorce development has become a critical

part o the mission o community colleges, says Alred. A

lot o what is driving initiatives such as President Obama’s

call or increased higher education is insecurity about the

competitiveness o the American worker in the global

economy.

Community colleges have also developed close ties to

their local communities, providing more adult learningopportunities when local economies have suered, as

well as nding ways to share their resources with those in

their neighborhood. Alred recalls a school with a dental

hygienist program providing low-cost dental care to local

residents.




COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS

Community colleges are the melting pots o higher

education with an ethnically and economically diverse

student body that ranges rom high school students

to retirees. While the majority o students entering a

community college or the rst time plan on transerring

to a our-year institution, they are joined by others who donot plan to transer: high school students earning college

credits, workers seeking to learn specic skills in their o-

hours, and adult learners who want to learn how to make a

cabinet, create sculpture, or understand Beowul.

“Te diversity is amazing,” says Bahr. “All the characteristics

that make up what we think o as non-traditional students

in our-year institutions—rst-generation students,

part-time students, students who are employed ull-time

and squeeze classes in around the edges, single momsand dads, English-as-second-language students—these

characteristics are common in the community college.”

Classes comprised o such diverse students provide “the

true test o the proessional teacher,” says Alred. “I’ve

taught introductory social science courses with every kind

o student under the sun. Te challenge is to deliver quality

teaching to all o the dierent kinds o students.”

Te myriad outcomes o a large variety o types o students

with a wide range o goals make measuring success in

community colleges difcult. Across the country, the

average rate o completion, as measured by the earning

o a certicate or associate’s degree, may be as low as 10

percent. However, this number doesn’t take into account

the large number o students who transer to a our-year

institution or to another community college without

earning a credential rom the community college. Te

graduation rate is also diminished by including students,

such as the high school students earning college credits,

the retirees indulging their interests, or the adult learning

discrete skills, who never intended to earn a credential.

Some scholars think that i transer students are included,

the actual completion rate at community colleges is around

40 percent.

WHAT DO WE KNOW—AND WHAT CAN WE

LEARN—ABOUT STUDENT BEHAVIOR?

Community colleges are oen criticized or their low

graduation rates and their unding is oen threatened as a

result. In an eort to shed light on the murky outcomes o

community college students, Bahr has been analyzing data

rom the immense Caliornia community college system.

Among his ndings are that a rather large percentage—

about a quarter—o community college students transer

rom one to another community college at least once.

In addition to aecting completion rates, there are

implications o this behavior or community colleges.

While community colleges traditionally hold student

orientation and inormation sessions in the all, Bahr’s

research nds that community college students are mostlikely to transer to another community college in either

the spring or summer semesters. New student unctions, as

well as the hiring o counselors and aculty, may be based

on counts o all-enrolled students and thus inadequately

serve transer students who arrive later.

Continued on page 19

Richard Alred Peter Riley Bahr Susan Dynarski




During the 2009-10 academic year, a small group o School o Education doctoral students discovered they

shared interests in issues relating to community colleges. Pooling their notes, they produced a substantial list

o aculty and students who were interested in and/or working with community colleges—and they began to

imagine the projects, collaborations, and events that could happen i all the interested parties could somehow

be brought together.

While there were some things they could do as an inormal group, in order to organize the substantive events

they envisioned, they needed unding. They applied to the Horace H. Rackham School o Graduate Studies

at the university and received unding and status as an ofcial Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop, the

Community College Interdisciplinary Research Forum (CCIRF).

SOE Students

Organization to Facilitate Discussion

and Connect Research to Practice

Brett Grifths (with son Aaron Zoellner), Christie Toth, and Kate Thirol.




The ounding members, Brett Grifths, Christie Toth,

and Kate Thirol, have all taught or worked with

community colleges, and Grifths attended one. They

eel strongly that community colleges have an important

role to play in the country’s educational uture: “Access

to higher education is a major civil rights movement o

our times,” says Grifths, “and it’s a movement that’s

going to be made at the community college level.”

In the summer o 2010, CCIRF organized a series o

fve discussions o books on community colleges and

several panel discussions with community college

practitioners in the areas o institutional research,

instruction, and student services. In all 2010,

they held several events including a aculty panel

discussion in which several SOE aculty members and

a guest rom Eastern Michigan University discussed

their community college-related research. On May 2,

2011, they are holding a conerence titled “Research

and Innovation or 21st Century Students: Rethinking

Community Colleges in the 2010s.”

Grifths, Toth, and Thirol have clearly identifed an

area o interest, not just to the School o Education

community, but to the university and beyond. Each o

their events has been well attended, with the audience

or the aculty panel pushing the capacities o the room.

They have more than 100 people on their listserv and

anticipate a good turnout or the conerence.

Thirol says that CCIRF is about more than providinga orum or discussion. “It’s not just about the sharing

o ideas,” she says. “At every meeting we think o how

we can contribute to the feld and advance community

college research.”

Toth adds “It was working in a community college

frst-hand that convinced me to come to the School o

Education’s Joint Program in English and Education in

the frst place. It’s important that the research we do

here gets out and makes a dierence or community

colleges and their students.”

More inormation about CCIRF, their listserv,

and the upcoming conerence can be ound

on the web at www.bit.ly/CCIRF or by emailing

[email protected].

Bahr is also working on constructing behavioral typologies

o community college students. Using the Caliornia

student data, he has classied students based on their

course-taking and enrollment behaviors. Bahr was able

to group students into one o six categories, includingtranser, vocational, exploratory, and experimental.

One utilitarian aspect o this is that better understanding o

student behavior would help colleges direct and optimize

the use o resources toward students who may be lost rom

the college or otherwise may miss the mark in terms o

their academic goals.

Closer to home, Bahr is looking at the experiences o

community college students who have transerred tothe School o Education. Tis is both a quantitative and

a qualitative study. Te quantitative includes looking at

students’ academic data rom community colleges and

their post-transer data rom the School o Education

and comparing with the analogous data or students

who completed two years at the university’s College o

Literature, Science, and the Arts beore transerring to the

School o Education.

On the qualitative side, most o the community college

transer students have been interviewed, responding to

questions about their post-transer experiences, including

perceptions o classroom experience, social integration,

adjustment, and overall “t” in the school community.

Te students were interviewed in all 2010 and will be

interviewed again in late spring 2011 to enable detection

o any changes.

EVOLVING INSTITUTIONS IN CHANGING TIMES

“Community colleges are the most complex, most

multiaceted o higher education institutions,” says Bahr.

“Tey are the gateway to postsecondary education or

a huge segment o the American population that would

otherwise be excluded. But they’re acing huge challenges

as well, including tight unding and an enormous need or

remedial education among students.

Continued rom page 17




“Really, it’s astonishing that community colleges do as

well as they do, given the resources that they have to work

with.”

Community colleges are caught at the center o a cyclone

o changes. Even as President Obama calls upon them to

increase the numbers o graduates, the number o studentsenrolling in community colleges swells, due in part to

dismal employment prospects or those without higher

education. Yet while this surge o students provides the

bodies needed to meet President Obama’s challenge o

increasing graduates by 50 percent, the wave o incoming

students also presents challenges both in terms o standard

community college resources—everything rom parking

lot capacities to numbers o classrooms and aculty—but

today’s students also need more remedial education than

did their predecessors. (Remedial classes are “catch-

up” classes that students take to bring them up to the

Assistant Proessor Vilma Mesa studies undergraduate mathematics education. Mesa’s ocus is on the

day-to-day, even minute-to-minute components o teaching. She studies what makes it easier or more

difcult or math instructors to implement new methods o classroom instruction. She ocuses on the

interactions between students and instructors while they learn mathematical content.

minimum academic thresholds necessary to take college-

level courses. Remedial classes typically don’t provide

credits or count toward degrees or certicates.)

“oday’s high school graduates require more remediation

than did past generations o students,” says Alred. “In

part it’s because placement testing in community collegesis more rigorous than it used to be, so more learners are

identied as needing remediation.

“But it’s also true that the quality o graduates coming out

o our K-12 schools is not what it used to be.”

Alred, who has consulted with scores o community

colleges, believes that students and institutions alike would

benet rom an earned credential that was dierent rom the

associate’s degree. “From the standpoint o their mission,

purpose, and organizational architecture, community

Teacher/Student Interactions

in Community College Classrooms

SOE Faculty




“Similarly to K-12 education, in post-secondary education

proessional organizations have been asking mathematics

educators to reorm instruction in ways that are intended to reach

more students,” she says. These suggestions are intended to

increase students’ intellectual engagement with mathematical

concepts so that they think like mathematicians, rather thansimply learn a script and perorm as human calculators.

Community colleges are excellent places to study the difculty

o changing classroom interaction and relate this to learning,

says Mesa, because the smaller math classes in community

colleges aord more student/teacher interactions than there are

in our-year institutions. At our-year colleges, she says, “We

tend to think that lecture is an efcient way o teaching math.

It’s a pervasive model and many instructors don’t know how to

do it any dierently when they have large classes.”

The results o her research, thus ar, suggest an interesting

phenomenon related to the increased classroom engagement.

In one recent study o seven community college instructors, she

did fnd a relatively large number o teacher/student interactions,

but too many o these were at low levels o lexical and cognitive

complexity. This is due, at least in part, to the instructors’ desire

to have the students succeed: the instructors ask students

questions that aren’t too difcult in order to increase students’

colleges are not built to graduate or ‘complete’ legions o

students,” he says. “Alternative completion structures in

the orm o credentials certiying specic skills learned or

knowledge acquired…would more accurately depict their

contribution to learning. Tese structures would also put a

whole new ace on the completion picture or community

colleges and would put them on par with traditionalcolleges and universities.”

RESEARCH IN COMMUNITY COLLEGES

BENEFITS ALL HIGHER EDUCATION

INSTITUTIONS

Dynarski says that community colleges are particularly

good places to examine some higher education issues:

“Research relevant to all types o colleges—especially those

with high drop-out rates—is taking place at community

colleges. By partnering with researchers, community

confdence that they can

handle the content.

“Just because students

are actively engaged and

answering questions,”says Mesa, “it doesn’t

mean that they’re

learning what we want

them to be learning.

We need to ensure

that students engage

also with authentic

mathematics.”

Mesa’s research into the

conditions that support

or hinder reorm in post-

secondary mathematics

teaching is an example o the kind o work being done by

School o Education aculty with community colleges, but

which promises to be relevant to our-year and other higher

educational institutions.

colleges are putting themselves on the line to identiy

practices that can help all college students succeed.”

See the article about Vilma Mesa’s work below or an

example o this type o research.

Dynarski, Bahr, and Brian Jacob, proessor, School o

Education; Walter H. Annenberg Proessor o Education

and Policy, Gerald R. Ford School o Public Policy; and

proessor, College o Literature, Science, and the Arts,

are developing a partnership with three local community

colleges to examine the post-community college paths

o their students. “We’re going to work with them on an

analysis o their data,” says Dynarski. “We want to help

them understand which programs appear to be eective at

increasing earning or improving other outcomes.”

Story by Robert BrustmanPhotos by Mike Gould




In the hopes o giving teachers a resource to deepen their

proessional knowledge, the new Case Studies o Reading

Lessons (CSRL) program takes teacher education away

rom required proessional development, instead oering

teachers a choice to study eatures o eective instruction.

“I’d like teachers to have more control over their own

decisions about how they advance their own proessional

learning,” said Joanne Carlisle, proessor o education and

CSRL ounder.

In an eort to give teachers the kind o “control” that

Carlisle alludes to, CSRL takes advantage o the modern

interactive culture. Te CSRL program uses streaming

video o reading lessons, teacher interviews, copies o

text used in lessons, and experts’ analysis o the lessons

themselves to enhance a web-based multimedia program

aimed at helping teachers rene their own reading lessons.

Te program is made up o a series o recorded case studies

o reading lessons that were contributed by Michigan

teachers in grades 1-3. Each case study includes streaming

Online Teaching Lessons forIn-Classroom Reading Lessons

The CSRL tutorial video introduces frst-time viewers to recorded reading lessons eaturing students in grades 1-3.




video o two to our reading lessons led by a teacher over

the course o a ew days, allowing or the viewer to see

the reading lesson unold as it would in the classroom. In

addition to the video o the reading lessons, interviews

with the teacher both beore and aer the reading lesson

are made available. Further providing an overview into

the reading lessons is the teacher’s discussion o theparticipating students, the lesson plan, and the texts used

in the reading .

A unique eature to CSRL is the ability or other teachers

to log into the website and view the case studies. While

viewing the case studies, viewers are encouraged to answer

a set o “thinking questions.” Tese questions are designed

to ocus the viewer’s attention on the purpose and design

o the reading lesson, the instruction, and the student

engagement in the reading lesson. Te program is exible

enough to allow or one viewer to work through the case

studies, or a study group. But it is this interactive eature o

the program that has Carlisle excited about the prospects

o improving reading education.

“Te idea is that i you train teachers to be a little more

analytic by watching others teaching, they will learn to

become more analytic when thinking about their own

teaching, which will ideally make them better or more

inormed teachers,” said Carlisle. “In an earlier project we

had been trying to understand what eective teaching lookslike when you observe it in the classroom i you’re there in

person or i you videotape it and analyze instruction. It’s a

way to try and get at what knowledge looks like in practice.”

Te success o the CSRL program has been encouraging.

Following a beta testing session this past summer, the

participating members o the survey gave eedback about

the program—the kind o eedback Carlisle was hoping to

hear.

“Te teachers raved about it,” Carlisle said. “As part o the

study o the beta version o the program on the website,

the teachers were all asked to sample two case studies and

then complete a survey. Te survey had some easibility

questions like ‘were you able to access the website okay?’ or

‘were you able to log in okay?’ And at the end o the survey

there were questions asking i they would recommend this

program to various proessionals or teachers. And we’ve

received a lot o positive responses to those questions.”

Tough the program has been received warmly by

those who have used it, there have been some technical

difculties with the website. But as Carlisle points out,

the challenges o the website are typical o any interactive,web-based program.

“Tere were problems we had to deal with: slow streaming

o the videos or buttons you couldn’t see very well,” Carlisle

explained. “But we went back in and made a whole bunch

o improvements.”

For the CSRL program, creating a procient proessional

development tool or teachers is the goal. According to

Carlisle, CSRL ultimately broadens a teacher’s options in

terms o proessional development, a problem that currently

plagues the eld. ypically, proessional development

programs in literacy are used to train teachers to use new

materials or a particular teaching method. Tis system is

one that Carlisle sees as dictating to teachers what to do,

rather than having them think or themselves.

“We’ve been in a world where what is oered to teachers

in proessional development are programs that were

chosen by a district, state, or school,” Carlisle said. “Tere

aren’t a lot o choices on the teachers’ behal or what they want to do. We don’t provide opportunities or teachers

to engage in the study o actual instruction and evaluate

it on their own. We aren’t asking them to ponder about

eective teaching enough. I think we don’t honor the

capabilities o the teachers and their capacity to evaluate

aspects o instructional events that are more and less

eective. Helping teachers acquire the ability to analyze

the complexities o teaching reading is the goal o CSRL.”

Story by Omar Hussain




Indeed, he says “I was pretty straight when I was in Ann

Arbor. I didn’t do protests or things like that.” Instead, what

he did was to major in psychology as an undergraduate and

earn his PhD in the Combined Program in Education and

Psychology at the School o Education.

He had grown up in Detroit and, as a child in public school,

observed that school was like a game, and some students

were better at it than others. “At an early age,” he says, “I

understood that every kid is dierent.” He noticed that school

experiences that were successul in teaching some children

were ineective at reaching others.

In the 1960s, the psychology program at the university had

several ties to the Northville Regional Psychiatric Hospital,

located about 25 miles northeast o Ann Arbor. As a junior,

Littky visited the hospital as part o a class on the dynamics o

mental illness. “Te people in that hospital,” he says, “they were just a couple steps over the line rom you and me.” Wanting

to help, Littky returned as a senior with some other students

and tutored and worked with some o the hospital patients.

Aer each visit to the hospital, the university students would

return to Ann Arbor and discuss their experiences o helping

the patients learn. Tis pairing o education by individual

instruction, together with insights rom psychology, became

a principle hallmark o Littky’s approach to education.

Due in part to his experiences with the hospital patients, Littky

grew increasingly committed to working with disadvantaged

populations. o expand both the number o opportunities to

help, along with his capacity to help, he decided to pursue a

doctorate in education and psychology.

He credits the program, which included instruction in human

behavior and learning theory, with teaching him some o what

has become undamental in his philosophy o education: the

role o motivation in students’ lives. “You learn when you’re

interested in stu,” he says. “You learn when you have realwork to do, when there’s meaning to it.” In Littky’s view,

education ourishes when you help a student articulate his or

her interests and then get the student together with a teacher

and allow them to work on lessons drawn rom real-lie.

However, because students’ interests are idiosyncratic, this

model demands a lot o individual or small-group attention.

“It started getting very clear to me that we can’t mass-teach

students; they’re too dierent,” he says.

Littky also ascribes to his University o Michigan education

an intellectual exibility and reedom. While he is critical o

the pedagogy o traditional higher education institutions, he

says that the university “allowed me to think about using my

knowledge to teach others in a very dierent way, rather than

to perpetuate the sometimes wrong way that people have

been teaching. Somehow, they [the aculty] gave me the right

to be mysel, to expand, to be a change agent in education in

very dierent ways.”

Aer nishing his coursework and his preliminary doctoral

exams, Littky was asked to come to Ocean Hill-Brownsville, aneighborhood in Brooklyn, NY. Ocean Hill-Brownsville was

then the center o a school- and education-centered crisis that,

over the course o several months, included teacher strikes,

charges o racism and anti-Semitism, and was undamentally

about issues o community inuence on schools and the ability

to provide eective education in difcult circumstances. He

“My lie is committed to helping

improve education or students in this

country. That’s what I do, 80 hours a

week, rom the day I let Ann Arbor until now.”




spent a year-and-a-hal working as a community organizer

in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, organizing parents to work one-

on-one with students and training parents and teachers

to be more eective in the classroom, and wrote about his

experiences or his doctoral dissertation.

In the decades since receiving his doctorate, Littky has

run a teacher training program at Stony Brook University,

ounded and spent six years as the principal o the Shoreham-

Wading River Middle School in New York, spent 14 years as

the principal o Tayer Junior/Senior High School in New

Hampshire (his work at Tayer was recorded in a book, Doc:

Te Story o Dennis Littky and His Fight or a Better School ,

by Susan Kammeraad-Campbell, and in a 1992 NBC movie,

A own orn Apart ), worked at the Brown University’s

Annenberg Institute or Educational Reorm, ounded

Big Picture Learning and another high school, this time

in Providence, Rhode Island, and nally (so ar), ounding

College Unbound.

“My lie is committed to helping improve education or

students in this country,” he says. “Tat’s what I do, 80 hours a

week, rom the day I le Ann Arbor until now. I’m passionate

about what needs to be done and about what isn’t being done.

And how the poor and underserved in our country get a bad

de al.”

Littky’s methods strike some as unconventional. He believes

that the traditional school model is not conducive to learning.

In his schools, he gets rid o bells because he hates the

thought o a suddenly ringing bell interrupting a productive

conversation or lesson. He believes that students need to be

treated with respect and allowed chances to discover learning

opportunities in real lie. He understands the import o

standard school subjects, but he also believes that “learning is

about ‘the three Rs’—relationships, relevance, and rigor.”

And his methods, unorthodox as they are, are impressively

eective. At Tayer, the dropout rate dropped rom 20 percentto 1 percent during Littky’s tenure. College matriculation

jumped rom 10 percent to 45 percent. At the Metropolitan

Regional Career and echnical Center (the Met) school in

Providence, the graduation rate is consistently above 90

percent, drawing rom the same population that is victim o

the 66 percent graduation rate in the regular public schools.

And 98 percent o the Met’s graduates apply to college,

with nearly all being accepted, and most o them are rst-

generation college students.

Tis kind o success does not go unnoticed. Te Bill and

Melinda Gates Foundation provided some unding aer

hearing about Littky’s (and his partner Elliot Washor’s) results

with the Met and their model was implemented in about ten

schools around the U.S. When those were also successul,

other schools expressed interest and the model has been

adopted by a total (to date) o 70 schools in the U.S. and about

40 more in Australia and the Netherlands.

Littky is pleased with the success o his students, but he’s not

yet ready to rest on his laurels. “I started looking at the data,”

he says, “and i you’re a rst generation college-going kid, and

poor: you made it through high school, so you’re in the 50th

percentile. Eighty-nine percent o people like you drop out o college. Tat’s absurd! Tat means only 11 percent graduate!”

And in today’s economy, Littky understands, it’s not good

enough to simply get a high school degree.

So Littky begins a new chapter in his lie, turning to higher

education and ounding College Unbound. In this Providence-

based school, the degrees are granted through an agreement

with Roger Williams University, and the model is an extension

o what has worked with younger students.

Over the next ve years, Littky says, he hopes to open people’s

minds and redene what a college education is and redesign

how to accomplish that education. “I’m a little driven,” he

admits. “My best traits are my enthusiasm and my passion.”

For more inormation about Dennis Littky, visit Big Picture

Learning online at www.bigpicture.org.

Prole by Robert Brustman




MARY CLARE CAROLAN DURAN,

ABED ‘81, CERTT ’81

Mary Duran retired rom Detroit Public Schools aertwenty-ve years o service. She also had ve years o servicein international schools in Chile, her husband’s country. InDetroit she taught homeroom, oreign languages, and, ormost o her career, art. She says her career highlights includeteacher exchanges to Russia and to Japan and the proudmoment when her grandson Gabriel Herrera-Duran waspresented an award in the citywide show as her art student.

WILLIAM E. HERMAN, PhD ’87

Aer completing his doctoral studies in educationalpsychology, Bill Herman pursued an academic careeras a teacher, researcher, and scholar with a distinctively

international ocus. He has spent the past 32 years preparinguture K-12 teachers at Madonna University, Livonia,Michigan, and the State University o New York College atPotsdam. His research on the motivational characteristicso test anxiety, ear o ailure, and academic success led toteaching a three-week graduate seminar at the University o Potsdam in Germany during the summer o 2009. Earlierproessional work abroad included serving as a SeniorFulbright Scholar in Russia (1993) and teaching graduatecourses or ve summers in aiwan (1989-93). During the2010-11 academic year, Herman is conducting proessionaldevelopment seminars or aculty members in the Collegeo Education at Pranakhon Rajabhat University in Bangkok,Tailand, as part o the Fulbright Specialists Program.

EDWARD HOFFMAN, MA ’72, MA ’74, PhD ’76

An adjunct associate psychology proessor at YeshivaUniversity, Edward Homan was awarded a grant rom theJapanese government and served as a visiting scholar at theUniversity o okyo in 2009. He is the author o more than adozen books in psychology and related elds, and several o these have been translated into Japanese including Te Right tobe Human: a Biography o Abraham Maslow, Te Drive or Sel:

Alred Adler and the Founding o Individual Psychology, andFuture Visions: Te Unpublished Papers o Abraham Maslow.

Homan is also a senior editor o the Journal o HumanisticPsychology and has been studying peak-experiences rom across-cultural perspective.

BLAISE LEVAI, EdD ’52

Rev. Dr. Blaise Levai died peaceully on December 20,2010, surrounded by his amily. He was a graduate o HopeCollege (1942), New Brunswick Teological Seminary (1945), University o Chicago MA (1946), and University o Michigan EdD (1952). He served as a missionary pastor o St. John’s Church and proessor o English and vice-principal

o Voorhees College in Vellore, South India. On returningto the United States he was proessor o English and director

o admissions at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa(1958-60). From 1960-68 he was managing editor or theAmerican Bible Society and rom 1968-75 he was directoro literature or the Methodist Board o Missions. Beoreretirement he was pastor o Reormed Churches in NewJersey and Florida.

KATHLEEN VESTAL LOGAN, CERTT ’64, ABED, ’64

Kathleen Vestal Logan taught elementary school or threeyears, then ran away and joined the navy in 1967. Shereceived her master o science in management rom the Navy Postgraduate School in 1971. She married a navy ofcer andmoved requently, living in Virginia Beach, Washington,

DC, Japan, and Pensacola, FL, where they now reside. Loganreceived a master’s in marriage and amily counseling in 1981.She has been a speaker and writer on military amily issuesand deployments, a counselor, college instructor, coordinatoro an employee assistance program, and writer. Logan andher co-author, Betsy Smith, recently published their award-winning book Second Blooming or Women: Growing a LieTat Matters Afer Fify.

FRANK MERLINO, CERTT ’83, ABED ’83

Frank Merlino recently published his novel Stream o Consciousness.

MARK NECHANICKY, MSE ’97, AM ’04, CERTT ’04

Mark Nechanicky was named the 2010 Albert Lea eachero the Year. He teaches ourth grade at Lakeview Elementary School in Albert Lea, Minnesota.

PENNY PASQUE, PhD ’07

Penny Pasque is an assistant proessor at the University o Oklahoma and recently published her book, American Higher Education, Leadership and Policy: Critical Issues and the PublicGood.

MARYJEAN TYKOSKI (NEE GRAY),

BSED ’95, CERTT ’95

Maryjean ykoski was named the Middle-School Scienceeacher o the Year by the Science eachers Association o exas.

JACK ZEVIN, PhD ’69

Jack Zevin and colleague David Gerwin have just had a pairo books published: eaching U.S. History as Mystery, in arst and a second edition. Tese books oer “a philosophy,methodology, and examples or world/global history instruction that are active, imaginative, and provocative.”

CLASS NOTES




SCHOOL OF EDUCATION PARTICIPATES IN NEW PEACE CORPS MASTER’S INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM

On October 14, 2010, the ieth anniversary o the Peace Corps’ inception by John F. Kennedy’s amed speech on the ootsteps o theMichigan Union, the university announced the launch o a new master’s program in partnership with the Peace Corps. Te program allowsstudents serving in the Peace Corps to apply their experiences as practicum or master’s programs in several university units, including theSchool o Education. In this photo U-M President Mary Sue Coleman (le), SOE Dean Deborah Ball (third rom right) and others at theannouncement o the program.

SNAPSHOTS

DEBORAH BALL INFLUENCING EDUCATION POLICY IN WASHINGTON D.C.

In May 2010, Dean Deborah Ball testied beore the House Education and Labor Committee and argued or the proessional preparation o highly trained and highly skilled teachers who would be able to work competently on their rst day in the classroom. On September 28, 2010,Ball joined the National Board o Education Sciences. Secretary o Education Arne Duncan swore her in. Tis photo shows the members o the board.




WAITING FOR “SUPERMAN”/RACE TO NOWHERE

Sponsored by the Educational Studies program during the months o November and December, the acclaimed documentaries Waiting or “Superman” and Race to Nowhere were screened at the Michigan Teatre and in the Schorling Auditorium. Each lm was accompanied by apanel discussion eaturing school aculty members together with students, educators, administrators, and policymakers.

GRAND RAPIDS EML

Te Elementary Mathematics Laboratory was taken to GrandRapids in July 2010 or rising h graders. Te laboratory eaturesa mathematics program led by mathematics educator and School o Education Dean Deborah Ball.

U-M AND ANN ARBOR PUBLIC SCHOOL PARTNERSHIP

With Ann Arbor Public Schools, the School o Education ispartnering to combine Mitchell Elementary School and ScarlettMiddle Schools to create a K-8 campus with innovative curriculumand teaching.




BARRY FISHMAN

Associate Proessor, School o Education; Associate

Proessor, School o Inormation

Barry Fishman received the Provost’s eaching

Innovation Prize or his project, “Using Collaboration

and Communication echnologies to ransorm Large

Lectures into Small Seminars.” Tis award recognizes

aculty who have developed innovative approaches to

teaching that incorporate creative pedagogies, e.g. new

uses o instructional technology, new ways to engage

students in the learning process, new approaches to

student collaboration, or new methods or replicating the

advantages o a small course in a large lecture.

ANNE RUGGLES GERE

Gertrude Buck Collegiate Proessor, School o Education;

Proessor o English Language and Literature, College

o Literature, Science, and the Arts; Arthur F. Turnau

Proessor; Chair, Joint Program in English and Education;

Director, Sweetland Writing Center

Anne Ruggles Gere was awarded the Rewey Belle Inglis

Award by the National Council o eachers o English.

Tis award honors women who have served as leaders

and inspirational models to the association and the

proession.

KRISTIN HOLMSTROM, Research Investigator, and

ANDREW KRUM, Doctoral Student in Educational

Studies

Kristin Holmstrom and Andrew Krum received the

2010 Best Paper Award or their paper “Making Sense

o Instruction” rom the Organizational Teory Special

Interest Group o the American Educational Research

Association.

AWARDS Faculty and StudentsBOB BAIN, Associate Proessor, School o Education;

Associate Proessor, Department o History, College o

Literature, Science, and the Arts, andELIZABETH MOJE, Proessor; Arthur F. Turnau

Proessor; Associate Dean or Research

Bob Bain and Elizabeth Moje received the Provost’s

eaching Innovation Prize or their project, “Learning

and eaching the Disciplines through Clinical Rounds

(Te Rounds Project).” Tis award recognizes aculty

who have developed innovative approaches to teaching

that incorporate creative pedagogies, e.g. new uses o

instructional technology, new ways to engage students

in the learning process, new approaches to student

collaboration, or new methods or replicating the

advantages o a small course in a large lecture. (An article

about this project begins on page 2.)

DEBORAH LOEWENBERG BALL

William H. Payne Collegiate Chair; Arthur F. Turnau

Proessor; Dean o the School o Education

Deborah Loewenberg Ball received the Distinguished

Alumni Award rom her alma mater, Michigan State

University (MSU) College o Education, where she

received her PhD in 1988. Te award is given annually to an MSU College o Education alumnus who has

made signicant contributions to his or her proession,

community, and educational organization through

recognized leadership. Ball was nominated by Carole

Ames, dean o the MSU College o Education, and

is honored or “her inuential eorts to transorm

mathematics teaching and to improve how the nation

prepares teachers.”

PERCY BATES

Proessor; Director, Programs or Educational

Opportunity; Director, Lives o Urban Children andYouth

Percy Bates was inducted into the John McLendon

Minority Athletics Administrators Hall o Fame in 2010.




We’d love to hear rom you. Send us news about your

achievements and experiences. Send us your comments

and advice.

Our address is:

Ofce o Development, Communications, & Alumni Relations

U-M School o Education, 610 East University, Suite 1001

Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1259

email: [email protected]

Staying in touch

JOSEPH KRAJCIK

Proessor; Co-Director o the IDEA Institute

Joseph Krajcik received a Rackham Distinguished

Graduate Mentor Award. Tis award honors and

encourages the eorts and accomplishments o aculty

who serve as eective mentors o doctoral students.

According to the selection criteria, “the successul mentorserves as advisor, teacher, advocate, sponsor, and role

model, ensuring that the experience o dedicated scholars

and artists remains accessible to the ull spectrum o

graduate students.”

DIANE LARSEN-FREEMAN

Proessor, School o Education; Proessor, Department o

Linguistics, College o Literature, Science, and the Arts;

Research Scientist, English Language Institute

Diane Larsen-Freeman was selected by the American

Association o Applied Linguistics to receive their 2011Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award.

VALERIE LEE

Proessor

Valerie Lee was elected to the National Academy o

Education, which consists o U.S. members and oreign

associates who are elected on the basis o outstanding

scholarship or contributions to education.

JOAN McCOY

Registrar in the Ofce o Student Aairs

Joan McCoy received the rst annual Patricia A. Natalie

Sta Award or Excellence. Te award honors the

memory o longtime School o Education community

member Pat Natalie.

VILMA MESA

Assistant Proessor

Vilma Mesa was the 2010 winner o the Pattishall Award.

Endowed in the School o Education in 1993 by Evan G.

and Helen G. Pattishall, this award is to encourage early

career aculty with the pursuit o their research.

CHRISTOPHER NELLUM

Doctoral Student in the Center or the Study o Higher

and Postsecondary Education

Christopher Nellum was elected to a two-year term as the

Graduate Student Board Member or the Council or the

Study o Community Colleges Board o Directors.

EDWARD ST. JOHN

Algo D. Henderson Collegiate Proessor o Higher

Education

Edward St. John was awarded the 2010 Research

Achievement Award by the Association or the Study o

Higher Education. Tis award is presented to a scholar

or contributions to research that signicantly advance

the understanding o higher education among researchers

and more broadly.

SIMONE HIMBEAULT TAYLOR

Adjunct Assistant Proessor; Associate Vice President

or Student Aairs, Ofce o Vice-President or Student

Aairs

Simone Himbeault aylor received the award or

Outstanding Contribution to Student Aairs through

eaching Award at the 2010 NASPA-Student Aairs

Administrators in Higher Education Region IV-

East annual conerence. Award criteria include

contributions to the proession through the development

o proessionals; contributions through research

and publication; and contributions through active

involvement with proessional organizations.




to build and create spaces that oster and encourage that

culture.

Our objective is to create exible and hospitable classrooms,

lecture halls equipped with state-o-the-art technology,

improved spaces or research and collaboration, updated

laboratories, and new acilities such as a digital library

and archive. We will also upgrade our technology

inrastructure and wireless capabilities to support the

innovative opportunities we can oer in our programs.

Tis will be an expensive undertaking, but one that is

critical to our mission. I hope you will partner with us in

our eorts. Your gi today to the School o Education will

be an investment in our building, in our students, and in

our uture. It will give us the nancial exibility to model

innovative environments worthy o a world-class teacher

preparation and educational research institution.

Tank you or your support.

Sincerely,

Michael S. DubinDirector o Development, Communications,

and Alumni Relations

At the School o Education, we strive to build and sustain a

vibrant and intellectually rich learning experience or our

students. A large part o that experience is shaped by the

physical environment—the learning and teaching spaces

in which our students not only take classes and conduct

research but also learn vital lessons about the importance

o space in educational settings.

As you may recall rom your time here, the historic building

that houses the School o Education is a campus landmark

and an architectural treasure. Originally built in 1921, it is

a handsome structure cherished in memory by generations

o alumni. However, its spaces are not always amenable to

the work o our students, teachers, and researchers, who

must collaborate and communicate, oen across space and

time, in imaginative and unprecedented ways.

As a result, we have recently begun to develop a wise plan

or a mission-driven and practical renovation o our legacy

building. By “wise” we mean a plan that uses resources

prudently and eectively to get maximum improvement

without extravagant outlays o money. By “mission-driven”

we mean improvements that are geared directly to the core

goals o the school’s agenda and scope o work.

We must design the uture learning environment o

the School o Education to support the new kinds o

proessional training, the innovative research programs,

and the design and development work we do and will

be doing both in the short term and in coming decades.

Moreover, we must consider the type o culture we want

UNTILNEXT TIME



Mark your calendar now and make plans to return to

Ann Arbor for your reunion. Connect with old friends,see what’s changed on campus, learn about new programs

and cheer on the Wolverines. Whether you are celebrating

five or 50 years since graduation, you’ve all got one thing

in common—your Maize and Blue spirit!

Class of 1961

50th Reunion and Emeritus Weekend

October 27-30, 2011

Class of 200110th Reunion

October 28-30, 2011

Class of 2006

5th Reunion

Date to be announced—visit our Web site for details

Get involved, find a classmate, learn about your reunion

and more! Contact the Office of Reunion & Reunion Giving

at [email protected] or 866.998.6150.

reunions.umich.edu

Celebrate Your Reunion



INNOVATORUniversity o Michigan School o Education

610 East University Avenue

Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1259

The RegenTs

of The univeRsiTy of michigan

Julia Donovan Darlow, Ann Arbor

Laurence B. Deitch, Bingham Farms

Denise Ilitch, Bingham Farms

Olivia P. Maynard, Goodrich

Andrea Fischer Newman, Ann Arbor

Andrew C. Richner, Grosse Pointe Park

S. Martin Taylor, Grosse Pointe Farms

Katherine E. White, Ann Arbor

Mary Sue Coleman, ex ofcio

nrt P stttThe University o Michigan, as an equal opportunity/afrmative action employer, complies

with all applicable ederal and state laws regarding nondiscrimination and afrmative action,

including Title IX o the Education Amendments o 1972 and Section 504 o the Rehabilita-

tion Act o 1973. The University o Michigan is committed to a policy o nondiscrimination

and equal opportunity or all persons regardless o race, sex, color, religion, creed, national

origin or ancestry, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression,

disability, or Vietnam-era veteran status in employment, educational programs and activi-

ties, and admissions. Inquiries or complaints may be addressed to the Senior Director or

INNOVATOR is published by the

University o Michigan School o Education

Ofce o Development, Communications,

and Alumni Relations

leadeRshiP Team

of The school of educaTion

Deborah Loewenberg Ball, Dean

Elizabeth Birr Moje, Associate Dean, Research

Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar, Associate Dean,

Academic Aairs

Henry Meares, Assistant Dean

office of develoPmenT, communicaTions,

and alumni RelaTions

Robert Brustman, Writer

Jenny DeMonte, Public Aairs/Media Relations

Mike Dubin, Director

Elena Godin, Web Administrator

Lois Hunter, Secretary

Innovator Spring 2011

Documents

Transcript of Innovator Spring 2011