The Niemeyer Series

Cultivating Genius and Joy in Education through Culturally and Historically Responsive Pedagogies

In her keynote, Dr. Gholdy Muhammad explored a unique culturally and historically responsive approach toward the goal of cultivating genius and joy in education. This approach is essential for accelerating the growth of all students, and, uniquely, youth of color who have been traditionally underserved in learning standards, policies, and school practices. She presented her equity framework, called the HILL Model, to help educators teach toward developing students’ histories, identities, literacies, and liberation.

Segregated Pedagogy; Segregated Schools: The Role of Progressive Education in the Drive for More Culturally Responsive Schools

Amy Stuart Wells, Professor and Director of the Sociology and Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University, presented at the 2019 Niemeyer Series on Tuesday, November 19. During the talk, she explored the history and key tenets of progressive education revealing natural conceptual connections to multicultural education, culturally responsive pedagogy, and ethnic studies curriculum. These connections imply that progressive educators should be at the forefront of efforts to integrate schools by integrating instructional approaches. This integration of these different pedagogical strategies has not yet occurred, however, and in fact, their separate existences in separate schools and classrooms exacerbates racial, ethnic and socio-economic segregation as parents are forced to choose one or another. Wells examined the racial and socio-economic divide among educators and parents that perpetuates these divisions and explore the possibility of convergence. She also explored the impact of federal accountability policies on this divide and called for a grassroots, interracial movement to advocate for less teaching to the test and more progressive education that is culturally relevant.

Carla Shalaby, a Research Specialist at the University of Michigan, presented at the 2018 Niemeyer Series on Thursday, November 8 in a talk titled, “On a Curriculum of Human Being: Learning Love, Freedom, and Troublemaking from and with Children.” Shalaby wrote, “This talk will invite us to imagine what we want to teach children through our own example and, more importantly, what we might learn from the examples of human being that children offer us in everyday life.”

During the reception, Shalaby signed copies of her book, Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School. 

These Schools Belong to You & Me: Why We Can’t Afford to Abandon our Public Schools

Deborah Meier, author of the acclaimed books The Power of Their Ideas and In Schools We Trust, has spent more than five decades working in public education as a parent, school board member, teacher, principal, writer, and advocate. Meier ranks among the most acclaimed leaders of the school reform movement in the United States. Among her numerous accomplishments, she helped found the Coalition of Essential Schools in the 1980s, under the leadership of Ted Sizer. In 1987, she received a MacArthur award for her work in public education.

Emily Gasoi has been an educator for more than two decades and was a founding teacher at Mission Hill School in Boston. In 2012 she earned a doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania. Gasoi currently lives in Washington, DC, where she adjuncts at Georgetown University and is co-founder of Artful Education, an organization focused on helping schools and arts organizations improve practices related to creative teaching and learning.

Progressive Pedagogies and Public Policy: Reasserting Bank Street’s Research Presence in Debates about How Best to Use Early Childhood Education to Address Inequities

Dr. Sharon Ryan is Director of the Straus Center for Young Children and Families at Bank Street College of Education. Prior to joining Bank Street, she was Professor of Early Childhood Education at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Dr. Ryan has worked in the early childhood field as a preschool teacher, consultant, program leader, curriculum advisor, and special educator. As a researcher, Dr. Ryan uses a range of qualitative and mixed methods designs to research early childhood teacher education and professional development, curriculum, policy enactment, and the potential of critical theories for rethinking early childhood practices. She has published a number of articles, book chapters, and reports in these areas.

Stereotype Threat: How It Affects Us and What We Can Do About It

Dr. Claude M. Steele is an American social scientist, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost at UC Berkeley, and author of Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do.

Dr. Steele served as the I. James Quillen Dean for the School of Education at Stanford University from 2011 to 2014. As dean, he led the school toward a deeper engagement in public education, including the renewal and expansion of a partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District. From 2009 to 2011, Steele served as the 21st Provost of Columbia University, where he led and implemented academic policies and plans for the university, including a major initiative to enhance support for the basic sciences. While at Columbia, he was responsible for managing the work of the university’s faculty, departments, research centers, and institutes while overseeing the university’s budget and financial planning.

Steele is best known for his work on stereotype threat and its application to minority student academic performance. His earlier work dealt with research on the self as well as the role of self-regulation in addictive behaviors.

Progressive Practice in Public Settings

Deborah Meier has spent more than four decades working in public education as a teacher, principal, writer, and advocate. She is currently senior scholar at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education. After teaching in early childhood classrooms early in her career, Meier became not only an advocate for progressive policies and practice in public settings, but also a pioneer in founding innovative schools serving primarily students of color in New York City’s District 4. She supported the development of similar schools throughout the city, and in 1984 helped found the Coalition of Essential Schools.

After graduating from the University of Chicago, Meier became an early childhood teacher, and in the late 1960s, she taught kindergarten in Central Harlem. For the next 20 years, Meier helped revitalize public schools in New York City’s District 4 in East Harlem. In 1974, she founded Central Park Elementary School, a highly successful public school of choice that served predominantly local African American and Latino families. In the years that followed, Meier opened two other Central Park elementary schools in District 4 as well as an acclaimed secondary school, while supporting and directing the development of similar schools throughout the city.

In the 1980s, Meier helped found the Coalition of Essential Schools under the leadership of Ted Sizer. At Coalition schools, Meier helped foster democratic communities, greater autonomy for teachers, parental voice in children’s education, and inter-generational connections.

Meier is the author of many books and articles, including The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem, and In Schools We Trust. She is an outspoken critic of state-mandated curriculum and high-stakes standardized testing, and has written extensively on their unreliability and class/race biases. She is on the board of the Coalition of Essential Schools, FairTest, Save Our Schools, Center for Collaborative Education and the Association for Union Democracy. She also serves on the editorial boards of The Nation, The Harvard Education Letter, and Dissent. In 1987 she received a MacArthur “Genius” Award for her work in public education.

The Death and Life of the Great American School System: What New York’s Next Mayor Needs to Know

Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and a historian of education. She blogs for Education Week, Politico, and Huffington Post. Her articles have appeared in many newspapers and magazines. From 1991 to 1993, she was Assistant Secretary of Education and Counselor to Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander in the administration of President George W. Bush. She was responsible for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education. As Assistant Secretary, she led the federal effort to promote the creation of voluntary state and national academic standards.

Her latest book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, was hailed by The New York Review of Books as “indispensible” for understanding what has happened under the reform movements of the last several decades.

Alternatives to School Closings

Christine Quinn, New York City Council Speaker, is an influential figure in educational policy and was a major candidate in the city’s 2013 mayoral race. The discussion was moderated by former dean of Bank Street Graduate School Jon Snyder and featured the voices of representatives from some of New York’s leading educational advocacy organizations, including Zakayah Ansari, Advocacy Director for the Alliance of Quality Education and a parent leader for the Coalition for Educational Justice and Maria Fernandez, senior coordinator for the Urban Youth Collaborative.

Teacher Performance: Highly Effective, Effective, Developing, Ineffective – How Can You Tell?

Moderated by Jon Snyder, former Dean of Bank Street Graduate School. Panelists including Shael Polakow-Suransky, President of Bank Street College and former Chief Academic Officer and Senior Deputy Chancellor at the New York City Department of Education; Margaret Ryan, Co-Founder and Principal of Harlem Link Charter School; Barnett Berry, President and CEO of Center for Teaching Quality; and Frederick Frelow, Program Officer at Educational Opportunity and Scholarship, The Ford Foundation.

Race, Class, and Reform: A Panel Discussion about Education Reform in America

Moderated by Jon Snyder, former dean of Bank Street Graduate School. Panelists included Irving S. Hamer, Jr., Deputy Superintendent of Memphis City Schools; Peter L. McFarlane, Principal of the Hugo Newman College Preparatory School; Michael Nettles, Senior Vice President of ETS; Jeannie Oakes, Director of the Ford Foundation’s Educational Opportunity and Scholarship Program; and David Sciarra, Executive Director of Education Law Center.

School Reform: Where have we been and where should we be going? Some lessons for a new American President

Moderated by Deborah Meier, Senior Scholar at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education. Panelists included Thomas Payzant, Professor of Practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Education; Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University School of Education; Louis Delgado, Principal of Vanguard High School; and Alec Gershberg, SFC ’78, Associate Professor at the Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy.