Message from Our President

I offer you a warm welcome to Bank Street College of Education. This year, in addition to my role as president, I also will be serving as the interim dean of our Graduate School of Education.

As the first Bank Street alum to serve as president, I am honored to say I speak from experience. My time as a student here was a turning point. I learned that when we connect teaching and learning meaningfully to the outside world, we can strengthen not only individuals, but our neighborhoods and communities at large.

Bank Street pioneered an approach over a century ago that celebrates the whole child, reveres the relationship between student and teacher, and honors each child’s unique journey. Our work is grounded in the belief that education is a process of constructing knowledge, and that when learners begin to question the world, they connect to their own sense of agency and engage in deeper learning. 

Through mentored fieldwork and deep relationships with faculty, our graduate students learn how to transform educational theory and ideas from the abstract to the concrete, developing the skills necessary to thrive in real-world settings as impactful educators, community leaders, museum educators, and child life specialists. 

If you, too, would like to start shaping the future through meaningful, developmentally appropriate learning opportunities for students of all ages, I encourage you to find out more about our many graduate programs, our amazing faculty and staff, and our passionate students and alums. 

Bank Street is a powerful and well-respected educational institution—an engine of innovation and learning that strives to become more and more accessible to both educators and children. I hope you will join us—because together, we can transform the world through education. 

Sincerely,

Shael Polakow-Suransky, GSE ’00
President
Bank Street College of Education