Childhood Special and General Education Dual Certification (On Campus or Online)

Transcript Prompt: What makes you feel like a Bank Street Teacher? Chiara: I feel like a Bank Street teacher every time I’m kind of walking around my room, maybe with a clipboard, jotting down notes of what people are doing, or asking somebody about a math problem, like, “How do you know that?”, “What do you think?” Um, or looking at a piece of art with kids and saying, “What do you see that makes you say that?” Um, I feel like a Bank Street teacher in my setting every time we look at artifacts, like digital ones online or we go on a fieldtrip—every time we go on a fieldtrip, I feel like a Bank Street teacher. Prompt: Can you talk about a course you took at Bank Street that still impacts you today? Chiara: When you sit in Developmental Variations and learn about different kinds of minds and different strengths that in a school would get called “disabilities,” I mean that’s something that really changes how you see people, and possibly also yourself. And how are you going to meet people as people and meet people where they are. And by people I mean students, I mean kids. When we say social studies as the core of the curriculum for learners with special needs, that’s gotta be true. That’s a wonderful, amazing thing to make true because it becomes the backbone of everything else, and that’s where you build community and where you learn about the world and bring your own thinking and opinions to bear, and you use evidence, and you practice writing, and you look at art and artifacts and maps, and it just weaves everything into this really integrated experience. Prompt: Why did you come to Bank Street? Chiara: I came to Bank Street for Special Education because of that model of thinking, what do people bring, what do individuals bring to the classroom. Not, what box am I gonna put a kid in because of what they can or can’t do, but how am I going to make my classroom a place where all learners can thrive? Prompt: What does “advocating” mean to you? Chiara: It’s the combination of, how are we advocating for students? So, the students we teach and the students we are as grad students. How are we teaching students to advocate for themselves? And then, how are we also—I’ve seen the school do this more when I was a graduate student and since graduating—but how do we also make a place for ourselves in the world of education, which people are constantly trying to reinvent and prescribe things for, how do we get out there and say, actually, what can take you very far—we’re not going to say it’s right for everyone everywhere—but what can take you very far is this idea that children are whole people and they can do great things when you put life in front of them. And take them on their way, and help them grow through all of those things that they encounter. Advocating for that is something that I really love about Bank Street and I want to spread that around.