the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education

fall 2009 | vol. Liii, no. 1

Also
Medical Model
Start Your Own School

Arne Duncan
The Man Trying to Change
the Status Quo and Put the
Department of Education
Back on the Map

Pulling Back the Cover
Duncan Data
After reading our cover story, you may think you know Arne Duncan, secretary of education and former Ed School visiting
committee member, fairly well. But here are 10 things about him that just may surprise you.
l Arne’s siblings also work in education: His sister Sarah, also a
former Harvard hoops player, runs the Community Schools
program at the University of Chicago, and his brother Owen
is assistant director of their mother’s afterschool center.
l During his four years playing for the Australian National
Basketball League, Duncan’s nickname was “the cobra.”
l In 2004, Duncan pushed through a policy that required
would-be dropouts to sign a form that warns of the risks.
Phrases on the form included: “I will be less likely to find
good jobs that pay well, bad jobs that don’t pay well, or
maybe any jobs” and “I will be more likely to spend time in
jail or prison.”
l While overseeing schools in Chicago, he was credited with
trying to open the nation’s first gay-friendly high school.
(The plan is currently on hold.)
l Growing up, the Duncan household didn’t have a television set.
Ed. The Magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education | fall 2009 | vol. lIIi, no. 1
features
16 Will Obama’s Choice Change Education in America?
After several years as a member of the Ed School’s visiting committee,
Chicagoan Arne Duncan is now heading up President Barack Obama’s
Department of Education with a team of Ed School alumni — and
informal faculty advisors — in tow.
Round and Round
What is good teaching and learning? Without a common language
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
or shared practices, educators are often all over the map when
22
it comes to answering this question. Inspired by a practice used
Arne Duncan listens as Marian Robinson, mother of first by physicians called medical rounds, the authors of a recently
lady Michelle Obama, reads books to children during a published book, Instructional Rounds in Education, look at a new
“Read to The Top!” summer reading program
model that could help educators find common ground.
Construction 101
Some get excited about a new idea. Others get frustrated with
what they’ve experienced. All face hurdles. A look at Ed School
28
alumni who have started their own schools — barriers, roadblocks,
chutzpah, and all.
l In 2004, Duncan threatened to sue the U.S. Department
of Education after the agency pulled No Child Left Behind
funding for a district-run tutoring program for 40,000
34
struggling Chicago students.
l This past summer, Duncan recruited White House pals to departments
help read books once a week to local children (including
Cover: Arne Duncan with children from Newberry
Academy in Chicago. John Knox/Friends of Newberry Academy
his own: Clare, 7, and Ryan, 4) as part of the Read to the 3 Dean’s Perspective
Top series. Duncan kicked off the program with Clifford the
Big Red Dog and Where the Wild Things Are. Other readers 4 Letters
included David Axelrod (White House senior advisor) who
read First Dog and Marian Robinson (first grandmother) 6 The Appian Way
who read The Napping House.
34 In the Media
l Duncan once tried out for the Boston Celtics.
40 Investing
As secretary of education, he’s 16th in line for the
34 48
l
6
presidency. 42 Alumni News and Notes
l He’s tall — 6 foot 5. 48 Recess
Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 1
 Ed.
The Magazine of the
Harvard Graduate
School of Education
dean’s perspective
senior writer/editor
Lory Hough
HGSE Alumni Council, 2009—2010
lory_hough@harvard.edu Dear Friends:
Chair
Margaret Jay Braatz, Ed.M.’93, Ed.D.’99 Rowena Fong, Ed.D.’90
production manager/editor
Marin Jorgensen Vice Chair David Greene, Ed.M.’91, Ed.M.’94, Ed.D.’02
marin_jorgensen@harvard.edu I last had the distinct honor to meet with Arne Duncan in January, shortly after
Sarah Levine, Ed.M.’77, Ed.D.’80 Irene Hall, C.A.S.’93, Ed.D.’05
President Barack Obama tapped him to be the ninth secretary of education of
designer Jiraorn Assarat, Ed.M.’04 Deborah Hirsch, Ed.M.’86, Ed.D.’89
Paula Telch Cooney the United States. During our conversation, I was struck by Duncan’s steadfast
paula_telch@harvard.edu Marilyn Barber, Ed.M.’83 Marc Lewis, Ed.M.’99
commitment to improving the lives of learners, especially those in struggling
Tara Brown, Ed.M.’01, Ed.D.’05 Tanya Odom, Ed.M.’98
Director of districts. During our conversation, I was reminded of President Obama’s words
Communications Anthony De Jesus, Ed.M.’97, Ed.D.’03 Douglas Wood, Ed.M.’96, Ed.D.’00
Michael Rodman when he announced Duncan’s nomination: “When it comes to school reform,
Stella Flores, Ed.M.’02, Ed.D.’07
michael_rodman@harvard.edu Arne is the most hands-on of hands-on practitioners. For Arne, school reform
Communications intern isn’t just a theory in a book — it’s the cause of his life.”
Amanda Dagg
HGSE Visiting Committee, 2009—2010
contributing writers Bridging the gap between what we know and what we do is at the heart of
Jill Anderson Chair Arturo Madrid
Amanda Dagg P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, A.B.’74 effecting positive change in education. During his tenure with Chicago Public
Claire Chafee, Ed.M.’09 Richard Melvoin, A.B.’73
Amber Haskins Arlene Ackerman, Ed.M.’93, Ed.D.’01 Schools, Duncan made difficult choices that were based on evidence and
Andy Rotherham
David McKay Wilson
Photeine Anagnostopoulos driven by data. He closed schools, invested in early childhood education,
John McQuaid Patti Saris, A.B.’73, J.D.’76
Amy Rollins Edith Aronson, A.B.’84, Ed.M.’97 and set high expectations for students and teachers alike. As John McQuaid
Kenneth Russell, Ed.M.’00 Steve Seleznow, Ed.M.’89, Ed.D.’94
Paul Buttenwieser, A.B.’60, MD’64 describes in the cover story of this issue of Ed., Duncan launched a com-
Dacia Toll
copyeditor Idit Harel Caperton, Ed.M.’84, C.A.S.’85 prehensive intervention program aimed at struggling first-year high school
Abigail Mieko Vargus David Vitale, A.B.’68
M. Christine DeVita students. The program reflected findings by the University of Chicago’s
Susan Wallach
© 2009 by the President and
David Gergen, L.L.B.’67, KSGF’84 Consortium on Public School Research. Duncan’s policies resulted in fewer
Fellows of Harvard College. Roger Wilkins
dropouts, more students going to college, and a stronger sense of community

jonesfoto
Ed. magazine is published three John Hobbs, A.B.’60, MBA’65
times a year, free of charge,
for alumni, faculty, students, Ira Krinsky, Ed.D.’79 in Chicago’s most troubled districts.
and friends of the Harvard
Graduate School of Education.
This issue is No. 1 of Vol. LIII, Duncan has made many friends over the course of his career, including several Ed School faculty members. In 2004, Duncan
Fall 2009. Third-class brought his senior leadership team from Chicago to participate in our Public Education Leadership Project, an executive
postage paid at Cambridge, MA, HGSE Dean’s Council, 2009—2010
and additional offices.
Sarah Alturki David Lubin, Ed.D.’77
leadership program jointly sponsored by the Ed School and the Harvard Business School. He recently served as a member of
POSTMASTER: Send address Kenneth Bartels, A.B.’73, MBA’76 John McArthur, MBA’59, DBA’63
our visiting committee. And in his new role as secretary, Duncan has reached out to Associate Professor Monica Higgins and
changes to:
Donald Burton, MBA’89 Ronay Menschel
Professor Tom Payzant, as well as Academic Dean Bob Schwartz, for counsel as he begins this role at an important time in our
Harvard Graduate School of
Education
Jamie El-Erian Albert Merck, A.B.’47
country’s history.
Office of Communications
44R Brattle Street John Hobbs, A.B.’60, MBA’65 John Nichols Jr., A.B.’53, MBA‘55
Cambridge, MA 02138
John Humphrey, MBA’64 Susan Noyes
Duncan’s tenure with the Chicago Public Schools could be viewed as a case study in leadership and management through
www.gse.harvard.edu
Andrea Kayne Kaufman, Ed.M.’90 Patti Saris, A.B.’73, J.D.’76
collaboration. As you will read, he initiated bold and potentially controversial programs, while maintaining strong political
To read Ed. online, go to backing. His personable style won him supporters where there were previously antagonists, and his relentless focus on student
www.gse.harvard.edu/ed.
learning brought new enthusiasm for education reform, even in communities that had been intensely polarized. Given his
track record of implementing evidence-based research to improve student learning, I am confident he will provide much-
needed federal leadership to guide the next generation of education reform.
It’s an Honor
American Illustration Sincerely,
selected an illustration
created by Blair Kelly
for the story, “In the
Middle,” which ran in Kathleen McCartney
the winter 2009 issue of September 2009
Ed., as one of the best
of the year.

2 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 3
 letters
Murphy’s Fans
There could be no finer tribute to Jerry
Murphy than your publication of his
inspiring article, “Reflections of a Retir-
ing Former Misfit” (summer 2009).
Like Jerry, I retired a dozen years ago
without a clear idea of my next steps. I
had spent 31 years with the Committee
for Economic Development, much of
that time helping to enlist the business
community in shaping education policy.
Jerry promptly recruited me to serve on
the Dean’s Council, and it was there that
I developed a deep appreciation of his
talents as an education leader and his
uncommon human qualities. Jerry was
refreshingly frank about the challenges
he faced, and he used the Dean’s Council
not as a rubber stamp for his decisions
and predilections, but as a welcome
source of outside advice. The experience
was crucial in helping me determine
how I would spend my own life after
retirement: as a writer on education and
an adviser on education policy.
Sol Hurwitz
Jerry Murphy, your tale is delightful!
The wonderful quote from E. B. White
speaks to a favorite of mine, found in
one of Annie Dillard’s books: “The work
is not yours to complete, but neither
are you free to take no part in it.” As a
fellow misfit of the same age and a few
similar experiences, your words inspire
me to fill out an application for admis-
sion to HGSE — not so much for the
degree, but for the experiences that you
have so eloquently advertised. Above all,
4 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009
your story made me smile.
Thanks, and travel well.
“Shout” you a coffee if you
ever get to Melbourne,
Australia.
Gerry Katz
Congratulations and best
of luck, Professor Murphy!
Thank you for being the
wonderful and dedicated
teacher that you were to me and to
countless others. God bless you!
David Ward, Ed.M.’07
Hit or Miss?
While we applaud your decision to
highlight arts education with Mary
Tamer’s recent cover story, we were
underwhelmed by “On the Chopping
Block, Again” (summer 2009) — not
because of its grim portrayal of school
districts undervaluing and sacrificing
arts, but because it overemphasized a
model of delivering arts education in
public schools that is rapidly fading. In
so doing, the article overlooked many
positive gains that have taken place in
the field in the last decade.
The article was based on an arts edu-
cation model that views the relationship
between arts and schools through a lens
of value deficit. Its underlying assump-
tion is that school districts do not have
the resources, knowledge, or desire to
bring the arts into their classrooms. The
only way, therefore, to ensure arts
instruction is to rely on partner-
ships with external arts providers,
many of whom willingly provide
their services to schools for free
or at deeply discounted rates.
This model, while driven
by a sincere desire to improve
children’s learning, is flawed. By
framing arts education as charity,
it perpetuates a cycle in which an
enthusiastic teacher, principal, or
district leader secures a patchwork of
arts programming for a small number of
students. In the event of staff turnover or
economic decline, both schools and arts
providers struggle to sustain the partner-
ship. There is no infrastructure to ensure
that arts instruction remains rigorous
and integral to student experience.
In Arts in Focus, a 1999 survey of
superintendents and directors of cur-
riculum and instruction in Los Angeles
County school districts, respondents
were asked whether they thought arts
education is of value to all students. 100
percent answered yes. In response, Los
Angeles County developed and ad-
opted Arts for All: LA County Regional
Blueprint for Arts Education, a strategic
plan to restore sequential instruction in
dance, music, theater, and the visual arts
to all 1.7 million public school students
in the county. Its underlying strategy is
building arts education infrastructure at
the school district level.
The current recession has put Arts for
All to the test. While Mary Tamer writes
that “prospects for comprehensive arts
education in most K–12 public schools
appear bleak,” the situation in Los Ange-
les County shows the opposite.
Ayanna Hudson Higgins, Ed.M.’94
director of arts education
Arts for All
Talia Gibas, Ed.M.’06
arts education coordinator
Arts for All
I read “On the Chopping Block, Again”
tonight and it strikes a double chord for
me as I started my career as an educa-
tor in arts education — I taught creative
dance movement to children while and
after earning a self-designed major in
children’s dance education. No matter
where I taught subsequently, dance and
the arts were always integrated into my
curriculum. For much of my career I
worked with students who were second-
language learners, and music, dance,
visual art, and theater were pivotal
to their success in English-language
development. It also really hits home as
a parent, as my child will be in school
in a few years, and it would make me
desperately sad if they she did not
receive an adequate arts education. The
article is a great reminder of what is
important and why we do what we do.
Nell Forgacs, Ed.M.’05
It was an enormous pleasure to receive
the summer issue of Ed. magazine
focused on arts education. As cochair
of the Graduate Arts Education Council
at Harvard, I am excited to share and
discuss the issues raised, which high-
light the most salient subject matter, for
our upcoming fall meeting. Acknowl-
edging the challenges facing us at this
moment, we follow Jessica Davis’ lead
and “foster celebration rather than
justification, hopefulness rather than
despair.” The thoughtful comments
solicited from present and former staff,
council members, and AIE graduates
confirm the signal importance of our
work, and I look forward to this coming
year as an opportunity for the council to
work productively and energetically to
develop strategies that will lead us into
the next decade.
As a lifetime arts educator, with a
25-year career that has spanned leading
a large private arts-in-schools program,
serving as a dean and trustee of major
private colleges of art, and leading
Join the Conversation
Want to weigh in about Arne
Duncan’s maverick plans? Feel
strongly about starting a new public
school? In addition to writing letters
to the editor, you can now add online
comments. Go to the magazine’s web
page (www.gse.harvard.edu/ed)
and leave your comments at
the bottom of each story.
museum education initiatives at one
of the nation’s premier museums, I share
both the hopes and concerns in Mary
Tamer’s lead article. I have seen the fallow
periods, and also the creativity that
inevitably reemerges, the new ideas, the
new commitments. After all, creativity
is the name of our game — as noted,
arts educators are mostly, if not all, also
artists. (On that note, when I am not
working with the AIE Council, I too
work an artist — a memoirist and a poet!
While my name does not appear, one of
my poems, Reflections, is excerpted in
the article about Sara Lawrence Light-
foot’s new book, The Third Chapter.)
Ronne Hartfield
Missed Mentor
We were quite moved recently to learn
of the passing of former HGSE Lecturer
Steve Truitt on March 10, 2008. For
some of us, he and his Harvard Out-
ward Bound Program were the reasons
that we came to HGSE, and for others
of us he became a central pivot-point
during our stay. We remember fondly
his cramped office in Gutman, site of
long conversations, sparked by a book
on the shelf, a recent trip, a mutual
friend or admire-ee, or just the neurons
firing. They were on “river” time and not
“graduate student” time, and would last
Ed.
too long; one would see his “Everything
MUST get done this month” sign, so
carefully colored, feel guilty, and begin to
leave. Extracting oneself would take too
long, but finally his students would leave
(not him), believing that the conversa-
tions would be continued another time.
He practiced what he preached in his
courses, enabling students to dig deeper
into ideas about the role of challenge,
risk, trust, and community in learning
environments by allowing us to form a
learning community ourselves. Having
lived for 18 years with glioblastoma mul-
tiforme brain cancer, he made the most
of every day and every interaction.
He was generous to everyone with his
time and himself. He is missed.
For information about Steve’s life and
memorial, suggestions about donations,
or to connect with his family, visit:
www.caringbridge.org/visit/stevetruitt.
Holly Bull, Ed.M.’94, Jennifer Dorsen,
Ed.M.’94, Laurie Gardner, Ed.M.’94, and
Kevin Kecskes, Ed.M.’94
Ed. magazine welcomes
correspondence from all of its readers.
Send letters to:
Ed. magazine
Letters to the Editor
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Office of Communications
44R Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
E-mail: letters@gse.harvard.edu
Online Comments: www.gse.harvard.edu/ed
Please note that letters may be edited
for clarity and space.
• Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 5
 the appian way
mark morelli
Name: David Perkins Title: professor
Focus: learning by playing the whole game
“They’ve been practicing their batting without
developing a sense of the whole math game.”
Let the Games Begin
By Lory Hough
6 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009
Growing up, Professor David Perkins wasn’t especially good at
baseball. In fact, he says he didn’t show much talent for sports
at all. Yet it was America’s national pastime that Perkins
turned to when he started writing his recent book, Making
Learning Whole. Although the results of playing baseball
weren’t great, he says the process was. “From the beginning I
built up a feel for the whole game. I knew what hitting the ball
or missing the ball got you. I knew about scoring runs and keep-
ing score. I knew what I had to do to do well, even though I only
pulled it off part of the time,” he writes in the book. And then,
the epiphany: “I saw how it fit together.” Why not apply this
same logic to teaching, Perkins thought, especially in subject
areas like math and history, where students often struggle to
make connections? Just after the book was released, Perkins
spoke to Ed. about knowing the whole game, “elementitis,” and
why we love sport metaphors.
Your basic argument is that school learning is often like learn-
ing to bat without knowing the whole game of baseball. Can you
give me an example?
When kids learn math in a conventional way, they practice the
computational skills but often don’t develop a very good sense
of what math is for or how to use it. We know this because
many youngsters have a hard time picking out what operation
to use — is this a “plus” situation, a “minus” situation, a “times”
situation? They’ve been practicing their batting without devel-
oping a sense of the whole math game.
Do we ever use the whole learning approach in schools to teach?
We do sometimes teach the whole game, particularly around
subjects often — and unfortunately in my view — considered
more marginal: athletics, music, the arts. Also, ideally children
first learn about reading by being read to a lot, so they have a
sense of the whole game, and as they develop their decoding
skills they soon practice on simple small-scale texts that none-
theless try to be interesting and meaningful.
Why not for math, science, and history? Is it because that’s how
teachers themselves learned?
There are several reasons. Partly, yes, it’s a matter of the way
teachers themselves learned. Partly it’s because learning bits
and pieces now and putting them together later simplifies the
classroom routine: it’s easier to work on isolated pieces. Partly
because when kids make mistakes, the most obvious mistakes
concern the pieces — arithmetic errors, misspellings, facts not
remembered. Partly it’s a failure of imagination, a failure to
figure out what small-scale accessible meaningful versions of
mathematical modeling or building historical interpretations
would look like for children.
Explain the terms “elementitis” and “aboutitis” used in the book.
We educators always face the challenge of helping our students
approach complex skills and ideas. So what to do? The two
most familiar strategies are learning by elements and learning
about. In the elements approach, we break down the topic or
skill into elements and teach them separately, putting off the
whole game until later — often much later. So students end up
practicing meaningless pieces to score well on quizzes without
developing a sense of the whole game, like the kids mentioned
above who can do the computations but don’t know what op-
erations to use when. This is a persistent plague of education,
so to have a little fun I call it “elementitis.”
And “aboutitis”?
In the learning about approach, instead of teaching how to
do the thing in question, we teach about it. For instance, we
teach information about key science concepts rather than
teaching students how to look at and think about the world
around them with those concepts, which supposedly comes
later. But again, the information tends to be meaningless
without a context of use, and often “later” never happens. This
is another plague of education, so to have some more fun I call
it “aboutitis.”
Elementitis and aboutitis are devil’s bargains. They make
learning superficially easier today, but young learners find it dull
and also don’t develop the active understandings we really want.
Why do you think people respond well to sports metaphors?
Most people have an early sports learning experience they
enjoyed and can relate to, and it always involves learning the
whole game at some level. Of course, a lot of people aren’t
deeply into sports, but like me have fond memories of ca-
sual sports. My sports examples aren’t about the baseball or
football star but about very everyday backyard versions. Also,
once people get the idea, some people prefer other kinds of
examples — learning games or crafts or arts — and these work
just as well.
Do you still play baseball? Maybe throw the ball around on a
Sunday afternoon?
It would be cool to say yes, but I don’t think I’ve swung a bat
for more than a minute since the casual games I used to play
with my own kids when they were growing up. Once in a while
I play tennis with my wife, and that’s my sports life. I was never
a dedicated sports person, but sports were more of a presence
in my life years ago than they are now. Realistically, most of my
time these days goes enthusiastically into research and writing
and teaching around education, learning, understanding, and
critical and creative thinking. That’s my whole game!
Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 7
 the appian way
Forgotten Schools Remembered By Lory Hough, Photographs by Claudia Stack
Overgrown Currie School
It is Julius Rosenwald who gets most of the credit. And by all
accounts, when it comes to the more than 5,000 schools built
in the south for African American children during segrega-
tion, he deserves much of it. Rosenwald, a wealthy Chicago
philanthropist and part owner of Sears, Roebuck & Company,
didn’t hesitate when his friend Tuskegee University president
Booker T. Washington asked him to help finance a new, rural
school-building program that he hoped would counter the
inadequate education that African American children were
receiving under Jim Crow laws. Rosenwald initially allowed
Washington to use some of the money he had donated to
Tuskegee, later giving $4 million in additional seed money.
By 1928, one in every five rural schools for African American
students in the South was a “Rosenwald school,” as they came
to be known.
But the way Claudia Stack, Ed.M.’92, sees it, the poor African v. Board of Education
American families who dipped into their own pockets to help
pay for the schools should also be getting credit — certainly
more than they have in the past.
“Nothing would have happened without the community
contribution,” says Stack, who recently helped high school stu-
dents near her home in the southeastern part of North Caro-
lina create a short film about the schools. She is also finishing
a full-length documentary of her own. “If there’s anything I
would change about the coverage of the schools, it is that the
emphasis is usually on the philanthropy. The philanthropy is
key, but it was more of an organizing point.” (In addition to the
seed money, the Rosenwald Fund also provided architectural
8 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009
plans for the buildings, which ranged from
simple one-room wooden schoolhouses to
two-story brick buildings.)
Stack says African American families
contributed a staggering $4.7 million toward
the schools, which were spread across 15
states, from Maryland to Texas.
“Many of the people were the children
and grandchildren of slaves. They perhaps
earned 50 cents a day,” she says. In Canetuck,
N.C., for example, which is the focus of
the student film, Seeing It in Color, families
raised $1,200 for their two-teacher school.
“In the early 1920s, for the families to
contribute that amount is amazing,” Stack
says. “The drive they had to obtain an edu-
cation for their children and grandchildren
was remarkable.” Rosenwald funds contrib-
uted $800 toward the school, and public
financing — a third, required component
of the funding that was intended to make white school boards
take more responsibility for the education of African Ameri-
cans — kicked in $674.
Hanging on to History
By 1932, the year that
Julius Rosenwald died,
construction grants had
ended for new schools
(except for one school
built five years later in
Warm Springs, Ga., at
the request of President
Franklin Roosevelt).
Following the Brown
decision in 1954 Walkway in front of the
Pender County Training School
that read, “Separate
educational facilities
are inherently unequal,” many of the schools closed or were
repurposed by churches and civic groups. Over time, many
abandoned schools were torn down or left to rot. According to
the National Trust for Historic Preservation, an estimated 10
to 15 percent of original Rosenwald schools are still standing.
“The history has become just a province of alumni,” says
Stack. She became interested while she was working on a
project at UNC-Wilmington to commemorate the 50th
anniversary of Brown.
Canetuck School, built in 1922
“I started to
wonder about the
abandoned school
buildings that I drove
by every day. What
was it really like in
1954 around here?”
she says. “I knew they
Inside the were school buildings,
Currie School but not much more
than that. I started
asking questions and I visited one. This one had a narrative
plaque inside, which introduced me to the story.”
At the time, Stack was codirector of the university’s
freshman learning program and leading two film classes.
She decided to get her students involved in researching and
documenting local history, including the schools. Eventually,
Stack also involved students from nearby Pender Early College
Students in Stack’s film class
High School. For a semester, these
high school students learned how to
make a film. But more importantly,
Stack says, they met and interviewed
surviving Rosenwald alumni.
“There was a dual enrichment that
happened when the generations met,”
Stack says. “Locally, people don’t
talk much about the segregation era.
That history is in danger of being
lost. Today’s younger students don’t
have much awareness of what went
on here. As they learned, it shocked
them and made them understand
why the older folks they met were
so appreciative of their education. It
gave them a different perspective on what they have.”
As the process of completing the film went on, students
started making connections. “One day a student said, ‘Why do
we have to eat in the garage?’ I told her to take it a step further:
What does that say to you? And what do you think it meant
when black students were given secondhand books and had to
walk miles to substandard schools? It was a teachable moment,
for sure,” Stack says.
Recently the 2009 Cine Noir Festival of Black Film screened
the students’ film, which can be viewed in part on YouTube.
Stack hopes to finish her longer documentary, Under the
Kudzu, by the end of the year. Not only will it highlight Rosen-
wald schools more broadly, but it will also dispel myths about
African Americans and how they valued education.
“Today, in light of the history of the Rosenwald school
movement, nothing could be further from the truth that
lower-income African Americans have never been interested in
education or their children’s learning,” she says. “This line that
we’ve been fed is really questionable, especially
based on the history of these schools. We just
need to reconnect with this rich tradition.”
Stack’s website: www.underthekudzu.org
YouTube video: query “Seeing it in Color preview”
or go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_bcBrvag9Q
Searchable index of Rosenwald schools:
http://rosenwald.fisk.edu
Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 9
 the appian way
A TO B: Why I Got into Education
The Algebra of Buried Things By Claire Chafee, Ed.M.’09
“Do you see this? Do you see what I am looking at?” the young
math teacher asks me. I follow her eyes to the upper part of
an equation where she is gently rapping the knuckle of her
engagement ring finger under X. She has the answer, is pretty
sure I have it too, and gives me a smile of conspiratorial pa-
tience that is so lovely, it is hard to deny the tug. But my mind
is traveling slowly down an escalator. I feel like I have night
goggles on in broad daylight. I was what they would call back
then a “difficult learner.” What made this even more compli-
cated was that it was determined that I was “gifted.” For me, a
costly combination.
Once you get labeled as gifted or talented, there is little you
can do to unstitch it from your sleeve: they believe their own
assessments, whatever the glaring evidence to the contrary.
My teachers called me into meetings to praise my potential.
They had approaches, they were armed with concern, they
saw my reluctance, but somehow missed my confusion. I had
more information than I could comfortably carry. The world
of sequence that was presented to me — the calm algebra of
variables; the methods to reveal themes in novels so easily
discernable to others eluded me.
Once you get off the express train of mathematical progres-
sion, whether at the station of fractions, or decimals, or the
quiet towns of Sine and Cosine, there is no local to catch. I got
off at algebra without my luggage and had no answer for this Y
or this X, or any other problem that included a variable.
I knew I had to conquer algebra to go to college, to leave home.
And I was desperate to leave home, a tiny claustrophobic
apartment on the Upper West Side with my therapist mother
and schizophrenic brother who had dropped out of high
school two years before, took the subway at 5 a.m. to bird
watch in Queens, and received command hallucinations from
taxi cabs. After spending seven straight weekends of family
therapy at Yale-New Haven Hospital, I started sending away
for college catalogues with a quiet fierceness.
When you live with crazy people, you dream of camou-
flage, of being an extra on a movie set, of living in as small a
place as possible. When a wild, bold idea comes your way, you
don’t invite it in; it is already overcrowded in there. I was a B-
minus/C-plus student and could not comprehend my teachers’
frustration. They thought, it seemed to me, that I was taunting
them with my lack of urgency in mathematics, or history, or
English. They wrote “extend this” and “apply this to theme” in
red ballpoint pen, pressed hard in the margin. I don’t suppose
it ever occurred to my teachers that there was too much traffic
in my mind, and I had no intention of adding to it.
10 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009
jeff Hopkins, ed.m.’05
I chose a quiet, Midwestern liberal arts college and majored
in theatre, which one could take Pass/Fail, Credit/No Entry. I
had never heard these terms before and grew to love them. My
classmates found Oberlin boring, but it was a good place for
me, tranquil and liberal, the intellectual equivalent of corduroy.
As a junior, I earned a place acting at The Drama Studio, a
conservatory in Ealing, a working-class suburb of London. I
was improbably cast in Chekov’s Three Sisters to the horror of
the British students. Colin, a director with the Royal Shake-
speare Company, told us he was doing this for money.
“Claire,” he began simply. Then a pause and he pointed to
the faces looking at me in the rehearsal room. “Do you see
these people here? They don’t want you to f---ing go to Mos-
cow. They want you to just stay here and just f---ing wait.” I
nodded. “But you don’t want to f---ing wait.” I shook my head.
“You, my darling, simply want to f---ing go to Moscow! Right?”
Blinking, furious, stunned, I stood there trying to recover.
He pointed his cigarette toward the rest of the cast shouting,
“Use it! Use it!” meaning I should bring all those feelings to bear
on my next lines. I realized, there and for the first time, that
what I had buried — rage, humor, presence of mind, fear —
were somehow useful, that characters in plays buried these things,
too. And when they could no longer carry them, they came
unfurled. How Colin knew I had such things inside me, I do not
know. Only that maybe he wasn’t doing it just for the money.
I realize this is an absurd story to surface when think-
ing about what brought me to education, a field known for
its sincerity of purpose and professional approach to adult-
hood. Such displays as Colin’s would, seen through any lens,
embedded in any pedagogy, seem like abusive rant. But I came
to teaching to continue the conversation of ideas with people
who were so passionate about them, that they appear to list
to one side, fix their eyeglasses with a Band-Aid, wear strange
trousers, and exhibit a relationship to their subject that to an
untrained eye is identical to the person talking things over
with themselves on a subway. In short, I found my best teach-
ers to be misfits; somewhat ill-equipped for life on the outside,
but wonderful guides to the art of cutting a hole in the ice,
baiting a hook, and lowering it into the dark unknown.
They were embarrassing, magnificent tutors for the rigors
of selfhood. I would not have dared to bring as much of my
strangeness or my buried love along with me, had I not had
First the Feet, and Then the Heart By Lory Hough
First he took off his shoes. And then, after folding his legs under
the familiar crimson and saffron robe and settling himself into an
ornate wooden chair on the stage of Harvard’s Memorial Church,
Tenzin Gyatso, more commonly known as the Dalai Lama, made
the audience laugh: “Oh, not very comfortable.”
It would not be the last time the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet
joked during his speech, sponsored jointly by Harvard’s educa-
tion and divinity schools. After telling the bowing audience to
“sit down,” he spoke of how honored he was to speak at such a
famous institution. “A friend once told me, Harvard is so, so fa-
mous that just to walk in that place is something sacred,” he said,
followed by a smile. “That is too much, I think.”
His Holiness, as he was addressed during introductions, was
also serious as he hit on a number of complex issues: his defini-
tion of secularism, the meaning of Islam, and youth violence.
He also addressed the topic of the day’s speech, “Educating the
Heart.” In particular, he questioned whether education and intel-
ligence alone bring inner peace.
“Those people who are more compassionate, those people
are religious man, community man, family man,” he said. “Much
peaceful, much happier.”
In contrast, “there are very smart scholars and professors who
are full of competition, full of jealousy, and even full of anger.
Sometimes they even commit suicide,” he said, pausing when he
realized who was in the audience. “I don’t mean disrespect to the
academic community.”
The Dalai Lama also stressed that compassion starts at home.
“If you see people who are more calm and ready to show love
and kindness toward others, those people probably had a
mother who provided more affection at a young age.”
The 74-year-old was in the Boston area as part of a four-day
tour that included a conference at MIT later that day and an
address (wearing a red New England Patriots cap) before nearly
16,000 at Gillette Stadium. The latter raised nearly $450,000 for
the construction of a Tibetan heritage center in Boston.
Throughout his Harvard speech, the Dalai Lama’s comments
were simple, which surprised Chi Pham, Ed.M.’09.
their example: giving long analogies that lost us all, in sweat-
ers just a size too small; riffling through lost pages of a meticu-
lously planned lesson; bridging the world of mistake, and the
world where no mistake is worthless.
— Claire Chafee, Ed.M.’09, wrote this piece in Nancy Sommer’s
Teachers as Writers class last spring. She moved back to the Bay
Area with her partner and four-year-old daughter to continue
her work as a playwright and teacher.
“I don’t know what I was
expecting, but thought that per-
haps he would enlighten us with
a long and eloquent speech as I’m
used to sitting through during my
time at Harvard,” she said. “What I
got was completely different, and
in my mind, so much better. The
Dalai Lama’s words were simple
yet powerful.”
Tetsuya Takahashi, Ed.M.’09,
mike rodman
who had traveled for two months
through Tibet, was moved by the
Dalai Lama’s message that educators must include compassion in
their teaching.
“His speech made me re-recognize the role and the task of
educators,” Takahashi said. “He mentioned that he knew the
purpose of education — to foster the soul of compassion.” Look-
ing at the front row, where the deans were seated, the Dalai Lama
said, “The task is on your shoulders, not mine, so finish it now.”
In her introduction, Dean Kathleen McCartney said the Dalai
Lama’s focus on compassion in education was exactly the reason
she wanted him to speak again at Harvard. “His name is often
translated as ocean of wisdom,” she said, “yet he is quick to offer
a translation that is more accurate: teacher.” And although he is a
spiritual leader, McCartney pointed out that the Dalai Lama likes
to say that kindness is his religion.
His kindness was evident after the speech concluded and he
had moved outside to a tree-planting ceremony in his honor. In
addition to blessing a pregnant woman’s belly and individually ac-
knowledging the young Tibetan dancers who had performed be-
fore the speech, he made sure that the young birch hybrid created
at nearby Arnold Arboretum was well taken care of. After the deans
and Harvard President Drew Faust each tossed a shovel’s worth of
dirt on the tree’s roots, the Dalai Lama circled the tree, covering it
properly with many scoops of soil before dousing it with bottled
water that had been left at the podium for the speakers.
Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 11
 the appian way

First Impressions
A Look at the School’s New Faculty

Ronald Ferguson senior lecturer Harry Spence professor of practice

Focus: teacher quality, youth cul-
ture, and racial achievement gaps
Pre-Ed School: senior lecturer,
Harvard Kennedy School*
Grew up: Cleveland, Ohio
Favorite book: Souls of Black Folk
by W.E.B. DuBois
Inspiration: My grandmother, Focus: management and leadership
Kathryn Chavers, a master teacher of organizations, with a particular
focus on moving organizations
Historical figure you would like from a focus on compliance to a
to take to lunch: Any ancestor focus on learning
who was born into slavery and
experienced emancipation Pre-Ed School: commissioner
of Massachusetts’ child welfare
program
Grew up: Cranbury, N.J.
Favorite book: Achilles in Vietnam
by Jonathan Shay
Inspiration: don Lorenzo Milani,
an Italian priest I worked for in
Italy in 1965, a radical transformer
of education, now the subject of a
canonization movement
Historical figure you would like
to take to lunch: Shams of Tabriz

Andrew Dean Ho assistant professor of education Marty West assistant professor in education policy
Focus: educational statistics and Favorite book: The Mismeasure of Historical figure you would like Focus: American K—12 education Inspiration: Chris Waters (Williams
measurement and their interac- Man by Stephen Jay Gould to take to lunch: Charles Darwin politics and policy College), Avner Offer (Oxford
tions with large-scale educational University), Paul Peterson (Harvard
policies Inspiration: My mom and her mom, Pre-Ed School: assistant professor, University), and the many other
both fantastic teachers; my Stan- Brown University dedicated professors I’ve had along
Pre-Ed School: assistant professor, ford University adviser Ed Haertel; the way.
University of Iowa and the high school students in Grew up: Rockville, Md.
Japan who first gave me a perspec- Historical figure you would
Grew up: Honolulu, Hawaii tive on testing as a tool of policy Favorite book: The Things they like to take to lunch: Jonathan
Carried by Tim O’Brien Edwards

Katherine Masyn assistant professor of education

Focus: The development and
application of cross-sectional and
longitudinal latent variable models,
specifically, finite mixture models,
latent growth curve models, and
event history models. I also have
strong substantive interests in
teacher education and retention,
alcohol research, and prevention
science
Mark Moore professor in education, management, and organizational behavior
Focus: how individuals have to
think and act to make highly lever-
aged changes in social conditions
Pre-Ed School: professor, Harvard
Kennedy School*
Grew up: Midwestern roots (Oak
Park, Ill.), but lived mostly in Penn-
sylvania, Maryland, and Massachu-
setts as a child and teenager
Pre-Ed School: assistant professor, from my graduate students and my
University of California at Davis
Grew up: Vienna, Va.
Favorite book: Crime and Punish-
ment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Inspiration: I get my greatest
inspirations for work and for life
Favorite book: Contemporary,
Saturday by Ian MacEwan; Classic,
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Inspiration: Basic fear of not
amounting to anything. Belief
that individuals in general, and
I in particular, might be able to
contribute something of value to
the world. The example of many of
my teachers. The simple, brute fact
closest colleagues
Historical figure you would like
to take to lunch: Plato
of unmet social needs that can, in
principle, be solved with thought,
good will, and collective commit-
ment and effort.
Historical figure you would like
to take to lunch: Barack Obama
Newly Tenured
Bridget Terry Long professor of education
Focus: access to higher education and
college success
Joined Ed School: assistant professor,
2000
Current Projects: improving access
to college information and financial
aid, understanding barriers and
examining interventions, and
addressing the problem of insufficient
high school preparation
Degrees: master’s and Ph.D. in economics, Harvard University; A.B.
in economics, Princeton University
Ph.D. Thesis: The Market for Higher Education: Economic Analyses
of College Choice, Returns, and State Aid Policy
Nancy Hill professor of education
Focus: role culture plays in parenting
and adolescent achievement
Joined Ed School: visiting associate
professor, 2007
Current Projects: Project PASS
(Promoting Academic Success for
Students) and Project Alliance/
Projecto Alianzo
Degrees: master’s and Ph.D. in
developmental psychology, Michigan State University; B.S. in
psychology, Ohio State University
Ph.D. Thesis: Mother-Daughter Relationships and Upward Mobility
in Middle Class African American Women

*continues to hold a joint appointment with the Harvard Kennedy School

12 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 13
 the appian way

5
STUDENT impact CAMPUS BRIEFS

Reasons to Know ... Commencement Roundup

On June 4, 597 Ed School
Students: Wanted
Ed School students are in high demand. Despite the downturn in the job market,
students became Ed on-campus recruiting interviews were up by 15 percent over 2008; the PreK–12
Raygine DiAquoi School alumni. The Morningstar Expo saw a 39 percent increase in participating organizations; and the Social
Doctoral student Family Teaching Award was presented Impact Expo had a 10 percent increase. The online Virtual Career Fair included
to Professor Monica Higgins; Profes- 129 jobs from 66 organizations — a 222 percent increase in jobs over last year.
She was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and attended public schools until the sor Dick Elmore, C.A.S.’72, Ed.D.’76,
sixth grade when her parents, wanting her to have every opportunity, gave the faculty address; student speaker
Mark Hecker, Ed.M.’09, implored his Early Honor
sent her to the Hewitt School, a private school for girls on the Upper
classmates to “get to work” changing This summer, Associate Professor Nonie Lesaux was selected for a
East Side. Her experience there highlighted the inequities she knew ex-
the world; and Alumni Council Award Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Only
isted in public education. “I was being groomed to be a leader through a handful of education researchers have ever received this honor.
winner Ernesto Schiefelbein, Ed.D.’69,
the styles, tastes, and predispositions that my teachers and mentors The award was created in 1996 by President Bill Clinton to support
reminded the soon-to-be graduates that
were actively cultivating in me,” she says. “This contrasted greatly with their degrees would open many doors. young professionals who show leadership potential in science and
the experiences of my family members who technology. Winners receive five years of funding from a related federal agency —
were being groomed for a life of disadvan- in Lesaux’s case, the Department of Education — to advance his or her research.
tage. They were not being asked to think YouToo?
critically, to be creative, or to lead projects. I now know that With the creation of a new branded
With Class Bi-Laws
their schools, like my school, were simply reproducing and maintaining YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/
The 2009–2010 incoming class at the Ed Two Ed School grads were
the status quo.” This Big Sister to a local second-grader is now at the Ed HarvardEducation), the Ed School has
School includes: 39 doctoral and 639 master’s named deans at two law
joined the online video revolution. Click
School to figure out why this happens — and what she can do about it. students from 39 states, the District of Colum- schools, effective this past
on the “subscribe” button and you’ll be
bia, and 36 countries. Average age of Ed.D. is July: Martha Minow,
alerted each time we put up a new video.

1
32 years, with a range from 24 to 44; Ed.M. is Ed.M.’76, became dean of
With a handful of other doctoral students, she started the Graduate
28 with a range from 21 to 61. Almost three- Harvard Law School; Chris
Student Research Collaborative, the student arm of the school’s
To learn more about these briefs, quarters are female and 95 percent will study Guthrie, Ed.M.’91, became
Achievement Gap Initiative. Their main goal: find a direct link be-
go to www.gse.harvard.edu/ full time. Students of color make up 22 percent dean of Vanderbilt Univer-
tween culture and academic achievement.
news_events. of the group; international students 16 percent. sity Law School.

2
Ultimately she says she’s interested in better understanding schools
that are successfully educating minority students. She also wants
to paint a different image of African American families than the
Must Be Awards Season Harvard’s Global Day of Service
Associate Professor Vanessa Fong was given a five-year CAREER On May 9, more than 300 Harvard alumni and stu-
prevailing one that implies they are not interested in education.
award by the National Science Foundation’s Cultural Anthropol- dents from 13 cities around the world gave back to their

3
ogy Program. Professor Kurt Fischer received the Transforming communities as part of Harvard’s first Global Day of
Since coming to the Ed School in 2007 following teaching stints at
Education through Neuroscience Award at the Learning & the Service. Sponsored by the Harvard Graduate School of
schools in Harlem and at the academic achievement program she
Brain Conference. At the American Education Research Associa- Education and the Harvard Alumni Association, the event
attended before starting private school, she has been active in the
tion, Professor Carol Weiss was given the Presidential Citation; worked through regional Harvard Clubs to match volun-
annual Alumni of Color Conference. “It’s a space where I feel nourished and
Professor Christopher Dede was honored as an outstanding teers with local service organizations such as Habitat for
reminded of why I’m here.”
reviewer; and Professor Robert Selman was named a 2009 fellow. Humanity, Teen Empowerment, and Hands on Tokyo.

4
This past summer, she worked in Haiti on a Save the Children proj-
ect designed to help a community track their own school success
using surveys and interviews. She created a task force of teachers,
students, community leaders, and parents that are doing the tracking and
then will share the findings with the rest of the community.
Students Selected
Student honors last spring: Doctoral candidate Leticia Braga, Ed.M.’03, received the AERA Minority Fellowship in Education
Research; Malia Villegas, Ed.M.’05, received the Spencer Dissertation Fellowship; Jennifer Groff, Ed.M.’09, and doctoral candi-
date Anna Rosefsky Saavedra, Ed.M.’06, received Fulbright Scholarships; Kathleen Corriveau, Ed.M.’03, Ed.D.’09, was named a
Koppitz fellow; Wendy Mages, Ed.D.’08, received the American Alliance for Theatre and Education Distinguished Dissertation

5
martha stewart

She can walk on stilts and ride a unicycle. She learned both skills Award; and doctoral candidates Robert Garcia, Ed.M.’02, Shimon Waronker, Ed.M.’09, Almudena Abeyta, Ed.M.’04, Ed.M.’09,
while a counselor at a performing arts camp. “I unicycle now to re- Beth Schiavino-Navaez, Ed.M.’03, Ed.M.’09, and Guadalupe Guerrero, Ed.M.’02, Ed.M.’09, won the 2009 Innovation in Educa-
lieve stress. It’s hard, it’s counterintuitive, but that’s part of the fun.” tion Award from Phi Delta Kappa for the design of their New American Academy model.

14 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 15
 Will Obama’s Choice Change Education in America?
As Arne Duncan, a former member of the Ed School’s visiting committee,
helps school districts across the country Race to the Top and tries to give
every child a chance to succeed, this idealist, competitor, and basketball pal
to the president has the opportunity to do what no previous secretary of
education has been able to accomplish.
By john Mcquaid

A
rne Duncan, the secretary of education,
spent the balance of his childhood travel-
ing back and forth each weekday from his
Chicago neighborhood to the afterschool
center run by his mother, Sue. It was a short
trip — the Duncan home was on 56th Street in Hyde Park,
the center on 46th in the Kenwood neighborhood. But as in
many American cities where privilege and poverty butt up
against each other, it was in essence a passage from one world
into another. Hyde Park, home to the University of Chicago
(and, until recently, to Barack Obama and his family) was a
famously integrated, upscale community. Kenwood was, in
the language of the time — the 1970s — a ghetto.
The Sue Duncan Center was attended by kids from
elementary to high school age, nearly all of them African
Americans struggling with the grind of urban poverty —
crime, drugs, gangs, absent parents. Arne and his younger
brother and sister attended the well-regarded University of
Chicago Laboratory Schools in the morning, then spent their
afternoons as, in effect, junior members of their mother’s staff.
As young kids they earned small change for sharpening pencils
and cleaning up. As they got older, they took on more respon-
sibilities: tutoring, supervising, coaching sports and games.
The gulf between their own comfortable circumstances —
their father was a professor of psychology at the university —
and those of their contemporaries on the South Side bothered
Daniel Bayer
inequities exist in Chicago, in America? Who or what was to
blame? Unsurprisingly, they focused on what they knew —
education. Inner-city Chicago schools were notoriously bad
during the 1960s and ’70s; Duncan’s brother, Owen, says that,
at the time, the afterschool center didn’t help kids with home-
work because their teachers didn’t give them any.
“I grew up having a huge amount of anger, frankly, at the
local public schools — that what we were trying to do from 3
to 8 p.m. at night wasn’t in most cases happening during the
school day,” Arne Duncan says in an interview. “So you had
kids who may not have been born with all the advantages, but
they were smart, they were committed, they wanted to learn —
and they weren’t being challenged. No one was expecting
them to do anything.”
Let’s be upfront about it: Arne Duncan is a bona fide ideal-
ist. He talks not just about putting kids first, raising test scores,
and the relationship of education to economic opportunity —
the standard rhetoric of his predecessors — but also about
education as a tool for social justice, not a phrase heard very
often in Washington policy circles or even among his fellow
technocrats in the Obama administration. He believes that
government has an obligation to right the wrongs of poverty —
or, at least, to do everything possible to mitigate the damage
it does to individuals. “In so many places we’re not giving
every child a chance, we’re not giving children the chance they
need to be successful,” he says. “And where we don’t, I really

the Duncan kids. It became a kind of puzzle, a mental nut believe we’re part of the problem. We perpetuate poverty. We
they all tried to crack as they grew older. Why did such glaring perpetuate social failure.”
 Arne tutoring at the
Sue Duncan center
and using data in creative ways. Ed School Academic Dean
Robert Schwartz, C.A.S.’68, a friend of Duncan’s, recalls sitting
with him on a flight last fall, several weeks after the presiden-
tial election. “The obvious speculation at that point was that
Arne would be on anybody’s shortlist of potential secretaries,
and he wanted to talk about it. I said, ‘Arne, has the secretary
of education or the education department been a significant
neighborhoods, showing up at gyms and talking his way into the Devonport Warriors. He spent four years there, playing,
pickup games. “If you wanted to be a good basketball player coaching, devoting free time to working in a national foster
you had to go where the good basketball players were,” he says. care program — and, for good measure, met Karen Donnelly,
“That was inner city, South and West Side. I guess it was pretty whom he’d later marry and with whom he’d have two children.
unique. I was the only white kid anywhere I played.”
Losers would be kicked off the court, but the winners would
keep playing. So anyone who wanted to play had to learn how

Courtesy of the Sue Duncan Center

Chicago investment banker and philanthropist John W.
Rogers Jr. met Duncan playing on South Side basketball courts
as a teenager and later gave him his first job running an educa-
tional mentoring program. “I think he sees this as the fulfill-
ment of his mom’s legacy and his own,” Rogers says. “It’s the
opportunity to take his mom’s values and his values and share
them with the entire country.”
Problem is, the Department of Education has in its nearly
30 years of existence been something of a graveyard for ideal-
ism. The job of secretary is hostage to the basic structure of the
U.S. education system, with its tradition of local control and
the sway that powerful interest groups hold over national edu-
cation policy. The department is the smallest federal bureau-
cracy, with 4,200 employees. Its principal task: to distribute
federal funds to states and local school districts amounting to
about 8 percent of the total spent nationally on education. Even
the signature federal reform, the No Child Left Behind Act
passed during the Bush administra-
tion, has failed to live up to its billing
and is overdue for a revamping.
Given these limitations, the sec-
retary of education has at best only
modest influence over what goes on in
classrooms — and, if the politics turn
sour, flirts with irrelevancy. Duncan
knows this as well as anyone. Prior
to being handpicked by President
factor in your life as CEO of the Chicago schools the past seven
years?’ He looked at me, and the answer was obvious. It was
not a relevant factor.”
And yet, this time things might turn out differently. Duncan
has an opportunity that none of the previous nine education
secretaries could even dream about. Obama’s decisive vic-
tory and a severe recession have opened a way for the fed-
eral government to make a significant impact on schooling
nationwide. The Obama economic stimulus package contains
a huge windfall for education, approximately $115 billion —
more than double the department’s annual budget, a requested
$46.7 billion for the coming fiscal year. Most of those funds are
going to avert catastrophic school budget shortfalls caused by
the recession. But the stimulus also includes an unprecedented
$5 billion in discretionary funds. The largest share belongs
to the Race to the Top program, in which states will compete
for grants by showing they’re innovating. Duncan’s hope is to
leverage that cash to create a brushfire of reform at the local
level: funding and ultimately “scaling up” successful reforms
and seeding them elsewhere. But his window of opportunity is
quite narrow — the money will run out in two years.
“We’re in a place where we have to push very hard for
reform at every level — early childhood, K–12, higher ed,”
Duncan says. “It presents challenges, but what’s so fun about
this is the opportunity to break
through. We have unprecedented
Shooting hoops
with Obama discretion and resources. So we have
a chance to move things in ways
they’ve never been moved before.
It doesn’t guarantee success. But it
absolutely puts you in the game.”
to win. The games, and the occasional dangers of the inner-city
gym culture, forced Duncan to develop some street smarts.
Like Obama, he’s an outsider who has never quite wholly
belonged to any of the worlds he moved through, nor to any
particular interest group or camp, yet who could be comfort-
able anywhere: basketball courts, the streets, political meet-
ings, and policy salons.
“It was hugely helpful. Hugely,” Duncan says of the later
impact of this phase of his life. “I knew all the streets, I knew all
the people. And you really learn how to read people’s character.
There were people who, all I knew were their nicknames, and
you trust your life to them, literally. I had people protect me.
And there were other people that didn’t have your best inter-
ests at heart. You had to negotiate those things.”
Duncan never nursed many doubts about what he wanted
to do, sticking to the parallel tracks of basketball and public
education. A sociology major at Harvard, he took what would
have been his senior year off, returning to work at the Sue
Duncan Center and to research his thesis, titled The Values,
Aspirations and Opportunities of the Urban Underclass. It
looked at the gap between what people in Kenwood wanted
from life and what was actually available to them. He says he
was also trying to come to terms with the violent deaths of
many of the South Side friends he’d made over the years on the
basketball courts. One pattern was obvious. Everyone who had
been killed had dropped out of high school; friends who had
stuck it out and graduated survived (they are a diverse group,
including actor Michael Clarke Duncan and R&B singer R.
Kelly). “It was this real, absolute dividing line,” Duncan says.
“There’s this idea that we talk about how important education
is — but in these really, really tough communities, it was liter-
ally between life and death.”
The year off had also been a test to see if he wanted to
pursue urban education as a career, and he decided the
uncan returned to Chicago and in 1992 took a
job offered to him by a childhood friend from the
basketball courts — John W. Rogers, the founder
and CEO of the nation’s largest minority mutual fund firm,
Ariel Capital Management. Duncan ran the Ariel Education
Initiative, a program that mentored children at one of the city’s
worst-performing elementary schools, then followed them
year to year (and later helped pay their college tuition bills).
After the school was closed, Duncan reopened it as a success-
ful charter school with a finance-oriented curriculum, the Ariel
Community Academy.
Only 27 at the time he started with Ariel, Duncan’s rise was
quick. He joined the Chicago Public School system in 1998, as
a deputy chief of staff to CEO Paul Vallas, where one of his jobs
was supervising the creation of magnet programs in troubled
schools. Three years later, Mayor Daley pushed Vallas out and
installed Duncan in his place. The Chicago Tribune headlined
its story “Obscure Deputy Was Daley’s Second Choice,” noting
that Duncan had never held a post high enough to merit his
own secretary.
Duncan pivoted from his predecessor’s bottom-line ap-
proach. “During Vallas’ time, there was a strong push on
ending social promotion, using standardized tests. They were
less focused on how to intervene in schools, in classes and with
individual kids,” says Timothy Knowles, director of the Univer-
sity of Chicago’s Urban Education Institute. “Duncan and his
team brought to Chicago a set of ideas about how to improve
teaching, learning, and leadership — not focused exclusively on
accountability and governance.” He drew in part on expertise
from Harvard’s Public Education Leadership Program, run by
the graduate schools of education and business, dispatching
teams of staffers each summer.
As CEO, Duncan pursued a mix of programs — some sys-
tem-wide, some fine-grained. The centerpiece is Renaissance

I
Obama, his friend and sometime f that’s going to happen —
pickup basketball partner and adver- and the odds of a decisive
sary, Duncan was CEO of the Chicago breakthrough are still pretty
Public School system, the nation’s long — it may not be Duncan the
third largest with 400,000 mostly idealist who accomplishes it but
minority, low-income students. With Duncan the competitor. As a scrawny
Mayor Richard Daley’s backing, he kid of 12 or 13, he gravitated toward
REUTERS/Ho New
answer was yes. But basketball still beckoned. Duncan had
been cut from the Harvard varsity squad his freshman year,
a major blow at the time, but by the time he returned for his
senior year in 1986 he was made cocaptain and led the team
in scoring and steals. A scout had told Duncan he was good,
but would never make it in the NBA, and he set his sights a
bit lower. He played for the Rhode Island Gulls of the summer
2010, an ambitious effort to shut down 60 troubled schools
and create 100 new state-of-the-art schools across the city. As
part of that plan, Duncan pushed to expand the city’s roster
of charter schools — it now stands at 67 — and embraced the
turnaround concept, in which a school is temporarily shut
down, staff members fired, transferred, or asked to reapply, and
a new staff built from the ground up.

had real power to effect reforms, in- the South Side’s predominant game, U.S. Basketball League, then decamped to Australia, where he One of the biggest problems plaguing school reform is the
cluding shuttering poorly performing basketball. He began traveling alone played for a series of teams, both professional and semi-pro: absence of good data tracking the performance of students,
schools, expanding charter schools, through some of Chicago’s toughest the Eastside Melbourne Spectres, the Launceston Ocelots, and teachers and schools over time. So Duncan took particular

18 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 19
 Speaking to reporters in Milwaukee
about grants to retrain displaced workers
interest in the detailed data analyses done by
the University of Chicago’s Consortium on
Public School Research. One long-term study
found that only 3 percent of African American
and Latino male students who graduated from
Chicago schools ever got bachelor’s degrees.
Duncan’s team tried to identify exactly where
students got off track. Consortium research
showed that while elementary school students
with low test scores and other problems stood
a good chance of improving later on, troubled
high school freshmen almost never did so.
Duncan focused resources on mentoring and
intervention at that level.
O
Another initiative was modeled on his own experience:
partnering with local organizations to turn schools into de fac-
to community centers open through the afternoon and into the
evening. “I think our schools should be open 12-13-14 hours a
day,” Duncan said recently on The Charlie Rose Show. “Not just
lengthening the school day, but a wide variety of afterschool
activities: drama, art, sports, chess, debate, academic enrich-
ment. Programs for parents: GED, ESL, family literacy nights,
potluck dinners. At home we attached health care clinics to
about two dozen of our schools. Where schools truly become
the centers of the community, great things happen.”
Duncan’s efforts on school overhauls — as well as his more
unconventional ideas, such as a program that paid students
for good grades — stirred up resistance from affected com-
munities and teacher organizations. He was persistent, but also
unfailingly good-natured and collegial, unusual attributes in a
job that usually requires sharp elbows. “Arne is a nonpolarizing
figure,” says Vallas, now superintendent of the New Orleans
Recovery School District. “Despite his strong support for char-
ters, accountability, and closing failing schools, he doesn’t have
the type of personality that grates on people. He has a really
easygoing, relaxed manner to him and can be really disarming.
And it’s real, not contrived.”
In Chicago, however, Duncan could afford to be gracious.
He was backed with the wide-ranging power over schools
granted the mayor. In Washington, his power is considerably
more diffuse. If national education policy demands a bold,
paradigm-busting leadership, some critics suggest that Duncan
may be too cautious. After seven years, Duncan’s Chicago re-
cord was innovative but hardly revolutionary. “The record sug-
gests that even when playing with a pretty strong hand, he was
a cautious, incremental operator, who left with everyone saying
nice things about him but had not used the political capital he
had to pick any of the really tough fights,” says Frederick Hess,
Ed.M.’90, director of education policy studies at the conserva-
tive American Enterprise Institute. “That might have been the
right call in Chicago; that might have been who he is.”
20 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009
f course, Duncan wasn’t hired to blow up an old
system, but to build on the work of his predeces-
sor. And his current job is, if anything, more of an
incremental game than the previous one. The agenda spans
proposed changes in preK to college, pounding the bully pulpit
to promote charter schools, merit pay, and national standards,
and what’s likely to be a contentious fight over the reauthori-
zation of No Child Left Behind. Besides his $5 billion pot of
discretionary money, Duncan has several things working in
his favor. Over the past decade sharp partisan divisions over
education policy have softened, in part because of the progress
made by reformist big city superintendents including Duncan
himself. That doesn’t mean a big breakthrough is imminent;
the landscape is simply more fractured than before. “There
is some bipartisan agreement, center-left, center-right. But
both Democrats and Republicans are divided on education,”
says Cynthia Brown, vice president for education policy at the
liberal Center for American Progress.
The national political foment has been accompanied by a
flood of experimentation and new policy thinking, and Duncan
wants the department tapped into it. Among other things,
he’s brought in Monica Higgins, an associate professor at
the Ed School, to organize a series of 90-minute roundtables
every three to four weeks in which outside policy experts and
practitioners meet with Duncan and his top deputies for an
open discussion on a particular topic — teacher performance,
turnaround in schools. Duncan has also seeded key positions
in the department with Ed School graduates. Martha Kanter,
Ed.M.’74, the undersecretary of education, had been chancellor
of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District and is an
expert in two-year colleges, a focus of Obama’s goal to increase
college attendance and graduation rates. Gabriella Gomez,
Ed.M.’01, meanwhile, is running Duncan’s congressional rela-
tions. Robert Shireman, Ed.M.’89, founder of the Institute for
College Access and Success, has been appointed to oversee
college tuition and finance issues. Schwartz continues to advise
Duncan informally.
Right now, anything seems possible. That’s not going to last. Robinson, now the men’s basketball coach at Oregon State).
“Everybody goes through this period, enjoying the honey- They crossed paths occasionally after Obama was elected to the
moon phase. But then when it gets down to reality of who gets Illinois State Senate in 1996 representing Duncan’s home base,
money, who gets approved, who are the real innovators and Hyde Park and Kenwood on the South Side, and frequently when
drivers, there it gets much harder,” says Duncan’s predecessor, Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate and Duncan ran the
Margaret Spellings. One obstacle is the caps that many states school system. They also began playing basketball regularly —
maintain on the numbers of charter schools — a policy Obama they played on election day in Chicago, and occasionally manage
and Duncan are pushing them to relax. “Imagine a governor of it in Washington. “It’s really, really lucky when you’re not trying
a state that has fairly severe caps on charter expansion and a to build a relationship now,” Duncan says, “when you’ve got this
need to get in an application under Race to the Top. It will take history of working together, when you tend to see the world
an act of the legislature in New York, for example, to change very similarly and have a similar set of values.”
caps,” says Russ Whitehurst, a senior fellow at the Brookings Education, of course, must compete with other items on
Institution and former head of the Department’s Institute of Obama’s ambitious agenda, as well as with erupting crises
Education Sciences. Congress will also be skeptical — as it was that will inevitably distract the White House. If the president
recently when Senate and House committees grilled Duncan pushes education reform consistently and wagers politi-
on his plans for Title I funding. cal capital on it, Duncan has a chance at success. Duncan’s
As in Chicago, Duncan’s plans ultimately depend on his membership in the close-knit group of Chicago transplants
relationship with his boss. “He gets this,” Duncan says. “Before in the Obama administration — including top advisors David
I came to Washington we talked a lot about what we want to Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, and social secretary Desiree Rog-
do here. And he, like me, feels this huge sense of urgency, this ers (John W. Rogers’ ex-wife) — will help him keep his issues
real sense of impatience, and this real sense of possibility. He in the mix.
helps create the space and the latitude to make the changes we
need to make.” ­ John McQuaid is a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer based
—
Duncan and Obama met in the early 1990s (through bas- in Washington, D.C. This is his first piece for Ed. To access his
ketball, Duncan already knew Michelle Obama’s brother Craig stories and blog, go to www.johnmcquaid.com. Ed.
From the Charles to the Potomac
We’re not a school of government, yet Ed School graduates play a huge role in education policy around the world, especially in Washington, D.C. In fact,
graduates are employed in nearly every agency and department, from the departments of labor, energy, and commerce to the Consumer Product Safety
Commission to the Library of Congress. Many, of course, also work for the U.S. Department of Education as undersecretaries, writers, policy analysts, and
education program specialists, to name a few. Below are a sampling of positions held by Ed School graduates currently working for the federal government.
U.S. Department of Education U.S. Congress U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Martha Kanter, Ed.M.’74, under- Roberto Rodriguez, Ed.M.’98, senior Paul Shapiro, Ed.M.’66, senior
secretary; Marshall “Mike” Smith, education advisor, Senator Edward environmental engineer
Ed.M.’63, Ed.D.’70, senior counselor Kennedy (D-MA); Sophia King, Ed.M.’99, chief
to Secretary Arne Duncan; John of staff, Representative Gregory Meeks (D-NY) U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Silvanus Wilson Jr., Ed.M.’82, Edward Wright Jr., C.A.S.’74, senior budget
U.S. Department of State
Ed.D.’85, executive director, White officer; Julia Chiu, Ed.M.’03, disaster assis-
Erin Renner, Ed.M.’05, Laura Hochla,
House Initiative on Historically tance directorate
Ed.M.’05, Francis Cheever Jr., M.A.T.’71,
Black Colleges and Universities;
Jennifer Lawson, Ed.M.’05, and Dina
Robert Shireman, Ed.M.’89, deputy Peace Corps
Tamburrino, Ed.M.’08, foreign service officers
undersecretary; Gabriella Gomez, Nanayaa Kumi, Ed.M.’08, recruitment and
Ed.M.’01, assistant secretary for placement specialist, Peace Corps Response
legislation and congressional affairs; U.S. Department of Energy
Zakiya Smith, Ed.M.’07, director of Barbara Twigg, M.A.T.’72, communications
National Institute for Literacy
government relations officer, Office of Energy Efficiency and
Lynn Reddy, Ed.M.’98, deputy director
Renewable Energy
Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 21
 RO

UND
&

UN
RO Borrowing a page from the medical
school world, educators at the Ed
School are showing teachers and
school leaders how to find common
ground when it comes to learning
and instruction.

By lory hough
illustrations by cathy gendron
 S
arah Fiarman, Ed.M.’05, Ed.D.’09, remembers being
with a group of educators as they sat in a classroom
observing a reading lesson. The teacher was ask-
ing lots of questions and students were constantly
raising their hands. All of the textbooks were open.
Afterwards, the group of principals, superintendents, and
union leaders gathered to talk about what they saw. As Fiarman
remembers it, the comments were all over the map.
“Some left feeling like, Wow! Did you see how engaged the
students were? Others thought the text wasn’t useful,” she says.
Other comments were directed at the teacher’s performance.
Fiarman herself felt like no real learning had taken place.
Now a principal at a K–8 school in Cambridge, Mass., this
former teacher realizes that everyone was on different pages
when it came to describing the scene and evaluating the class-
room. “We didn’t have a shared practice,” she says. “As educa-
tors, we have such different ideas of what effective teaching
and learning is.”
Now imagine that the educators are medical students and
instead of observing a class, they are in a hospital room with an
experienced doctor visiting a patient. Later, huddled outside in
the hallway, the group talks about what they saw. Their com-
ments are factual and based on evidence: I noticed this; the
patient did that. Questions get asked. Eventually, a diagnosis
is offered, as well as potential treatments. Everyone is on the
same page before they move on to the next patient.
Could this same medical training model — one that in-
cludes a shared language and a common sense of what’s effec-
tive — work for educators?
Common Ground
According to Fiarman, the answer is yes. In fact, as she explains
“
in the recently published book Instructional Rounds in Educa-
tion, written with Professor Richard Elmore, C.A.S.’72,
Ed.D.’76; Lecturer Lee Teitel, Ed.D.’88; and Executive
Leadership for Educational Excellence Program Director
of Instruction Elizabeth City, Ed.M.’04, Ed.D.’07, this model
is already working in several school districts across the
county, as well as in Australia.
Called instructional rounds, the model is fairly straight-
forward: Initially a group of educators (referred to in the book
as a network) is formed. In some cases, the group is role-
specific — in Connecticut, where a network has been in place
since 2001, only superintendents. Some networks are more
diverse and also include principals, teachers, staff members,
and local union leaders. These networks can be formed in one
school or one district (as is the case with Cambridge, which
formed in 2006), multiple districts (Connecticut), or statewide
24 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009
(like Ohio and Iowa, which both started in the past two years).
Once the group forms, they identify a problem that the school
or district is struggling with, observe classrooms, debrief, and
then focus on what needs to be done next.
In some ways, this doesn’t sound all that new or innova-
tive. Across the country, principals and superintendents visit
classrooms every day and then meet to discuss solutions. The
problem, say the authors, is that what typically happens is these
educators, no matter how motivated or well meaning, “do not
have a common definition of what they are looking for.”
In one case described in the book, a school knew that when
it came to reading and writing, the students were doing fairly
well on decoding, vocabulary, and simple writing tasks, but not
as well on comprehension. Even after teachers started work-
ing with students in small groups, the school found that there
was no consistency in how the groups operated. Despite best
efforts, school administrators were at a loss when it came to
moving forward.
Teitel hears similar stories all the time when he and the
other Harvard facilitators start working with networks. “Often
people don’t know what high-quality teaching and learning is,”
he says. “We’ll show a video of a class to district leaders and
ask them to describe it or rate it. There’s usually no common
understanding of what ‘good’ looks like.”
Another problem with traditional class visits (called walk-
throughs or learning walks) is that the focus is often on style,
not substance.
“Administrators descend on classrooms with clipboards and
checklists, caucus briefly in the hallway, and then deliver a set
of simplistic messages about what needs fixing,” the authors professionals do well, but not educators. “Educators . . . tend to for people to be straightforward and question or confront each
write, and the fixing is usually the teacher. (It’s no wonder some confound and confuse the practice with the person,” he writes. other when they have not been in each other’s classrooms or
teachers refer to these visits as “drive-bys.”) “Indeed, for most educators, their practice is who they are.” shared the work.”
In contrast, the rounds model stresses separating the Teitel says he’s not entirely convinced that doctors have Which is why Teitel says he and the other facilitators spend
personal from the practice — something Elmore says medical an easier time being impersonal compared to teachers, a lot of time at the beginning helping rounds participants
but agrees that “in the education world, there’s definitely a understand that everyone involved — not just teachers — is
tendency to use language such as ‘good teachers,’ not ‘good working on their practice.
We’ll show a video of a teaching.’ It’s so pervasive.”
As a result, teachers can become guarded about their work.
The authors also stress the importance of collecting mean-
ingful, raw evidence when observing a classroom, and to do
class to district leaders and “Teachers are justifiably skeptical about opening up their
classrooms to outsiders, because it often results in conflicting
it without judgment. “We call this the ‘unlearning’ part of
rounds,” Teitel says. “We have to learn to be nonjudgmental.”
ask them to describe it or and vague advice that has little practical value to them or their
students,” the authors write.
Even one nondescript comment can be harmful. “Once a judg-
ment slips into a conversation,” the authors write, “they have a
rate it. There’s usually no Tom Fowler-Finn, a rounds participant in Cambridge who is
now helping to expand the model in Australia, experienced this
habit of reproducing like rabbits.”
The foundation of rounds is based on describing what
common understanding of privacy barrier when he was superintendent.
“It is more a function of the cellular classroom and the fact
was observed in the class instead of immediately asking if the
teacher held the students’ attention or if too much time was
what ‘good’ looks like.” that education has not developed practices adopted long ago
by other professions, like the medical rounds that instructional
spent on a certain activity. (The facilitators value this stage so
much that they spent the first year and a half of a two-year
rounds are based upon,” he says. “Then too, it does take time process working with one principals group on just the descrip-
— Lecturer Lee Teitel
Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 25
 tive phase.) The tendency in education, says Fiarman, is for
educators to jump to solutions without really understanding
the problem.
“There’s tremendous value in slowing down. We go in and
watch a reading lesson. Normally the observers want right
away to say, Wasn’t her approach fabulous? or, Oh! We use
that book, too, instead of, What went on in there? How did
that student learn?” she says. “Rounds is stopping to really try
to understand those interactions. It’s a leap of faith for any
people that taking the time will bear fruit for understanding
the issues.”
Without this understanding, the authors write, solv-
ing problems in education is “a bit like doctors discussing
whether a patient is healthy without identifying vital signs, or
like lawyers discussing whether someone is guilty without as-
sembling facts, or like carpenters discussing whether a house
looks sturdy without describing the construction materials
and joints. Such discussions generate lots of heat without
much light.”
Andrew Lachman, executive director of the Connecticut
Center for School Change, the nonprofit that organized the
rounds group in Connecticut, says Elmore made it very clear
“
The standard was set at
the first visit. Some of
the supers talked about
‘good teaching,’ ‘warm
climate,’ and ‘engaging
teaching,’ while Richard
clinically described what
he saw: a paraprofessional
working on the initial
consonant B sound with
three students.”
— Andrew Lachman
26 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009
when he first started working with the group that their lan-
guage needed to be strictly descriptive.
“The standard was set at the first visit. Some of the supers
talked about ‘good teaching,’ ‘warm climate,’ and ‘engaging
teaching,’ while Richard clinically described what he saw: a
paraprofessional working on the initial consonant B sound
with three students,” Lachman says. “We’ve done video
observations several times to help calibrate our skills. I men-
tion staying at the bottom of the ladder of inference at every
debrief, and people either call each other out or note when
they’re moving to judgment. We also review the transcripts to
keep us on our toes.”
Network Model
At some point — maybe after a year of class visits and debrief-
ings — the final stage of rounds begins. Here, a basic question
is asked: What is the next level of work? The network meets
to explore strategies and discuss resources needed to address
the initial problem they identified. A plan of action is created
and follow-up visits are scheduled to gauge how well the plan
is working.
The ultimate goal, say the authors, is for the protocols and
practices learned doing instructional rounds to become as
much a part of the culture of education as they are a part of
the culture in medicine. If rounds is seen as just “another activ-
ity,” the authors write, “then it will probably go the way of most
good ideas about school improvement.”
Teitel says he’s very optimistic that this model will not fade
into oblivion, but could be taken to scale. In November, for
example, a brand new instructional rounds executive program
will take place, introducing a new crop of educators to the
model. “I feel hopeful,” he says. “There’s been a lot of interest in
expanding the work into other places.”
In April 2008, a group of principals and regional staff from
the Gippsland region in Australia observed rounds groups in
Connecticut and Massachusetts.
“We visited schools and classrooms and spoke with prin-
cipals, leadership teams, and superintendents to learn about
the application and outcomes of instructional rounds, and
in particular, to learn about the change in culture one could
expect from such experiences,” says Karen Cain, assistant
regional director of the Gippsland region for the Department
of Education and Early Childhood Development.
The group liked what they saw and decided to try out the
instructional rounds model in Latrobe Valley, a region with
39 schools. They based their model on the Cambridge model,
which focuses on principals, but includes the superintendent
and central office staff. Knowing that having a skilled facilitator
“
This is a network of people learning from one
another and being honest with what they don’t
know. They come to understand this as a strength.
That’s very countercultural to leaders, maybe
especially with education leaders. A lot of school
leaders are afraid to look like they don’t have all
the answers. We want the network to be proud to
be learning and not have all of the answers.”
— Sarah Fiarman, Ed.M.’05, Ed.D.’09
was key (with the initial networks, the Harvard team served Fiarman says this group-learning mentality — which
as facilitators), they invited Fowler-Finn to advise them. When centers on the idea that everyone involved is working on their
he retired as Cambridge’s superintendent in February 2009, he practice — helps especially with superintendents and princi-
joined the existing Australian team with the goal of expanding pals who, having achieved a certain level in their career, are
the network. reluctant to admit they don’t have all of the answers.
Cain says the feedback collected so far has been extremely “This is a network of people learning from one another and
positive, “with principals indicating a significant change in being honest with what they don’t know,” she says. “They come
their view of classroom practice and their roles as instruc- to understand this as a strength. That’s very countercultural
tional leaders.” to leaders, maybe especially with education leaders. A lot of
Another reason why the instructional rounds model has school leaders are afraid to look like they don’t have all the
been viewed so positively by those involved, says Teitel, is
because it is collaborative.
answers. We want the network to be proud to be learning and
not have all of the answers.”
“The process is about the individual learning, but also about
organizations learning,” he says. In the medical world, rounds
She says this “network model” has been particularly help-
ful in Cambridge. “School leaders started looking at each
is the major way that doctors in training learn, but “more im-
portantly,” the authors write, it is “the major way in which the
other as resources to learn and share ideas,” she says. “I was
there as a teacher for isolated days of professional devel-
profession builds and propagates its norms of practice.”
Teitel stresses, however, that medical and instructional
opment that never went anywhere. Now the teachers and
principals are part of a network where they can discuss what
rounds are not entirely mirror images of one another.
“We spring off of medical rounds but don’t take all of it.
they saw and learned.”
Fiarman says she would love to one day see this model
There are some aspects of the culture that we don’t try to
export,” he says, mentioning the tendency in medicine toward
played out across the country with all educators speaking the
same language and following shared practices.
hierarchy and the senior-doctor-knows-best mantra. “We feel
like we’re all learning from the instructional rounds model,
“It would be great if we had a coherent, national model of
what effective teaching is. Even if all the schools of education
regardless of rank. We’ve done a few debriefings and at one, were teaching the same practices, that would be a miraculous
a teacher from Ohio told us that she couldn’t believe she was feat,” she says. “But we would still need to get folks to talk
sitting with a team of teachers, superintendents, union leaders, about the real practices they see in front of them. It’s a practice,
and principals, all as peers.” not a theory. You need to see it in action. It’s also not a for-
Teachers, he says, often spend their careers being told what mula. Teaching, like medicine, is a complex craft that requires
to do, including “mysterious compliances” that filter down. a deep conceptual understanding of what you’re doing. You
“With rounds, it’s pretty energizing for teachers to have an op- can’t follow a formula if you teach something and the students
portunity that says we’re jointly constructing what this should
look like,” he says. “That’s a dramatically different way to work
aren’t following you. As much as anything gets documented
in textbooks, you still need to have discussions about how you
for people within a district.” make decisions.” Ed.
Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 27
 By david mcKay wilson

Construction
101
Starting your own school isn’t
easy. Beyond having a good idea,
you need ingenuity, nimbleness,
patience, tolerance for risk-taking,
flexibility, and courage. Oh, and a
bit of chutzpah helps, too.

A look at a few Ed School graduates

who have tried to start their own.
 A “
year into planning for the school he wanted to
establish, David Silver, Ed.M.’01, was despon-
dent. Two teachers he’d lined up had quit. He
still didn’t have a building, and he had discov-
ered, to his dismay, how much he needed to
learn about managing people.
Quite frankly, Silver wanted to give up. He was ready to
call it quits on creating an elementary school in an impover-
ished Oakland, Calif., neighborhood called Fruitvale, where
70 percent of the students were English language learners
and more than 90 percent came from low-
income families.
But Silver, then 29, persevered, deter-
mined to create an elementary school with
strong family involvement and collaboration
between teachers and community, all united
around the vision that every student would one day
go to college. The Think College Now Elementary
School opened to great acclaim in the fall of 2003,
yet by the end of its first year, just 8 percent of his students
were proficient in English language arts, 23 percent in math.
Achievement was slow to rise, despite Silver’s best intentions.
Then he engineered a major shift in the school’s approach,
and by 2008, proficiency had risen to 54 percent in English,
and more than 63 percent in math. Silver is expecting in-
creased achievement in 2009.
“When I started the school, I thought that the kids would
do well if everybody was working together and passionate
with a common vision,” recalls Silver, now 36 and the school’s
principal. “But we realized we needed to get our assessments
aligned with California standards and use data from those
tests to inform our instruction. We were focused on process
and details instead of people and outcomes. Now we are get-
ting results.”
For Silver, those results validate his decision in the late
1990s to look beyond the strictures of traditional American
classrooms and dream boldly about what could be done to
reach low-income minority children struggling to make the
grade. He quickly realized that starting a new school took
much more than a good idea. He also needed ingenuity, nim-
bleness, patience, tolerance for risk-taking, flexibility, courage,
and a healthy dollop of stubbornness. Those qualities — and
more — were needed to develop curriculum, find a building,
drum up community support, and convince policymakers
that his vision deserved support.
Silver opened his school at a time in the history of Ameri-
can education when innovators could get traction for their
30 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009
dreams, with support from private foundations, state govern-
ments, local boards of education, and graduate programs like
those at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Many of
these new schools are focused on solving one of our society’s
most intractable problems: how to close the achievement gap
between low-income minority students in our nation’s inner
cities and their white middle- and upper-class contempo-
raries in the suburbs.
S
ilver has plenty of company
among alumni from the Ed
School who have estab-
lished new schools from Califor-
nia to New York City, creating charter
schools outside the purview of local school
boards, innovative schools within municipal school
districts, or independent schools with a new twist.
Some, like Silver, are young and idealistic. Many launched
their careers in poor communities, where they grew frus-
trated with the traditional public school system’s resistance to
change. They came to Harvard, where their ideas incubated in
the scholarly community, and then blossomed in new schools
that got planted upon graduation or soon thereafter.
“I was young, optimistic, and a little arrogant,” says Xanthe
Jory, Ed.M.’00, founder and executive director of the Bronx
Charter School for the Arts. “I was 27 then and had taught in a
public school with a culture of failure that prevented any posi-
tive change from taking place. I thought I could do better.”
Others, like Paula Evans, M.A.T.’67, and Regina Rodriguez-
Mitchell, Ed.M.’74, are veteran educators who have long
worked within the system and now want to use what they
have learned over decades
Rodriguez-Mitchell, cofounder of the National Collegiate
Prep Public Charter High School in Washington, D.C., says
she wanted to use her quarter-century of experience in urban
education to create a school where inner-city teens could
thrive. Her school, which opened in the fall of 2009, will be
among 59 charter schools in the District of Columbia that
serve 36 percent of the city’s public-school enrollment.
“It takes some chutzpah to think you can do it,” says Rodri-
guez-Mitchell. “Over 25 years, I’ve seen how schools have
worked and how they haven’t worked. I have such passion for
kids. I’d like to see if I can get it right.”
The 21st century has proved a heady time for educational
entrepreneurs. The emergence of charter schools in the 1990s
It takes some chutzpah to
think you can do it. Over 25
years, I’ve seen how schools
have worked and how they
haven’t worked. I have such
passion for kids. I’d like to
see if I can get it right.”
— Regina Rodriguez-Mitchell, Ed.M.’74
provided manifold possibilities for educators to create new
schools outside the purview of local school boards, where
innovation and experimentation were encouraged. The small-
schools movement has created opportunities within school
districts, as sprawling comprehensive high schools are split
up, and smaller entities are created to offer more personalized
instruction.
There are also educators like recent graduate Will Yeiser,
Ed.M.’09, who opened an all-male independent middle school
this fall in Asheville, N.C. His new school, called the French
Broad River Academy, has no more than 12 students per class
and uses the river and the surrounding watershed as the basis
of study. The program includes outdoor and experiential edu-
cation as well as global understanding through international
travel and study.
Yeiser became disillusioned with traditional schools after
teaching Spanish for three years in the Asheville City Schools.
He brought his idea for a new school to Harvard, where he
fine-tuned his concept, learned about financial management,
and took courses to develop his skills as a leader. Now he’s
learning to handle financial risk. During the first year, he’ll
rely on tuition and most likely take out a loan. He needs a
minimum of 12 students to start the school; he’s hoping for 16
and would love to attract 24.
“It’s a scary economic time to do be doing this, but if you
believe in something, I think you have to make the leap,” he
says. “You have to believe that the safety net will
appear or you may not even need it.”
Professor Patricia Albjerg Graham, former
dean of the Ed School, notes that the past 100
years in U.S. education have seen at least two
waves of new schools that swept across the
education landscape when dissatisfaction
mounted challenges to the status quo. At the
start of the 20th century, many Roman Catholic
parishes established parochial schools to make
sure that their parishioners’ children were raised
both American and Catholic. Decades later, dis-
satisfaction with excessively regimented schools
led innovators to create “progressive” schools
that emphasized the arts and distinctive modes
of instruction.
“All of these efforts were supposed to improve
the learning of students, though it has never been
absolutely clear what will do that,” says Graham.
The current wave of innovation in charter
schools differs from earlier reforms by focusing
on governance, with charter schools freeing educators from
oversight by elected school boards. The charters can also op-
erate outside of rigid work rules and tenure protection enjoyed
by unionized teachers across the nation.
That was one of the motivating factors that inspired Evans
to found the Community Charter School of Cambridge in
2005 in the city’s Kendall Square neighborhood. Evans, who
worked for 15 years at Brown University’s Annenberg Institute
for School Reform, returned to Cambridge in 1999 to serve
as principal of Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, the
city’s main public high school. She left after three years, mak-
ing the choice to start a charter, which has a board of direc-
tors but does not report to a board of education.
“I was asked to come in to Rindge and Latin to make the
school more equitable and raise the standards,” says Evans.
“It was good work, but it was difficult work. The politics got in
the way.”
With her charter school, there’s no tenure protection. Her
27 teachers — eight of whom are Ed School graduates — work
on one-year contracts, which Evans decides whether to renew.
“If you can’t dismiss someone who clearly is not doing the job,
it does a real disservice to the kids,” she says. “If a kid in a sub-
urban district like Wellesley or Newton has one bad teacher,
it’s not going to matter that much. But if one of my kids has an
incompetent teacher, that’s a huge hole that isn’t going to get
filled at home. This is urgent work we are doing.”
Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 31

A
djunct Lecturer
Linda Nathan, Ed.D.’95, teaches a class at the Ed
School called Building Democratic Schools. She has
more than 20 years experience starting up new schools
and was also instrumental in setting up the Boston’s first
performing arts middle school — an experience she shares
in her class, which is for students thinking about becoming
educational entrepreneurs.
“You have to be able to balance many spinning plates at
the same time,” she says. “You have to suddenly be as good at
teaching and instruction as you are at figuring out what to do
with the window sills in your building.”
Peter Turnamian, Ed.M.’99, who interned with Nathan in
1999 during the Boston Arts School’s first year of operation
as part of his educational leadership program at Harvard, was
hired in May 2000 to serve as the founding director of the
Greater Newark Charter School in New Jersey. The school has
had its charter renewed three times, and Turnamian is now
looking to expand the school, which serves grades 5–8, to
include grades K–4 by August 2010.
While he has won a $250,000 grant from the Newark
Charter School Fund to finance the expansion, he still needs
a building to rent for the younger grades because his cur-
rent school doesn’t have room. (The state of New Jersey does
not provide capital funds to construct schools.) Turnamian
doesn’t want to replicate the experience his current school had
over its first three years. For two years, it operated at a church.
The next year the school rented three doublewide classroom
trailers that he parked behind the YMCA, which let him use
its gymnasium for physical education class. The school finally
found a home in a parochial school that had been closed by
the Archdiocese of Newark. In 2008, Turnamian signed a 10-
year lease.
“If you don’t have a stable facility, it can undermine every-
thing else,” he says. “It was a real victory for our school to have
32 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009
the stability provided by the archdiocese. It was a good deal
for us, and the archdiocese has a permanent tenant.”
Juliana McIntyre, Ed.M.’64 knows the importance of that
all too well. Every Friday for 15 years after founding the Princ-
eton (N.J.) Junior School in the basement of a church in 1983,
McIntyre and her four teachers would pack the school’s mate-
rials in her car trunk to make way for church programs, and
then unload them each Monday. (They’d also need alternative
classroom space on days that weddings or funerals were held.)
Her patience paid off: Today, the school, which serves grades
preK–5, is housed in a spacious building constructed in 1998
in Lawrenceville, N.J.
“It was very improvisational at the beginning,” says McIntyre.
Which is why keeping in touch with others going through
the same struggles can help. Over the years, as Turnamian’s
charter school came together, he kept in touch with Nathan,
to get her advice and share the travails in the trenches. Aman-
da Gardner, Ed.M.’04, the founding principal at Boston Pre-
paratory Public Charter School in Hyde Park, Mass., says she
continues to tap into the Ed School network that was formed
during her year in the School Leadership Program. Many
still live in the greater Boston area, and they meet monthly
at Charlie’s Kitchen in Harvard Square to talk about the new
schools they are building. They also keep in touch with an e-
mail listserv for those in their program who live elsewhere.
“It has been a great support network,” she says.
W
inning permission from
local and state education
authorities for one’s
dream school can be an arduous
process, testing an educator’s
patience and ability to
please a broad range of
constituent groups.
Dean Leeper, Ed.M.’03, is
in the final stages of winning
approval to open the Kindezi
School in Atlanta, a K–8 school
with just six students per class. It
has been a long journey for Leeper,
who grew up in Atlanta and now has
his fourth application for his school
before state authorities.
“I’m thinking the fourth time’s a charm,” he says.
“
You have to be able to balance many spinning
plates at the same time. You have to suddenly be
as good at teaching and instruction as you are at
figuring out what to do with the window sills in
your building.”
— Adjunct Lecturer Linda Nathan, Ed.D.’95
Leeper, 32, began his education career teaching second
grade in 2001. He came to Harvard a year later, then taught
fifth grade in a Washington, D.C., charter school. While
there, he became frustrated teaching a classroom with 24
students. He saw so many students who didn’t thrive in such
a large group, and he felt the traditional public school system
precluded him from giving his students the attention many of
them needed.
“I had one student having problems who would come in
early, and in those moments in the morning, in the small situ-
ation, he’d be getting the attention he wanted,” recalls Leeper.
“I started thinking about a school with small classes. It was a
crude vision, and I’ve been working towards it ever since.”
After a dispiriting experience at the D.C. charter school,
he moved back home in 2004, and that summer ran a sum-
mer program for children at his local food cooperative, telling
parents that if they liked his approach, he’d homeschool them
for free in the fall to test out his model. They agreed, and that
September he welcomed six students from fourth through
seventh grade. It was a labor of love, with Leeper doubling as
teacher and his homeschool’s bus driver.
He was going deeper in debt, but by 2005 felt the model
worked and began the process of starting up a charter school
in southwest Atlanta, one of the city’s poorest areas. His
first board, however, included members who often became
embroiled in shouting matches at community meetings. That
wasn’t helping to build community support, so he dissolved
that board, recruited new directors, and finally applied to the
Atlanta Public Schools in 2007, hoping to open in 2008.
The proposal was kicked back for revisions, submitted
again in 2008 so school could open in 2009. The school
board approved the plan, which triggered a $250,000 grant
from the Walton Family Foundation to support the start-up
and early years.
But then the Georgia State Board of Education balked,
unwilling to back Leeper’s school governance experiment, in
which the teachers would be organized like attorneys in a law
office’s partnership, and have the power to hire and fire teach-
ers as well as the principal.
Leeper was in a bind. He already added two more employ-
ees to the staff, and he’d selected 14 of 16 teachers selected for
the school, which would open as a K–3 and add an additional
grade over the next five years.
So he had to retrench, telling the teachers they wouldn’t
be needed in the fall. He became the school’s lone employee
again. He presented the revisions to the state board of educa-
tion in May and as an educational entrepreneur, remains
optimistic that he’ll be approved in December.
Besides, the extra year will give him more time to make
sure his school is ready when it’s time to open.
“There’s a huge learning curve to starting a school,” says
Leeper. “And it’s such a rollercoaster. The highs are really
great, and the lows can be crushing. But I’m patient. I’m confi-
dent my school is going to open.”
— David McKay Wilson is a New York-based freelance
journalist. His last piece for Ed. looked at the pros and cons of
families being involved in school. Ed.
Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 33
 in the media
So after a child plays with one of these
products, the parent connects the toy to a
computer and gets a report explaining what
skills were used and what supplemental
questions the parent can ask? Why not just
let the child play?
Kids like our products because they
are fun, but parents also appreciate
their educational qualities. We started
developing the connected products I
mentioned and created the Learning
Path as a way for parents to gain insight
into what their kids are learning, what
they may be struggling with, and their
interests. It also facilitates more learning
by guiding kids to specific additional ac-
developmental delays at the University
of Kansas. That’s where I first discovered
innovative ways to use technologies with
kids, including videotaping them on
field trips as a prompt for language and
literacy development. I’ve also taught
middle school kids in summer programs
and graduate students at the Harvard
Graduate School of Education and the
Rochester Institute of Technology, plus
various online courses. I’m an eternal
teacher and student.
You’re 6’6”. Was that intimi-
dating for your preschoolers?
Believe it or not, it rarely
and take that into account. For a three-
year-old, I would look for physical,
cognitive, and social activity. X number
of minutes hopping and bending with
friends in front of the TV with a Wii
game or our new Zippity counts more
positively than watching similar edu-
cational content from the couch alone.
Even then, I would balance that experi-
ence with time outside or with blocks or
dress-up clothes. I think of this variety
as a “healthy toy box” approach to play,
similar to a balanced diet of food.
At LeapFrog, do you use any of what you
learned at the Ed School?

oneonone
tivities, online and offline. The Learning came up. I was pretty quick Absolutely, in terms of knowledge about
Path has only been available for less than with a deep knee bend to research, child development, learning,

oneonone
with

a year, and it seems to be valuable for get face-to-face with them and in other ways. This week I remem-
with many families. and somehow fold myself ber discussing primary and secondary

courstesy of Jim Gray

into position on their little emotions in relation to a Tag Junior book
Jim Gray Do you ever get to work directly with
children?
chairs. As I remember,
when they did notice
for toddlers. I refer often to concepts
like “deep understanding” and “authen-
I was hired in early 2004 as research I was taller than other tic assessment” that I learned while
manager to run the lab and in-home adults, I’d engage them in an estimation working at Project Zero and the ATLAS
Jim Gray, Ed.M.’94, Ed.D.’99, remembers when he realized that learning and fun could coexist: He was a freshman at Michigan studies. We have two onsite kid labs game called “can Jim touch the ceiling?” Communities project. Plus, my profes-
where we test products with approxi- sional network certainly reaches back to
State University with no idea what he wanted to do with his life. During an overseas study program to Copenhagen to get a
mately 50 children per week. Would you be as good in your job if you had Cambridge, and I use it when planning
social science requirement “out of the way,” he watched as an older teacher in overalls crouched on a playhouse roof with a I still spend not had that hands-on field experience? activities for my staff. For example, a
hammer in her hand, enthusiastically building a learning structure while the preschoolers played around her. “That image some time in Probably not, although I hire people with couple of us attended a recent workshop
of the teacher and her young students is still vivid in my mind,” he says. “They were happily exploring, playing, and learning, the lab but expertise I don’t have, so I could man- on causal patterns by [Assistant Profes-
wish I could age. I’m actually very proud of the team. sor] Tina Grotzer, and I’ve had [Lecturer]
and she seemed to be having as much fun as they were.” Twenty-five years later, it is no surprise that Gray found his own way They all have at least 10 years of teaching David Rose and [MIT Professor] Mitchel
spend more.
to combine education and fun: as director of learning at LeapFrog, the technology-based toy company based in Emeryville, experience, doctorates in education, and Resnick as guest speakers.
Calif., just east of San Francisco (and home to another kid-centered company: Pixar Animation Studios). Best part of your job? passion for their areas of expertise.
Knowing my work has a direct, positive Do you have children or are there neighbor-
You oversee LeapFrog’s Learning Team. Learning design means . . . ? products like the Tag Reading System impact on the experiences of millions On your blog, in response to criticism of too hood kids who benefit from your cool job?
What does that involve? How well the educational content and and Leapster2 handheld gaming platform of kids. much screen time for kids, you’ve said that We don’t have kids yet, and our extended
At a strategic level, we advise the compa- goals align with the interaction design log time spent on a book or game level, instead of counting minutes, parents should family is at a distance, but we do have
ny on educational directions, like incor- and likely learning outcomes. response patterns, etc., and present it to You write on your blog that your first job instead take a more balanced approach. several friends with LeapFrog-age kids,
porating more conceptual understanding parents through a secure online website was as a preschool teacher. What would be appropriate for say, a including our favorite five-year-old
across the curriculum, 21st-century skills, Give me an example. called the Learning Path. In aggregate I worked as a preschool teacher for a three-year-old? neighbor and her 18-month-old sister.
photo/illustrations: istockphoto.com

or environmental science. We write cur-
riculum guides for specific product lines
and provide a learning roadmap for the
company overall. On a daily basis, we
approve the learning design of individual
products under development.
One area of research that I’m
especially excited about
is our new capacity
to assess products
with studies of
actual logging data. Our new connected
form, these data can be used to im- total of five years, for three years while I suggest they look They visit often for play dates with me
prove product designs and understand completing my bachelor’s degree, then at what their child is and my wife, whom, by the way, I met at
how children learn with these kinds of for a year with infants and toddlers at actually the Ed School in the computer lab.
technologies. There’s even potential for a hospital daycare center, and finally doing in
university researchers to collaborate with in a “reverse mainstream” early inter- front of — Lory Hough
us on these studies. vention classroom for children with screens

34 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 35
 in the media
Books
Can I Wear My Nose Ring to
the Interview?
Ellen Gordon Reeves
Workman Publishing Co., 2009
Based on the author’s experi-
ence in hiring, counseling,
and resume-doctoring, Can
I Wear My Nose Ring is a
guide for young job-seekers faced with
increased competition and fewer jobs. The
book goes over the arsenal of a successful
applicant: the art of writing strong cover
letters and resumes, how to dress for an
interview, things to be honest about, how
to use parents in your networking efforts,
and things not to say. Ellen Gordon Reeves,
Ed.M.’86, serves as résumé expert at the
Columbia Publishing Course in New York.
Changing Course
Lauren Causey and
Lettie McGuire
Self-published, 2009
For the 10th year in a
row, the student group
ALANA (African,
Latino, Asian, and
Native American Alliance) has published
an anthology of student poetry, short
essays, journal entries, illustrations, and
photography. This year’s issue centers on
their definitions of transformation and
newness, which was inspired by President
Barack Obama’s inauguration speech.
Lauren Causey, Ed.M.’09, and Lettie
McGuire, Ed.M.’09 are recent graduates
of the Ed School, where they were active
members of ALANA.
Classroom Motivation
Eric Anderman and Lynley Hicks Anderman
Pearson, 2010
In this study of achievement motivation,
the authors link the growing disconnect
between what motivation researchers dis-
cuss and recommend and what teachers
know and think about students’ motiva-
tion. Key topics discussed include the
use of rewards in classrooms, choosing
motivational academic tasks, evaluating
36 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009
student progress, grouping students for
instruction, and creating positive learning
environments for all students. Eric Ander-
man, Ed.M.’86, is professor of educational
psychology at Ohio State University and
associate editor of The Journal of Educa-
tional Psychology.
Don’t Bite Your Tongue: How to Foster
Rewarding Relationships with Your
Adult Children
Ruth Nemzoff
Palgrave Macmillan, 2008
Don’t Bite Your Tongue seeks to counter
the popular belief that parents must let
go of their adult children and silence
themselves. Through the use of vignettes,
the book demonstrates how functional
the parent/adult child relationship can be
by encouraging dialogue between the two
generations. This book can serve as a guide
to navigating the ambiguities and ever-
changing realities of the lives of parents
and their adult children. Ruth Nemzoff,
C.A.S.’76, Ed.D.’79, is a resident scholar
at Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies
Research Center and adjunct assistant pro-
fessor at Bentley College.
Education and War
Edited by Elizabeth Blair,
Rebecca Miller, and Mara
Casey Tieken
Harvard Educational
Review, 2009
This book examines
the complex relations
between educational institutions and soci-
eties at war. Drawn from the pages of the
Harvard Educational Review, the essays
provide multiple perspectives on how edu-
cational institutions support and oppose
wartime efforts. The first half of the book
explores how students, educators, and
communities work within established edu-
cational systems to reinforce existing con-
ditions or to promote change, while the
second half looks at how they work around
or beyond existing school systems to pro-
mote political and social transformation
and to create new educational opportuni-
ties in response to conflict. Elizabeth Blair,
ON MY BOOKSHELF: Professor John Willet
Ed.M.’05, Rebecca Miller, Ed.M.’05, and Currently reading: A novel called The Noneducation genre of choice: I par- To read a longer version of
Mara Casey Tieken, Ed.M.’06, are doctoral Crooked Cross by an English author that ticularly like novels about the origins of Professor Willett’s responses,
candidates at the Ed School and on staff at no one has heard of: Michael Dean. religion, myths, and lost kingdoms, time visit www.gse.harvard.edu/
the Harvard Educational Review. travel, and the “big picture.” I also enjoy news_events/ed/2009/fall/media.
First impressions: It’s intriguing. … The looking at good cookbooks, especially
If Holden Caufield Were in My Class- book’s premise is that if Hitler had been those with colored photos of food and
room: Inspiring Love, Creativity, and prosecuted in 1931 for the murder of Geli cooking techniques. I really recommend
Intelligence in Middle School Kids Raubal (the daughter of his housekeeper), Julia Child’s The Way to Cook to anyone
modern history would be different. who wants to make it in the kitchen.
Bernie Schein
Sentient Publications, 2009
Book you have read over and over again: Next up: Now that I have answered
By the time Bernie Schein’s students arrive
I am fascinated by the two great novels of these questions, I feel like reading The
in his middle school classroom, they are
Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey Eighth Day or perhaps The Magus [by
little more than a gaggle of psychological and, even better, The Eighth Day. John Fowles] again. Now, those are two
defense mechanisms. For more than 30 books that everyone should read!
years, Schein has worked with students in Favorite spot to curl up with a good
middle-class Atlanta, helping them redis- book: In bed!
cover who they really are. Through stories
from his classroom, he describes how true
emotion, rather than pure reason, is the
key to discovering real relationships and
personal truth. Bernie Schein, Ed.M.’71,
has been a principal, director of teacher
training, and teacher of creative writing
and literature at the middle school and
high school levels.
In Our School:
Building Community in
Elementary Schools
Karen Casto and
Jennifer Audley
Northeast Foundation
for Children, 2008
In Our School is intended
for school leaders and study groups seek-
ing inspiration and practical ideas for
building schoolwide community. The
book begins with a framework for building
schoolwide community, followed by arti-
cles showing what schoolwide community
looks like at more than 20 schools — rural,
suburban, and urban; small and large;
public, private, and charter. The authors
offer suggestions for building common
knowledge about the school’s values and
rules, establishing schoolwide routines,
creating opportunities for cross-age learn-
ing, and involving families in all aspects of
school life. Jennifer Audley, Ed.M.’98, is a
full-time staff writer/editor for the North-
tanit sakakini
east Foundation for Children and a former
classroom teacher.
Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 37
 in the media
Just Breathe
Susan Wiggs
Mira, 2008
This novel introduces Chicago cartoonist
Sarah Moon as she is forced to tackle her
own real-life issues that, in the past, she
had only ever imagined for her syndicated
comic strip, “Just Breathe.” Readers follow
Sarah through conception issues and a
crumbling marriage to the town where she
grew up. There she finds a new beginning
just as she is revisiting her past. Susan
Wiggs, Ed.M.’80, is a novelist and work-
shop leader in the Pacific Northwest.
The National PTA, Race, &
Civic Engagement, 1897–1970
Christine Woyshner
The Ohio State University Press,
2009
The PTA, the largest voluntary
educational association in the 20th
century, has over the course of 100
years lobbied for national legisla-
tion on behalf of children and families,
played a role in shaping the school cur-
riculum, and allowed for participation of
diverse community members in dialogue
about the goals of public schooling. In this
book, the author examines the National
Parent Teacher Association in relation
to its racial politics and as a venue for
women’s civic participation in educa-
tional issues. Her argument is that the
PTA allowed for discussions about race
and desegregation when few other public
spaces, even the schools, did so. Christine
Woyshner, Ed.D.’99, is an associate profes-
sor in the Department of Curriculum,
Instruction, and Technology in Education
at Temple University.
Paper Clarity at a Glance: What to
Keep and When to Let Go
Laura Moore
ClutterClarity at Home, 2009
Paper Clarity at a Glance is a reference
tool that seeks to answer the nagging
question we all ask: Do I need to keep this
document or can I shred it now? This book
contains a chart of more than 100 per-
sonal financial, medical, and legal docu-
38 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009
ments and records, as well as tips, storage
recommendations, and guidance on taxes
and audits. The book is intended for all
who are challenged by the volume of paper
in their lives. Laura Moore, Ed.M.’89, is
principal of ClutterClarity at Home in
Concord, Mass.
The Right to Literacy in Secondary
Schools: Creating a Culture of Thinking
Edited by Suzanne Plaut
Teachers College Press, 2008
This resource challenges educators to view
adolescent literacy as a “civil right” that
enables students to understand essential
content and to develop as independent
learners. The book is a call to action and a
practical guide for reform-minded schools
and districts, and for teachers seeking
to help all adolescent learners achieve
at high levels. It includes illustrations of
exemplary classroom practice across all
content areas. It also offers frameworks
to help teachers implement those prac-
tices in their own schools. Suzanne Plaut,
Ed.M.’99, Ed.D.’04, is vice president of
education at the Public Education &
Business Coalition.
Rumer & Qix:
The Race to Terra
Incognita
Kathleen Wilson
BookSurge Publishing,
2009
Rumer & Qix — a
futuristic adventure
novel for young adults — follows 16-year-
old reporter Rumer and her sidekick, Qix,
as they become obsessed with several
reliable reports of bizarre nature sight-
ings. The sightings are odd since, in the
31st century in which they live, all natural
plants and animals have been replaced by
synthetic replicas. The mysterious nature
sightings are dismissed as lunacy by every-
one but Rumer, who finds herself enlisted
by MoNa (Mother Nature) to help fight an
epic battle to turn things around on the
planet before its too late. Kathleen Wilson,
Ed.D.’88, is a media consultant and ad-
junct professor at New York University.
Is Paper Getting You Down?
We don’t want to lose you as a reader,
but we understand the need to whittle
down your mail pile and do good for
the environment, so we’re giving you
the option of opting out of the hard-
copy version of the magazine that you
receive and instead letting you read it
online. To do this, send us an e-mail at
letters@gse.harvard.edu with the words
OPT OUT in the subject line. We will
send you an e-mail alert once a new
issue comes out and is available for you
to read online.
www.gse.harvard.edu/news_events/ed
Why Did This Happen?
Content, Perspective,
Dialogue: A Workshop
Model for Developing
Young People’s
Reflective Writing
Susan Wilcox
The Brotherhood/Sister Sol, 2008
Why Did This Happen? is designed to help
young people engage in critical inquiry,
develop a love of learning, and trans-
form their lives. It includes strategies,
illustrations of real teaching moments,
youth writings, and suggested resources.
Through this model, The Brotherhood/Sis-
ter Sol works to develop in youth a lifelong
love of learning and an ability to utilize
their knowledge and skills to transform
themselves, filling the gulf between the
traditionally structured teacher-learner
dynamic and young people’s natural curi-
osity. Susan Wilcox, Ed.M.’92, has created
curriculum for schools and community
organizations and taught at Eugene Lang
College at the New School and Teachers
College at Columbia University.
Why He Didn’t Call You Back: 1,000
Guys Reveal What They Really
Thought About You After Your Date
Rachel Greenwald
Crown Publishing Group, 2009
Why He Didn’t Call You Back is based
on the author’s own research, which she
performed through “exit interviews” with
1,000 single guys who confessed the true
reasons they really didn’t call women back
after dates. Greenwald found the top 10
reasons straight from the men themselves.
She also relates success stories from real
women who used exit interview feedback
to find Mr. Right. Rachel Greenwald,
Ed.M.’87, is a dating coach, matchmaker,
and New York Times bestselling author.
The Why…? Series
Pandwe Gibson
BookSurge Publishing, 2009
The Why…? Series is a new children’s book
series that incorporates various academic
interests while instilling the importance
of family and community in its young
readers. The books present opportunities
for parents and children to learn together
about science, literature, history, math,
critical thinking, imagination, and social
entrepreneurship. The series consists of
three multilingual books created to sup-
port inquiry-based learning through sci-
ence and social studies curricula. Pandwe
Gibson, Ed.M.’08, is an educator with New
Orleans Recovery Schools and New Lead-
ers for New Schools.
Wounded by School:
Recapturing the Joy in
Learning and Standing Up
to Old School Culture
Kirsten Olsen
Teachers College Press, 2009
In this new book, Olson
brings to light the conse-
quences of an educational
approach that values conformity over
creativity, flattens students’ interests, and
dampens down differences among learn-
ers. Drawing on emotional stories, she
seeks to show that current institutional
structures do not produce the kinds of
minds and thinking that society really
needs. Instead, according to Olsen, the
system tends to shame, disable, and bore
many learners. She also presents the ex-
periences of wounded learners who have
healed and shows what teachers, parents,
and students can do right now to help
themselves stay healthy. Kirsten Olsen,
Ed.M.’98, Ed.D.’05, is a writer, education-
al consultant, a national-level Courage
to Teach facilitator, and principal of Old
Sow Consulting.
Blogs and More
Ed Beat
www.learningmatters.tv/blog/news-desk
John Merrow
Ed Beat is a daily education blog run by
Learning Matters, a nonprofit production
company focused on education founded
by Merrow in 1995. The site includes news
articles, videos, and podcasts relevant
to education today. Merrow can also be
followed on Twitter, at http://twitter.com/
john_merrow. John Merrow, Ed.D.’73,
is president of Learning Matters and a
scholar in residence at the Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of
Teaching at Stanford.
My Pop Studio
www.mypopstudio.com
Renee Hobbs and Sherri Hope Culver
Funded under a contract from the Office
on Women’s Health, U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services, My Pop
Studio is a “creative play experience”
that aims to help girls aged 9–14 bet-
ter understand and process how their
attitudes are affected by various media.
Activities centered on magazine, televi-
sion, music, and digital areas are fun and
engaging, while increasing media literacy
and knowledge of women’s health. Renee
Hobbs, Ed.D.’85, is an associate professor
and director of the Media Education Lab
at Temple University.
Ed.
Reach Incorporated
www.reachincorporated.blogspot.com
Mark Hecker
When Hecker launched his new
nonprofit, Reach Incorporated, in the
summer of 2009, he felt well prepared
for the strategic planning and program
design that goes into any start up. But it
was the day-to-day operations that took
him by surprise, and through which the
real progress can be measured. On the
companion blog to Reach, Inc.’s website
(www.reachincorporated.org), Hecker
sheds light on what goes on behind the
scenes of a new organization trying to find
its footing. From applying for tax exempt
status to making new contacts to buying
the right office printer, Hecker leaves
no detail out. Mark Hecker, Ed.M.’09, is
founder and executive director of Reach
Incorporated, an organization that
aims to teach academic skills through
employment.
Ed. magazine provides notice, on a space-
available basis, of recently published books,
blogs, podcasts, and websites by HGSE fac-
ulty, alumni, and students. Send your name,
degree, and year of graduation, along with
the title of the book, the publisher, and date
of publication, or a URL link to your blog,
podcast, or website.
Ed. magazine, In the Media
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Office of Communications
44R Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
E-mail: medianotes@gse.harvard.edu
Fax: 617-495-7629
• Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 39
 investing in education
The Great Leveler
By Jill Anderson
Many years ago David Ottaway
contemplated whether to become
a teacher or a journalist. He chose
the latter. With more than 30 years
working as a journalist under
his belt, Ottaway admits that he
doesn’t regret the decision, even
though he has always kept one foot
in the world of education. Today
he remains devoted to supporting
many education initiatives, includ-
ing the Ed School’s Urban Scholars
Fellowship program.
Looking back on Ottaway’s long
journalism career, it’s easy to see
why he doesn’t regret his choice.
He has witnessed some of the 20th
century’s most notable moments
in world history, including the
overthrow of Ethiopia’s Haile
Selassie, Nelson Mandela’s Long
Walk to Freedom in South Africa,
and the departure of a million
French people from Algeria.
In what he considers the most
dramatic piece of history, Ottaway
stood only 40 yards from the
assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat at a parade in
1981. “There was so much chaos, I was able to run down to the
podium to find out whether he survived and nobody stopped
me,” Ottaway recalls. “That was quite an event. There have
been a lot of interesting stories.”
For Ottaway, journalism was, more or less, in his blood.
Raised in upstate New York, his family founded the Ottaway
Group of newspapers, which consisted of publications in
New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and the West Coast.
By the 1960s, though, the family sold the newspapers to Dow
Jones & Company, and Ottaway went to study history at
Harvard College.
After graduating, Ottaway began working abroad for The
New York Times and Time Magazine. At the time, Algeria was
fighting for independence from France and Ottaway found
himself covering it firsthand. “At that point, I had some idea
what it was like being able to witness history in the making,”
he says.
40 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009
By 1971, Ottaway had
joined The Washington
Post, where he spent the
bulk of his career work-
ing as a national security
reporter, foreign corre-
spondent, and investigative
reporter. Being a journal-
ist, Ottaway says, taught
him “how good people can
be and how horrible people
can be. You see the best
and worst of people and
everything in between.”
With the daily grind of
journalism behind him,
Ottaway continues to write
books in his retirement,
including the recently
published The King’s
Messenger: Prince Bandar
bin Sultan and America’s
Tangled Relationship with
Saudi Arabia.
jill anderson
Outside of writing, he
also dedicates much of his
time and efforts to address-
ing issues in education with his wife, Marina, who has taught
at universities around the world.
As a resident of Washington, D.C., for more than 30 years,
Ottaway became alarmed watching repeated education ef-
forts to improve the city’s schools fail. “This has led to a very
vibrant charter school movement in Washington in part of the
great search to find out what kind of education or educational
system will establish better school systems for all — white,
black, brown, yellow,” Ottaway says. “What concerns me is how
difficult it is to make any progress. There is no overall sustained
system of education that we’ve been able to define that works
for all.”
The lack of progress, particularly among African Ameri-
cans and Latinos, drives Ottaway to continue being a advocate
for and provide scholarships to minority students and urban
schools. “Education is the most powerful tool for giving them
an even chance in the world,” Ottaway says. “Education is a
great leveler.”
Together, Ottaway and his wife helped launch the SEED
School in Washington, D.C., a nonprofit that partners with
urban communities to provide innovative educational opportu-
nities that prepare underserved students for success in college
and beyond. With two successful schools completed to date,
plans are underway for additional schools in the future.
While working on Harvard University Committee on
Student Excellence and Opportunity from 2005 to 2008, Ot-
taway learned of the Ed School’s Urban Scholars Fellowship
— a program that provides tuition and health insurance fees
for nine selected educators from urban school systems. The
program resonated with Ottaway, who became intrigued by
Scholorship Purpose By Amy Rollins
In 2006, the Ed School introduced the Urban Scholars Fellowship
program, a scholarship program with a specific focus on students
committed to improving the nation’s urban schools. “We want
to provide a reward to people who have worked in urban public
schools, which we view as an important public service to this
nation,” said Dean Kathleen McCartney at the time of the program’s
launch. “We believe that this fellowship will provide an incentive
for people to return to urban public schools in leadership roles.”
The selection of candidates for the fellowship program is
rigorous. The scholars are chosen from among those who rank
in the top 10 percent of the Ed School’s applicant pool and have
demonstrated a commitment to working in urban school systems.
Each of the 13 master’s programs admissions committees reviews
their top candidates and nominates students based on experi-
ence, background, test scores, academics, and engagement with
the challenges of urban education.
In addition to completing the standard master’s curriculum, the
students participate in an interdisciplinary program designed to
create a network of professional colleagues who share the same
passion for improving public schools in urban areas. Throughout
the year, the urban scholars have regular meetings under the
guidance of Jennifer Petrallia, assistant dean for master’s students.
These meetings provide the students with information from
researchers and practitioners in the Boston area who focus on
issues and challenges specific to urban education. The students
also get behind-the-scenes opportunities at the university on
a wide range of issues, such as how geographical information
the urban scholars’ determination to continue as teachers in
urban schools.
The Urban Scholars Fellowship program is part of a larger
effort at the Ed School to provide additional financial aid to
master’s students. For many of the students awarded the fel-
lowship, without it, graduate school wouldn’t be an option.
Though Ottaway is modest about his support of the Urban
Scholars Fellowship program, he sees teachers as key to solv-
ing education’s problems. “If they can help save the public
school system, God bless them,” he says. “What is important
is that they go back to urban schools and don’t get sidetracked
because the urban schools need so much help.”
Urban Scholars at
jill anderson
a reception with
David Ottaway
systems are being used in scientific research on urban education
and where to find hidden secrets in the university libraries or
museums. This year, the scholars met for special seminars on
topics like counseling in urban schools, economic research, special
education, and being an urban superintendent. Ultimately, the
sessions create strong relationships for the students with practitio-
ners from across the country and with each other.
The Urban Scholars Fellowship program is one example of the
school’s recent efforts at building fellowship and scholarship
programs that address the financial burdens facing practitioners
in the field. According to McCartney, the Ed School’s leadership
team believed it was important to create a prestigious fellowship
to encourage the best students to come to the school — and
return to their urban school systems — unburdened by heavy
loan payments.
Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 41
 alumni news and notes
1941
Jesse Dossick, Ed.M., passed
away in April. A story on
Dossick and his yearly $25
donation to the Ed School was
featured in the winter 2008
issue of Ed.
1962
Judith Brown, Ed.M.’54, Ed.D.,
has been named distinguished
professor at Oakland University
in Rochester, Mich. She is a
professor of anthropology.
PROFILE
Ben Barnhart
Joanne Creighton, M.A.T.’65,
is too busy to ponder what she is right now;
that will be a task for her sabbatical.
For Joanne Creighton, M.A.T.’65, retirement is not the end to her
career in education, it is merely a sabbatical. Creighton, who will
vacate her position as president of Mount Holyoke College in
South Hadley, Mass., at the end of the 2009–10 academic year, is
in no rush to decide on her post–Mount Holyoke life, however. “I
will have time to reflect on what I will do next,” she says. “I need
this ‘gap year’ before making any commitments for the future.”
42 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009
1965
Joanne Creighton, M.A.T.,
will step down as president of
Mount Holyoke College at the
end of the 2009–2010 academic
year after nearly 15 years of
service. (See profile below.)
1966
Marilyn Stevens, M.A.T.,
passed away in July after a long
battle with brain cancer. A
tribute written by her daughter,
Jennifer Stevens, Ed.M.’09, can
be found at www.marilynstevens.
blogspot.com.
1969 1971 1974 Recovery and Reinvestment
Act with Secretary of Educa-
Francis Amory, M.A.T, William Fitzsimmons, Sally Mahe, Ed.M., had the tion Arne Duncan at the White PHOTO FINISH
continues to serve as a full Ed.M.’69, Ed.D., was honored book she coauthored, A Great- House.
professor in urban studies at by Access, a nonprofit organi- er Democracy Day by Day,
Worcester State College with a zation that provides financial chosen by the Tri-S Foundation They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Now it’s also
private practice in clinical so-
cial work on the side. He writes
aid, scholarships, and advice to
Boston high school students.
as its book club choice. She also
recently launched her website,
1980 worth an alumni note. Starting with the next issue of Ed.
(winter 2010), we will be including alumni-focused photos in
that good work is a blessing, He is dean of admissions and fi- www.democracydaybyday.com, Barbara Kittredge, Ed.M.,
the alumni section of the magazine. (Either the alum is in the
and he has many fond memo- nancial aid at Harvard College, as a way to keep her passion for has been tutoring children of
ries of the Ed School. and was honored for his work a greater democracy kindled Mexican immigrants, grades photo or the photo is connected to the graduate — a photo
of a new baby, for example.) Send your high-resolution digi-
ensuring that institutions of and shared. K–6, for eight years. She calls
it a “gratifying experience.” She tal photos to classnotes@gse.harvard.edu. Photos that are not
Ernesto Schiefelbein, Ed.D., higher education are affordable
writes, “This year [I] have a
received the 2009 Alumni and accessible to everyone. in focus or that are dark may not be usable. Please identify
Council Award for Outstanding 1975 5-year-old [who didn’t] know the people in the photo and include a few lines of context.
Contribution to Education at colors or how to hold a pencil —
Alan Woodruff, Ed.D., is Due to space constraints, we may not be able to print all
the HGSE Convocation in June. last week he wrote his name,
running for Congress as photos but we will do our best!
‘Luis.’ Wow!!!”
representative of New Mexico’s
First Congressional District,
greater Albuquerque. A
detailed discussion of his posi-
1982 chair of the newly established Vanity Fair article, “Heads in
tions on educational matters Sarah Milburn, Ed.M., Social Sciences Department at the Sand.”
is included on his website at received her Ph.D. in political Nashua Community College
in Nashua, N.H. She is also an
science on May 20, 2009, from
1996
Creighton’s career in administration happened unexpectedly. www.alanwoodruff.com.
In fact, her reason for coming to the Ed School was simple: “I liked Rutgers University, where she associate professor of social
studied comparative politics, sciences.
1976
school and decided to keep going,” she says. And she kept on Erik Carneal, Ed.M., was
going, first, to the University of Michigan for her Ph.D. in English,
political theory, and military appointed by Piper Jaffray &
and security issues in postco- Leo Shea, Ed.M., was named
then to Wayne State University, where she was working as an Martha Minow, Ed.M., Co. as managing director in the
lonial French-speaking central to the board of directors of the
English professor when she was approached to take on the “tem- became dean of the Harvard firm’s business services group
Africa. For more than 20 years, International Lyme and Associ-
porary” position of associate dean. “That detour was to change Law School in July. A member with a focus on the educational
she has been a Central Africa ated Diseases Society in March.
of the Harvard faculty since sector.
the trajectory of my career,” she says. “From then on I was lured country specialist for Amnesty He is clinical assistant professor
from one administrative assignment to the next,” including time
1981, Minow was a former International USA, working on of rehabilitation medicine at
clerk to Supreme Court Justice Walter Stroup, Ed.M.’91,
as interim president at Wesleyan University. She came to Mount Chad, Gabon, the Democratic New York University School
Thurgood Marshall. Minow has Ed.D., published “What Bernie
Republic of Congo, and the of Medicine, staff psycholo-
Holyoke in 1996. taught at the Ed School. Madoff Can Teach Us About
Central African Republic. gist at the Rusk Institute, and
She calls her choice to retire in 2010 a “natural transition,” Accountablity in Education” in
president of Neuropsychologi-
as it is also in that year that Mount Holyoke completes a major the March 18 issue of Educa-
fundraising effort, The Plan for 2010. During her tenure, she has 1979 Tamara Nash, Ed.M., was
honored as Member of the Year
cal Evaluation and Treatment
Services in New York City and
tion Week. He is an associate
professor of curriculum and
shepherded two such plans designed to strengthen the school’s Ron Kronish, Ed.D., was re- and appears in the 2008–2009 Quincy, Mass.
instruction, an Elizabeth G.
mission: “educating a diverse residential community of women cently the subject of an article edition of the Madison Who’s Gibb Fellow, and the chair
at the highest level of academic excellence and fostering the alli-
ance of liberal arts education with purposeful engagement in the
in The Times (of London). He
is a rabbi and staff member at
Who Registry of Executives
and Professionals. She is the 1991 of the Science, Technology,
Engineering, and Mathematics
director of the Center for Civic
world.” Among the plans’ many successes are a larger, stronger the Interreligious Coordinating Chris Guthrie, Ed.M., became Education Graduate Studies
Council in Israel. Engagement at Oglethorpe dean of Vanderbilt Univer- Committee at the University of
applicant pool, significant growth of the faculty, and dramatically
University in Atlanta. sity Law School this past July. Texas at Austin.
improved financial resources.
Chinaka Esiaba, Ed.M., writes, He is a seven-year veteran of
Creighton does plan to continue her affiliations with both
Mount Holyoke — at “a respectful distance,” she says — and
“I hope the light still shines as
we left it in 1962.” 1986 Vanderbilt’s law school and the
school’s former associate dean 1999
Women’s Education Worldwide, the first-ever global alliance of Janine Bempechat, Ed.M.’79, for academic affairs.
Dilafruz Williams, C.A.S., Camia Hoard, Ed.M., has
women’s colleges that she cofounded in 2003. But for now, she, Ed.D., was awarded tenure at
elected in 2003 and 2007 to the been named a winner of the
ever the student, is looking forward to her next challenge: “I
haven’t had much leisure time in many years, so I’m pretty inex-
Portland (Ore.) School Board,
serves as secretary-treasurer
Wheelock College in Boston.
1994 2009 Kohl McCormick Early
Childhood Teaching Awards
perienced at it,” she says. “But I do expect to learn more about
how to enjoy leisure time after I step down as president.”
of the Council of Great City
Schools. On March 16, she
1989 Mike Walker, Ed.M., is the
head of civil affairs for the
for leading her Chicago first-
graders to success by chal-
participated in a roundtable Robyn Hallowell Griswold, Marine Corps in Iraq. He was lenging negative perceptions
— Marin Jorgensen discussion on the American Ed.M., was promoted to mentioned in the May 2009 of urban education, inspiring
Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 43
 alumni news and notes
them to do things they didn’t
believe they could, and exem-
plifying best practices in quality
early childhood education.
2000
2002
Amalia Cudeiro, Ed.M.97,
Ed.D., was named superinten-
dent of the Bellevue School
District in Washington state.
2003
2005
Hannelore Rodriguez-Farrar,
Ed.M., was named assistant to
the president at Brown Univer-
sity beginning July 2009.
Nia Ujamaa, Ed.M., was named
2006 PROFILE
Erby Mitchell, Ed.M., began his
new position as assistant head
for enrollment management at Kerida McDonald, Ed.M.’85, Ed.D.’89, is on a multicountry
the Loomis Chaffee School in
Windsor, Conn., in July. life-cycle journey using her engagements with early childhood
education, health and nutrition, adolescent development, and

courtesy of Kerida mcdonald

Virginia Kerrigan, Ed.M.,
relocated to San Diego in 2006
and is now married to Keith
Joseph Ruehrwein. They were
thrilled to welcome Jonah,
their first child, in March 2008.
Kerrigan launched her own
educational support business
in the summer of 2009: www.
thetotalstudentsite.com or
www.virginia.ruehrwein.com.
PROFILE
one of the 52 American mem-
Tyler Hodges, Ed.M., is dean
bers of the Apple Distinguished 2007 media sectors to educate and communicate for development.
Educator program of 2009. She
of students at Laguna Blanca Ethan Gray, Ed.M., recently
is currently the instructional
School in Santa Barbara, Calif., became vice president of The The last time Kerida McDonald, Ed.M.’85, Ed.D.’89, had visited the in the West to
technology specialist for the
where he oversees discipline Mind Trust, an education non-
Mirman School for the Gifted Ed School was to attend her graduation. As she rushed around development in
and student life for the Upper profit based in Indianapolis
Child in Los Angeles. campus last spring, the memories came flooding back. “Rastafari, I Africa is a big privilege.”
School. Previously he worked that supports education entre-
for six years as a history preneurship. wonder what happened to . . . ,” she would say as she remembered Recently she moved to Ethiopia to her current post as chief
instructor and academic dean an old acquaintance. of communications for UNICEF. Her work focuses on behavior-
at Episcopal High School (Va.). In the 20 years since her graduation, the Jamaica native spent change communication around immunization, sanitation, and
Hodges and his wife, Tristan, her time mothering five children, consulting on early childhood nutrition. “While at Harvard, and even in Jamaica, early childhood
have two daughters: Madalene, development, and serving as an international civil servant. She was about education; in my current work, it is about survival.
3; and Hannah, 9 months.
joined UNICEF Jamaica in 1998 and spent the next six years sup- When 30 percent of children do not [live] to their fifth birthday in
porting policy and legislative frameworks for early childhood Tanzania, you need to understand early childhood development
development. As a Rastafari, her spiritual home is Africa and, differently,” she says.
in 2004, she traveled there as head of the Health, Nutrition and She says is grateful to the Ed School for opening doors that
Early Childhood Program in UNICEF Tanzania. would be closed to a Rasta. It is apropos that she returned to

Kevin Roberts, Ed.M.’09, “It was a powerful feeling to be there . . . to be where your
ancestors were shipped from. It was an eerie feeling to walk into
is ready to take on the world. the dungeons in Zanzibar, to see where our forefathers were first
held as slaves,” she says, shaking her head as if in disbelief.
When Kevin Roberts, Ed.M.’09, was contacted by the Farm of The struggle for justice, a core tenet of Rastafari, informs
the Child, a nonprofit orphanage in Honduras, its staff was McDonald’s passion. “I am a child of the universe, wanting to
campus for the 2009 Alumni of Color Conference’s panel on
international experiences with discrimination. “Slavery and
colonialism still has an anchor that is very heavy,” she says. “It still
determines the tribalism and divisions that we have not been
able to get past.”

courtesy of Kevin Roberts

finalizing plans for a professional development trip and were see a better world for us and our future generations. … To be — Kenneth Russell, Ed.M.’00, is a third-year doctoral student in
looking to buy new language arts textbooks for its school. able to connect to the continent and apply what I have gained Cultures, Communities, and Education and a native of Jamaica.
They asked Roberts, who had done prior volunteer work for
the organization, if he would be willing to help them obtain
materials and create activities to strengthen their language
arts program. With two other International Education Policy in math and reading on Honduran national assessments. For Rob- Elizabeth Hawkins Lincoln, Derrick Florence, Ed.M.,
master’s students, Roberts proceeded to research professional erts, “it was great to see the children growing up and doing well.”
Ed.M., recently accepted the was recently the subject of an Intellectual Contribution/Faculty Tribute Award
role as program director for article in the Los Angeles Times
development strategies, crosscultural exchange strategies, and He hopes the trip has broadened the worldview of the Espiritu Hope Walks, an educational which profiled him for his work Thirteen graduating master’s students were recognized
textbook options. Santo volunteers and made them aware of the realities in which program of Global Strategies as coach of the girls’ basket- in June for their dedication to scholarship, the result of
Eventually he found himself back in Honduras. “The trip itself most of the people in this world live. “To actually see, smell, for HIV Prevention. She spent ball team at Centennial High which made positive impact on their peers. The recipients
was a dose of reality for everyone who went,” Roberts says of touch, and interact with people living at this level can have a the summer in Rwanda and the School in Compton, Calif., and are nominated by students and ultimately selected by the
the group of teachers from the Espiritu Santo Catholic School in profound effect and change perceptions on reality,” he says. Democratic Republic of Congo a mentor of one of his players master’s program directors. This year’s recipients were:
Safety Harbor, Fla. who accompanied him. “It is not until one is on With graduation just a few months behind him, Roberts hopes visiting orphan programs who will be attending the Uni-
funded by Hope Walks and versity of California at Santa Emily Almas, Ed.M. Suzannah Holsenbeck, Ed.M.
the ground experiencing the reality of the situation that can one to continue promoting education and creating opportunities for Joe Baker, Ed.M. Melissa Mayes, Ed.M.
conducting research. Barbara on a full scholarship.
begin to conceive what life is like for the rural Honduran.” It can be those whose situations may not allow for the best education to Angelica Brisk, Ed.M. Mangala Nanda, Ed.M.
a shock to some, explains Roberts, to experience the intense heat, explore their abilities. “To me, it does not make much difference Tim O’Brien, Ed.M., is work- Elisha Brookover, Ed.M. Nancy Schoolcraft, Ed.M.
and to observe the simple things that the open-air classrooms if I am doing this for people in Boston or Guayaquil [Ecuador], 2008 ing as a professional develop- Andrew Cabot, Ed.M.
Ashton Wheeler Clemmons, Ed.M.
Terri-Nicole Singleton, Ed.M.
Kathy Yang, Ed.M.
lack, such as overhead projectors and, on occasion, electricity. with a nonprofit or a government organization. I just hope that ment specialist for the Wash-
Andrew Barron, Ed.M., Jerome “Jay” Green, Ed.M.
Journeying back to the orphanage after four years away was somehow I can use my abilities to help others to achieve their ington, D.C., public schools,
recently published the article
personally gratifying for Roberts. In spite of the many emotional full potential.” training math and literacy
“Speaking for Democracy” Visit www.gse.harvard.edu/commencement for
professional developers.
and physical barriers the students must overcome, as well as the in the Coalition of Excellent more information.
lack of resources, they have ranked among the highest performers — Amber Haskins Schools Journal.

44 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 45
 alumni news and notes
Commencement ’09
Clockwise, top to bottom: Happy graduates;
student speaker Mark Hecker, Ed.M.’09;
Ernesto Schiefelbein, Ed.D.’69, recipient of
the 2009 Alumni Council Award; graduates
in the yard; Will Yeiser, Ed.M.’09, and his son
Jack posing onstage with Dean McCartney;
smiling faculty; and a trio of doctoral marshals.
46 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009
In Memory
Catherine Foster Largay, M.A.T.’38
Eleanora Vogel, Ed.M.’40
Jesse Dossick, Ed.D.’41
Robert Ray Neuenschwander, M.A.T.’47
Evan West, M.A.T.’48
Joan Osterman Yalman, M.A.T.’48
Paul Burke, Ed.M.’50
George Frederick Miller Jr., Ed.M.’51
Elaine Blanche Bye, Ed.M.’53
John Christopher Howard Jr., Ed.M.’53
Frederick Clark, Ed.M.’54
Gertrude Houghton, Ed.M.’55
Joseph Pynchon, Ed.M.’55
Elihu Harris, Ed.M.’56
Donald Parsons, M.A.T.’56
Joseph Marion Carroll, Ed.M.’53, Ed.D.’58
Margaret Irish Porter, Ed.M.’59
Ruth Crawford-Brown, Ed.M.’61
Gail Kendrick, M.A.T.’63
Ed. and the Office of Alumni Relations
welcome news from HGSE alumni about
employment, activities, or publications.
Classnotes will appear either in Ed. or on
the Alumni Relations website.
Please e-mail your classnote to classnotes@
gse.harvard.edu or submit online at
www.gse.harvard.edu/alumni_friends/
classnotes/submit_note.
Classnotes can also be mailed to:
Ed. magazine, Classnotes
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Office of Communications
44R Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Albert Benson Jr., Ed.D.’64 Shirley Johnson, C.A.S.’90
Beverly Aronson, Ed.M.’65 Rachel Siebert, Ed.M.’88, Ed.D.’91
Elizabeth Wright, M.A.T.’65 Anne Saks Yates, Ed.M.’93, Ed.D.’05
Marilyn Stevens, M.A.T.’66
Paul Gilman, M.A.T.’67
Mary Leeds Johnson, Ed.M.’68
Roger Prokop, M.A.T.’70
Thomas Minter, Ed.D.’71
Edith Aldrich, Ed.M.’73
Nancy Nauts Dobbs, Ed.M.’73
Hanna Hastings, Ed.M.’79
Maria Montenegro, Ed.M.’79
Fred Schatz, C.A.S.’80
Robert Choate, Ed.M.’81
Jeffrey Woodworth, Ed.M.’82
Mary Jane Burbank Crotty, C.A.S.’84
James Bowman, Ed.M.’76, Ed.D.’85
John Baird, C.A.S.’86, Ed.M.’89
Linda Bayer, Ed.M.’90
CLASSNOTES/ADDRESS UPDATE
NAME: YEAR(S)/DEGREE(S):
ADDRESS:
CITY: STATE: ZIP:
E-MAIL:
NOTES FOR PUBLICATION IN ED. OR ON THE ALUMNI RELATIONS WEBSITE:
r I do not want MY classnote on the web. r this is a new address.
r I want MY classnote only on the web.
Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 47
 recess
A Harvard First by Amanda Dagg
Recently we received an e-mail notifying us of the
death of Harriet Rattray Gemmel, Ed.M.’31. In it,
the writer inquired whether Gemmel could have
been the first woman to receive a graduate degree
from the Ed School. After a little research and an
afternoon at the Harvard Archives, we discovered
that that honor belongs not to Gemmel, but to
Lorna Myrtle Hodgkinson, Ed.M.’21, Ed.D.’22.
In fact, in addition to being the first woman to
receive a doctoral degree from the Ed School,
Hodgkinson was also the first woman ever to
receive one from Harvard University.
Hodgkinson was born in Melbourne, Australia,
in 1887 and grew up in Perth. She spent the first
courtesy of harvard university archives
decade of the 20th century earning her teacher’s
certificate and working as an assistant at the Perth
Infant’s School, where she first showed an interest
in the education of mentally challenged children.
By 1913, Hodgkinson had become a public
school teacher, and she then took a position with
the Department of Public Instruction as director
of special work among feeble-minded children.
She was offered paid leave in 1920 to travel to America
and attend the Ed School, where her degree application
indicates that she pursued a special field called “education
psychology,” and her coursework reveals the type of student
Hodgkinson might have been: mostly As and only a few Bs.
“I can say she would have been extremely hardworking,
probably a perfectionist and driven, which probably didn’t
allow for too much more than having her head stuck in a book
or research,” says Kathryn Hodgkinson, Lorna’s cousin twice
removed. Kathryn has been researching Lorna’s life for the
past few years and hopes to produce a feature film about her
legacy. (Lorna never married and had no children of her own.)
It was upon her return to Australia that Hodgkinson’s career
path dramatically changed. She assumed a new position at
the Department of Public Instruction and, shortly afterward,
publicly criticized Australia’s neglect of its “feeble-minded”
citizens before the Royal Commission on Lunacy Law, earning
the reputation of being an “outspoken lady doctor.”
By shedding light on this issue, she also drew the ire of
her employer: The director launched an official inquiry into
the validity of her admission to Harvard. In a letter to Henry
48 Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009
Left to right, top, middle, bottom:
Huai-Ming Sun, Learning and
Teaching; Lisa Garcia-Hanson,
Higher Education; Denton DeSotel,
Higher Education; Josh Keniston,
Higher Education; Kathryn Hurley,
Language and Literacy; Omar
Lopez, Education Policy and
Management; Kimmy Spector,
Human Development and
Psychology; Allyson Ross, Arts
in Education; Gene Roundtree,
Education Policy and Management
Wyman Holmes, then-dean of the Ed School, Director S.H.
Smith wrote that Hodgkinson was “not qualified to speak with
authority” about issues of education and mental defectiveness,
and suggested that the school cancel her degree, implying
that she had exaggerated her credentials for admittance to
Harvard. Despite these charges, Dean Holmes wrote to the
commission offering his support and speaking to her proven
qualifications. (Despite the support, Hodgkinson was removed
from her position and her pay was cut in half. Her dissertation
still has not been published in Australia.)
Hodgkinson decided to start a private school for mentally
disabled children. The Sunshine Training Institute opened in
Their Goals. Give a gift in any amount to the HGSE Fund and you support
every aspect of the Harvard Graduate School of Education experience, ensuring that the
1924 with six students. In a January 1925 Society article on the
institute, she explained why she founded it. “I had to because next generation of educational leaders has the resources needed to achieve their goals
Your Opportunity.
nobody else would do it, and there is not even a state institution and make an impact nationally and globally.
to which such cases can be sent for proper treatment,” she said.
Today, the school, now called the Lorna Hodgkinson Sunshine
Home, supports more than 400 people with disabilities.
Visit www.gse.harvard.edu/alumni_friends/giving/fund or use
jill anderson
— Amanda Dagg, a 2009 Harvard graduate, is now teaching
in Nashville with Teach For America. the enclosed envelope to submit your gift to the HGSE Fund.
Ed. • Harvard Graduate School of Education • fall 2009 49
Harvard Graduate School of Education Nonprofit Organization
Office of Communications U.S. Postage PAID
44R Brattle Street Burlington, VT
Cambridge, MA 02138 Permit No. 70

Where’s Ed.?
After chasing eight-year-old Johanna and six-year-old
Daniel around Conroy Commons for an hour, doctoral
student John Roberts, Ed.M.’03, stopped long enough
to read through a recent issue of Ed. magazine. The
Bandler kids, who were hanging out with their mother,
Rebecca Holcombe, Ed.M.’90, also a doctoral student,
repaid John for his efforts by flashing bunny ears. Or
as their mother told John afterwards, the kids “were
helping you rediscover your inner child, which you’d
misplaced somewhere between a Bonferroni test and a
quadratic transformation.”

Send us a picture of yourself reading Ed. magazine —

preferably in a locale more exotic than Conroy — and
you may just be in the next issue of Ed. magazine!