Interview with Ann Eustis

Karen Blair: Ms. Eustis, thank you for sharing with us your thoughts about your career and education. You are helping us enrich our understanding of Teacher Education at Towson across time. I guess we should start in the beginning. Could you tell us a little bit about your early social context? Where you grew up, what thoughts you were having about life after high school, whether you were considering college, if you had any career thoughts? Ann Eustis: I was born in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1960. I loved school as a child. I’m the middle of three girls. It started out being okay to play school where my older sister was the teacher. But, pretty soon, we were both teachers and then my younger sister, as well. We remember setting up the schoolroom and teaching the dolls and the stuffed animals and then having teacher meetings in our playroom. My mother went into Elementary Ed and Special Ed when I was in junior high school. She was not too happy in it and very much coaxed me not to think about teaching. I had a very strong sentiment not to go that route. My father had considered it very strongly; but, his family had suggested he couldn’t provide for his own family if he went that route. So, he ended up being a stockbroker. It was an interesting choice. I thought, a lot as a child and through high school, about social work. I really made some college decisions based on that. My parents had very strong views about many things. One was they didn’t think there were good enough schools south of the Mason Dixon line. My dad had gone to Yale and my mom went to Columbia. So, there was a bit of pressure to go north for school. I ended up at Wesleyan in Connecticut and it was very early in their admitting women. A lot of my relatives had gone there, but I was the first girl to go there. I started out in psychology and sociology and thinking that I was going to go that route of social work. However, things changed as I went along. K.B.: You wound up getting a degree, a Bachelor of Arts in Government with a concentration in American Studies? A.E.: American Politics. K.B.: How did you arrive at that major? What were you thinking you might do with that major? A.E.: In thinking about evolving gender roles and being in college in the late 70’s and early 80’s, it was very evident to me that maybe social work wasn’t the only thing that I could consider. That was more of a female field and I wanted to think about other things. I was very interested in law and politics. But, a pivotal switch was I took some time off from college. My university had an internship program. So, I lived and worked full time for about four months in a shelter for battered women in Providence, Rhode Island. I did intake with the police, all late hours. The things that I did at age twenty were pretty courageous and not always thoughtful, but I did my best and during the days and after school, I began a homework and tutoring program for the children of the women in the shelter. I think that whole playing teacher as a child part of me was always in there. I would be confronted with situations where children would come into my view. I worked well with those kids, those children and their parents. I really saw that the power for social change may not be as much in social work, but as in family law. My decision to switch my major came as a result of that live--in internship. I said, “Well, I’m going to be pre--law,” and you had to concentrate. My dad had died and my mom had moved to Washington D.C. and was working for the Department of Labor. I think the whole politics thing was because I had that experience. K.B.: So, you graduate. What happens next? A.E.: I was still in that pre--law mode, but I knew that I wanted to work for a while first-- before law school. One of the strong influences for me to go the law route was my godfather who had been a preeminent lawyer in Florida and then had been appointed by Nixon to be on the bench. He was the chief judge of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and had been considered for the Supreme Court a couple of times. None of my cousins had even graduated from college. So, there was a lot of pressure because I looked like the one that might follow in his footsteps. I thought I might be too. He helped me get an internship between my junior and senior year in D.C. at the United States Department of Justice. I worked for the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. I really was exposed to amazing activities that were created for me because of my uncle. I learned a lot about the views of those political appointees because it was pretty high up. I’d go to congressional hearings and write papers. One thing they had me do was research everything Dr. Martin Luther King had ever said on the topic of color-blindness. At that time, it was the Reagan administration and they were trying to say that Reagan was like Dr. King. I had all these competing philosophical ideas about that, but I liked that I got to do the research. As a result of that, I met a lot of people that were career attorneys in civil rights. My office had been with them and not the politicos. So, they said, “You know what? We really thinking you have a good head on your shoulders. Would you like to come work with us when you graduate?” So, I went back for my senior year knowing that I could be a paralegal when I graduated. That turned out to be a really remarkable first career. I was there for five years. We prosecuted cases all over the country. The attorneys in that section, the criminal section of civil rights, were mostly doing police brutality cases as well as racial violence and slavery cases all over the country. They were assistant U.S. attorneys and they would go and do these specialized prosecutions. I was responsible for preparing the witnesses, all the documents and legal research. The things I got to do as a paralegal . . . there are not many lawyers that would ever have gotten to do. It was hard not to want to stay. K.B.: Compelling work. A.E.: Right. I actually had the chance to either become a teacher or work on the Rodney King prosecution in L.A. That ended up being a very fascinating choice, but I’m glad that I made the one I did. It was that level of cases. K.B.: Very prominent, public involvements. A.E.: It was interesting because it would be the United States versus Joe Klansman and you would be the United States. I would sit at the table with the attorneys and FBI agents. Again, I feel like I had to do some pretty courageous things because we were dealing with some very bad people. Some of our work . . . the prosecutors’ cars had been blown up and things like that. My mother would always come home and say . . . I’d call from the road and she’d say, “I don’t think that was in your job description” or something like that because I’d have to bring a Klansman from his workplace to us. I really learned a lot and I loved it. It was through that that I think my path to teaching evolved again. We had a slavery case----a modern form of slavery in the upper peninsula of Michigan. An African American appliance salesman decided to found his own church. They called it The House of Judah. They bought a lot of land in the upper peninsula and made it sort of a concentration camp. All of followers were enslaved. They couldn’t leave. There was barbed wire fence, police dogs and the like. A thirteen--year old had been beaten to death for trying to run away. His mother had taken the wrap for it on the state level and had gone to prison. It had been ordered by the prophet and his minions. We did a modern criminal slavery prosecution and we convicted eleven people on every count. For that, I was working with all these child witnesses who had been taught that white people were evil, that the government was more evil. There were a lot of challenges to try to actually get them to testify against these adults whom they were supposed to respect. I befriended, especially, the two brothers of the victim who had died. Daniel and David, these twins, and I worked together a lot. They had been severely physically abused as well. I taught them card games. Then I taught them to read. We actually corresponded for years afterwards. Their writing to me, “We really think that you should teach because you are a teacher.” That is actually why I became a teacher. K.B.: Very compelling. How did the case turn out? A.E.: All of them were convicted and the kids, as part of a civil case that came after, they got them to sell the land and give the assets to a child victim fund so the kids got to go to counseling. Last I knew, the twins were college--bound, so I think it’s turned out well. I haven’t been in touch with them for quite a while. K.B.: It steered you to a new path. A.E.: Very much so. I think that I started to see that the work that we were doing, while it was compelling and challenging, the education route might be more hopeful. In some sort of small way, maybe I could change some hearts and minds before they had some of these really skewed views that I was encountering in this work. I was dealing with these criminals that had very rash ideas. K.B.: So, you go back to school? A.E.: I took the Miller Analogy Test and I remember feeling guilty that I had done so well on it. I felt like I came from such privilege. I could see civil rights issues in the test. They were asking me about comparing art museums in Europe to one another. I thought, “Okay, cause I’ve been several times and I knew them, I could answer that.” It was still good, because I felt, if I could do well, I could be on this next path. University of Maryland had started a master’s certification program three years before. It was highly competitive to get in. You needed recommendations and good transcripts from your undergraduate, as well as some kind of test: either GRE’s or Miller. It felt very exciting to be part of something so early on. The people who had founded the master’s cert program were all my professors. My advisor was Richard Arends, who wrote Learning to Teach; he wrote it for us. So, we piloted this book. Curiously, now at Towson, many of my colleagues use the book that my advisor wrote because I brought it to them. It’s kind of neat. My colleague and I are actually in the book. Our research is in the book that Dick wrote. It was really fun because it was us as graduate students going through a very intense thirteen month program to change careers. We did two summers plus the academic year. In that time, you got both initial certification and the M.Ed. It was a M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction. K.B.: So, we had not moved to that notion of an MAT [Master of Arts in Teaching] yet? A.E.: College Park was deciding because they were College Park, where I was studying, that the M.Ed. was the route that they wanted for this alt cert. K.B.: Do you know if that program is still in place? A.E.: Very much so. I’ve had the opportunity to instruct there in some summers and kind of come back in a different role. Yes. Now, with some of the work I do with the edTPA or Teacher Performance Assessment, I’m involved with some of my colleagues from College Park, one of whom had been one of my students in one of the summer classes is now on the faculty in master cert. It was fun. K.B.: Did you have to do any kind of student teaching as part of that program? A.E.: We had more traditional than what I’ve experienced since. Fifteen weeks and I was in fourth grade in Howard County. K.B.: Were you in the same grade in the same school for the whole fifteen weeks? A.E.: First grade and fourth grade both in Howard County. So, I did two different schools. It was a nine and six type of thing. I did first grade first and then the fourth grade. I think that I saw that my interest, if I could pick, would be with intermediate grades. Not that I didn’t enjoy the younger ones, but I think it was more of a natural fit for personality. K.B.: When you finished, you must have applied for teaching positions. Where did you wind up? A.E.: That’s an interesting question too. I still had my white hat on . . . or wanting to do good. So, I wanted to apply to Washington D.C. schools. Nobody had ever tried yet to come with an alt cert, an alternative certification, so they didn’t know what to do with me. They said if I had just come with my Bachelor’s in Government and applied without certification, they would have been able to hire me the next day. However, because I was trying to come fully credentialed and with a master’s, they didn’t know what to do. They stalled. They lost my application. Very late in August and I didn’t have a job. My university supervisor who was Frank Lyman, who had invented Think, Pair, Share, he helped me apply to some other districts and got me some interviews right away, both in Howard County and in Prince George’s. Howard, I got a call and they said, “Come and sign all your papers.” So, was coming from Silver Spring up a twenty--five mile drive. When I got there, the superintendent, ironically, Dr. Hickey had told him that they couldn’t issue any more open contracts. They had oversubscribed. So the contract wasn’t there just in that time span that I had driven. I really tried to be optimistic, but it was very disconcerting. I went ahead the same day to the Prince George’s interview and they hired me on the spot. I was at Burtonsville School for that first year. I was in Howard after that. K.B.: Do you think you were at a disadvantage because you were coming in with a master’s degree so that would obligate them to pay you more? A.E.: Yes. I do. And also because our graduation had not been until August. K.B.: You were just graduating practically the day school started. A.E.: In 1989, the job market wasn’t tremendous. It wasn’t horrible, but there were definitely some challenges for that summer. K.B.: So you were hired on the spot. A.E.: On the spot and it was the last day of teacher work week. The children would come in that following Monday. Fifth grade classroom. As you may have heard in your interviews, back then, the practice was to give the new teacher the really challenging class that nobody else wanted. And that’s whom I got----31 students and several severe behavioral challenges. One was severe emotional disturbance. One in a wheelchair who was really, really angry about his disability and would purposely run over other students with his wheelchair. Like many, I cried a lot that first year. I did have help from my faculty. Everyone stayed that Friday and most of the weekend to help me get my classroom ready. I saw that there was something in the commitment of classroom teachers. It wasn’t my fault that I had just gotten this assignment so late. I remember being remarkably creative. I wasn’t even sure what kinds of jobs fifth graders should have for the helper board. I had them write want ads on the first day of school and they decided what the jobs should be. You feel like whatever you need to do to get through it. I very much bonded with the class. You’ll always have your first year. K.B.: You’re thinking, “This is really tough and maybe I might switch counties?” A.E.: I did spend a good part of the year deciding, “Was this just going to be my year and then maybe switch to Howard County back where I felt more supported?” I loved the students. The principal and I had some philosophical differences. I was really confident that her method of discipline, where she was insisting on assertive discipline, was not my way of being. We locked heads as far as what I thought was right. I feel like I left more because of that than the county. I also knew, because Howard County had been where I student taught, I knew that had a lot of potential, so I wanted to get back there. I signed in early April, the first time that one could sign an open contract. That ended up giving me seniority. That ended up being really favorable in times when something may have been bumped and I had that early contract. I stayed there for nine years. K.B.: Did you go back into fifth grade? A.E.: Initially, fifth grade. Then I either did fourth, fourth and fifth together, or fifth for the next nine years. Two schools, but they were geographically proximate. K.B.: Were they the same socioeconomic profile pretty much? A.E.: Yes. Clarksville area, so very high socioeconomics. Challenging in its own way. I saw great students, great children and a different kind of parent with a different set of expectations. Sometimes, some neglect because they were often dual income parents who were lawyers and doctors. The children might have had nannies or babysitters that were doing more of the care. Still very much got to practice my craft, my art and really teach. Would infuse my social justice side whenever I could. My sister, at the time, was a missionary in Guatemala. She would come back and tell them about what the country was like. My uncle would come and be part of a panel and we would teach them about the branches of government. I think what I’ve noticed most about these 24 years in education is I always bring me to whatever it is I’m doing. Whatever that new thing is. K.B.: Sure! And your extended family, almost, too. What a wonderful exposure for them. A.E.: I think so, to support me in that. Around about year eight or nine in the classroom, I got into the doctoral program at College Park. I remember my uncle finally saying, “I guess it’s okay that you became a teacher and not a lawyer.” K.B.: It took a while, didn’t it? A decade or so. A.E.: Unfortunately, they had a program in Howard County where there were a certain number, just three slots a year that could be for educational leave. They took them away because of budget cuts. So, while I got into the program, I couldn’t start it because I was a single person and I couldn’t really afford to do a doctoral program full time. That was not to stop me, because I transferred from one elementary school to another in 1994 and they were only a few miles apart. I did it because a new venture had started at Pointers Run with Johns Hopkins University. It was to found a professional development school and I was very interested in what that was. I thought that I would want to be part of it. So, I transferred and that led to further things, including my time at Towson. K.B.: What was Hopkins saying about this new idea, this professional development school? How did you understand, at least initially, that concept? A.E.: We were going to be about becoming true partners as far as school--based people and college people. There would be much less of a division and much more of an infusion where we could, not just infiltrate each other’s worlds, but actually bring what we each knew to the other in a way where, preparing a pre--service teacher was indeed your first order of business, but it was never intended to be your only order of business. We were going to look at teacher professional development for all the staffs of your sites, as well as maybe helping the university professors with their development. And the big prong that I loved, and that caught me, was because we were going to be partners. It was going to be done in an environment that valued inquiry and action research, as well as the singular focus on student achievement. With those four ideas, I thought, “This really makes sense.” It’s something that I think I would be good at. When I had my exit interview from graduate school way back when, Frank Lyman said, “What do you want to be when you ultimately grow up?” and I said, “I want your job.” I always knew that somehow I would get back into wearing the university hat, but looking at it with the clinical lens. I saw that the PDS [Professional Development School] might actually be the way that I could fulfill that dream. K.B.: You stayed on the teacher side, on the county side of this with Hopkins. A.E.: For four years. At that point, I was able to do the adjunct instructing both for Hopkins and College Park in the summers. I taught a graduate course for Hopkins, but I had it in my elementary classroom after school. I was able to mentor many Hopkins interns. I think it’s because of Hopkins’ strong stance, as far as its medical background, where we were to think of it as a teaching hospital. That the professional development school was like a hospital. Interns were interns and mentors were mentors: it wasn’t cooperating teachers and student teachers. We conducted something in my elementary school that was called operating theatre. It was like grand rounds. Sometimes with me and sometimes with their university supervisor, we would go around and actually observe other classroom teachers with a group of interns and then debrief with that classroom teacher afterwards and look at best practices. He or she would come to seminar and work with them about some of the things they were trying to implement. That idea, I’ve carried with me into the work I’ve done at Towson, so we have a similar thing. K.B.: So, students are really getting to be interns, really getting exposed a lot of teachers and their style. A.E.: Right. And the Hopkins’ model was, they came the first day the teachers came, in August, and stayed until the end of the school year for the children, so much more immersion. K.B.: How did you connect with Towson University? A.E.: One of the university supervisors for Hopkins was also in the MAT program here at Towson. She noticed me and she reported to the person, who would become my chair, that she knew that I was really interested in trying to parlay my experiences and figure out if I could do university work full time. I tried to do something similar with both College Park and with Hopkins and they were both hung up because I didn’t have my terminal degree. I think the fit with Towson was meant to be. Dr. Karen Robertson said, “We want your practitioner side. We want your praxis, we want the fact that you can live in both these worlds pretty well and can navigate. That would be a value.” She hired me in 1999 as a lecturer full time. My superintendent, Dr. Hickey, asked that I get a year leave. We called it educational leave. They held my spot in the county, but I could come here and try it out. It was wonderful. K.B.: That was somewhat of a no--risk venture for you. A.E.: I remember that Dean Hinkle called me. I was out taking care of my nephew in California. The fact that he had to track me down; I don’t even think there were cell phones. He said, “We’ve heard so much about you.” I think he and Tom Proffitt had heard me present at Towson’s PDS conference, which was the first time I had ever come to this campus, presenting for Hopkins. They said, “We want to get her.” That was very affirming. K.B.: It certainly was. How wonderful! How could you say no? A.E.: Right. And that year, Dr. Robertson thought, we need to have the new person stay on campus and try out the professor role. I think I spent about half of it trying to argue that I needed to be back in Howard County. So, we spent some time coming up with the idea of forming a new professional development school. Owings Mills was active. K.B.: In Baltimore County. A.E.: In Baltimore County. I said, “I have a vision that we could do this in Howard County and do it for elementary there.” Two principals from Hollifield Station and St. John’s Lane were both Towson alums and very, very interested in forming a partnership. So, they almost started stalking Dr. Robertson. They did the hard work! Timing being everything, I was positioned to say, “I could do that. I’m living in Howard County now. Wouldn’t this be nice? It’s where most of my teaching experience had been. I could do it.” In the summer of 2000 we formed a partnership. The superintendent, Dr. Hickey, and Dean Hinkle decided to try something new out. I was given an appointment to work both for the county and the university. On paper I looked like I was still a classroom teacher with all my years and my education. So, I was being paid very well. Got retirement and benefits and the university just paid half of that to the school system. I held that for three years. K.B.: What schools were involved in that initial PDS? A.E.: Initially, it was St. John’s Elementary, Hollifield Station Elementary both in Ellicott City. They are only about two miles apart. After year two, we brought on Waverly for Elementary Ed. It had already been in partnership for many years with Towson for Special Ed. We transformed a duo into a trio and we called it the Ellicott City triad. It was good because each school had its own character. Hollifield Station had a lot of English language learners. Waverly had the strong Special Ed. It was a suburban setting, but we got some very good diversity and experience as well. It was the support of all three principals who couldn’t do enough to be part of this partnership. K.B.: What did that partnership involve? A.E.: We decided to try to test out some newly created professional development standards. I had been part of a team along with Dr. Robertson, Dr. Gartland and a lot of people working for the state of Maryland, over the course of three summers, to figure out what a professional development school could and should be and how to measure it. This new partnership I formed, even though we had only been in it a year, they asked us in your two and three to test out the state standards and be part of a field test and self--study. So we did the equivalent of the NCATE [National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education] visit after only two years. K.B.: How did that go? A.E.: We received great accolades. It’s actually interesting, because our current dean is asking if we can bring him the artifacts we collected and reports and all that because there seems to be a need to relook at it now. It goes to show being a historian, like yourself, could be a good thing because when you have institutional knowledge, sometimes it helps. K.B.: It certainly does, so we don’t reinvent. A.E.: One thing I was charged with, from the state level, was to be part of a team that was focused on, initially, they called it diversity. I amended it so that we called it “diversity and equity.” Again, how I say that you always bring you with you. It was interesting because somehow I was picked to be on that standard. It was really where my heart and soul were. We looked at ways that the interns would be getting equitable experiences, as well as students, really looking at equity. That’s something that I carry in my work today, where even if you are partnering a rather rich school with a not--so--rich that you make sure that in a partnership, you look to level the playing field and provide “what is needed is what is fair.” It’s not always “what is the same is what is fair.” I think that’s been a big part of me and how we’ve learned and grown. The self--study allowed me to do a tremendous amount of networking around the state and learn that I’m really part of something at Towson that is of value and needs to be replicated. K.B.: And that you probably have kindred souls at other parts of the state. A.E.: Right. The MSDE [Maryland State Department of Education] folks that are in charge are actually still in charge. They have reconnected with me, so some of the things I’m doing now have brought me back with some of my early adopter people. K.B.: What else do we need to talk about? What things haven’t we reached or covered that you especially want people to hear? To know about? A.E.: I wanted to make sure that I spoke to the fact that what I’ve learned most about being a professional development school coordinator and university supervisor is that it’s messy work, but it’s really valuable work because it’s problem based. People that really value problem solving and challenge can benefit. That the interns see that it is a truly “lived” experienced. They are not just showing up when school starts. They are part of all kinds of things. One thing that I’m doing now, I’m in my third year, purposely transferring from supervising in Howard County for ten years to now being in Baltimore City. I see such a difference in terms of, sometimes physical plant or amount of resources and parent involvement, but, not always. I don’t want to generalize. There are definitely differences. But I see that the students, the children are so much the same. It has really reignited my passion for Teacher Ed to be in this urban environment and to carry that equity stance again. The interns that I have now are really collaborative. They saw that in our one site, south of Federal Hill, that there had been money given, foundation money given for a new Weinberg library. A new multi--million dollar library opened up and the governor, the lieutenant governor, CEO and the professors were all there to do this great fanfare in September. At the same time, our new school, Armistead Gardens, had no working library. The interns were asked to clean it just so they could have some meetings in there. The librarian had been fired the year before for malfeasance and for books just walking. As their social studies methods professor, I challenged them to conduct a pay--it--forward project, just like the movie. I gave them fifty dollars of my own money and said, “Could you do something with this? And I’ll support you.” We ended up, in early November, having a grand revealing and grand opening of the Armistead Gardens library. The interns, their parents, their friends, the art department at Towson, we completely remade the library. Four thousand books were donated. We’re working now on getting parents and retired people in the community to learn how to do the circulation part so that it can be functional that way. We remade a stage. We have murals. We didn’t tell the principal. We wouldn’t let him in. He came to the reveal with his young son who is part of the school and to say that there were tears would be an understatement. Our dean came. I feel really proud because we started something and we are making a difference. All of the interns feel very much like the city is where they want to teach. For me, I think, it was steering that and just seeing again that is the best vocation ever. It really is a vocation. I think you have to want to want to be a teacher to be a good teacher. It’s not about what the world values in terms of money or standing sometimes. It’s a remarkable and vibrant career. I think you are always creatively challenged. I would want other people who are going into it to know that what I’ve learned is you do best if you are humbly confident. It’s not an oxymoron. You are humble, but you are confident because you can make a difference. K.B.: Thank you. A.E.: Thank you.