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Greetings, We welcome you again to another interview in the Oral History Project sponsored by TURFA, the Towson University Retired Faculty Association. Today's interview is with Karen Robertson, who is from the Department of Elementary

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Education. And we welcome you to the interview and thank you for doing this, Karen. Thank you very much. We're going to begin all the way beginning.

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Where were you born? I was born in little town in Ohio. It's called Shelby, Ohio, a population of currently about seven or eight thousand people.

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Small town. When I was growing up, probably 15,000 people there. It's lost its businesses and storefronts and all of that stuff over the years. So population is dwindling, kind of, my sister calls it a dying town.

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I grew up in a similar town in Indiana. OK. Yeah. You know. The same thing is happening because I know what that's like.

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And you grew up there, too? Yeah. I lived there until I went to college. And what college is that?

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I went to Bowling Green State University in Ohio. I was there for two years. I thought that maybe getting married was better than finishing my education. So that's what I did.

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But after I was married for a year, I continued at Bowling Green, but in a regional campus in Sandusky, Ohio. Yu might know that's where Cedar Point is located. And so after finishing... If you finished enough courses that

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the state determined that you would need to be a teacher, you could teach, you didn't have to have a four-year degree. And so I had gone to school for three years. I had the right teaching methods courses and sociology courses and history of

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education. So I got what's called a cadet certificate, and that allowed you to teach for five years in an elementary school. And in that time, you were supposed to finish your last

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year of undergrad. They gave you five years. I didn't do that either. So at the end of, well, after teaching for two years in a small

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town on Lake Erie called Vermilion, Ohio, it's kind of a boating community. And I was still married at the time, So my husband was transferred to California. And in California, they'd never heard of a cadet certificate.

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And so my teaching career ended before I got, you know, as soon as I got to California. And after a few years in California, the marriage fell apart. I came back to Ohio, went to a branch of Ohio State University

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in Mansfield, Ohio to finish my undergraduate degree. So I've taken a winding road to get to that undergrad degree. How many years does that take to get your undergraduate? About eight, nine.

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So yeah. But you have more than an undergraduate degree. So what happened after you got your undergraduate degree? I've got the undergraduate degree.

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Then I taught elementary school in another town in Ohio. It's a really small town. All of these are small towns around Shelby. This one was called Willard, Ohio, and I taught first grade there for

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another couple of years. And at the same time I worked on a master's degree. So I would teach school all day long, drive the 70 miles to the Ohio State campus, take two courses, I think twice a week

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we did that. So you would take four courses a semester until I finished that master's degree. And while I was there doing that, I had an instructor who encouraged me to

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go on. And he said, at one point, what are you going to do now that you have your master's degree? And I said, well, I think I'm going to go back and teach

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first grade again. And he said, why would you do that? And I said, well, why wouldn't I do that? He said, well, if you want to go on and work on your

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PhD I can get you an assistantship at the University of Iowa. So I had to really think about that because I had two kids. I was on my own. I didn't know how I was going to live on a graduate assistantship with two

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children and me, but I did it anyway. So I went to University of Iowa. The first year I was there, I taught in an early childhood center.

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They had started this program for children, I think they had to be walking and toilet trained in order to start, until age five. And I had a room of two-year-olds that I managed with graduate assistants. So it was very eye-opening.

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And then I stayed there at the University of Iowa and worked on my PhD. I was there for four years doing that, at which time I had not finished my degree, my PhD, and I no longer had an assistantship.

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So I left without a PhD degree, without a doctorate degree, taught at a small College in Omaha, Nebraska called Saint Mary's College, and at that time I worked on finishing my PhD while I taught courses there. So when I finally got the PhD, hallelujah, I think it had taken me fifteen years to

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finish that degree, but I did it, yeah. Did you ever teach elementary education again? No. So I'd only had, like, four years of elementary teaching in the classroom.

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So you started out by thinking you wanted to be an elementary education teacher and wound up in higher education. Why higher education? Well, when I was at all these universities,

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I had had experiences teaching courses and supervising interns or student teachers at the time. And I kind of liked that. I think I was sort of good at it.

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And so I thought, well, what, why... Well, why don't I do that instead of teaching first grade? So, and I was kind of encouraged to... When you

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finished a PhD program, it was sort of like, you don't want to go back to a classroom. You could choose to be a principal, elementary level principal. I had all the right courses for that.

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Or you could go to higher ed and teach, you know, teach your process of how you taught to students there. So that was a choice I made. Did you go from the University of Iowa...

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Did you come to Towson directly from... Oh, no, of course not. So what's the path? Oh my God. OK, so I already told you I was at Ohio State

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as a graduate assistant, and then I went to the University of Iowa as a graduate assistant. Then I went to the College of Saint Mary in Omaha, Nebraska. So that was a faculty teaching position that they hired me without a doctoral

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degree. Then I went to the University of South Carolina once I got the PhD, and I taught there for ten years. So I was a faculty member teaching both early childhood and elementary classes.

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And then I became the chair of the department. And when the dean of the College of Ed moved on, he moved up to be an interim Provost. I moved up to be the dean, acting dean.

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And so that lasted for two years and then after that it was like, well, am I going to go back to being a faculty member or do I kind of like this administration stuff? So thought I wanted to try my hand at administration.

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I went west to the college in Denver, Colorado called Metropolitan State College of Denver. I went as the chair of the elementary, early child and special ed department. So I was there for four years.

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Then I decided, well, I didn't decide. I moved back. That's when I came to Towson. So as my mother would say, I just needed a house on wheels so I

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could move all over the country. And I pretty much did. What attracted you to come to Towson? There are a number of things. Personally, my two grown children were here on the East

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Coast. I had a son who was going to Harvard and a daughter who lived in Boston at the time. And my parents lived in Ohio.

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Still in Shelby, Ohio, same house. And then as they aged, you know, they had some issues and they were, like, in the hospital and they just needed, I don't know, I just felt like I needed to be closer to them.

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So that was one motivation for moving. And I looked at several colleges just east of the Mississippi so I would be not so far away. And then I had attended a conference in Chicago, a national conference,

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and I went to a presentation and it was done by two faculty members from Towson. I believe they were in the early childhood department and they'd done such a good job and sold the college so well. I mean, you know, they were talking about the processes

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that they used and I thought that seems like a pretty good place to go. So let me investigate that a little bit. So when Towson had an opening I applied for it. And you came here what year? 1999.

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I came in January of 1999. Was the school called Towson State University at that time? It was, but it was in the transition from state to just Towson University.

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So I remember all the letterhead that we had in the office and all that stuff. Had to throw it all away because it had the wrong name on it. Yeah. So when you first got here in that first semester from January 'till May,

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what's your impression of Towson when you first got here? When I first got here, just the physical aspects of Towson, it's like, it's right in the middle of a neighborhood.

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You know, you can walk across the street and you're at somebody's house. And I had never been at an institution like that before. Usually they're set off, you know, with lots of land around it or in Denver,

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it was right downtown in Denver. So I was like, that was interesting to me. I noticed how few students lived on campus. That was kind of surprising.

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It's like, is everybody a commuter? I did notice that there weren't as many minority students or faculty as I thought there would be living in this particular part of Maryland. Those are some of the impressions.

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Yeah. Who is the president of the university when you came? Hoke Smith. What do you remember about him? Oh, he's a grandfatherly kind of guy.

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He was so nice, very soft-spoken, very scholarly. And I, I mean, I didn't have much interaction with him, so I just kind of knew him from a distance. He did come to one leadership meeting that we had the leadership group that Ted

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Zaleski organized and, you know, ran and he was there one night. And I mean, we just, like, just talking, you know, and I was so new that a lot of the stuff he was talking about, I think kind of passed over my head.

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But he was only here, I think, a year or two before he, well, I guess he retired. I don't know. I mean, he'd been here a long time.

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So, and then they hired Mark Perkins. Mark Perkins, who was here less than a year. So it was a little bit of a revolving door in the president's office. Right. Right.

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I knew we had crossed paths somewhere before. It was that leadership institute, was that Ted Zaleski. We were there together. Oh, were...

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Oh, my golly. So I knew that. I knew we'd... Oh, yeah.

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Oh, I didn't know that. OK. I didn't know that part of... OK.

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So you were in elementary education department the whole time you were here, I assume? Yes. I came here to be the chair of the elementary ed department.

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That was my position. Were you chair the entire time you were here? No, of course not. I never do things in a straight line.

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I was the chair for two years and then I stepped down, I guess, or stepped out to become a faculty member because we were developing programs in the College of Ed, especially in elementary ed, that were called professional development schools.

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It was a new concept nationwide, really. But it's a program where you concentrate student teachers that were now called interns because we're doing something new. They're interns and you concentrate them in one or two schools.

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So you might have eighteen or so interns, but you try to place them together with teachers who have agreed to take them and work with the university to let those students practice what they'd learned here at the university in those particular classrooms.

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And then the teachers, the teachers were called mentor teachers and they also worked with university faculty who were supervising and teaching the interns in their buildings to either present professional development to the interns or learn from the college faculty

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what the students were learning. So the intention was that the interns would become more ingrained in the life of the school. They wouldn't just be dropped into a school after the school had started and,

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you know, and just start their internship and then they would only be there with maybe one or two other students from Towson. They didn't have a group, a camaraderie group. And so the interns would, our model evolved to be that the interns

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would spend an entire year, two semesters, in one particular school. So they would learn from their mentor teacher. They would start when the teacher started, not when the university started.

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So they would learn how to set up a classroom, how to get ready for all the students who were coming, to see how first day of class went with the students. They would participate in the professional development,

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the teacher meetings, just become a part of the school, as much as they could be. Did you go out then and have to supervise these interns in these different schools? Yes.

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So faculty members, some, not all faculty members, but some faculty members were assigned to what we called the PDS and you would spend your time there. You wouldn't really be on campus.

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You would teach your classes if you could in the school, if they had a room for you. Your interns would just report to the school, not to the university. So for, we called it level 3 and level 4, but it was their methods courses, had already been taken.

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So they were learning just how to be a teacher. So it was pretty successful, but it's very, very, very time consuming for a faculty member. Sounds like it. But what courses did you teach

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when you were here? I taught mostly reading courses, reading methods courses. So how as an intern will you teach your children to read? And then a curriculum course that I taught when we were in the PDS and then

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in the final semester they were doing what everybody knows as student teaching. We called it internship. And so that was, you know, the students were in the classroom full- time and so that was supervision.

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Then you had a seminar with them once a week to kind of debrief hopefully what they were learning, what questions they had. Interesting about teaching a reading course. And tell me a little bit more about that course. I'm curious.

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The focus of the reading courses changed when I was here as the chair of the department. I was here, I was the chair for two years. I stepped out and did this faculty thing for maybe five years,

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I guess it was, and then I came back to be the chair. So I've been chair twice, but the state of Maryland under Nancy Grasmick mandated that elementary, and early childhoo,d especially, and special ed programs, would teach twelve credit hours of reading to the interns

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in their professional experiences. And the state of Maryland mandated what goals and objectives would be contained in each of those courses. And so you had to, as faculty members, design a course. She said,

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Nancy said twelve credit hours, It could be four three-credit courses or three four-credit courses or twelve one-credit courses. You know, however you put together those twelve hours and you developed your syllabus and you had to present them to the state to approve them.

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So it was the state-approved reading sequence of courses that we had to teach. I did teach a couple of graduate courses, I taught one in the MAT, the Master of Arts in Teaching program, which is a graduate program. That was a reading methods course. And I taught a curriculum course in the MED, Master of

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Education, program. Since you had the supervise teachers, student teachers, how were... How are teaching loads calculating? So when you were in the PDS and it was a two-semester sequence of courses and

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you were with the same interns both semesters in the same schools. So in the first part of that, the first semester in the PDS, you would teach two methods courses and you would get credit for supervising the interns when they were part-time in their schools.

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They were there, like, half a day a week, or half a day three days a week. And then you got credit for organizing the PDS, which involved all the placements of the interns working with the mentor teachers. It just involved a lot of work.

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So that was considered a nine-credit-hour load. The following semester, the interns were in the school full time and you were there full time supervising. You had to observe them teach lesson once a week, sit down with them,

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give them written feedback, you know, and then meet with them for the seminar. So that was considered a 15-credit-hour load. So between the two semesters you had an equivalent of 24 credit-hour load. Over the two semesters, right.

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Yeah. Did you develop any courses after you came here? We developed several of them, mostly around the PDS. And then those four mandated reading courses.

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That took a lot of time and a lot of work with the faculty because they didn't want to be told what to do, of course, you know, So that was a hard pill to swallow for a lot of them. We developed a course in how the interns can work with diverse students.

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So, you know, most students in education are white female students. They're not placed in schools like that, although they came from schools that are mostly like that, white and middle class, but they're placed in situations,

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especially as new teachers, in schools with a lot more diversity in the classroom. So how do you work with students who learn differently, who look different than you do, who might not always embrace education

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the way you did as a student? So we developed that kind of course and several graduate programs that we developed in the MAT Program. Well, another undergraduate program when I was

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the associate dean was in middle school education. So they had just had secondary education as the only program for students in middle and high school and certification is grades seven through twelve. So we developed a special middle school program for those students.

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Of course, of the time you were here, and... Let me get the dates right. You came in 1999, retired in... July in 2019. And then I had a special contract for one more semester after that.

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So between 1999 and 2019, did you see any big changes in faculty responsibilities in the department and college? Well, during that time they changed the general education courses to the core curriculum.

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And I think faculty were given credit for advising, the loads that they were advising students. And then our college, it used to be one of the programs with the most graduates, especially elementary, it used to be.

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And we, I mean, we had several hundred students and we didn't have all the faculty to just, you know, advise them. So if a faculty would advise fifty students or more, they got a course release for that.

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One time, not both semesters, but one semester. So that was a change. The emphasis on publications, research and publications, faculty and education programs are really good at doing presentations at

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national conferences, but not so much about writing about those or writing about their strategies that they use or that kind of stuff. So there was a big push, especially with one of the deans, Dean Lorion, to up the scholarly activity of faculty.

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What about changes in the student composition? Did that change from the time you came 'til the time you retired? I noticed over the years that more students were working full-time and trying to go to school full-time.

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And that does create a clash because especially when they're in the elementary schools and, you know, we started with them in placements in schools in their first semester in the professional program. So they would be out in the school for a day a week and then two days a week and

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then three days a week and then full time. And if you're working and trying to do that, that didn't always mesh with their schedules. So that was a sort of a gradual increase.

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But, you know, it was like, when I went to college, you weren't working. You just went to classes. But that was quite different.

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Yeah, very different. And you said you were chair twice. I heard you just say you were associate dean too. Yeah.

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For the last seven years. Let me check my notes. Yeah. That's associate dean from June of 2012 to July of 2019.

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Oh, so that came after you were chair for the second time. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

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And after you retired, did you teach any more after that? No, I retired kind of late, later than, you know, I was well past 65 when I retired. So I was like, I was done.

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And so what did you do after you retired? Any other careers or... No, no careers. I did a lot of volunteer work, which was something I didn't ever have time to do when I was, you know, here at Towson and all the various roles.

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So with the... Started out with the program where... It's called a baby cuddler, that you would go to the... Well, I went to the University of Maryland downtown and they had a program there for the babies who were in the NICU program that you would come and just work with...

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You... Your role was to cuddle those babies. You know, because the nurses don't have time to do all that and somebody needs to hold those babies

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so they have human contact, talk to them, read them stories, sing to them. Oh, poor babies. And, I mean, that was a good program. I liked that one a lot.

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But as soon as COVID hit, we were not allowed to go anymore. And then I'm still working with a volunteer group called Backpacks for Baltimore City. So it's a program that secures non- perishable foods that they then put in

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plastic bags that go into a backpack. Students take that home, that food home, over the weekend so they have something when they're not in school for their family and for them to eat. So.

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And what do you do in that program? I just pack the bags. OK, good. Yeah.

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I mean, that's about all... If you're not administering the program, that's the only other thing that... You can deliver the bags to various schools. But this particular organization works mostly with Baltimore City schools.

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I think there are other programs that work with Baltimore County schools. Let's go back and talk a little more about Towson and about the... In education... Did the pedagogy in education change over the years for you?

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Pedagogy change, yes. Like I said, when I first came here, the students, they didn't have to take those four or twelve credits, twelve credits of reading.

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We only had six credits of reading and that allowed them to take other, you know, other methods courses. So they had to take a lot of how to teach courses, how to teach science, how to teach math, how to teach reading,

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how to teach language arts, those kinds of things. And so there used to be a teaching language arts, which is connected but separate from reading course. And we did away with that to fit in the twelve credits of reading.

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We had to condense some of our other courses, you know, that way, to fit the requirements from the State Department. And then the students in all education programs are tested a lot in order to get into the professional program, which starts for them when they're

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juniors usually, the last four semesters that they're here. They have to take a screening test that the state mandates. It's a national test.

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It was called the Praxis One. It tested the students in basic skills in reading, writing and math to see if they were... I guess the idea is are you competent in those three areas to then go on and

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become a teacher? So, and they would get a cutoff score in each of those three areas that the state would set. And so when they take the test, they had to show test results to get

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into and start some of our education courses. And the state changed that over the course of time. The students now only take the reading and the writing section and they don't take the math section anymore.

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Students in early childhood, elementary, and the special ed programs or the dual certs in those areas have to take a reading competency course. And so once they're finished with... There's twelve credits of reading, they take, once again, a nationally designed reading test that

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comes from ETS, Educational Testing Service, and they have to pass that in order to get certified. So a lot of the changes in the pedagogy over the years comes from the mandates from Maryland State Department of Education.

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And then the College of Education has always been nationally accredited by accrediting agencies that are specially designed just to accredit schools and colleges of education. And some of those requirements mandate that you do specific things with the

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interns. So many credit hours in public schools, so many connections with parents when you're in the school, you know, just a whole host of requirements. So yeah, the pedagogy kind of changes frequently.

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Did all the rapid advancements in technology change, in any way, the way you were training teachers to teach elementary schools? The college itself doesn't... Towson had a requirement for a technology course.

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And then I think education... I don't think, I know. Education mandated a second course, you know, how to use technology in schools. So yeah, that changed. And, of course, the way faculty teach students has

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changed in their classrooms. The classrooms now all have the smart boards like they have in public classrooms, and, yeah. And the students were, I assume all

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your majors were interested in going and setting a career in elementary education somewhere. Somewhere. We think the majority of them did. You don't know if they went on and got certified from the state or did they go

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on to a graduate program? Sometimes if they went straight through, they're quite young when they finish, they decided they would get married and have a family.

00:32:35.920 - 00:32:49.160

And then ten years later they come back and attempt to get certified in the state and teach. If we were able to spot a student that said, I don't think the student is right for elementary education and... Yes.

00:32:49.280 - 00:33:05.340

And what'd you do? You counsel them out if you can. So that became a little bit of an issue over the length of time I was here. So students, like I said, we would put them in classrooms

00:33:05.340 - 00:33:18.730

incrementally, you know, one day a week, two days a week, three days a week. Then when they get to student teaching, they're eventually planning and doing everything. They write all the lesson plans, they teach all the lessons, they grade

00:33:18.730 - 00:33:37.090

all the projects and papers, they attend all the meetings, all of that. So we found thattudents can be successful, like, one and two, even three days a week, because the pressure isn't the same. But when they were responsible for everything in the classroom,

00:33:37.090 - 00:33:49.760

they weren't always successful. And then what to do with them because they're at their end of the program. They'd already accumulated over 120 credit hours.

00:33:51.480 - 00:34:10.880

And so to try to counsel them into another major, which is what we did. But you can imagine that the parents were not happy with that because their student had gone to school for four years and has nothing to show for it and all the money that they spend and all the time.

00:34:11.560 - 00:34:29.360

So we worked with Bob Giordani in the registrar's office to develop an education program that did not lead to certification. So those students would do everything except the student teaching, the internship.

00:34:31.360 - 00:34:48.960

And so they could graduate with a degree in elementary or early childhood, but their transcript would indicate, there'd be a statement on the transcript that says not eligible for state certification. So that was our solution to that problem.

00:34:50.240 - 00:35:03.460

Are there any humorous or unusual stories that you can tell me about the times you've been, you were here at Towson? Well, I think I told you I started in the

00:35:03.460 - 00:35:20.980

middle of a year in January and that,I found out, became a little tricky for people around the campus. But I came on January third thinking that was my start date. And when I went to the College of Education to find out where my office was,

00:35:20.980 - 00:35:34.280

there was no office for me. They hadn't designed an office yet or appointed an office. I think they were thinking that I would come after the mini-mester was over and I didn't even know there was a mini-mester.

00:35:34.280 - 00:35:52.400

So it was like, oh, I'm here early. And that was kind of a funny feeling. The other thing is that I never knew that there was a group of chairs that met. I never got the technology training that they would do for new faculty members.

00:35:52.400 - 00:36:04.960

It was just like, at one point they lost all of my paperwork for salary and you know, that kind of stuff. So it's like, it was a little bit of a comedy of errors, really. [inaudible] ...the beginning.

00:36:04.960 - 00:36:14.480

I should be given an office eventually. I did, yes. Yeah, it's the old... It was the old office in Hawkins Hall that used to be the broadcast studio there,

00:36:14.480 - 00:36:25.520

and so I was in the office. I had a big window into a smaller office, and that's where my administrative assistant was, so I could watch her all day long, see what she was doing.

00:36:26.560 - 00:36:39.440

It was an interesting arrangement. Then finally moved to the psychology building when they moved out. I'm guessing that you think there's something special about Towson University, am I right?

00:36:40.560 - 00:36:51.840

I found it... Yeah, you're right. There is something very unique about it. I think it's very accessible. That's what I found.

00:36:51.840 - 00:37:10.160

It's something that everybody in the area knows about, the history of the institution, you know, since, long-standing institution, and in our field it had a great reputation especially for elementary and early childhood teachers, to start with,

00:37:10.160 - 00:37:30.880

at least. The principals would say if they have the choice of a student that graduated from a couple of other institutions or Towson, they would certainly choose the Towson student because the reputation of the students being well-prepared was definitely well known by principals.

00:37:30.880 - 00:37:48.200

Many of them had probably attended here anyway and knew the program. And I think its small faculty- student ratio, that they don't use graduate assistants to teach the classes. And I think that's a real positive thing.

00:37:49.560 - 00:38:02.960

I think it makes Towson special. Yeah. Towson as a university will continue to grow, which, it has grown significantly since I've been here. I think there were like 13,000

00:38:02.960 - 00:38:24.460

students when I came and now there's what, twenty-some-thousand? So that was one really outstanding thing you noticed about the university. Out in the public, there is not such a high prestige put on having a college degree as there used to

00:38:24.460 - 00:38:38.040

be. Yes. But I think it will continue to expand like you were talking before about all the locations just around Towson itself where there's some representative of

00:38:38.040 - 00:38:56.560

Towson University or some program off- campus, actually. I don't know about growing faculty. I mean, you know, if programs expand, yes, but I don't know that... I'm not sure about that part.

00:38:57.400 - 00:39:21.330

Something that I thought of actually on my way here to address, but the College of Education has an interesting reputation on the campus itself and not always a real positive reputation. And I know at some point in some of the associate dean's meetings,

00:39:21.330 - 00:39:38.520

there were some jokes, I guess I'll say, about how students in the College of Education all get A's. And so how hard could the program really be? And it was like when you try to explain that there's a different philosophy from

00:39:38.520 - 00:39:57.950

most people in education, that if your students aren't being successful in your class, you try to work with them to help them understand what it is they're not understanding. Give them another opportunity to show you that they now have learned what you

00:39:57.950 - 00:40:12.540

thought they needed to learn. And so in doing that kind of a philosophy, you might have a student that failed a test. Well, you don't want to just let them keep

00:40:12.540 - 00:40:28.220

going on having failed that test because they're going to go out into the field and work with real human beings and, you know, with kids. And they've got to know what it is they have to teach. So you maybe give them another chance, another form of the test or a way to go

00:40:28.220 - 00:40:41.890

back and answer those questions again once you read something that you've assigned to them. And so then you give them a higher grade. And they do all earn pretty high grades because of the philosophy of how you work

00:40:41.890 - 00:40:57.320

with them. Also, our students are screened excessively just to get into the program and to get out of the program. And so we might be working with students who are a little bit higher achieving or

00:40:57.320 - 00:41:08.960

harder working. I'm not going to say smarter because that's not the case at all, but they're screened out early if they're not, if they're going to really just be unsuccessful.

00:41:09.040 - 00:41:22.400

So I just think it's kind of important. I kind of wish there was a little better reputation for education in general on the campus maybe and around the country that those students are working harder than you think.

00:41:22.600 - 00:41:46.120

What's happening at the state level right now is that they only are talking about the science of reading, which translates to mean the teachers have to teach reading through phonics. And that is not the philosophy of the reading teachers here at Towson.

00:41:47.120 - 00:42:04.440

Although because of the mandated reading courses, they're going to have to incorporate a lot more phonics than they're happy with. But it's sort of like we've been here before. No Child Left Behind was the very same thing.

00:42:05.560 - 00:42:18.750

And the State Department of Education is saying that, you know, all students have to learn to read by third grade, which is a noble goal, but it can't happen. You can't control what students come to

00:42:18.750 - 00:42:32.310

you with. You know, if they come from a home where there are no books, when they're really young children, nobody read to them, when, you know, they're just not exposed to literacy and

00:42:32.310 - 00:42:44.680

people talking to them and sharing experiences with them. That's a whole different situation than somebody comes from a home just the opposite of that. And so some students learn differently.

00:42:44.680 - 00:43:04.480

I think we try to impose one program on all students thinking they all are the same and they don't. So there needs to be a lot more focus on how you determine how a student learns.

00:43:05.000 - 00:43:19.170

Some students learn visually, some auditorily. Some have to have a kinesthetic experience with whatever it is that they're experiencing. And we need to think that in the early grades especially,

00:43:19.170 - 00:43:31.340

the classrooms need to be so much smaller. So a teacher can really individualize instruction to those students who really need that. You know, students with a rich background before

00:43:31.340 - 00:43:42.360

they even come to school are going to learn probably in spite of whatever program is used with them. But some students without that, they need different help. They need different help.

00:43:42.760 - 00:43:58.560

And with the short attention span, once again, I don't know know how you all remember learning to read, but I remember learning to read in a really large group of students where everybody was doing the same thing.

00:43:58.640 - 00:44:11.600

And yeah, and you were at a table and you went round-robin and you read and you, you know, whatever. I don't think we can keep doing that kind of stuff because it's... Research would show it doesn't work.

00:44:11.880 - 00:44:22.480

So good question. We're going to have to put everything on a smartphone so that they'll pick it up and learn it that way. I don't know for sure.

00:44:26.360 - 00:44:35.160

Thank you very much, Karen, for participating in this interview, it was very good and we wish you much happiness in the future. Thank you very much for having me.