Interview with Marilyn Nicholas

Marilyn Nicholas earned her bachelor's degree in education and psychology from Regis College in 1959. Doctor Nicholas taught in public education for eight years. She came to Towson State College in 1967 and has served as a

faculty member and administrator for over 40 years. These are her reflections. Doctor Nicholas, thank you for sharing your thoughts about your teacher preparation and your subsequent career in education.

We are hoping that your story will add to our understanding of the evolution of teacher education at Towson University. To start with, we would love for you to share with us your early social context, where you grew up, what you thought about

career choices, and when you first considered becoming a teacher. OK. Thank you for including me in this project. I'm really excited to be part of it and look forward to sharing

my teaching career with you and anyone else who's going to look at it. Well, I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts and I was an only child. My father was a pharmacist, my mother was an administrative

assistant, but I don't think they called them that, to the bank president. So, and I grew up at 35 Capital Street. I used to go to my grandparents' home and my grandfather would

take me to preschool or, I don't know if they called it preschool in those days, but I would go to the Pomeroy house and have an activity and then my uncle would come- My grandfather would come and pick me up and take me back to

Murphy Court where I would stay until my mom was finished working and she would come and take me home. So they spoke Italian. I never, I understood... I heard the language, but I

never spoke Italian to them. But I remember playing an Italian card game with my grandfather called Scopa. And I used to try to cheat so I'd win.

But when it was time to go to school, right down the street from 35 Capital Street was a French school. And so I went to the French school from kindergarten to eighth grade and then I transferred to Our Lady's School.

And what was interesting about the French school was that I was taught French in the morning and English in the afternoon one year and then it was reversed the next year. So I learned all my subjects in French and then learned them all

again in English in the afternoon. And I really remember in kindergarten I was a left hand writer and I remember the nun tying my hand behind my back because that I wasn't supposed to write left-handed.

I was supposed to write right-handed. So that's what they did. So now... In kindergarten. So now I write with my right hand, but I eat with my left

hand. And the other night friends of mine took me bowling and I was very conscious of bowling with my left hand. So it's kind of interesting how that occured.

And then we we moved from Capital Street to 635 Center St. where I lived through high school and college. And I remember distinctly saying to my mother, I wanted to go to Regis College because it was a Catholic college and the nuns

had ingrained in you that, you know, you really should have Catholic education. And my mother said, well, what do you want to do? And I said, well, I'll probably think about being a teacher.

And she said, well, I think we should go to Framingham State. And why did she... Because that was a teacher... Much like Towson University.

It was like Framingham Normal's teacher prep, and that's what they excelled in. And it was premier institution in the Boston area. So we went and had my, I don't know how, I had an

interview with the president. And he asked what did I want to do? And I said, I thought I wanted to be a teacher. And he said that, you know, we talked about the program.

And he said, well, do you want to come to Framingham? And I said, no, I really want to go to Regis College. And my mother kicked me under the table. I remember that.

And he said to my mother, then if she really wants to go to Regis, that's where you should send her. So I went to Regis College and I believe tuition and room and board was $500.

Yeah, it's not that now. I'm sure. And so my major there was psychology with an education minor. And you couldn't major in education?

No, they did not have... It was a liberal arts college. And my biggest trauma was we had to pass two years of gym. And we had two days of comps in psychology,

And if you didn't pass your comps, you didn't graduate. And when you were a senior and if you were in good academic standing, you got to wear your academic robe for major events.

Well, going to mass and going to... Beginning of the school year, they always had a big event, and any other kind of event, seniors were allowed to wear their academic robe to distinguish them for the rest of

the undergraduates. And one of the neat things too, at Regis, we had freshman junior sisters, freshman junior sisters and senior sisters.

And now that I've been out of Regis for such a long time, I'm on the alumni board and my senior sister is on the board of trustees. So we get to see each other at certain occasions.

Yeah. And have you stayed in touch over time? Not really. At certain occasions like reunions, because she'd be there

in the same reunion year. And that was just very interesting. At the end of your undergraduate work, how did you feel about becoming a teacher?

Well, that was very interesting, our preparation for teaching at Regis. I don't know how I was assigned to a Catholic school in West Roxbury and I'm trying to think.

No, West Roxbury was very high end, very upper middle class. But I remember teaching in first grade and there were fifty children in the room, all in rows. And when the supervising teacher came in from

Regis, she sat at the desk in front and watched me teach. And we student taught one day a week. So of course there was no long range planning, no idea of developing a unit.

I mean, it was this is what you will teach on Thursdays next week. So the continuity was missing for me and also classroom management.

I had no clue about how to do classroom management when I began teaching because in a Catholic school you really didn't have many problems with the children. They all sat in rows.

They all behaved because the nun was there in a black robe, so they certainly weren't acting out. And I remembered, one activity I remember doing. She wanted me to do a fruit bowl at Thanksgiving, but the nun

showed me how to fold the paper and how to do it so that every fruit bowl would look alike. There was no having creativity for children or saying, OK, if we're having a fruit bowl, how would you... Let's talk about what

a fruit bowl is. What do you know about a fruit bowl? What would you put in it? And no stimulation. It was just, OK, we're going to put the oranges, the apples, the

grapes, and this is how it's going to look like. So creativity was not part of my early training. Interesting. Yeah, it's very interesting.

So when you graduated, did you immediately go into a teaching position? I did. We had very dear friends of the family.

Bill De Stefano, he lived in Towson, Maryland, and was a principal. He was a principal at the time and his brother Richard lived here and he was a coach and taught at Delaney.

And the interesting thing, he was also a member of the Colts marching band. He played the glockenspiel. So I my early introduction to Colt football was because of

Bill DeStefano. So I remember applying probably my second semester of my senior year and I flew to Baltimore and I was interviewed and I was hired on the spot.

This was Baltimore County? This was Baltimore County and I was hired on the spot. So I went home. I can remember, I had a red cashmere coat.

That I remember, I don't know. Don't remember much about the interview? The interview was, why do you want to teach? What grade would you like to teach?

And so and I didn't really want to teach in Bill DeStefano's school because I knew him, but that's where they placed me. And so I graduated and I drove down with a car and I boarded with a young woman who worked at the same

school, but we lived on Lake Ave. So I rented a room from them and I taught there for two years. But the drive to go from Lake Avenue to Sussex Elementary School in Essex was almost two hours

daily. So I think we would leave the house at six o'clock just to get there because there was no Beltway. And that was just a very interesting experience because I

had no clue about the children, the environment, being brought up in a middle class family that was... The socioeconomic area was entirely different from what I had ever observed. And just being in Baltimore was so different.

And so I think my first assignment... And we taught first grade, they did not have kindergarten at that time. So for the first month, first graders only came to school I believe a half a day.

I may be wrong and maybe it was a couple of weeks. I may be wrong at that. But I know it was a significant part of time that they only came a half a day to get used to the full day of school.

But they put me as a beginning teacher on, to get an idea of the environment, they put me on the bus and I had to take the children who were bus students home.

Well, at the end of that period, we got back to the school and there was a child on the bus and I didn't know.... I was in tears because I had no clue where he belonged.

Oh my heaven. So we finally figured it out. He just didn't want to get off the bus. He just wanted to take a ride for the day.

So we did that. That was one experience. I can remember my first observation as a beginning teacher, but one of the things that I... Since I was clueless as as to how to plan and how to use the handbooks and

how to use curriculum guides, I was very smart in going across the hall to an older teacher who happened to have been a former nun, sat down with her and said, what do we do tomorrow?

And I did that every day for the two years I had Sussex Elementary School because I needed to understand the content. I needed to understand how to teach, how to do classroom

management, what was going on. So that was part of my... And what happened next? You said two years. So my first observation, they sat in the back of the room and

they told me that I needed to improve my handwriting. Well, I think I was blown away at that point because there was more that I needed to improve. It was just not my handwriting on the blackboard.

It was really how to do learning strategies. I hadn't really no clue. I was just teaching rote, I mean, and so I think it was my mentoring, my going across the hall while Gloria Evangelisti was across the

hall from me and at one point when I was in the case office, when I arrived at Towson, I hired her to teach here. So she was a mentor.

She was a mentor. She was a mentor to me also. No, but I'd go across the hall and watch her teach because she was very creative and she had had two more years experience.

She had more experience than I did. So I taught with all of those individuals. Even Nancy Grasmick was teaching at that time around there. So I was part of all that early Baltimore County trend, but I

never stayed there. I decided I missed Boston too much, so then I went back home and then returned. So did you teach up there as well?

I did. Did you teach in a Catholic school again? No. I had two wonderful experiences.

I taught at Dedham, Massachusetts at the Green Lodge School. And that Superintendent had just completed his degree from Boston University and it was in team learning. And the Green Lodge School was a brand new school that time.

And I was teaching first grade. And we would have lots of visitors and you'd hear on the PA system, We are having visitors this afternoon,

team learning will be in operation. You were forewarned. We were forewarned. But teaching first grade, we were not part of that.

It was fourth, fifth, and sixth. But we sort of did little things. That was a very interesting experience at the Green Lodge School.

I never could find the film strips. I never could find some of the construction paper. The principal decided she was going to hoard all that and I guess pass it on to the next principal so she could get a big

award. But when I left the Green Lodge School, I transferred to Lexington, Massachusetts and I was in the first team teaching school with Harvard.

Harvard, Lexington had a partnership. So that was the first early beginnings of team teaching and they built a school. This was a very old two floor school, but this is where they

developed the team teaching and the reason being if it could happen in a senior building, then let's develop a new building that can accommodate what we're talking about, having teachers team together.

So I taught there for three years and if you remember Joan and David Shoes... OK, well, Joan was a school psychologist in the town of Lexington.

And one of the neat things that happened in our team teaching school was every Wednesday afternoon we had planning time and we would meet with school psychologists, counselors, on how to handle various students, disruptive students, helping us

cope with understanding the teaching process. But we had team meetings on those days. So it was really... Yeah, it was a wonderful,

that I think was the highlight of my career. And it also provided you the opportunity to go in and look at senior teachers who were teaching so you could gain those strategies.

So I taught the high- level reading and the low math for one year and then I, they reversed it, you know, so that you didn't always get to teach the same thing. But we had 200 children, seven teachers, and we were always...

Team leader, assistant team leader, and we were all responsible for meeting together, planning the curriculum and assessing the students. So I taught there and that was very... I was married and taught

there. I was married and taught there for two years. And when I was leaving to move back to Baltimore, I remember being very sad and I would not, I did not want to meet the person who was taking my place.

That was very hard for me to leave Lexington because it was such a wonderful experience. And yeah, it was great experience. So, you know, in my career, having that partnership with

Harvard, we also were given wonderful professional development from Harvard and to the town of Lexington. So it was just great. So I mean, when they talk about partnerships, we were doing it

early on. There you go. Yeah. So what goes around comes around as always, right?

Different kinds of partnerships. And I did get my master's degree from Boston University and we had student teachers and the town of Lexington would give you a voucher.

And so you could, you would get, if you had a student teacher... They collected all the vouchers, and if you would take courses at Boston University or Harvard, you would get a voucher and that would allow you to have a free

course. So they, you know, just because the student teacher was assigned to one school didn't mean those teachers would get it.

It was anyone in the town of Lexington if they had enough vouchers for BU or for Harvard or whatever. So that was kind of, that was an interesting concept also. And a good partnership. Very good partnership.

So you moved back to Baltimore? I moved back to Baltimore and I remember going, I remember saying, oh. I can get a job.

I'm not... Since we're going to Baltimore, I can get a job there, that won't be any problem. So I called Baltimore County and I was interviewed and I was

rehired and I taught at Hampton Elementary School. And I taught first grade there. And that's where I met Mary Taylor. Mary Taylor may have had student teachers there.

And she walked into my room and I had a speech-to-print phonics box, which was developed by Donald Durrell from Boston University, whom I'd studied under. And so she said to me, what are you doing here?

You should be at Towson College. Was it Towson College? When I.. It was called, at that time, wasn't Towson University. Towson State College.

So I said OK, and I had met George Diffenderfer. He lived across the street from Bill DeStefano. And I remember meeting George Diffenderfer. He taught in the geography department here at one time.

And I, in the back of my mind, thought at one point, you know, I really would like to teach at Towson. That would be a goal. I'd like to teach at college or university.

Now I had no clue how it was going to get there, but I guess putting it out there somehow Mary came into my classroom and she was being transferred to the project that Billy Hauserman, Mary Taylor, Jack Epstein, Manny Velder

worked in Baltimore City in conjunction with Morgan. It was a partnership and I hope I can think of the name of the project, but it was a special project that we had developing urban teachers.

And when would that have been? Was that in... Had to be early '60s. I was going to say. Early '60s, 64, 65, 66, 67, you know, because I'm trying to think... I'm just thinking that developing

urban teachers, that was a fairly progressive idea in the '60s Right. And it was... Billy Hauserman was in charge of it. Project Mission.

That's what it was, Project Mission. And Mary, of course, was assigned to that for the literacy component. Manny Velder was a teacher in Baltimore City, but then became a partner, you know, it was a partnership there.

So then he eventually transferred to Towson. So I was interviewed and I became a visiting guest lecturer, visiting professor or something like that. And that's how I began.

I remember going over... We had big cohorts and we had groups of students like elementary, I believe, still does. I remember going over to Eileen Cone's home, sitting outside and

I was very nervous about teaching language arts, reading, social studies, as a core curriculum, to the students. She just looked at me and said, oh, you're going to be wonderful.

Don't worry about it. And I'm thinking, I don't know anything about this. What about the books? What about the text?

How do you do a core syllabus? And she was already there in that... She was already here teaching. And so I sort of hooked onto her as my mentor.

Anyway, it worked out and I'm still here. Yes. Marilyn, you've been here in a variety of capacities. You have been a professor in elementary education.

You are now a professor in instructional leadership and professional development. In between those two, you have been director of the Center for Applied Skills and Education, which in essence is the office

that deals with student teaching and school placements and that. You have worked with... Which at its time was a new program, the Master of Arts in Teaching program, which is initial cert, but at the graduate level.

What am I forgetting here? Lots of things. Could you just tell us a little bit about some of those positions and how that sort of has influenced your thinking on

how we best educate prepared teachers? I was thinking back on my own experience. I knew it was trial by fire and I knew I had direct experience in the problems of being successful as a teacher.

I think for me, what helped in the long run was the psychology major. That foundation geared me into understanding human growth and development in children and them being able to apply the content.

It was the content that I was missing, the teaching strategies, how do you best involve students, those kinds of things I was weak in so that my counterparts, coming from a

traditional education major, were much more successful in the application. But I think I had a better view of the process and could see the whole picture rather than just the little pieces that went in

to make the whole picture. So I struggled with that a long time. So when I arrived at Towson, I knew that I wanted to learn the strategy.

So I probably was learning along with the students at the same time, which is probably an interesting fact that I wanted to be creative and I wanted to induce creativity and include art, music and PE into the program, even though those

were... PE was never my strength. So taking all of those strategies and listening to that, I began to develop my own way of teaching. And it wasn't a lecture style method, but it was more, OK,

we're going to talk about cooperative learning. I was actually going to model it and demonstrate it and then have them model it. So I became more of a facilitator and that has

been my teaching style all through my career. It's not the lecture mode, it's more application. How do we do it? Let's see how we can do it.

How can we improve it? And I was a great proponent of micro teaching. I think having teachers teach each other and reflect on what they're doing and model it and rethink it through was

a great success for me. And I think one of the highlights for me, when Evelyn Di Tosto and all our good friends were at the State Department, it was Evelyn Joyce Murphy.

They noticed when they would come to review our programs that faculty had little professional development except when attending conferences. And they brought in Madeleine Hunter.

And I can remember going to a number of retreats with Madeleine Hunter and actually doing that same teaching style. We were taught, and then we did micro teaching among ourselves.

And that to me was just the basis of how I grew as a professional and how I could talk about teaching strategies. What would be a good way if you have this kind of a student? What do we need to do to help move that?

So it's always individualizing the instruction and and just being with a variety of professionals that were on my level. We were all the same because we were all students and we were

all learning and it was a wonderful experience. And I think faculty today don't have that. I think we're missing that key of professional development and training.

They're really concerned about research and how to be successful in their own careers. Not that they're not good teachers in the classroom, but I think the link is missing that we had once

before. So that's my career in... I think I was bored. After a while, we developed the student... We had those groups,

I've forgotten what we used to call them, but maybe it'll come back to me. Then we developed the teaching centers and I remember Maud Broyles and all the early faculty, they wanted to go to

Howard County, but of course they didn't want to drive the Beltway. So I was a young professional. I was probably the youngest in the department.

OK, let's send Marilyn there. We'll send Marilyn to Howard County and she can open up the first student teaching center, and we did, at Faulkner Ridge Elementary School.

And what was the thinking behind having a student teaching center? We really took that from University of Maryland. University of Maryland had started to develop that.

And the student teaching center was where we would take a group of students and we would integrate language arts, reading, social studies and teach the curriculum in the school and invite teachers in to talk about language arts,

reading, and social studies, really integrating theory and practice. And we would have them in the school for the whole student teaching experience.

So it'd be fourteen. In fact, you were at Faulkner Ridge Elementary School, so you went through. So you know, we were in an open space school, brand new.

And I was talking about this last night. How the first two years of Faulkner Ridge Elementary School, those teachers thought they were in heaven. And then when interface housing opened and we had other students

from the urban areas come into Howard County, those teachers were shocked and had no idea of how to cope with it. And so that was a learning experience not only for my students, but also for the teachers.

And it was a great experience being in an open space school, and we paired that with... Open space, and then we had the traditional school down the street.

So you spent seven weeks in an open space and seven weeks in a traditional and you learned the language arts, reading, and social studies. And you know, for me, that was the forerunner of the

professional development school. It certainly sounds like it had many of those components. And then some of my faculty... And I used to integrate the language arts, reading, and social studies in my student teaching centers.

But then some people wanted to front load it and just do student teaching, you know, so they would front load the language arts, reading, and social studies and, you know, whatever changed the model to suit their needs.

But we were out in the schools almost five days a week except for Mondays. So that was, you know, working with fourteen student teachers. I don't think faculty who teach in the liberal arts

component understand what it's like to be out in the field and to work conjunctively with just fourteen. It's sometimes a little more difficult, especially when you have one student that really

needs mentoring the whole fourteen weeks and what happens if they're not going to be successful? And we did micro teaching, we videotaped, they looked at their own teaching and experiences.

So we did lots of wonderful things in those early days. Let's see, where did I move to next? I did... I did that for a long time.

One of the things that I did want you to talk about was you oversaw the master's in the arts, Master of Arts in Teaching program. And that was a new concept, which was the idea of taking people who had a bachelor's degree in some content area and

then did the master's degree to cover all the initial certification requirements to become a teacher in Maryland. Tell us a little bit about that, and your thinking on that program. That was developed as an

urban program, almost like Project Mission. So when I was the assistant director and then became the director of the MAT program, that was only housed in Baltimore City.

Interesting. And I truly believe that that's where it probably... My commitment was that we needed to develop urban teachers. And we were very straightforward about that, that

if you wanted to come into the MAT program, you had to do your teaching and placements in Baltimore City. That didn't mean you had to teach there at the end, but it was an opportunity for us to develop a cadre of teachers that

would would want to be urban teachers and would strengthen that base. Because heretofor Baltimore City had a lot of transient teachers.

Teachers would go, if they couldn't get a job, they'd go to Baltimore City, stay two years and then, you know, at the third year transfer to the other counties because the feeling was, well, if you could teach in Baltimore City, you could teach

anywhere. But I kind of wanted, I felt we should develop a strong base there. And then other people decided that, oh, this was such a good

program, we could take it other places and expand it and make it larger. And we lost the focus of the MAT. But one of the neat things I think we did, we would bring all

the potential candidates in and interview them on one day because we only took in twenty, they called them the twenty. So it was a very select group. It wasn't anyone who came off the street that said they wanted

to be a teacher. It was a select group of individuals. And we brought back the faculty, but there were other MAT students and we would sit down and we would pick out the

twenty. And we really relied heavily on the former MAT students because having been through the program, they understood the rigor, because they, the first, you know, they

would come in in the summer and do nine hours and it would be very rigorous. So they understood the rigor that if you had a family and you had other commitments, maybe this wasn't the program for you.

So then that that portion was disbanded, the interview process, the urban process was disbanded and it's now an MAT program to train teachers to be professionals very similar to others across the nation.

Then I guess I went to, before that I went to the case office. I followed Jim Binko and Chandler and Jim Lawler. They all left.

And I for a long time was the only person in the case office. We did all the placements and when I was in the case office, I always tried to have that connection with Baltimore City and I always wanted to make sure that we had teachers in

Baltimore City, because certification requires you to do that. So I would always make sure that I had good schools in Baltimore City and maintained a nice relationship with Baltimore City.

And Harford County, we would explored Harford County. So we had Howard County, Baltimore County, Harford County, Baltimore City, Carroll County.

I remember taking our best alt worker to Carroll County so she could be a coordinator out there. So the reach of the partnerships was growing. Yes, for the student teaching centers.

Yes, that was very much part of it. And then, remember, we were mandated to have special ed and we had to do the field placements for special ed. That's much tougher. Yeah, because they had to find three,

you know, go out three days a week. And I mean, that was a nightmare to get all those partnerships in and to make all those placements for all programs. You know, K-12 programs, early childhood, elementary,

secondary. I mean, the case office did a lot of work. I wasn't saddled with a lot of the testing as the case office may now have because we didn't have to...

There was no praxis. No, there was... The praxis was there, but we didn't have to worry about gathering data.

I mean, at that point for accrediting... Which of course now is fundamental. Right. They're gathering data all the time for the impact of how are our teachers impacting the students. But that impact wasn't there.

We used to do a lot of teacher training, bring the teachers in. And I remember when the state developed the Maryland competency observation instrument that at one point, you remember, we were trained, they gathered a group of us to be

trained. They were going to send out group of us to observe initial... Teachers who were beginning teachers, because they were not, they were going to delay certification, delay that.

And we were going out to observe them that first year and if they needed to have additional support that was given to them. But then they found out what the cost would be to do that. And so they offered this instrument, the Maryland

competency observation instrument, to the colleges and universities to use as an observation tool for student teachers, teachers, and university supervisors so that the three of us could sit down and use this one instrument.

So I developed a training process for our university supervisors as well as the supervising teachers and brought them together to do that kind of training to impact the observation skill of the supervising teacher and

develop that partnership so that they would think of themselves more as a teacher educator. Right. So that was another part of that process. Part of the team. Because teachers think of themselves as a teacher of

children, but they don't have that larger picture, I'm a teacher educator, and I'm training, and I think with the student teaching centers, that was something that we tried to bring them in to teach.

OK, why don't you do a demonstration on a particular skill for reading, language arts, or social studies or science or what you're doing and then debrief with those teachers. So there was some of that that went on, but to try to give

that background to the teachers so that they would think of themselves as a teacher educator. That was fun. Did that, then went to the MAT, and then after the MAT program,

the Dean asked me if I would do Teachers for Tomorrow. Tell us a little bit about that program. That was not an initial cert program. No, no. Teachers for Tomorrow was, again, a partnership, and

it was University of Maryland, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Coppin and Towson. My role, I'm trying to think, who was the team at that? Was that Dennis Hinkle? Dennis Hinkle.

Dennis gave me... That was my job. I was responsible for the Teachers for Tomorrow. So I was part of the team that developed the curriculum,

gathered the students, but it was for Baltimore City. We recruited certified teachers and they were given a master's degree if they committed to teaching five years and they did

not pay a penny. Now Dennis really wanted them the second or third year to have some stake in it and wanted to charge them $100, which I think, you know, we should have because that might have kept it going.

But it eventually all came to Towson because I was the only one committed to keeping it moving. And we had probably eleven cohorts, and those... And how many students would you have in a cohort, twelve?

It depended if we could... How I did it, I would always tell the the teachers, OK, you have to replace yourself. So they would... And they were the best ones to find someone who would really be committed to staying in Baltimore City,

because the goal was to develop administrators and to stop that ebb and flow from teacher transitioning, staying two years, leaving, coming in, leaving. It was to attract good teachers who would be willing to stay, to

become administrators, to really turn Baltimore City around. And I can tell you that I'm still in contact with several of them. Corey Basmajian right now graduated from Teachers for

Tomorrow with an ed leadership degree, and he's now at Boston University in the new leaders program, and then will come back to Baltimore City and be a principal.

I have several principals, several team leaders. Dawn Shirey was in the first cohort, and she was at Montebello. Then she became a team leader, and then she became an AP.

Then she became a principal at Commodore John's Elementary School in Baltimore City. And now she's on the administrative team in Baltimore City, where she goes around to schools that are failing to

help get them back on track. And she's also taught in the ILPD department, curriculum supervision, because I brought her on as a teacher from Baltimore City who would be able to talk about programming and

curriculum and she had so much experience for future administrators. So that program served its need, and, I think, is stronger than Teach

for America because, for the most part, Teach for America, they come in for two years and then they leave. And I did have a couple of Teach for America students in the cohorts and they said, yeah, we didn't learn anything.

We learned, but we didn't have the support. So they would come back for their traditional MED. Interesting. Yeah. So at one point I had, and, you know, I'd have teachers for

tomorrow in the reading program, a large number in the reading program, early childhood, elementary, not too many in secondary. And then when ed leadership took on, then it was so hard to have

five programs. I would just concentrate with reading and ed leadership because my feeling is if you already have a degree with elementary and early childhood, you need to widen your range and

understand the entire spectrum of the school, especially if you want to be an administrator. I mean, you know, get into the reading, develop your reading skills or math or whatever.

So, one last thing in terms of your professional development and career that I would love for you to talk about a little bit is you have been very much at the forefront on converting things and developing programs that are delivered online.

And just love to hear some thoughts about what you've been up to and what kind of role you think online courses should play in in-service or pre-service teacher prep. Well, I became interested in online.

Many people don't know this, but I've worked with the Distance Education Training Council and it's not an accrediting agency, but it does offer a stamp to programs. So I became interested in online through two avenues.

I was a review person for the American Council on Education with the MIVER project. I went to military installations and we reviewed academic programs that were taught on base so to make sure that the

universities were using the same content and doing and not... Serving the military well. So from MIVER and DETC I had the opportunity to meet people that were doing online work and then seeing what online

was like and getting involved in distance education. So I was one of the first faculty that developed this human growth that I... It was, I'm trying to think of my course that I taught online first, the distance ed course.

It was like the human relations course, but we changed the name of it to leadership and group dynamics. And so we, ATE, had a classroom downstairs in the Cook library for distance education.

Baltimore County had one, Harford County had one. So I first started out developing my course syllabus to teach in Baltimore City. So I'd developed it so that I had a group of students

in Baltimore City, Harford County and Towson. I had three sites and I would teach based, you know, from one site with the three groups and what I tried to do was have them work cross site so that they would be doing

cooperative learning and meeting each group and doing that kind of partnership. So that that kind of distance education was how I became involved in doing totally online.

So when ed leadership department was approached to putting their master's degree online, I was, like, gung-ho. I was like, Oh yeah, let's do it, this will be great. By this time I'd retired and was still teaching, but I thought... I

was getting bored, you know, I was just getting bored with teaching the courses and going and doing the same thing face to face, trying to make it a little more energized with cooperative learning, bringing in teaching strategies and still trying to

model. But thinking through what did you have to do to develop an online program? How you have to think through conceptually of having

everything work out. Because once it goes up online, you can't say, oh, I think I'll do this tomorrow. I mean, it's there.

So my course went up first and there were, you know, there was some technical difficulties with the blackboard or with whatever program platform we were using. But then as we became more mature and we worked with CIOT

and developed this whole program, I love it. I find that the quality of work that students do on discussion boards, and relate to the students, it's much higher than face to face that I've ever achieved, that I've ever

received. And I think it's because, you know, I think it's because if you've been teaching all day and come to campus and spend three hours here, you're tired and your brain is certainly

fatigued. And you know, as a faculty person, you have to do a number of things to get people stimulated and work on... Toe the mark and do everything.

I think when you're online, you can go home. And if you're a night person, you can log on 10:00, whatever time you want to and complete your work. So it's all based on you as an individual.

Online isn't for everyone. There are students who forget that they're taking an online course, you know, and very much like they would do face to face, you know, you still have that kind of student that would, oh,

I'm an online student, OK, I have to check in and make sure I've got all the work. There are those students that are very dedicated and will complete the work and do it well and they'll tell you, oh, you

better go check this because it's not working right. I just had, I'm teaching online right now, the internship, and I just had a note. By the way, did you know that for case #5 you can't get in?

There's an error thing that comes up, so you have to fix that. And I send it to Blackboard and say, hey, what do I do now? That's an interesting... You're doing an internship online?

Uh huh. The ed leadership has integrated the internship program throughout all its courses so that from course one, students have certain activities that they must complete for the internship.

And we also have a mentor. I'm also a mentor for the first cohort I'm teaching now and they'll be graduating in August.

So I've seen them through all their courses. They're getting their MS degree and I've mentored them to make sure that they've put in their logs, that they've done their program, throughout every

coursework that they've had. So it's an integrated program for the internship. And then they do case studies and then they complete a stretch project and they graduate at the end.

But they take two courses a semester. For the admin one, it's a year, six credits, so that in a year they can get their admin one if they want, just the 18. And then for the full master's, it's almost two years and they

take two courses each semester. I'm now the online coordinator and with that I'm working with Renee and we've organized that so the students go through as a cohort.

But let's say Damian decides he's withdrawing but doesn't tell anyone. You have to go back, you know, you have to make sure if they drop out, they pick up

the courses that they need. So it's that advising piece that Renee and I are trying to provide and make sure that students are in the right place and taking the right courses so they will achieve.

And if they drop out, I try to send them a note saying, OK, where are you? So this is, is this the handbook prop? No, that's the online coordinating, making sure

that the students... But now I'm developing an online handbook and a module because I've found that in my course, if students aren't, if this is their first online course, they don't know how to use our

platform Blackboard. They don't know how. So we've developed a little module that they will go through, write an autobiography, and then they'll post it to the

Learn Online collection. They'll read an article, answer some questions and post it on discussion board so that they'll do... Right. They're using all the tools of Blackboard prior to coming into

my course, which means I've had to revamp my course and they'll understand what to do and how to save their projects in their learn online collection for their portfolio at the end of the development, which they'll do in the internship.

So this is a protocol for the university, and I'm working with La Tonya Dyer, and she and I, when we first began to work with CIOT, it was interesting because she was purely involved in technology, could understand the process of technology, but

couldn't understand where I was coming from with the education background and how I wanted, I didn't want my course to be just read, discuss, read, discuss, read, discuss and then answer the questions.

I wanted to integrate cooperative learning, all the different strategies. And so we finally got it. Finally.

I'm happy now that I have my students working in groups and of course with wikis and blogs, there's more interaction and it's much more involved and intricate. And you know, I find I know my students through online.

I think people feel, well, I just know their name. But if you develop that autobiography and you you keep reading the words, you develop a sense of picture and you can do a webinar, you can do a Webex conference, you can talk to

them. I feel I know my students as well as if I was teaching face- to-face, because there certainly were face-to-face students that were blurs to me.

You know, you always know the ones who's talking, you know, the ones who sit there and look at you and yawn. But there's a group in the middle, that they're there, but you have to involve them.

And so, you know, it's the same way online. You always know the ones that are asking you the questions all the time and wanting support. You know, I can tell you three or four names that are the ones that are

in my face, face-to-face. They're the same way online. So I just think it's a way of the future. I hate to tell you but I just reviewed two courses that

are totally online from a state and have NCATE approval. So I think we need to get with the 21st, 22nd century, and use these kinds of opportunities because it meets the needs of

students. It's not for everyone, but I think more and more if you look at young people today, what are they... They're on their iPhone all the time.

I was at a baseball game and this young lady in front of me did not look at the baseball game. She was so busy texting and I'm thinking, and her date paid $50 for this ticket.

I think I'd be a little upset that she was there texting the whole time so that, you know, they're always on that phone. So how are we going to engage first graders and how are we going to have... That, I think, is a challenge because how are

teachers, are teacher educators going to deliver their instructions so we are engaging students in that, in this field of technology?

That is to me the critical point that we're at, that juncture. Can we keep up with the technology? I don't know. We'll see.

One last question, and that's what advice you might give to someone who is considering a career as a teacher? Go for it. That, to me, I have been blessed.

I was fortunate to have wonderful experiences as a beginning teacher. Yeah, I may have struggled, but I loved my job. I loved my career.

I loved going to work every day. I don't know what it would be like to get up in the morning and to know that you have to go someplace that you weren't happy.

I had... I was blessed in that I was fortunate to have supervisors who recognized that I could not be hemmed in. I was not a good, I was a good follower

because I did my doctorate, but I was not someone that would always do the same thing every way. And I was always allowed to be creative and I was always allowed to think outside the box and I was always challenged.

So I was fortunate in that way that I had that opportunity to do what was important and and what would fulfill a need. But I never had to work, like, doing the same thing all the time.

I don't know what it would be like to work in a factory where you had to pick out the bottle and do the same thing day in and day out. I was lucky enough to be in a career that I was challenged to

be creative. And so, you know, I think teaching is a wonderful profession. There's so much out there.

Unfortunately, teachers today have to be accountable. And in many ways we were accountable. We were accountable to make sure our children grew. I think the testing accountability has gone way

overboard, but I think that's something we should have been more vocal about. And I think we need leaders who are going to support us.

Educators need to be vocal and educators need to be the ones that are in charge. So, but I would tell anyone, be a teacher, it's a great career, great life.

Is there anything that we've forgotten to ask or anything that you would like to add? Didn't ask you that question. My life at Towson has been wonderful.

I mean, I've retired and flunked it and come back and I'm still here. Seems to be an epidemic in the College of Ed with that retired and somehow wind up being back here. Yeah, well, there's that connection, and I'm fortunate enough

now that I have two wonderful lives. I live in Boston, I fly into Baltimore, I stay here for a few days and then I leave again and come back. So it's wonderful.

I mean, I have the best of both worlds. And Towson has served me well. And I love seeing how it's grown and we've met the challenges, I think, head on.

I think we're being more creative. So good luck. And thank you for asking me to share my life. Thank you for doing it.

It's a pleasure.