- Title
- Interview with Todd Kenreich
-
-
- Identifier
- teohpKenreich
-
-
- Subjects
- ["Fulbright scholarships","High school teaching","Teaching","Education -- Study and teaching","Universities and colleges -- Faculty","Teachers"]
-
- Description
- Todd Kenreich graduated from Georgetown University in 1993 with a bachelor's degree in Government. Dr. Kenreich taught in the Montgomery County Public Schools and at several institutions of higher education before accepting a position at Towson University in 2001 as a member of the department of Secondary Education. These are his reflections.
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-
- Date Created
- 10 April 2013
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-
- Format
- ["mp3","mp4","pdf"]
-
- Language
- ["English"]
-
- Collection Name
- ["Towson University Teacher Education Oral History Project"]
-
Interview with Todd Kenreich
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Todd Kenreich graduated from Georgetown University in 1993 with a bachelor's degree in government. Dr. Kenreich taught in the Montgomery County Public Schools and at several institutions of higher education before
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accepting a position at Towson University in 2001 as a member of the Department of Secondary Education. These are his reflections. Dr. Kenreich, thank you so much for joining us and sharing
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your history of your own teacher preparation and your subsequent career and education. I think this will add mightily to our understanding of teacher education across time, especially at Towson University.
00:00:56.120 - 00:01:05.240
Thank you. You're welcome. And I think a good place to begin is in the beginning. And if you would share with us a little bit about your early
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social context, where you grew up, as you got older, entering high school, what you were thinking about in terms of post- secondary, going to college, maybe even a career thought here or there.
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Absolutely. Well, I'll reach back here for a moment to the 1970s in Ohio. I grew up in Westerville, which is a suburb of the state
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capital, Columbus. And I come from a family of teachers. And so on my mother's side, I have my grandfather, who was a teacher back in the 1930s in a small town in central Ohio.
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My mother then also was a teacher of music education. On my father's side, my grandfather was an agricultural educator before he became a farmer, again in the 1930s and early 40s.
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That's in northern Ohio. And then my dad was also a teacher. He was a teacher in the school district that I attended on the north side of Columbus.
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And so in a very real sense, teaching has been in the family blood and the family expectations for a long time. I would say my dad's the oldest of seven. And I think of those seven, we have, nearly four of the seven
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have been in classroom teaching at a variety of levels. And then on my mother's side, we've got a professor here and there. So there's a lot of attention to schooling and education.
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And I think for me as a child, that was what I considered to be a normal family life, was that things were often a little bit quiet in the summertime that my dad wasn't teaching. My mother was a classroom teacher when I was a child for
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music education, but then once I was born, stayed home and then was a private piano teacher at home. So there was almost sort of a constant stream of students coming in and out of the house learning music.
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And I think for me, part of my experience since a young child was hanging around the high school where my dad taught. And so he was a choral music director and was very much involved in spring musicals and involved in kind of the larger
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life of the school. And I can remember hanging around in the school auditorium as a wee little kid, kind of running up and down the steps in almost the dark part of the auditorium as up on stage, the
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bright lights were showing his students singing songs and, you know, preparing for an upcoming performance. And that for me was always a very comfortable space being in high school, even not as a high school student.
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And so because he was a high school teacher at the high school that I attended, I, I think, always had sort of an expectation that teaching would make sense and be a really good fit for me.
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There was always that kind of encouragement from grandparents and from aunts and uncles that teaching is a good field, it's a noble profession. And that it would be one worthy of me.
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And so that was always encouraging to to have that. At the same time, not a lot of my family had left Ohio. And so in thinking kind of along the lines of kind of career interests, I had some wonderful social studies teachers as a
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middle school student and then also as a high school student. And they really planted the seed for me, especially my 7th grade teacher, Mr. Bane, he planted the seed for me of thinking about maybe studying
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politics or studying political science. And so that started probably in middle school, certainly was nurtured by teachers in high school. And then the idea of where I would kind of learn about
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politics. Certainly in Ohio, there are plenty of places where you could study it. But I really had the vision at some point of visiting
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Washington, DC, did that as a junior high student, fell in love with the city and thought all through high school, if there's any way that I can make my way to be one of the first people in my family to not go to school in Ohio and to go to
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school out east, that would be the way to go. And sure enough, I was lucky enough to have a lot of support from my parents along the way. And as I was interested in trying to learn more about
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politics and sort of political life, it seemed like Washington, DC was the right place to be. If there was anywhere I could be for four years, that's where I wanted to be.
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And so part of my thinking at that point in terms of career was not necessarily that I would be in politics as a politician, but that by being in the Washington, DC area, I would soak up part of that environment of, you know, an environment
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where everyone reads the paper and follows elections and is really interested in kind of politics. And then maybe take some of that experience and bring that back and have that shape and inform me as a social studies teacher.
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So early on, I had a sense that at some point my kind of circle might bring me back to the classroom. But I was certainly in college open to the idea that I might take some other turns before coming back to the classroom.
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And one quick example was I was an intern during the first Gulf War for our local congressperson from Ohio. And just in that context, as an intern in college, I really saw some of the behind-the-scenes and really how hard Congress
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people work, especially on the House side with the two year election cycle of going back and forth from, you know, the capitol and then back to Ohio and so forth with just the campaigning and then all the constituent services.
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Part of the work that I got to do was helping field... That was back when we used postcards to respond to constituent concerns, and I would help type out postcards to constituents that had had concerns about issues.
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And to me, it was really a big eye opener. But at the same time, it increasingly let me know that maybe that wasn't the next step for me. And then I thought something else that would be interesting
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related to be coming back to the classroom would be what's the federal angle on education? And so I did do an internship for then the transition... It was the Bush the first and then the transition to the Clinton
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team. This was then my senior year in college, two days a week for the Department of Education. So I can remember a wonderful experience there in their office
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of then policy and planning, getting a little bit of an angle on kind of the federal perspective on education. And one of the things that struck me was that most of the folks that I worked with there had never been classroom
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teachers. And I guess I didn't need to be so surprised by that, except to think that perhaps some improvement for federal education policy could be had through folks that have had
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lived classroom experience. And so part of my take away from that maybe a, you know, part of a year that I was an intern there while I was in school was thinking, ah, perhaps I'll go back and be a classroom teacher
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and then at some point kind of interface with the policy community again. And so that's part of the trajectory in terms of my thinking about, you know, going into the classroom.
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After I finished up at Georgetown, that's where I did my undergraduate work in political science. I went right into, I think I took three weeks off. I graduated in May, and by mid June I was taking summer school
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classes and doing what would be basically Towson's MAT program at Ohio State. We called it an MED, but it was an initial certification program.
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So I built on that foundation that I had in political science and in particular my area was political philosophy. So I was able to draw on that in terms of my preparation at Ohio
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State to become a teacher. And boy, that was a whirlwind year. It was, you know, they're on quarters. So it was sort of a summer, fall, winter, and then by spring
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I was already student teaching and then summer finishing up some additional courses. But I just had a lovely experience at Ohio State. Part of their angle and focus for their program is looking at
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what they call social studies in global education. And they have very deliberately tried to include more of an international perspective in their program. Some of that has been through study abroad opportunities for,
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you know, new teachers. But also, I'd say all of the professors that were a part of the team that I worked with, were very much committed to the idea that at its best, social studies teachers need to embrace
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some type of a global perspective in the work that they do. That even if you are a US history teacher, you need to be looking at ways in which the United States is absolutely
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intertwined and interdependent with other nations around the world. And so that sort of seed has really stuck with me in terms of some of the other work that I would later do.
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If we can just step back a minute to your work at Georgetown University, it sounds to me like you were involved in internships. I'm just thinking of the model.
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Sure. So when you were working in your representative's office, was that in any way connected to getting your degree? You know what, that was an unpaid internship and that wasn't
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linked to a class. And I have to say, even senior year, that internship was one that I sought out and worked with our Career Center and was able to make a good connection and to do it.
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But once again, I don't know whether I might have been a little bit on that earlier end of the curve where schools weren't as often giving credit for those service experiences or internships.
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So that was all just sort of extra time that I spent. And it was, oh, time well spent. I was really glad to have done it. Absolutely, and that just, I was thinking, you know, this is like
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doing internships in teaching that you're in there, you're getting hands on, you get an idea of what actually transpires in political offices and such. But you did it yourself and maybe in the process of doing it
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understood the importance of being in the world of whatever, whether it's politics or education. And I should add for a moment for sure, in my time, brief time as an intern at the Department of Education, it occurred to me
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pretty quickly that I was probably not cut out to work in an office because even in those two short days a week, I realized how antsy I was to sit at a desk with a computer. And not that that's not a great way to make a living, but I knew
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that just from my dad's experience and other family members that have been teachers, that much of your day as a teacher is on your feet and moving around and talking to people.
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And that really, that hadn't appealed to me down the road. And so that kind of helped me remind myself that maybe the typical nine-to-five office job wasn't gonna serve me well, at least at the beginning of my career.
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Todd, you're clicking that pen. I'm sorry. That's OK. It just is gonna distract from you.
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Sure. I would love to go back now to the work you were doing. Was that Ohio State? Sure.
00:11:13.560 - 00:11:27.160
And was that... That was an MED in preparation to become... Initial certification as a teacher. You got it just and you had said very much like our masters in the art of teaching, it does the same sort of thing.
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It was a full time... The program I was in was a full time program. So it was really one calendar year. You start in a summer, finished the following summer and it was,
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you know, you're moving through kind of as a cohort very, very rapidly. And I felt that they had done a great job with advising because I think that's one of the real challenges with someone
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coming to a new institution and being in really a one year program is that every decision you make about the classes you take counts and you just unless you want to hang on for an additional year, it was important to kind of have all
00:11:58.110 - 00:12:05.840
those pieces line up. And fortunately they did. And so tell us about that experience. How much was coursework?
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When did you get into schools? Sure. They, for that particular program, we did coursework in the summer, which was still kind of pedagogy.
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And then I had a few undergraduate courses that I still had to pick up in content area coursework. I had done a major in political science, had done additional coursework in history and then the state of Ohio, to be
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certified there, they wanted social studies teachers to have another kind of content, another content area. And I chose geography.
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And so I took a bunch of great geography classes there along the way. But it wasn't until the fall that I started to have field experiences in schools.
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Those were in high schools in Columbus City Schools and immediately fell in love with the students, fell in love with the teachers I was working with. Really felt like this was a good fit for me.
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And it was an opportunity to start to take a little bit of the theory that we had learned even just that summer and start to put it into practice. But in large part, those early experiences were not more than
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maybe two days a week, sort of afternoons. It wasn't quite the PDS model that maybe we have here at Towson, but at the same time they did describe it as PDS. It was early PDS at Ohio State.
00:13:10.240 - 00:13:23.400
And so by the time I did do my student teaching in the spring, I had already been out in that kind of, that host school for two days a week in the winter kind of starting into January through March and had gotten to know both the
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curriculum, the mentor teacher and the students. So that when I arrived actually after spring break, this is a tough time to sort of come into a school classroom. It was after spring break, we had student teaching and then
00:13:34.910 - 00:13:45.200
that went into June. So it was a maybe not the most enviable time to be in a school. But at the same time, you really did see kind of the real world of what it means when you have spring banquets that might
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intervene with, you know, an athletic banquet that changes the schedule for a school and what you do as a teacher to kind of work around that with your lessons. And did you, you really took on the responsibility of teaching
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fairly much by the end of your student teaching experience? Absolutely. So the student teaching experience there is one quarter, which is ten weeks.
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So very quickly by design, since we're not in more than one school, there was a very deliberate effort to try to have you transition fairly quickly into taking full responsibility of the class.
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I was so lucky. My mentor teacher was Doreen Uhas Sauer. She was a PhD. She had a PhD in Renaissance history and was a teacher at the...
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The school where I did my student teaching was called the Fort Hayes, and it's still there, the Fort Hayes Metropolitan Educational Center. And it was, a charter school is not the right word.
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It was a magnet school within Columbus City Schools. And so it drew from out the district for their arts programs. And so they were just wonderful kids to work with.
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But I was teaching the social studies side at this, you know, art centered school. And to have a mentor teacher who loved Renaissance history, one of the things I can, you know, clearly remember from student
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teaching, that was a highlight, was that they had sort of a Renaissance Festival day that they did on the campus of the school. And she very quickly made it clear that costumes were not
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optional, that she had this, you know, vast wardrobe of Renaissance history costumes. And that she was hoping that, you know, I would quickly don something and blend right in.
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And it was just great fun to see the students kind of learning about history and culture. And then, you know, for me as a student teacher, really feeling like I was a part of something bigger beyond the classroom.
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So here you are after this whirlwind one year program with ten weeks of student teaching. At the end of it, two things. How are you feeling about yourself,
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how comfortable with your choice of becoming a teacher, and how prepared you felt. Sure, I was on cloud nine. I was just having the time of my life.
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I will say sort of the backside of some of the grading, some of that was maybe a new aha for the just how busy in fact we I would be as a student teacher. I was also taking another graduate course in geography at
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the time. So I had other coursework. So it was a busy time, but I was thriving and really enjoying my time in the classroom with students and working with a
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really dynamic teacher. And so I have to say in the midst of that, there was what was called the Teach Ohio Fair that was on Ohio State's campus. And that had then, back in the 90s, five hundred some districts
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from all around the country, they were a big program. And so one of those districts was a district known as Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland. And I have to say, even having been a student at Georgetown, my
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world was so focused on just DC and I didn't have a car, didn't really make it out to the suburbs a whole lot. So I really had to take a look at a map and kind of get a little better handle on exactly where Montgomery County
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was and what it's mutation was and so forth. But that was one of eight school districts that I interviewed with on one bright sunny day in April, not unlike this one, that I had an opportunity to begin to try to sell my own kind
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of where in terms of what I could offer a school. And I have to say that it was Montgomery County who noticed that one of my other perhaps avocations during my time in college was to be a street musician.
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And so I played trumpet all through high school. And so I didn't play trumpet in college, but I played on the street from time to time, sort of along M Street, kind of at M Street in Wisconsin, in downtown Georgetown.
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And the reason I mentioned all of that is that that was on my resume, sort of tucked all the way at the bottom of the resume, because I thought I had some more substantive pieces to offer up top.
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And sure enough, the interviewer from Montgomery County, she just zeroed right in on the street musician. And she thought that seemed like there might be some skill set in being able to handle the public in that context, that
00:17:33.540 - 00:17:43.560
might translate for being a good teacher, too. So I appreciated her willingness to sort of see that and give me an opportunity to make a case for how that was part of a larger picture I could offer a school.
00:17:44.280 - 00:17:52.760
Well, and if she had known probably about your father's background, maybe you did share that, then she would have expected nothing less, right? Indeed.
00:17:52.920 - 00:18:00.760
Yep. We come from a whole family of musicians. Absolutely. So I take it then Montgomery County made you an offer.
00:18:01.160 - 00:18:09.260
They did. They did. I had interviewed with schools near Chicago, near Cleveland and a couple of other spots and was very open to kind of the
00:18:09.260 - 00:18:20.110
direction that the world would have me go. And sure enough, the first offer came from Jeanette Dixon. The assistant... I still can remember the phone call. Jeanette Dixon, she was an assistant principal at Walter
00:18:20.110 - 00:18:28.620
Johnson High School in Bethesda, where I would end up taking a position. She had called in the summer and said would I be interested in coming out for a face to face interview and that was the first
00:18:28.620 - 00:18:39.640
thing I had heard from. I was literally three weeks away from finishing all of my summer coursework for my master's program and wasn't despairing yet, but was certainly mindful that maybe a position wouldn't
00:18:39.640 - 00:18:51.000
come open sort of right in the timeline that I had hoped for. But sure enough, invited me out to a hot interview in an un-air conditioned school on a July day.
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And I got to talk with the building principal, assistant principal and the chair of the department and very quickly saw that this is a place that I could hang my hat and feel very comfortable.
00:18:59.960 - 00:19:12.320
And at the same time just felt that this was going to be a good start for a career and was open to the idea that if they made the offer, I might jump at it, but also that they probably had other good candidates and no offer might be
00:19:12.320 - 00:19:19.560
forthcoming. So kind of cooled my jets, had a really good experience, but wasn't sure what what might come next. These were of course pre cell phone days.
00:19:19.560 - 00:19:34.250
So I had to kind of make myself available at my local friend... I was staying on a, sleeping on a couch with a kind of a college friend's place and wasn't sure whether or not the phone would ring before I had to make my way back to Ohio to finish up my
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master's. And sure enough, it did. They offered the position and I took it right away and then in short order had to kind of wrap things up in Ohio, finish my
00:19:42.430 - 00:19:54.220
degree, and then move out to Montgomery County, Maryland. That must have been a very tight fit finishing that. It was, I think my last course finished, it's something finished up the end of July and then in short
00:19:54.220 - 00:20:06.000
order was headed out to look for apartments and do all of that kind of transition piece to be ready for... I still think school started somewhere around the 20 somethings in August, so it was a quick coming and going, but I
00:20:06.000 - 00:20:16.760
was doing my homework to make sure that I'd be ready and be all set. And what were you asked to teach and what grade levels? Right.
00:20:16.760 - 00:20:26.420
So Walter Johnson High School offers social studies at a variety of levels. And so I was asked to come on to teach U.S. history, which is a 9th grade course, and then also
00:20:26.420 - 00:20:37.450
government, national, state and local government, and that's a 10th grade course. So those were my initial courses that I was asked to teach and one of those, the 9th grade course, there was a special
00:20:37.450 - 00:20:48.600
section that was for at-risk only students. And so they had taken sort of, by their criteria, some of the students that were most likely perhaps to drop out of high school and had them in one particular 9th grade class for
00:20:48.600 - 00:20:59.500
history that I taught. And then they moved as a cohort to an English teacher's class. So, but early on, I was able to collaborate, sort of do a little bit of interdisciplinary planning with an English
00:20:59.500 - 00:21:07.720
teacher, Evan Bass, who's a great, great fellow, great great colleague at Walter Johnson. And together we were able to, you know, put together some field trips.
00:21:07.720 - 00:21:19.430
We were able to go down to Lincoln Theatre, take the students there, and we were able to do some of that that I think some of the other classes we weren't able to always do the logistics of field trips just because we had a somewhat
00:21:19.430 - 00:21:28.150
smaller group in a smaller section. But that had an appeal to me. Working with, you know, this is a relatively affluent community, but recognizing that even in an affluent community, you have
00:21:28.150 - 00:21:38.610
students that are struggling and students that may not be successful. And that group was interesting to me from the outset. And how long were you there and how long did you work with that
00:21:38.610 - 00:21:46.190
group of students? Right. So I was there only three years. I was a classroom teacher in the mid 90s, started in 1994 and
00:21:46.190 - 00:21:57.240
then finished in 97. And so that special program for the at-risk students, they were able to sort of do the configuration of staffing so that they were able to have it go for two years.
00:21:57.320 - 00:22:06.360
It was at one point supposed to sort of follow the whole cohort longer-term, but I stayed with the 9th grade groups and then I had a new group of 9th grade of the next year. So we had that for two years.
00:22:06.360 - 00:22:17.190
And then I did take on other courses. I took on an 11th grade modern world history course, which I still will say today. The the prospect of teaching 500 years of history of
00:22:17.190 - 00:22:28.370
the entire world in 180 instructional days has always been quite a nut to crack. But it was a great course, a lot of fun to teach. And then I had an opportunity to teach an elective course called
00:22:28.370 - 00:22:40.860
Ancient and Medieval History. And one of the reasons why I got to teach that course was that I had done a grant through the National Endowment for the Humanities in my second, this is 1996, in the summer after my
00:22:40.860 - 00:22:52.550
second year of teaching, I was one of 15 teachers to get a chance to study in Athens, Greece. For about five weeks, we were reading Plato's Republic and that was just about all we read and the commentary on Plato's
00:22:52.550 - 00:22:59.420
Republic. And then we had some lovely travel throughout parts of Greece. But I was able to use that experience to approach the chair
00:22:59.420 - 00:23:06.680
of the department and say, we haven't offered this elective for a little while. Can we dust off the ancient and medieval history course and could I teach it?
00:23:06.680 - 00:23:15.440
And we were able to find a room in the schedule for that. So it was great and a great experience in Greece, it sounds like. Absolutely, yeah, no doubt about it.
00:23:15.440 - 00:23:27.320
For me, that was sort of a touchstone or a hallmark of of amazing professional development that for me was really much content based, philosophy oriented. And it wasn't as heavy on the pedagogy piece, but more on
00:23:27.320 - 00:23:43.740
giving you a lived experience, a cross-cultural experience that you might be able to then kind of bring back to your classroom. So what happens after three years in Bethesda? I should mention here that albeit briefly here, that I was
00:23:43.740 - 00:23:59.120
hired with two women in the social studies department in 1994, and it turns out that one of the women had a roommate who is Amy, and Amy is now my wife. And so through that early connection of a friend of a
00:23:59.120 - 00:24:10.170
friend at school, I now have a very happy family. And the reason I mention all of that is that she was working for the federal government at the time. And we kind of put our heads together and said, graduate
00:24:10.170 - 00:24:22.390
school is in our futures. But when? And we both felt that way, we both felt that way. She was inclined to go back to law school. And I absolutely had on my radar at some point that I might be
00:24:22.390 - 00:24:35.300
interested in doing a doctorate in education. One spring break, I talked to one of my former Ohio State professors while I was still a classroom teacher and just floated the idea and they were super supportive, really
00:24:35.300 - 00:24:42.990
encouraging. And they said, you know, go ahead and apply to the program and we'll talk from there. And so I applied to just a handful of programs kind of up
00:24:42.990 - 00:24:55.730
and down the East Coast, and Ohio State made an amazing offer, a really great full ride package for me, and for my wife, she was able to get into Ohio State law school. So the prospect of both of us kind of leaving our, you know,
00:24:55.730 - 00:25:06.120
salaried positions and then being able together to move to a new state, in my case, back to Ohio to be in graduate school at the same time was, you know, serendipity. Absolutely.
00:25:06.160 - 00:25:16.570
And one of the things that I think was sort of a timeline for me was that I knew my wife's program was three years. So it did remind me that, and she had, I think in no uncertain terms, reminded me
00:25:16.570 - 00:25:26.640
that she would be ready to move on after three years after her law degree. So what can I do to kind of put my doctoral committee together quickly to conceptualize what that dissertation might look
00:25:26.640 - 00:25:34.160
like and try to stay on a similar timeline with her? And sure enough, we did it. But it was a busy time, but a lot of fun. Yeah.
00:25:34.880 - 00:25:49.620
Good grief. So you you moved back to Ohio and you're in this program. And what are you thinking about in terms of emphasis? Well, at this point, I went right back into the social
00:25:49.620 - 00:26:02.390
studies and global education program, what we might call a C and I or curriculum and instruction program. And I have to say, at the time, I was quite set on earning my doctorate and then returning back to the K12 school districts
00:26:02.390 - 00:26:13.930
as a curriculum developer. That was kind of my mindset of what maybe a doctorate might be able to add to my portfolio. And it wasn't maybe until maybe my second or third quarter that
00:26:13.930 - 00:26:26.870
I started to open up to the idea that college teaching could be appealing. And I guess because of that, very quickly I began to start to groom some of the work that I was doing there to think about
00:26:26.870 - 00:26:34.960
what might be appealing for taking a faculty position in higher ed. And that work in teacher education had a real appeal for me. Early on,
00:26:34.960 - 00:26:49.510
much of my work was focused on secondary social studies teachers and doing work in our PDS sites there for supervision and doing some work assisting with methods courses. Absolutely was thrilled with, you know, even the short amount
00:26:49.510 - 00:26:59.560
of time that I had been a classroom teacher, some of the wisdom of practice that I could share with brand new teachers and how exciting that was to be able to transfer and share some of that information.
00:26:59.560 - 00:27:10.170
But at the same time, it's a dynamic time whenever you're working with brand new people in a new, you know, who are new to a profession, a lot of folks are really open. They're looking for new tools, they're looking for new ways of
00:27:10.170 - 00:27:20.440
thinking about their work in the world. And that to me was a heady time, a really exciting time to be working with folks out in school sort of in now a somewhat different context than having been a day-to-day teacher.
00:27:21.520 - 00:27:28.880
Did you work with undergraduates? Did you supervise student teachers or do anything like that? I did. I worked with Ohio State.
00:27:28.880 - 00:27:37.470
At that point was one of the home schools that had moved almost entirely to have education at the graduate level. I see. So as a doctoral student, I was working with the master's
00:27:37.470 - 00:27:46.920
students who were actually in the same program that I had gone through maybe five years earlier. So this was still initial certification. Still initial certification, exactly.
00:27:46.920 - 00:27:54.980
And a lot of supervision. I mean, you know, it's a big program. So there were multiple schools all around central Ohio and definitely put a lot of miles on the car kind of
00:27:54.980 - 00:28:05.620
going back and forth from school to school, working with, you know, new teachers as they were getting ready to get ready for student teaching and then in student teaching proper. But again, much of my focus at that point was very much
00:28:05.620 - 00:28:17.720
curriculum and instruction and social studies education, which for me was a natural fit and a natural flow from having worked in social studies as a teacher in high school. And you whizzed through this in three years.
00:28:18.320 - 00:28:32.710
And so we're looking for some possible employment. That's right, keeping our eye open for possible employment. In a nutshell, I had been a part of what Ohio State had as a really small interesting program called the Future Faculty
00:28:32.710 - 00:28:41.800
Fellows or something like that. And in short, it was for folks that maybe weren't interested in a research one institution, but maybe saw themselves at a small liberal arts college.
00:28:41.800 - 00:28:52.960
And so in fact, that small liberal arts college that I interviewed at and and took a position with was called Saint Thomas Aquinas College. They are in Rockland County, just about 45 minutes north of
00:28:52.960 - 00:29:01.400
New York City, not on the city side, but on the upstate side. And it was a lovely small college. It was a Catholic college.
00:29:02.400 - 00:29:17.760
I worked with some lovely nuns and some other folks that were just really devout and committed to the work of teacher education and saw it as absolutely a calling for them in terms of their work here at the, you know, at the college.
00:29:17.760 - 00:29:26.560
And so that was a lovely place to work. I was there for just a year. I could have easily seen myself hanging my hat there professionally for for some time.
00:29:26.880 - 00:29:41.240
And I guess the other part of the equation was that my wife was fortunate enough to wrap up her law school program at the same time I was finishing up and she had taken another year of schooling, a master's degree at NYU in taxation law.
00:29:41.240 - 00:29:48.000
So she was down in New York City. I was at, you know, teaching in a small college a little bit north of the city. And it was a great setup for us.
00:29:48.000 - 00:30:00.790
But then there came a moment where my wife had an opportunity to be a clerk for a federal judge in Washington. And then that caused us to do some hard thinking about how far apart we could live from one another and whether or not it
00:30:00.790 - 00:30:11.600
was time for me to start looking for teaching positions closer to Washington, DC. And lo and behold, there was this university called, and I wasn't quite sure how to pronounce it, but I found that
00:30:11.600 - 00:30:23.760
it would be called Towson. And had had Towson on my radar from one individual by the name of Cindy Hartzler Miller, who I had bumped into at social studies conferences now and again.
00:30:24.080 - 00:30:31.880
And she had been real supportive. And at some point I had talked with her at a conference and she said we have an opening and would you be interested in applying?
00:30:31.880 - 00:30:43.960
And I said absolutely. So sure enough, things move forward very quickly. At that point we had then Dean Dennis Hinkle, who I can remember fondly having interview time with and then later some
00:30:43.960 - 00:30:53.170
great phone conversations with. And at the same time also then the chair of secondary was Jim Lawler. And he was just an amazing scholar and teacher and mentor
00:30:53.170 - 00:31:04.100
and individual who was super encouraging as I looked at Towson and tried to weigh kind of other possibilities or other options. He thought that Towson would be a good place for me and was real
00:31:04.100 - 00:31:12.000
committed to make sure that, you know, it would work out great for the department and great for me. I think it has. Good. Absolutely.
00:31:12.560 - 00:31:27.400
So now you're living in the Washington suburbs and somehow this has worked out very well. Tell me a little bit about what you've been doing at Towson. What year were you hired?
00:31:28.200 - 00:31:43.210
I came to Towson in 2001. And just as world events we can mention for a moment, I mean, literally within maybe the second week or so, I had a scheduled meeting with then Professor Doctor Neubert to talk
00:31:43.210 - 00:31:52.600
about the tenure and promotion process on a sunny Tuesday in early September. And that was September 11th. And we, everybody changed course on that day.
00:31:52.600 - 00:32:05.640
And we didn't have that meeting, but you had asked here a little bit about my early work. In 2001, I very quickly transitioned into the life of PDS, I was working at a PDS that we helped to create.
00:32:05.640 - 00:32:15.720
By the 2nd semester that I was here in the spring of 2002, we were working with Parkville High School in Pine Grove Middle School on the northeast side of Baltimore. Lovely schools to work with.
00:32:15.720 - 00:32:26.660
Really enjoyed the folks that I worked with there in terms of mentor teachers and PDS liaisons and the administration of both of those schools were fantastic. And so that was sort of my baptism by fire to jump very
00:32:26.660 - 00:32:36.890
quickly into that kind of administrative role in terms of working with PDS. But at the same time, I was teaching some of our bread and butter courses, like for secondary, we call 341 is our
00:32:36.890 - 00:32:47.180
Principals in Secondary Education. That by far is a course that I would point to and say this is where you learn the nuts and bolts of teaching when it comes to lesson planning and assessment and classroom
00:32:47.180 - 00:32:57.450
management and how this all fits in with the curriculum. And so I gladly taught that course. That was an interesting class to teach teach for me, having been in other settings where I focused more on just secondary
00:32:57.450 - 00:33:07.600
social studies teachers. All of a sudden here at Towson, those were mixed major courses where you had folks from dance and art and math and science. And that was really, for me, an exciting environment to be
00:33:07.600 - 00:33:17.760
working with folks that, you know, had somewhat different trajectories in terms of not necessarily being a history teacher, but being a classroom teacher in other fields. And so that was a great course that I taught early on.
00:33:17.920 - 00:33:27.880
Then very quickly I did start to transition into teaching secondary social studies methods courses, which was a natural fit, trying to think of other early courses that I would have taught.
00:33:27.880 - 00:33:36.700
And then certainly we would have had then Foundations of Education, kind of, that blend of history and philosophy of education. And yeah, I think I taught that actually from the outset, and
00:33:36.700 - 00:33:46.390
I've taught that almost ever since. That has always been a course to me that is, you know, it's lighter on the pedagogy side, but it's much heavier on trying to give students a little bit more of a
00:33:46.390 - 00:33:57.480
context for the work that we do in schools. Why it's so important, and maybe sort of what the historical perspective can help us understand about our work today and kind of where we've been over time with schools.
00:33:58.400 - 00:34:09.240
So that's sort of my early work, I would say, in the early part of the 2000s, I transitioned to also work in PDS in Howard County for a bit for three years there, worked with Wild Lake High School and Ellicott Mills Middle
00:34:09.240 - 00:34:23.560
School. They were both wonderful partners. And then, let's see, a sabbatical did come up here in 2008 and I had a lovely opportunity to be a US Fulbright Scholar in Japan.
00:34:23.920 - 00:34:33.040
And that really, I think, maybe started to kind of reinforce my interest in international perspectives and what we do in teacher education. And you'd been away from that for a while.
00:34:33.040 - 00:34:48.440
So this was kind of an opportune time to sort of reengage in that area. Absolutely, absolutely. This was a Fulbright scholarship and that's not easy to come by.
00:34:48.480 - 00:34:54.240
So that was competitive. It's competitive. It was a great honor. I have to say.
00:34:54.240 - 00:35:04.420
The one real credit that I'll give, I mean, if we think about sort of the whole foundation is, you know, after the namesake of J William Fulbright. I mean, his vision to think about how the world might become
00:35:04.420 - 00:35:15.600
a somewhat more civil and peaceful place through faculty exchanges, through student exchanges, I think was in my opinion a true visionary, especially after kind of the fallout of World War Two.
00:35:15.840 - 00:35:26.950
It was by very much his design that he tried to move things forward in Congress to say that our country needs to make an investment in exchange programs. And was, you know, thanks to his work, this has been sort of a
00:35:26.950 - 00:35:36.570
beacon in terms of international exchange, you know, around the world. I think today Fulbright does exchanges in, you know, nearly 150-some countries around the world and has a great track
00:35:36.570 - 00:35:43.480
record. So for me, it was a great honor, great opportunity, and I was able to bring the whole family. At the time, we just had my son, who was four.
00:35:43.600 - 00:35:54.200
He was over in a Japanese kindergarten or preschool at the time there. And my wife was able to just soak up the... She was taking language classes in Japanese.
00:35:54.240 - 00:36:05.040
I had taken short language classes before I left, but I have to say Japanese is a tough language and I didn't get too far along in those short classes. But at the same time being able to work there.
00:36:05.040 - 00:36:17.460
Then I was doing work in a teacher education program in kind of central Japan at a host school called the Kansai University for International Studies. And it was a relatively small campus, maybe about 2000
00:36:17.460 - 00:36:29.450
students and part of their program focused on English education or preparing what, you know, what they would call a foreign language instructors in English. And I was able to co-teach two courses while I was over there
00:36:29.450 - 00:36:40.320
and that was a dynamic experience, just a really great experience to work with the students there. Just the drive that they had, the passion that they had. In Japan,
00:36:40.320 - 00:36:53.840
the teacher license exam is so competitive in Japan that a number of folks that go through the education program in a Japanese university just resign themselves to saying, well, if I can't do well on the exam, I'll just have to do something,
00:36:53.840 - 00:37:01.720
I'll have to do another profession if I can't make it in teaching. And isn't that an interesting perspective that sometimes here we maybe think about things a little bit differently.
00:37:02.000 - 00:37:13.180
And as a result, there was really a sense that only the cream of the crop that would graduate and go through this particular university would in fact land a teaching position. That those positions were so highly prized and so well
00:37:13.180 - 00:37:22.160
respected, and the name in Japanese for teacher is sensei, which is derived from the idea of kind of that elder or someone who knows more than you do.
00:37:22.160 - 00:37:32.180
And so there's so much respect that goes with that, that while I was there, I was known as sensei no sensei, which is the teacher's teacher. And I have to say to just mention that in polite
00:37:32.180 - 00:37:45.640
conversation in many circles in Japan, a lot of folks would would very quickly kind of pause and say, oh, you must know something about something if you are the teacher's teacher. So it was fun to see how people, you know, really held education
00:37:45.640 - 00:37:53.360
in very high esteem in Japan. And for me, just the cross cultural experience was amazing. I had never done study abroad at at Georgetown or earlier up to that point.
00:37:53.560 - 00:38:03.280
I traveled a bit, had chances, you know, to spend a little bit of time in Greece as a teacher. But to live and work in a new setting in a new environment for an extended period of time was amazing.
00:38:03.280 - 00:38:09.320
And it was just fantastic. I learned so much about myself, about our family, and I learned a lot about America. Just living...
00:38:09.320 - 00:38:24.200
That was the time of 2008. We mailed in our absentee ballots for the 2008 presidential election, but to watch that election through the prism of the international press was fascinating.
00:38:24.200 - 00:38:36.560
It was really interesting to see the level of interest in politics that my students in Japan had. And it gave me pause to think about how little sometimes we know about the comings and goings of elections in other
00:38:36.560 - 00:38:46.510
countries, much less who's in power and what those campaigns look like. And yet the students I was working with in Japan were hungry to learn about who is this Senator McCain and who is
00:38:46.510 - 00:38:57.620
this Senator Obama and what do they stand for? And it was, it was a wonderful time for me to be almost a cultural ambassador of sort of trying to help folks in another part of the world make sense of our political scene, which is
00:38:57.620 - 00:39:10.080
not always easy to make sense of. That's true even for us Americans living here. Why did you choose Japan? Because as you said, Fulbrights go to 100, more
00:39:10.080 - 00:39:23.280
than 100 countries. So, and did you choose, right? I took a look at some of the offerings around the world and I have to say at one point I did have my eye on the Netherlands.
00:39:23.280 - 00:39:32.490
I had made a contact with someone in teacher education in the Netherlands. And I have to say, I was actually waiting for them to perhaps sort of give me a letter of invitation or something that
00:39:32.490 - 00:39:42.310
would say, oh, we'd like to collaborate with you. And that letter arrived two weeks after the deadline for the Fulbright. And so I had in the meantime, looked at some other possible
00:39:42.310 - 00:39:50.970
countries where the collaboration, you didn't necessarily have to have a letter preceding your application. You didn't have to identify a college or university that you
00:39:50.970 - 00:40:00.790
wanted to work with. Japan was one of those countries. And I have to say, as a teacher educator, I mean, especially as someone who's kind of come up through, especially in the 1970s
00:40:00.790 - 00:40:10.640
and 80s, all I heard about in the 1980s was this miracle of Japan and their educational success and then their economic success. And of course, things took a different turn in terms of the
00:40:10.640 - 00:40:19.200
economy in the 1990s and even in part up to today. But certainly as a child, I was very much impression, you know, impressionable to think about what are they doing right over there?
00:40:19.200 - 00:40:29.320
What can we learn from Japan? And I think that sort of drew me to, if I had a couple of countries to choose from, I was really interested to maybe be in a setting where this is a country that has a reputation
00:40:29.320 - 00:40:36.020
for strong education and what does that look like? What does that mean? And so that was part of my interest in making the
00:40:36.020 - 00:40:50.640
application there and was really lucky that they acted on it and I was invited to be a scholar. Absolutely. So was that for six months, a year, full year. That was for I think five months.
00:40:50.640 - 00:41:03.940
It was a half year program and I have to say I just wasn't sufficiently brave enough to put in for a... There were options to go in for a year and I thought, I'm bringing my family. If this is miserable for my family, do I want to put them
00:41:03.940 - 00:41:13.170
through a year of misery? Let's do this the shorter time frame. So that was me hedging my bets. If hindsight were 20-20, I think I might have put in for the
00:41:13.170 - 00:41:24.290
longer stretch of time, but it was in five months. I was truly humbled by the extent to which our neighbors reached out to us. I mean, we were living in a sort of a small town just outside of
00:41:24.290 - 00:41:36.910
Kobe, which is a fairly large city within Japan. And the the willingness of neighbors to take us on, perhaps as a charity case, but in other cases, as a real interest in trying to kind of help us make our way in a
00:41:36.910 - 00:41:49.100
new community, even gave me pause to think about how often that does or doesn't happen here in the United States and in some small towns or even in in the suburbs or cities. And so, yeah, I really have a very warm spot and a fond, you
00:41:49.100 - 00:42:01.200
know, fond memories of our time in Japan and the outreach that many people did on our behalf to help us sort of settle in, for my son, for my wife, and then certainly for me and kind of in my both kind of workplace and some of the work
00:42:01.200 - 00:42:13.250
we did elsewhere. Remarkable experience. Indeed. Truly. Well, now you have seen education from many different
00:42:13.250 - 00:42:26.910
perspectives and teacher education in Japan, several higher ed places. Can you share with us, snd I think now you've been at Towson for...
00:42:26.910 - 00:42:35.980
Eleven. Yeah, eleven years. What would you say? What are your thoughts? They might still be evolving. About what's important, what
00:42:35.980 - 00:42:47.670
aspects of teacher ed are essential? Sure. I think I would start first by maybe thinking back to someone like George Counts who in the 1930s writes about "dare the
00:42:47.670 - 00:43:00.630
school build a new social order" and sort of the the extent to which our society does look in one way or another to schools to try to fix some of the ills that we have. And I have to say, I think all too often those of us in schools
00:43:00.630 - 00:43:08.040
and working and preparing new teachers, the easy way out is to say those are someone else's problems, those are society's problems. Schools can't do it all.
00:43:08.040 - 00:43:20.760
And yet I think I have maybe a rosy optimism here to say part of the noble work that we do and the dignity of our work in teacher education is saying that yes, schools can be better places.
00:43:20.760 - 00:43:34.650
They can be more democratic places. And that the students and the people who work within them can use some of those habits of mind that they learn, some of the tools of critical thinking to make this experiment that we
00:43:34.650 - 00:43:45.930
have called American democracy, to make it more vibrant in ways that our society becomes more just and more sustainable and more peaceful. And I think that that is something that to me, and
00:43:45.930 - 00:43:58.180
whether you go back to Dewey or Counts or someone like that, that's important to keep on our radar. Thinking about how the work we do in teacher education is one way or another trying to kind of open up this larger project of
00:43:58.180 - 00:44:06.270
creating a more perfect union and creating a more vibrant democracy. At the same time, that lens for me is often sort of more here at home and
00:44:06.270 - 00:44:17.660
thinking about our nation. And yet certainly from my experiences with teachers in Japan and in other settings here, that global perspective I think is one that I really am trying to bring into the work
00:44:17.660 - 00:44:29.240
that I do here in a variety of contexts. One course that I teach now is, it was formerly Dr. Lawler's course Topics in Social Science. It's a content course that we offer all of our secondary
00:44:29.240 - 00:44:40.820
social studies teachers. And in that class we've really tried to spotlight some global issues like human rights and sustainability and say, as a future social studies teacher, what do you need to know about
00:44:40.820 - 00:44:54.170
some global issues so that you will be able to share these with students in your classes that you end up teaching? And I guess one of the reasons I highlight that course for a moment is that just before this conversation here a few minutes
00:44:54.170 - 00:45:06.360
ago, that particular class was about the business of trying to do a fundraiser for schools in Africa. And the reason why they were doing the fundraiser is that we had studied about the genocide that had taken place in Darfur
00:45:06.360 - 00:45:19.380
in western Sudan here in kind of the early part of the 2000s, and the enormous displacement, nearly three million people displaced from their homes and villages, and that the educational opportunities for folks that are
00:45:19.380 - 00:45:30.040
very much kind of on the margins of the society need to not be lost in the shuffle. And what we've tried to do in this class is to say, if global issues are important as new teachers, how can we not only
00:45:30.040 - 00:45:39.360
study about them, deepen our own content knowledge, but how can we open a larger conversation here on campus? And so that's what we've tried to do with somewhat modest endeavors here.
00:45:39.360 - 00:45:49.460
It's Genocide Awareness month and the Holocaust Awareness month here in April. And so we've tried to dovetail with that in terms of raising some awareness about educational opportunities, in particular for
00:45:49.460 - 00:46:02.160
Darfur refugees who are living sort of right on the edge of their country in eastern Chad. No cakewalk, no paradise schools there, for sure. But thinking about how nonprofit organizations here in the United
00:46:02.160 - 00:46:13.900
States and other NGOs around the world are not forgetting their plight and saying that if we truly commit ourselves to education as an equal opportunity here at home, what does that mean then for education as an equal
00:46:13.900 - 00:46:24.010
opportunity or as a human right for people elsewhere and in other parts of the world? And so we had tried today to have a modest little bake sale, but to try to help students raise awareness here on campus
00:46:24.010 - 00:46:32.000
and to think about what that would look like as future classroom teachers, how they might raise awareness with middle school students or elementary or high school students.
00:46:32.480 - 00:46:43.580
So, yeah, I guess to kind of come back to your question here about what's important, I think that global perspective, I think there are ways that we as teacher educators can provide experiences and content that really foregrounds the
00:46:43.580 - 00:46:55.320
importance of this within schools. And at the same time, I think that other piece of the democratic education and ways in which what we're doing in social studies in particular, is trying to model some of those
00:46:55.320 - 00:47:06.560
habits of heart and habits of mind that we would want future citizens to have in a vibrant democracy like like ours should be. What else do we need to know?
00:47:06.720 - 00:47:24.630
What things haven't we talked about that you think are important to to share? I'll mention here for a moment that, I'll just toot the horn of Towson here for a moment that it has been, for me,
00:47:24.630 - 00:47:38.490
exciting to see this campus grow and expand in the last decade. I believe when I came, we were in the low teens and now we're in the low, you know, low 20s. And to kind of witness the growth of this campus, not only
00:47:38.490 - 00:47:50.060
in terms of its physical space, but in terms of its reach throughout the state in terms of teacher education. I mean, we've have folks like Doctor Grasmick and others talking about our program as the premier teacher education
00:47:50.060 - 00:48:00.840
program. For me, it has been an absolute honor to work with not only the state's largest teacher education program, but one that has, I think, a storied history that I hope, you know, this
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program, the the oral history program is capturing some of that. But I think at the same time, for me, Towson is a place that's on the move, on the go, and to see the growth of the
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international programs here. I guess one footnote I'll add for a moment is the Master's of Education program in secondary several years back had been offering some work with teachers in China.
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And so I was really lucky actually in 2005 to spend a little bit of time with teachers in Shanghai. And I think some of that work we're still on sort of just the cusp of our outreach in terms of working with teachers in the
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developing world, whether it be in China, whether it be in India or elsewhere. I think the need and the demand is really quite great in terms of interest in what it is that we do in terms of professional
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development and working with teachers. And I'll be interested to try to stay in that conversation and to be involved in looking at ways in which our College of Education might be working toward partnerships with other
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institutions around the world and in other countries. So that's certainly something that's on my radar. But I've been really proud to see how Towson has grown in terms of, I think, you know, at one point, the Maryland State
00:49:06.650 - 00:49:16.670
Normal School very much sort of focused on maybe the immediate kind of Baltimore area. And now as a metropolitan institution, juggling this really dynamic balance between caring for our immediate
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community and then opening our students to the world. Important piece. Indeed, indeed. One last thing, if you can't think of anything else that you've forgotten, which you'll think of in an hour or
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so of course. We still have students. We still have individuals who are interested in a career in teaching. From your 20 years in education, here, there and
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wherever. What wisdom would you share with them about considering a career and really, it's a life choice, to become a teacher? Absolutely.
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I mean, one of the pieces that I've always used, especially as an advisor, typically I'm advising folks that have already made that decision. But of course, some will make that decision to not follow
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through. But whenever I have folks that perhaps stop me in the grocery store, if they have, you know, my background and are interested to know a little bit more about whether or not teaching might be
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the right thing for them or for their kids. I think you can't go wrong with talking to everyone that you know that is in teaching or that in one way or another is related to the profession.
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Because I think there's no substitute for someone's kind of narrative and life story about, this is why I got into teaching. This is why teaching is meaningful for me here. Like any career, there are some drawbacks or some downturns.
00:50:40.840 - 00:50:51.960
And this is how I've been able to weather that and be resilient, you know, all along. I think increasingly the generation that that I'm working with here on campus, it's hard for them to imagine a career in
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the more formal sense of being with an institute, the same institution, doing a similar job for the balance of your work life, you know, 30-some, 40 years. And I think I'm maybe humble enough to recognize at this
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point that for some of our folks, whether it's a nod to the Teach for America program or even in our MAT program, we may not be asking folks to choose teaching as their career for 30 years.
00:51:19.760 - 00:51:32.990
But I've, you know, some of the folks that I've worked with in our MAT program, if we could get a good chunk of five or ten of some of their best, most productive years as a professional in our classrooms, I think that would do everyone a
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great service. And so I have to say I've maybe scaled back a little bit to try not to overwhelm sort of our youngest candidates that might be thinking about teaching to say, this is what you'll be
00:51:43.300 - 00:51:51.080
doing for the next 30 years or 40 years of your life. And instead trying to say, teaching could be a really great fit for you. And here's why.
00:51:51.080 - 00:52:00.960
And here are some of the the ways in which you could learn more about whether or not it's a good fit for you. Because I think all too often teaching is one of those professions where a lot of folks will say, well, I'm a--
00:52:01.000 - 00:52:08.500
I've been a student. So I know what it takes. And I think it's only until you start to, whether you're lucky enough to have folks in your family that share some of the
00:52:08.500 - 00:52:17.090
behind the scenes of what it really takes to be a great teacher, or whether or not you have a chance to talk to other people that you know are a little bit further in your program here at
00:52:17.090 - 00:52:28.120
the university or elsewhere that are willing. I mean, very often I'll ask folks that are doing early field experiences whether or not they've had sort of a quieter conversation with whomever the classroom teacher is or mentor
00:52:28.120 - 00:52:37.730
teacher that they, you know, might work with more specifically later. If they're only in there one day a week, have they had a moment to be able to sit down and talk to that teacher and say, why do
00:52:37.730 - 00:52:46.490
you do this? Why is this important? And I think it's through weaving some of that kind of those stories together that we could make a more informed choice
00:52:46.490 - 00:52:54.720
about what career is best for us. And so that's always something that I've asked students to do, is let's talk to people. And sometimes students will legitimately say, I don't have
00:52:54.720 - 00:53:04.310
anyone to talk to. And then that's my job as a professor here to make some contacts and open those doors so that people feel like they do have an opportunity to talk to a real life teacher who can say,
00:53:04.310 - 00:53:14.920
This is why I do what I do and why there's dignity in our profession. And that's your role. Indeed. And one that I think you enjoy. Absolutely.
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You bet. Great. Thank you. Thank you.
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Thank you, Professor Blair. It's been a real pleasure here to be with you today. Thank you for doing this.
Interview with Todd Kenreich video recording
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