| Deans
Series:
Dean Jon Snyder, Bank Street College
by
Joan Baum, Ph.D.
Talk about speed
and interdisciplinary reach! It’s been only a little over a year
since Education Update caught up with the then relatively
new dean at the Graduate School of the Bank Street College of
Education, Jon Snyder, but in this short period of time, the energetic
administrator has moved on three new initiatives. And what is
more, he manages somehow to discuss them all the while also making
dinner for his 13-year old son. Nothing, however, causes the confident
and fast-talking ex-Californian to miss a beat, even as he excuses
himself for a few seconds “to take a tortilla off the grill.”
He knows that in New York education is the real hot spot.
He is “really
excited” about the three new programs Bank Street has instituted,
thanks to generous funding, and sees each making an important
contribution to the “evolution” of better teaching and assessment.
Thanks to philanthropic efforts at the Carnegie Corporation, Bank
Street is now embarked on the “serious stuff” of gathering evidence
about teacher education programs. The dean emphasizes the difference
between such evaluation and previous studies that have focused
on assessing and revising courses. The Carnegie grant is a program-level
study: what evidence can be found for how curricula and embedded
assessments work? He calls this initiative “curriculum-linked
assessment” and notes that it also takes into account the relationship
between instruction and standardized test scores. The purpose
of the study is not to create a model of what works but to present
evidence about policies “that make a difference to the kids” and
ensure that the policy-makers provide support. By “kids” he means
the children in Bank Street’s own school, ages 2-3 and those in
middle-school. The Carnegie makes it possible for “teams of Bank
Street “candidates” (students) , recent grads, and senior exemplary
teachers to go into classrooms for from 3-5 weeks to observe.”
Prior to the visits, teachers and candidates conduct pre-interviews
about goals.
More particular
in its educational mission is the initiative funded by the Kerlin
Foundation which will allow Bank Street to train teachers in science
for the middle schools. This year the program takes the form of
a Summer Institute at Bank Street which will be devoted to teaching
college-level physics. A discipline-centered program, the Kerlin
involved “interviewing the best college physics teachers in the
state” and determining that Richard Steinberg, of The City College
of New York, Professor of Physics, would guide the instruction,
along with Bank Street teachers, recent Bank Street grads and
public school teachers—a deliberate “heterogeneous mix,” Dean
Snyder emphasizes. Onsite visits will take place the following
summer and the hope is that a “network of people” will emerge
who will positively affect the teaching of science.
The third prong
in the Bank Street 2003 initiatives is a forum funded by Goldman
Sachs “to convene educators and business leaders” for discussions
on “how to enhance teaching quality.” The forum will be co-chaired
by Mayor Bloomberg’s appointee to the Department of Education,
Diana Lam, Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning. The good
dean would go on, but as John Steinbeck would say, Tortilla
Flat calls.#
Education
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