Harvard Ed. Magazine FALL 2016 “ Halfway through the year I caught one of my 12th- graders cheatıng…” ETHICAL DILEMMAS & THE 21ST-CENTURY TEACHER Harvard Ed. Fall 2016 20 Contents Do the Right Fall 2016 Features Thing. (But How?) Educators are faced with difficult ethical dilemmas every day. Figuring out how to handle these situations is rarely, if ever, easy. STORY BY JESSICA LANDER, ED.M.’15 FALL 2016 � ISSUE N 155 Editor in Chief Lory Hough [email protected] Creative Director, Ed. Patrick Mitchell MODUS OPERANDI DESIGN WWW.MODUSOP.NET Assistant Dean of Communications Michael Rodman [email protected] Contributing Writers Andrew Bauld, Ed.M.’16 Jessica Lander, Ed.M.’15 Leah Shafer Illustrators Laurent Cilluffo Riccardo Vecchio Photographers 28 Jill Anderson Jonathan Kozowyk Scenes from Diane Levine Ekaterina Smirnova an Open House “ I think we’ll find it It’s one of the few times Copy Editors each year when schools Marin Jorgensen successful when we have almost all families Abigail Mieko Vargus are able to bring in one place at the same personalized learning time. So why are we blowing this annual POSTMASTER to any school that back-to-school event? Send address changes to: wants to do it.” Harvard Graduate School of Education STORY BY LORY HOUGH Office of Communications ADAM SELDOW, 13 Appian Way ED.M.’03, ED.M.’08, ED.D’10 Cambridge, MA 02138 36 © 2016 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Harvard Ed. magazine is NEWS + NOTES FROM APPIAN WAY Life, Liberty, and the published three times a year. Buddy the plush bison, p. 4 � Mayors take the lead in redesigning Departments Pursuit of a Video Game PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. education, p. 7 � Alum gets personal at Facebook, p. 8 � A Harvard visit from a hip hop high school, p. 11 � Study Skills: Gladys Aguilar, Why one professor is bringing the Declaration of Independence CONVO. — READER FEEDBACK 2 into the digital age in an effort to reach young people. 4 p. 13 � Japanese student art from WWII finds a home, p. 14 � Why stressed students need more PDF, p. 16 � Donovan Livingston lifts GRAD. — ALUMNI NEWS + NOTES 43 STORY BY ANDREW BAULD, ED.M.’16 off, p. 17 � AND MORE! KOZOWYK JONATHAN TOP) FROM (CLOCKWISE POPE KEVIN HERTZBERG; DANIEL LEVINE; DIANA CAMPAIGN 49 Harvard Ed. Fall 2016 Behind the Story Convo. Lory Hough, Editor in Chief JOIN THE CONVERSATION: SEND YOUR COMMENTS TO [email protected]. ROBERT MORRISON, ED.M.’57, a long-retired teacher and adminis- Past Tense Beatles from the kids, when they 1 trator, wrote to say he applauded our recent redesign of Ed. but heard that I would be off to England urged us to devote more ink space to stories focused on public Our inaugural “Past Tense” piece in the next year. Yes, because I left schools. He also asked that we offer stories that give advice to educa- the summer issue promoted another those kids. I felt so guilty. I cared tors working with young people in mainstream classes who are labeled 1960s graduate to recall her ex- about them, and they sensed it. By special education and need help keeping up. “I work with a young perience as a fledgling teacher. As the end of the year, ‘Hey, Teach’ man who will be going into high school next year, and I could SHEILA TIELLI, M.A.T.’63, wrote to us: became ‘Miss Martin.’ That was my sure use some help,” he writes. “What a jolt to my memory I success. However, like Ms. Kovner, received in reading Past Tense the sense of hopelessness was Our story “Where Are All the Teachers of Color?” received a in Convo. My school was a junior such that I had to save my sanity Summer 2 2016 2 fair share of comments on Facebook and Twitter, as well as high in the Brownsville section of by leaving or, if I stayed, to lose my 3 longer responses, including a letter from LOUIS DEFREITAS SR., Brooklyn. I started, fresh out of the humanity by hardening myself. Where Are All the Teachers of Color ED.M.’71, a 30-year teaching veteran of public schools who had a dif - M.A.T. Program, in late September, “Five years ago, I returned for 20 ferent experience than the students and alumni quoted in the story. as a replacement art teacher. When the first time, ‘my’ school now an ALTHOUGH NONWHITE PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENTS ARE NOW THE MAJORITY As he writes, “I was born and raised in Harlem. I have been black I appeared the following Monday, elementary school. The remembered IN THE UNITED STATES, NONWHITE TEACHERS ARE ANYTHING BUT. “ There were so many kids wearing bowties like mine. Even if they don’t realize it at the time, your students are the students couldn’t believe it, as tiny asphalt playground is now non- STORY BY JOSH MOSS always watching your for 78 years. I taught in public schools for over 30 years, 25 of After came out last spring, I moves, and I’m very Dilemmas of Educational Ethics PHOTOGRAPHS BY WALTER SMITH cognizant of that and always watching what I’m doing.” EDVERETTE BREWSTER, ED.M.’16 those years in the New York City public school system.” As a they had already changed teachers existent, filled with portables. Is this HED01-FEA-TeacherDiversity.indd 20 5/4/16 11:09 PM HED01-FEA-TeacherDiversity.indd 21 5/4/16 4:06 PM knew I wanted to include a story in the magazine about the student, DeFreitas says he learned at schools where there were black four times. I came to see the school possible? Apparently. Brownsville teachers and at schools where all the teachers were white. “At no time as a warehouse for those for whom is still the worst area in the city in book or, more generally, about the subject, one I suspected There’s Nothing a new emphasis on something no one had expectations. They were categories such as single parent that educators as a student did I ever feel neglected or disrespected by my most people didn’t think much about: the ethical choices that have known for decades: skills not measured teachers. I always felt that my teachers were about teaching waiting to turn 16 so that they could families and early school leaving. All by standardized testing are important teachers, principals, and other educators need to make. Sure, to children’s every child. … It was the teachers who loved to teach who got leave. There was an overall grey these years later, it still makes me About These development the best results.” He later taught in Virginia. “The children there shabbiness, bars on the windows, want to cry.” I knew there were big ethical issues, like teachers changing by jeff wagenheim illustrations by marc rosenthal were the same as the children I taught in New York City schools. They the smell of urine in the stairwells, answers on standardized tests or getting too close to their a policeman assigned to the block. ed_winter_outlined.indd 36 12/22/15 1:56 PM ed_winter_outlined.indd 37 12/22/15 1:56 PM respected teachers who respected them and disliked teachers who did CONNECT WITH ED. not want to teach.” One suggestion? Future educators should watch The only special event I remember students, but those examples were rare, I thought — instances the movies Blackboard Jungle and To Sir With Love. Both, he says, “offer was a beauty contest, of all things, that made splashy headlines in the news but that didn’t affect people an understanding of what dedicated teaching is like.” which served to increase the ten- most teachers. ¶ In one sense, I was wrong. After reading this sion between black and Puerto TWITTER.COM/HGSE HARVARDEDUCATION. TUMBLR.COM OOPS ON US In our winter 2016 issue, Jeff Wagenheim wrote about the Rican students. book, I realized that all educators have to wrestle with ethical 3 growing interest among educators in the so-called soft skills “I was naive. I worked hard to issues of some sort, often on a daily basis and usually without that young people need that go beyond reading, writing, and motivate interest, staying after FACEBOOK.COM/ In our summer story, “Where arithmetic (“There’s Nothing Soft About These Skills”). EVE ODIORNE hours to assemble lesson materials. HARVARDEDUCATION ISSUU.COM/HARVARD guidance. They rarely are the big ethical issues like system- EDUCATION Are All the Teachers of Color?” SULLIVAN, M.A.T.’66, agrees with the content, adding, “There is nothing Yet often paper was crumpled and wide cheating, but ethical issues that nevertheless can have we made a big no-no and soft about these skills, to be sure.” However, Odiorne Sullivan, founder in the wastebasket before I finished big ramifications, especially for students, depending on how passing it out. I once braved a field forgot to credit two authors of the Cambridge-based Parents Forum, also said that the conversa- YOUTUBE.COM/ of the paper The Challenge of trip, but only once. Still, we had a HARVARDEDUCATION MEDIUM.COM/ the teacher reacts. That’s a lot of pressure. And it’s personal. tion around skills shouldn’t be left to educators alone. “ All parents, @HARVARDEDUCATION Recruiting and Hiring Teach- not only affluent ones, should be included in the conversation relationship. In our bleak classroom That’s why, when planning this story, I knew it had to be written ers of Color: NICOLE SIMON, about social-emotional learning,” she writes. “Where are parent- we were stunned to hear the break- ED.M.’12, ED.D.’15, and STEFANIE ing education and parent peer support in this discussion? Miss- ing news of the assassination of by a teacher.