Bard, A Place to Think - Master of Arts in Teaching

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Field Notes

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Field Notes Fall 2009, Volume 5, Issue 2

Features
  • Blood on the Page
    By Thea Burgess, Diana Decker, Celia Hetterich, and Kathy Dudley
    A MAT professional development course combines the study of literature and literacy

  • The Al-Quds Bard Master of Arts in Teaching Program
    In August 52 Palestinian teachers began their first MAT graduate course in this unique collaboration between a New York State college and a university in the West Bank.

  • Dad
    By Judith Harmon Miller
    As an educator of teachers, the author advocated an autobiographical approach to unearth the connections between early learning experiences and the development of teaching practices.

  • The Girls’ School as Medical Theater in Elsie Venner
    By Jaime Alves
    MAT literature professor Jaime Alves’s first book, Fictions of Female Education in the Nineteenth Century, highlights the ways in which American writers and educators attempted to garner support for the controversial work of educating females.

  • Night: A School-Community Read
    By Katelin Grande
    The 10th-grade English curriculum at Rhinebeck High School focuses upon Martin Luther King’s assertion that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

  • Joy, Subtlety, Elegance, Inventiveness, Appropriateness, and Madness: The Pedagogy of Teaching Music
    By Paul Ehrlich
    A self-taught violinist and a master violin teacher develop transformative methods of teaching.

  • Genre Bending in Mathematics
    By Chris Watts
    Secondary school mathematics is taught backwards: although it is presented in an abstract, intangible way, teachers expect students to find relevance in it.

  • The MAT Program Graduates Its Fifth Class
    In May the MAT Program at Bard College celebrated the graduation of the class of 2009—30 new teachers.

  • Reflections on the Moodle Forum
    By Kathy Simpson
    How can a Moodle forum be used to teach students the difference between formal and informal language?
Departments
  • From the Director
    One Size Cannot Fit All
    By Ric Campbell
    The MAT Program is not in the business of expansion, but it is growing all the same

  • Morning Announcements
    MAT Program news for the fall quarter.

  • The NYC Campus
    “If there’s one thing I can do better . . .”
    By Samir Vural
    A classroom study on peer editing leads to deeper questions about rflective teaching and learning.

  • The California Campus
    Paramount Bard Academy
    In August, sixth and ninth-grade students started classes in the new Paramount Bard Academy in Delano, California, beginning an exciting partnership between a public school and a teacher education program.

  • Institute for Writing and Thinking
    Using Dialectical Notebooks to teach The Great Gatsby
    By Michael J. Wolf
    After attending workshops at Bard’s Institute for Writing and Thinking, the author adapted one of the Institute’s key writing-to-learn practices in his own classroom.

  • Paper Trail
    • Classroom Research Projects: Asking the Daunting Questions
      The MAT Program at Bard College requires students in each discipline to complete a classroom research project. These serve to reveal how apprentice teachers pose and respond to daunting questions directly connected with their experiences in the public schools.
    • Conversing with the Text
      By Eve MacNeill
      How does critical literary theory in the English classroom enrich the conversations readers have with texts, readings, and other readers?
    • Understandings of Integer Operations Using the Counting Pieces Model
      By Hilary Mallar
      What are students’ experiences and understandings of adding and subtracting integers when using the counting pieces model?

  • Notes from the Field
    Catch and Release
    By Derek Furr
    The cautionary lesson of these anecdotes may be implicit in the author’s family indulgence in versions of the pathetic fallacy.


Fall 2009

La Voz

Field Notes


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Hispanic Culture and News from the Central Valley A quarterly bilingual publication first published in June 2008, La Voz is co-sponsored by Bard College, The Resnick Foundation, and Paramount Farming Companies, in California’s Central Valley. In the same spirit of the original La Voz published in the Hudson Valley, La Voz in the Central Valley, empowers its Latino readership living in rural areas. The 28-page magazine provides information on legal rights, personal finance, health education and English learning. With a total circulation of 7,000 in Bakersfield, Delano, Shafter, Wasco, McFarland, Lost Hills, Earlimart, Avenal, Coalinga and Kettleman City, it also features inspiring stories, resource guides and a diverse selection of fiction writing and journalistic pieces written by college and high school students and faculty from both the East and West coasts.

Mariel Fiori, managing editor, recently wrote: “Almost three thousand miles separate New York's Hudson Valley and the Central Valley of California. Despite differences and quite a bit of distance, there is a great deal that unites the two regions: In my first editorial for the Central Valley La Voz, almost a year ago, I spoke about the similarities: both are agricultural regions in which the majority of workers are Hispanic. Many are Mexican and from countries in Central America. I also talked about the necessity of starting a dialogue from coast to coast, between the Anglo and Hispanic communities in both valleys. Little by little that dialogue is beginning to take shape. In previous editions we have offered the "American Dream" section, a space to reflect upon what this country has brought us, or has manifested at this stage in our lives. In this issue we present "From the East Coast," a section which offers a window to the Atlantic coast and stories the mainstream media tend to overlook.

Because the magazine seeks to be the meeting place for a diversity of voices to be heard, we invite professors, teachers, students, and anyone interested to submit short stories, testimonials, interviews, personal essays, cartoons, and other creative pieces, for publication in upcoming issues. Please, write to escribalavoz@yahoo.com for more information.