Schlomo Vinner urges a broad view of mathematics

A skit about medical appointments.  One of Ingmar Bergman’s dramatic Scenes from a Marriage. Woody Allen’s comic take on mortality.

Unlikely video illustrations for a lecture on mathematics education? Not if you are Shlomo Vinner and want to discuss how teachers can and should integrate discussions of a broad view of life into their lessons.  In “The Mathematics Teacher: Between solving equations and the meaning of it all”–  one of two talks he gave this week in Pullman — the Hebrew University professor recommended that teachers use by-the-way moments in their lessons to create interest and context.  The teacher should look for those moments, Vinner said, “as a hunter looks for prey.”

Vinner’s multidisciplinary focus reflects his own life.  In her introduction, Assistant Professor Jo Clay Olson noted that the Israeli educator is an accomplished violinist and poet as well as a key player in the relatively new field of mathematics education.   The two met at a Psychology of Mathematics Education conference in Greece, and their rapport led to Vinner’s visit this week to WSU. But his impact on the state arrived long before his plane did. Vinner’s groundbreaking work is reflected in Washington State Mathematics Standards.

Reading matter

The Creator of Wikipedia Turns to Education Videos. Larry Sanger says his  new site, www.watchknow.org, will allow students and teachers to sort through a library of online videos by content, and pick out what they need. There are already enough videos linked there to consume the curiosity and time of K-12 teachers.

A faculty member ponders how to interact with students on her Facebook page: “So perhaps for students, Facebook truly is an extension of the classroom, something like a grad-student lounge in which all kinds of connections take place, some routine and some substantial.”

Educators argue endlessly about the merits of one idea or another to improve schools. But with billions of dollars at stake, the Obama administration lays out a novel federal system for keeping score.

Teacher sees all: Does technology make student cheating impossible?

Her good work, bright smile and herd of Nubian goats are reasons enough to like Heidi Ritter, field services coordinator for the College of Education in Pullman.  Another reason?  She served in the U.S. Army during Operation Desert Storm.  EduCoug sends a big Veterans Day salute to Heidi and all faculty, staff, students and loved ones who have served in the armed forces.

Faculty accomplishments
Associate Professor SusanRae Banks-Joseph is just back from the Leadership Forum on Indian Education at her alma mater, Penn State, where she was identified as a prominent figure in Indian country. Prompted for a report on the occasion, Susan described it as “awesome!”:

“There were future Native leaders pursuing their master’s degrees and principal certification as well as doctoral students, program alums from across the nations, Penn State administrators, professors, and students, and community members. It is opportunities to give back such as these that help sustain the Native scholarly spirit. I sure felt renewed!”

Professor Michael Pavel, whose Native American name is CHiXapkaid,  was among authors who contributed to  S’abadeb: The Gifts: Pacific Coast Salish Arts and Artists, which recently won a Washington State Book Award in the general nonfiction category. Edited by Barbara Brotherton of Seattle (Seattle Art Museum/University of Washington Press), the book is  a compendium of Coast Salish culture through its artistry and oral traditions.

In a talk that would resonate in Indian country, Associate Professor David Greenwood gave the closing keynote for October’s 2009 North American Association of Environmental Education Research Symposium.  Titled “Nature, Empire, and Paradox in Environmental Education,” the speech mentioned such antitheses as local-global, urban-rural, environment-culture, masculine-feminine, native-settler, land-property,  social justice-ecojustice and schooling-learning. Said David:

“In the tradition of 19th century natural history, imagine an object lesson. I hold in my hands two related objects: the flight feather of a barn owl, and a wallet full of plastic and paper money. Inquiry: How do these implicate me and shape our work? Nature and empire, the flight feather of an owl and the wallet of a white man, generate a paradox, a paradox that we need to hold, and balance.”

David’s presentation will be published in the Canadian Journal of Environmental Education.

EduCoug wouldn’t presume to suggest that Cary Anderson has been around as long as the Compton Union Building (which, can you believe it, once had parking right out front!), but he’s seen the CUB change along with a lot of other things on the Pullman campus. Cary, an information technology specialist for the college, was honored this fall as a 25-year WSU employee. But he came to campus for the first time in 1977 as a journeyman union painter working on an addition to Bustad Hall.

Cary recalled the changes in a recent note, which read in part:

“The changes I have seen across the campus include beautiful walkways that have been put in where barely a small dirt path used to be going from Cleveland Hall to the CUB. Also I’ve seen the main road system repaved on Stadium Way and changes made at crosswalks and traffic lights. Also deep trenches dug on Stadium Way to accept the fiber optic cabling that now lies beneath the asphalt. There used to be trailers set up close to the Columbia/Chinook apartments that students rented but they were hauled away sometime in the late ’80s. I believe the name of the trailer court was OB Court (it’s a vague memory now). Included in the remodels on campus, and more recently completed, is the CUB building, which has been a huge upgrade for faculty, staff, and students. I can remember that building being very dark, crowded, and dreary. Now it’s nicely decorated with wide walkways, seating areas, restaurants, printing facilities, banking, movie theater, ballroom, Bookie, etc.”

Stacy Mohondro, assistant to the dean, was also recognized as a Quarter Century Club member at WSU Pullman. She began as a campus operator and worked for awhile at the WSU Foundation, but has spent most of her time being indispensable to College of Education administrators.  She came to the college in1986, working first for Dennis Warner when he was chair of what was then the Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology. The current search for a new dean is Stacy’s third. She helped out in 1991 when Bernard Oliver was hired, and in 1998 when Judy Mitchell came on board.

College of Education members who previously joined the Quarter Century Club are Arreed Barabasz, Lynn Buckley and Ruby Latham.

Kudos
When WSU neuroscientist David Rector spoke recently about the art of writing grants, he noted that, five years ago, it would have been unusual for a graduate student to write a grant.  He would be impressed by education doctoral candidate Cara Preuss’  100-page federal grant application, which landed $30,000 with which to document the skills of Latino child care providers.

Associate Professor Gordon Gates has been appointed to Educational Administration Quarterly’s Editorial Board by the executive committee of the University Council for Educational Administration. … Interim Associate Dean Corinne Mantle-Bromley has accepted an invitation to to serve on the Association of Colleges for Teacher Education’s Committee on Research and Dissemination.

Dressed for sustainable success
As an adjunct faculty member at WSU Tri-Cities, Yi-Chien Chen Cooper integrates arts into the education curriculum. She was inspired when Academic Director Liza Nagel mentioned needing a dress made from recycled material for an upcoming fund-raising event.  Cooper decided to have students at her private art studio make dresses as a pilot program and teach about the results.  The young designers presented their creations at a Richland Moon Festival style show.  Joining them on the runway and in the video was Cooper’s 3-year-old daughter, Katherine, whose Dillard’s bag dress was made two hours before the show.

Bad news for clock watchers
WSU Pullman has announced that it will no longer replace classroom clocks that stop working.  While it is true that watches, phones and computers can also provide the time, this marks a cultural shift after generations of students and faculty have tried– more or less often in their academic careers — to mentally speed up the slow-moving hands on the clock.

Anybody who knows Paula Groves Price is familiar with the way she throws her head back when she laughs. Which is often.  The associate professor explains that her family is the source of her humor–and her resilience–in a chapter of Trajectories: The Social and Educational Mobility of Education Scholars from Poor and Working Class Backgrounds. Paula grew up in San Diego, where she attended very different schools.  Clinical Associate Professor Leslie Hall grew up on a Washington farm where money was always in short supply, and dreamed of going to law school. She also writes about her childhood, as well as her career decisions, in Trajectories.

In “Sometimes You Gotta Live Your Life on a Bridge,” Paula explains that being a jokester helped her stay afloat as a multicultural child in a sea of white students:  “They may have had extensive knowledge of proper forks … and ballroom dancing techniques, but I knew how to read and write graffiti, and how to maximize multiple meals from a single block of cheese. I entered the 6th grade feeling lost and alone, and I exited as the elected class clown.”

Leslie was the only child in her family to earn a college degree, after which she moved to the Seattle area.  She returned to the Yakima Valley to teach the children of farm workers because that’s where she could find a job. She planned to stay a couple of years before moving back to suburbia.  But her instincts intervened.  In a school that mandated English-only instruction, she insisted on giving bilingual lessons to help her kindergarten students. The principal told her she could be fired.  In her chapter “Changing Fields: The Growth of a Subversive Educator,”  Leslie writes: “I continued to alternate between English and Spanish. That wasn’t the last time insubordination and termination were mentioned, either. My passion for social justice had finally overcome my desire for the ‘good life’ of the suburbs. I decided to stay and work with those wonderful children.”

Jason Margolis

What keeps teachers teaching?
Two out of five of America’s 4 million K-12 teachers appear disheartened and disappointed about their jobs, while others express a variety of reasons for contentment with teaching and their current school environments, new research shows.  It’s a subject that Jason Margolis explored in his 2008 article “What Will Keep Today’s Teachers Teaching? Looking for a Hook as a New Career Cycle Emerges.”  Editors at Teachers College Record felt the piece was so relevant that they’re published on the TCR Web site, where it can be read free of charge this week.

Jason’s paper concludes with three potential areas of exploration for both educational practice and research concerned with keeping “good teachers” teaching: merit pay, differentiated jobs, and university-school partnerships.

Applause follows Mac Bledsoe after he accepts the Advocate for Education Award

Alas, the EduCoug’s fashion reporter was so busy bundling up in designer stadium wear that she couldn’t attend the College of Education’s 2009 Scholarship and Excellence celebration, that grand Homecoming weekend soiree that doubles as a recognition of remarkable faculty, students and friends.  If she had made it, she would have spotted some celebrities — football great Drew Bledsoe! world famous mascot Butch T. Cougar! — and reported that bright smiles and crimson were de rigueur at WSU’s Palouse Ridge Golf Club.

If you missed the Oct. 10 party, or want a second look at the celebs, view the Homecoming album on the College of Education’s Shutterfly site. Read about the extraordinary teachers who were honored, Dee Baumgartner and Rena Mincks, on the alumni news page.

If you missed the seminars presented Friday by Advocate for Education Award winners Mac Bledsoe and Bob Craves, read the report on their presentations.  You’ll want to share Mac’s five top parenting tips with everyone who has kids. And you’ll be inspired by Bob’s decision to switch career gears in order to give more students a shot at college (and lifetime) success.

Mayumi Yoshinaga

Mayumi Yoshinaga, a native of Nishinomiya, Japan, was puzzled one evening when the man who brought her pizza stood in the doorway of her apartment waiting for something.  All that was on her mind was grabbing a hot slice of the pizza but she could tell something was expected.  Tipping isn’t common in Japan, and it took an explanation from Mayumi’s roommate for her to understand this familiar U.S. practice.

Mayumi is in Pullman as part of the WSU College of Education-Nishinomiya Education Board Partnership.  The Nishinomiya Board selects a teacher each year to send to WSU to take courses at the Intensive American Language Center  and to learn how to teach English as a second language when she or he returns to Japan.  Mayumi has found her courses very helpful and says  that they have definitely prepared her for teaching when she flies home on Oct. 17.

Although her instruction is the main reason for her visit to the U.S., Mayumi’s time here has provided a variety of new experiences outside of the classroom as well. Tipping is just one of many cultural differences she’s experienced. For example, the strength of the electric burner in her Chinook apartment  is different than the typical gas burner she uses in Japan.  Testing this new cooking device was followed by a few run-ins with the smoke alarm and a couple of burnt meals.

Mayumi has also had to transition from using the metric system to our English system, which she says is confusing when the news reports the weekly temperatures in Fahrenheit, rather than traditional Celsius. In fall, Pullman’s typical overnight low of 30 degrees would be equivalent to a scorching 86 degrees based on the Celsius scale.

Mayumi considers herself lucky to have experienced one of the most traditional of Pullman activities, Cougar Football Saturday.  While attending her first PAC 10 football game with a friend, Mayumi was confused by the yellow flags being thrown out onto the field by the referees.  WSU fans around her were helpful in explaining the details of the game and kept her informed when big plays were made on either team.  That was typical. Mayumi has found that most people on campus are welcoming and full of questions about her life and what she thinks of Pullman.

Throughout the trials of adapting to life in a radically different place, Mayumi has proved successful and will hopefully return to Japan with entertaining stories and a wealth of knowledge found only at WSU.  – By guest blogger, Sarah Goehri

Alumni honor, alumni praise
Two college of Education graduates, Danyell Laughlin and Michelle Kelly, are winners of regional Washington State Teacher of the Year Awards.  Good for them, and great for their students.  When told that their honors would be mentioned on the College of Education’s alumni news page, Michelle responded with a compliment: “My Master’s program at WSU was one of the most influential professional experiences of my career. I still think about it fondly. The professionalism of the faculty in my program inspired me to achieve at a higher level than I thought possible.”

If you’ve heard alumni news worth sharing, please remember to pass it along.

Undergraduate scholar
Elementary education major Jacqueline Nuha will be among the scholars featured at the McNair Achievement Program’s Research Poster Exhibition, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.  Oct.14 in Pullman’s Holland/Terrell Library Atrium. Jacqueline’s topic: Understanding the College Choice Process for Asian American and Pacific Islanders and Their Access to College Information.

Mooovie of the day
Ever create a video to share a message with students or colleagues?  Two WSU Distance Degree Program academic advisers who were preparing for a technology conference wanted to show simple that is, so they made their own video at a farm. It was meant to be a light-hearted piece about communication techniques. Then the cattle got busy.

Questions for the Vancouver faculty:  If you’re inclined to daydreaming, is it a good thing or a bad thing that the view from your office features majestic Mount Hood?   Or that the blue-green branches of a 100-year-old Douglas fir fill the conference room windows?

High-rent views are among the delights of WSU Vancouver’s new Undergraduate Classroom Building, home to College of Education programs on the West Side.   Construction delays meant that occupants couldn’t move in until a week before classes started.  So, they’re still settling in. But reports are glowing.  Says Academic Director June Canty:   “The faculty and staff love the space.  The classrooms are incredible — state-of-the-art teaching and learning facilities.  The students are using all the casual interaction spaces and furniture and the building has really come alive just the way we envisioned it.”

Faculty grant winners
Life’s not all about scenery-gazing and unpacking in Vancouver. There’s a lot of research under way, as evidenced by the fact that education faculty members snagged six of the 13 mini-grants awarded to Vancouver researchers for 2009-2010.  The grants of up to $5,000 fund projects that involve exceptional scholarly activity or will lead to requests for external funding.  Recipients and their grant topics include:
June Canty, Teacher Induction in Southwest Washington. June plans to follow a first-year teacher through her/his  first semester on the job, documenting how and how well a school district helps with the transition into a new profession.
Michael Dunn, Ask, Reflect, Text: Does the Use of Art During Pre-Writing Help Students Write More Elaborate Text? Michael explores the use of artistic expression to improve the work of students who struggle with the standard composition process.
Stephen Kucer, Discourse Context and Its Impact on Word Identification During the Reading Process. Stephen is analyzing data from his research into the effect that initial letters, semantics, location in text, and other factors have on readers’ ability to identify words.
Tonda Liggett, Notions of Diversity in a Neoliberal Context: The Undermining of Education in Chiapas, Mexico. Tonda intends to study the work of teacher educators interested in placing social justice and diversity at the center of their teaching, in a region negatively influenced by the corporatization of education.
Nancy Sanders, Research-based Practices: Guidelines for Educational Leaders. Nancy is investigating how administrators interpret the federal mandate in No Child Left Behind to use scientifically based practices, specifically understandings about research in relation to values of equity and social justice.
Richard Sawyer, Education at the Crossroads of Tension and Change: An Investigation of the Impact of Globalization on the Educational System in Southern Mexico. In a study complementary to Tonda’s, Rick intends to examine how teacher educators in Chiapas are dealing with the influences of neoliberalism in the education of new teachers.

International students
Did you read about WSU’s record enrollment of international students and wonder how many of those students our college enrolls?  The answer: 41, all at the graduate level. Of those, 31 students are current and 10 are on  grad/leave status.  Thanks to Jason Sievers  for the information.

Reading (and viewing) matter
Colleges find juicy titles swell enrollment. When “German Literature of the High Middle Ages’’ becomes “Knights, Castles, and Dragons.’’
Using Twitter in the classroom.  A video from UT Dallas.
Confessions of a D-student. The Seattle School District is considering lowering its graduation requirements. This writer knows first-hand that some good can come from a lousy grade.

Mark Bergeson counts yawns.

Partnership instructor Kris Lindeblad

That’s why Bergeson, associate director of Washington’s Higher Education Coordinating Board, was so impressed when he sat in on a day-long workshop of the Riverpoint Advanced Mathematics Partnership, aka RAMP. He reported seeing “zero yawns” and no laptop e-mail checking among the Spokane-area educators  getting instruction from the dynamic team of Janet Frost, Kris Lindeblad and Jackie Coomes. He did see many smiles.

Unlike its predecessor, the Riverpoint Partnership for Math and Science, RAMP includes some principals sprinkled among the participating teachers. Janet, the project director,  gives three reasons for the administrators’  interest:  “Principals can be more supportive of their (RAMP) team, because they know better what they’re doing. They can give better teacher performance reviews, based on what they know the person is trying to achieve. And they can make sure what we’re doing aligns with their school’s goals.”

Diversity honor
Ella Inglebret is an associate professor of speech and hearing sciences at WSU Pullman, but she deserves an honorary spot on the College of Education faculty for her work on the report From Where the Sun Rises: Addressing the Native American Educational Achievement Gap in Washington State.  Her research colleagues in Cleveland Hall can take shared pride that she has been named a Diversity Champion by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Ella was honored for her contributions to the report. She explains: “A part of what I did was to identify where there were tribe–school district relationships and where they were at in developing curriculum … My role was to find out what is working and who is doing it.”

Another member of the Native achievement gap research team, Susan Banks-Joseph, is pictured in this WSU ad that’s scheduled to run in the Oct. 16 Diversity Supplement of the Chronicle of Higher Education.  The photo in the ad montage, showing her happily engaged with a child, is a favorite of Susan’s.

Hear the Cougar fight song
Like you’ve never heard it before at thecoug.com.

Reading matter
The Rubber Room. The battle over New York’s worst teachers.
Seattle schools may lower grade-point requirement for graduation. They’re considering lowering the standard to a D average.

Jennifer Beller

“I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” says Associate Professor Jennifer Beller, after her first gig at Future Cougars Day.  During the Saturday event that’s part of WSU’s annual Seattle Week activities, Jennifer answered questions about kineseology programs while Director of Field Services Chris Sodorff and Clinical Assistant Professor Guy Westhoff explained the teacher preparation program.

Guy Westhoff

In some instances, Jennifer said, she was asked for specifics, such as “What kind of classes should I take senior year?”  Other times she addressed big-picture concerns. When one young man expressed interest in movement studies, and his mom urged him to earn a science degree, Jennifer was able to suggest a middle path.

Guy describes the experience as “three hours of non-stop conversations” on the crowded concourse of the Qwest Field Event Center. The two most common questions he received: What’s the admissions process like? What endorsements can education students complete?  Everyone was impressed by the number of

Chris Sodorff

college alumni who stopped by to say hello.  That continued even when the faculty trio went for a sandwich afterward. Chris reports that the first person who saw them in the restaurant was a recent grad who saw them and proclaimed, “I got a job!”

Kim Holapa, our director of development, has experienced WSU Seattle Week five times.  She reports that Cougar enthusiasm was as high as ever.  For Kim and Interim Dean Phyllis Erdman, one highlight was a very productive meeting of the college Advocacy Board.

Elevating engineering at Garfield-Palouse High School
In an update of an earlier College of Education article, Washington State Magazine’s latest edition includes  a story about College of Education alumnus Jim Stewart and the amazing project his students tackled over the last two years. Be sure to check out the time-lapse photos in which WSU photographer Bob Hubner captured the Gar-Pal design team putting the finishing touches on their agriculture lift for paraplegics.

Facebook boosts brainpower!
We’re not just saying that because the WSU College of Education has a Facebook group. According to a scholar in Scotland, Facebook boosts IQ — but Twitter doesn’t.

Reading matter
How Obama’s Pep Talk Became a Publicity Headache. What started as a simple question on a suggested lesson plan tied to the president’s speech to students ended up as the first major political misstep for a recently minted U.S. Department of Education team.
The Rubber Room. The battle over New York City’s worst teachers.< ><-->

Geoff Jensen

Sad but true:  It’s Geoff Jensen’s last day with the College of Education.  He’s going to burn some vacation time before his position as Web developer officially ends in a few weeks due to state budget cuts.

Geoff has made our large Web site a well-organized and attractive recruiting device, newsletter, directory, public face to the world … in other words, the ultimate multipurpose Internet tool.  It is a distinctive site even while it meets WSU graphic standards. We’ll miss Geoff’s technical and artistic skills and, most of all, his good cheer. He sends this note:

“It’s been such an absolute pleasure to work as part of the College of Education team for the last two and a half years, I’m going to miss you all! Seattle is treating me well – plenty to keep me busy. I’ll be doing both freelance and contract work in the field of user-interface and user-experience design. I’m also looking into earning an advanced degree at UW in Human-Centered Design & Engineering, where new methods of human-computer interaction are researched and developed.  These are times of big changes, but I’m excited to be moving forward in my career. Thank you all so much for the help and support you’ve given me. The College of Ed is a very special place to work and I know it will only get better.”

If you’d like to contact Geoff, his WSU address will be working for a few weeks:  iotus@wsu.edu.

A new face and new talent
The College of Education has its first communications intern this fall. Meet Sarah Goehri (pronounced Gary), who will be writing about college people and programs.  Sarah is a senior in the Murrow College of Communication and has her eye on a marketing/PR career.

Faculty notes
Assistant Professor Jane Kelley is quoted in the Daily Evergreen article, “Reading Rainbow closes the book.”

Professor Michael Pavel has been selected for the Patricia Whitefoot Award for Leadership in Education and has been asked to serve as an advisor for  the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ Making Excellence Inclusive program.