CharlieResponse

Charlie's Responses to Email Questions

1. I'm teaching this course because I love the subject matter and I believe deeply that it's solid grounding for our work as educators. I think we can use what we know about development and learning and school-related learning factors to help us separate what's important from what's now so important in the world of best-new-ideas that we all face.

2. I was a psych major in college. My doctoral sub-specialty work was with cognitive psychologists, and I have had experience in a rat lab while in college. Most recently, I've seem many of my beliefs about how we ought to be teaching confirmed by the exploding knowledge about brain functioning. I like that. I also find technology a fascinating tool that invites us into the world of the learner in ways heretofore not able to be experienced.

3. I retired from UVM in May after 39 years of mostly fascinating teaching in the undergraduate elementary education program. I started work on a funded project at UVM on June 1 focused on principles of Universal Design for Learning and it's application to make university teaching more enlivening to broader ranges of students. I was very active in public school initiatives during my formal time at UVM. I haven't done as much publication as I "should have," but I have written a book on multiage teaching, an entry on elementary education for the Grolier Encyclopedia, and articles on classroom meetings, cooperative learning (Complex Instruction), project based learning, and school-college partnerships. I have also explored my own social positioning relative to the question of who's diverse in "diversity"?

4. I've been quite focused on work and family for the past 35 years so this is actually kind of a hard question to answer for me. I do love to read. I'm trying to maintain a fairly regular jogging schedule. I love capturing a great photo. I think I'm a pretty good listener. People tell me I'm a good integrator and that the information I bring to a class is actually useful and interesting (let's hope that's true with this class). Photography would be a current "hobby" - in the past I've been fascinated with stamp collecting, gravestone rubbings, and sunfish sailing.

5. I think my project for this course is seeing how what I know about how the brain learns informs and creates a challenging experiential discourse for all of us in this course - and documenting that.