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- Ann Lewin-Benham
- Dr. Deborah T. Carran, Ph.D.
- Dr. John Castellani, Ph.D.
- Dr. Szu-Yin Chu, Ph.D.
- Janet Jakusz Favero, M.A.T., Ed.S.
- Dr. Elena L. Grigorenko, Ph.D.
- Dr. Carol Ann Heath-Baglin, Ed.D.
- Brian A. Jones, M.S.
- Dr. Despina Varnava-Marouchou, Ph.D.
- Dr. Sarah McPherson, Ph.D.
- Dr. Linda Tsantis, Ed.D.
- Mei Tan, M.A.
- Dr. Ursula C. Thomas, Ed.D.
- Dr. Judy Willis, MD, M.Ed.
- Hsu-Pai Wu, M.Ed.
Meet our Contributors:
Ann Lewin-Benham is educator and author. Founder and for 20 years President of The National Learning Center/Capital Children’s Museum in Washington, DC, Ann pioneered in the emerging field of children’s museums. On the Museum’s campus Ann founded and directed two schools – Options School, a junior high school drop out prevention program, and the Model Early Learning Center, a Reggio-inspired school for Head Start-eligible families. Both schools were harbingers of the incipient charter school movement and ran under contract to the District of Columbia Public Schools. Ann has recently written three books published by Columbia University’s Teachers College Press: Possible Schools: The Reggio Approach to Urban Education (2006); Powerful Children: Understanding How to Teach and Learn Using the Reggio Approach (2008); and Infants and Toddlers at Work: Using Reggio-Inspired Materials to Support Brain Development (2010). Her fourth book, Powerful Practice, on essential strategies for early education, is In Press.
Correspondence: e-mail: BIGfootR@aol.com
web: http://annlewin-benham.com
Article: Starting Smart: Twenty-first Century Early Education
Deborah Carran, PhD is a Professor in the Department of Teacher Development and Leadership in the School of Education at Johns Hopkins University. She received her doctorate in Developmental Psychology from the University of Miami, and then was a National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral fellow in Psychiatric Epidemiology for 2 years in the Department of Mental Hygiene at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Dr. Carran has been a faculty member in the School of Education with JHU for the past 20 years with areas of specialization in research design, methodology, statistical analysis, and evaluation. Areas of research include longitudinal database linkage and tracking, program evaluation methodologies, and data driven decision making for education.
Correspondence: email: dtcarran@jhu.edu
web: www.education.jhu.edu
Dr. Castellani received his Ph.D. in 1999 in Instructional Technology from George Mason University with an emphasis in Instructional Technology and a cognate minor in Reading and Special Education. He has taught courses in instructional design and development, assistive technology, and has worked to develop technology leadership programs in schools in Maryland. Prior to coming to Johns Hopkins University, he worked on two grant projects developing virtual reality and web-based tools for teaching and learning. Together with Dr. Tsantis, he authored the monograph Enhancing Learning Environments through Solution Based Data Mining tools: Forecasting for Self-Perpetuating Systemic Reform for the American Institutes of Research. Dr. Castellani’s journal articles include Grounded Neural Networking: A New Tool for Studying Social Complexity. Symbolic Interaction in University of California. He also served as Vice President and Secretary of the Technology and Media Division of the Council for Exceptional Children. Currently, Dr. Castellani advises and teaches courses in the Technology for Educators and Special Education Technology programs. He coordinates the Technology for Educators partnership programs and advises students in the multimedia development and assistive technology certificate programs. His current research interests are in the areas of data mining and neural networks, special education technology, multimedia development, and the use of emerging technologies for teaching, learning, and school leadership.Corrrespondence: jcastellani@jhu.edu
web: ww.education.jhu.edu
Szu-Yin Chu is an Adjunct Course Professor in the American College of Education. Her current research interests include culturally responsive teaching, family support, family-professional partnership, self-determination and young children, and teacher efficacy.
Correspondence: e-mail: szu-yin.chu@ace.edu
Article: Understanding Literacy Practices in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Children’s Homes
Janet Jakusz Favero began her teaching career in 1969 at McKinley Tech High School in Washington, D.C. A recent graduate of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto, where she had studied political science and history, Favero was enrolled in a Master of Arts in Teaching history program at Trinity College, also in Washington, D.C. The program included an internship year with the District of Columbia public schools, which Favero spent teaching American History and American Government to 11th and 12th grade students, respectively. After three years at McKinley Tech, during which time Favero was part of a team honored by the school system with an Innovative Teaching Award for differentiating instructional materials for students with low reading comprehension scores, she returned to graduate school. Her inner city teaching experience had convinced her that the most important things she could teach adolescents were the reading, writing, and thinking skills that would enable them to learn anything that interested them or was required of them. So at Michigan State University she undertook an Educational Specialist Degree in reading instruction. After interrupting her teaching career to begin a family and pursue other interests, Favero returned to teaching, this time at The Key School in Annapolis, Maryland. In 1991 her position at Key, to establish and run a writing center for high school students seeking assistance in planning and executing writing assignments, was considered experimental and temporary. Twenty years later, she chairs the all-school Learning Department and serves as the Upper School Learning Specialist and Writing Lab Coordinator. Favero, a native of Buffalo, New York, has been married for 38 years to economist Philip Favero; they have three beautiful daughters, all graduates of The Key School and accomplished in their diverse professional pursuits. In her free time, Favero loves to dance (last year she participated in over 300 aerobic dance and strength training classes), to read historical fiction, and to craft handmade, dark chocolate truffles.
Correspondence: e-mail: Jfavero@keyschool.org
web: http://www.keyschool.org/our_program/learning.asp
Article: Relying on Research: A Collaborative, School-Wide Approach to Adopting Educational Research
Dr. Elena L. Grigorenko is Associate Professor of Child Studies and Psychology at Yale Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Columbia University (USA) and Moscow State University (Russia). She has published more than 250 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and books. She has received awards for her work from five different divisions of the American Psychological Association. In 2004, Dr. Grigorenko won the APA Distinguished Award for an Early Career Contribution to Developmental Psychology. Dr. Grigorenko’s research has been funded by NIH, NSF, DOE, Cure Autism Now, the Foundation for Child Development, the American Psychological Foundation, and other federal and private sponsoring organizations.
Correspondence: e-mail: elena.grigorenko@yale.edu
web:http://childstudycenter.yale.edu/index.aspx
Article: Where Creativity and the Curriculum Meet
Carol Ann is an assistant state superintendent, Division of Special Education/Early Intervention Services, for the Maryland public school system. She administers and supervises special education and early intervention programs throughout the state, making sure such programs are in compliance with both Maryland and federal laws and codes. Among her varied duties, Heath-Baglin coordinates program funding from the federal to the local level, manages medical assistance reimbursement for school services and sets foster care rates for group homes. She also works with local school systems for non-public school placements, if the public school in question can't handle the special needs of a particular child. She also teaches three courses—Legal Aspects, Collaborative Programming for Parents of Children With Disabilities and Development of the Young Child With Disabilities—sees her SPSBE teaching function as a direct link to performing her job. "[The teaching] is an important reason why I am able to continue in my role as assistant state superintendent," she says. "In my classes, I have ongoing contact with special educators who are engaged each and every day in implementing the policies and regulations enacted by Congress, the Federal Department of Education and the State Department of Education. It helps me to keep current in the field and translate and put into practice ideas discussed with my students."
Correspondence: e-mail: cheath-baglin@msde.state.md.us
web: www.marylandpublicschools.org/msde/divisions/earlyinterv/
Although working on his “grand unification of teaching theory” takes up quite a bit of his day-dreaming time, Brian Jones still is able to save stray cats from the upper boughs of trees, help old ladies across the street, and pick up his dry-cleaning (it is amazing how dirty his superhero cape gets on a daily basis). He has even been rumored to be the editor and photographer responsible for providing "Combustible News to the Discerning Reader" in the prolific publication The Jet Fuel. Using the latest technology, Jones has designed coursework in the areas of history, humanities, algebra, and biology, creating complete on-line high school courses in these fields. His post-graduate work in humanities has taken him to Rome, Athens, Tokyo, and Gotebo, Oklahoma. Every once in a while he shows up in his classroom, throws out the next topic of discussion for his students to debate, and then melds back into the shadows where he can plot his next overthrow attempt of the local school administration regime (he grew up down the street from his arch-nemesis, Principal Colvin, setting up the classic hero-knows-villain-knows-hero scenario). Working on his second decade of leading students down the paths of intellectual anarchy, Jones will admit under duress to flirting with the mundane by having the students read from the school textbook once a month. Jones uses his super-ADHD power to oscillate between being a middle school band director, humanities teacher, football videographer, playwright, archery coach, cheer-dad (his wife is the middle school cheerleading coach), and all-around trouble maker for the local school administration. Jones sets the bar high when it comes to reading level in his class: his sixth graders read Homer, Shakespeare, and Machiavelli; his seventh graders read Verne and H.G. Wells; and his eighth graders read Locke, Rousseau, and Stowe (“What? Legree has Uncle Tom killed?!? Mr. Jones, why do you make us read this?!”). Jones is constantly exposing the students in his class to the latest in brain research, memetic theory, and explorations of the gifted mind. He can’t believe they actually pay him to come to school…
Correspondence: brian.a.jones@westernheights.k12.ok.us
Article: An Unabridged Treatise on Memetic Pandemonium within the Adolescent Psyche, Annotated.
Article from Spring 2010: The Many Hats of a Teacher
Despina Varnava-Marouchou (BA, MEd, PhD in Education and Business Studies). Dr V. Marouchou has presented and written many papers concerning teaching and learning in higher education, including several chapters in books. Dr V. Marouchou has also published her first book last May, entitled “Can Conceptions of Teaching Influence Conceptions of Learning?” She has taken part in a number of research projects concerning students’ creativity and has also initiated various workshops and conferences on qualitative research methods in education.
Correspondence: e-mail: D.Marouchou@eac.ac.cy
web: http://www.euc.ac.cy/easyconsole.cfm/id/634
Article: Can Faculty Conceptions of Teaching Influence Faculty Professional Deveopment?
Dr. McPherson is currently chair of Instructional Technology and Educational Leadership at New York Institute of Technology. She is also the current president of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Special Interest Group for Teacher Education, (SIGTE) and on the Board of Directors for New York Society for Computers and Technology in Education (NYSCATE). She graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 1991 and has written articles, book chapters, and presented at numerous national and international conferences on instructional technology for K-12 inclusive education, universal design for learning, response to intervention, virtual online education, web 2.0 tools for globalization and e-portfolios. She teaches instructional technology graduate courses in New York City and online.
Correspondence: e-mail: smcphers@nyit.edu
web: http://www.nyit.edu/index.php/profiles/details/sarah_mcpherson
Article: E-portfolio Systems for Performance Assessment and Program Evaluation
Mei Tan is a Research Assistant in the EGLab. She directs two projects concerning intelligence: the Aurora Project, the development of a new assessment for intelligence; and a project based in Saudi Arabia on the biological and environmental etiologies of giftedness. She is also involved in the BalaBbala project, investigating the occurrence and etiology of specific reading disabilities in the southern region of Zambia, and a project evaluating the effects of visual literacy on the development of writing skills in young children. Ms. Tan received her BA/BS in English and Biology from the College of William and Mary, where she wrote her thesis on language and identity in the work of Gertrude Stein. She earned her MA in Literature from the University of California at Berkeley; her thesis addressed the use of language and imagery in the poetry of John Ashbery, and was written under the direction of poet Robert Hass. She is currently working on her Masters Degree in Cognitive Studies in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Correspondence: e-mail: mei.tan@yale.edu
web: http://childstudycenter.yale.edu/index.aspx
Article: Where Creativity and the Curriculum Meet
Dr. Ursula Thomas is an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education and Birth through Age Five Program Coordinator at the University of West Georgia. Her research agenda includes issues of cultural mediation and its effects on instructional choices, the power of teacher educator research on diversity in the classroom, views of social justice in the early childhood classroom, and preservice teachers’ disposition on professionalism and diversity in teacher preparation programs.
Correspondence: e-mail: uthomas@westga.edu
web: http://coe.westga.edu
Article: The Power of Protocols on Surfacing Culture in Children’s Literature
Linda Tsantis, Ed.D. coordinates the Early Childhood Special Education graduate program at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Tsantis received her Ed.D. degree in early childhood / special education at the George Washington University, where she taught in the graduate program. Following a sabbatical assignment in IBM Academic Systems, she was recruited to direct IBM’s innovative study projects investigating the application of computer and communications technologies in special education and early childhood education. The "High Quality Achiever" award recognizing outstanding quality of Education Training Programs was awarded to Dr. Tsantis twice. Dr. Tsantis was consultant to the Agency for International Development, the Department of Defense Dependents Schools, and Stanford Research Institute International. She also served on the White House Task Force on Innovative Learning. Dr. Tsantis also served on the Board of Directors for the East Coast Migrant Head Start Program. She has received recognition awards from the Council for Exceptional Children Teacher Education Division and the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs for the development of innovative teaching programs. Dr. Tsantis is committed to helping teachers become agents of change who will successfully advocate for children and their families. She mentors her graduate students to publish and present their action research at national and international conferences. Her current work is focused on understanding how to apply findings from neuro-education research to help teachers develop more effective early intervention programs for children with special needs and how to use predictive modeling techniques to shape the future development and allocation of special education services and resources.
Correspondence: e-mail: Tsantis@jhu.edu
web: www.education.jhu.edu
After graduating Phi Beta Kappa as the first woman graduate from Williams College, Judy Willis attended UCLA School of Medicine where she was awarded her medical degree. She remained at UCLA and completed a medical residency and neurology residency, including chief residency. She practiced neurology for fifteen years before returning to university to obtain her Teaching Credential and Masters of Education from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She taught in elementary and middle school for the past ten years. Dr. Willis is an authority in brain research regarding learning and the brain and is a presenter at educational conferences and professional development workshops nationally and internationally about classroom strategies derived from this research. She has been a Distinguished Lecturer at ASCD national conferences, writes extensively for professional educational journals, and was honored as a 2007 Finalist for Distinguished Achievement Award for her educational writing by the Association for Educational Publishers.
Correspondence: e-mail: jwillisneuro@aol.com
web: RADTeach.com
Article: Rubrics as a Doorway to Achievable Challenge
Article from Spring 2010: Teaching Students A "Brain Owner's Manual"
Hsu-Pai Wu is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include culturally relevant pedagogy, cultural integration in heritage language education, and heritage language teacher education.
Correspondence: e-mail: sherry0429@gmail.com
Article: Understanding Literacy Practices in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Children’s Homes
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