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On a recent Thursday in a noisy hallway of P.S. 36 on Morningside Drive, Arian, 8 years old, sits reading a newsletter about himself. He looks at different articles that tell stories of his life: “A fun-filled weekend,” “The first PlayStation,” and “Sometimes we get sick.” The newsletter, “Arian Speaks,” is filled with colorful cartoons and stories—all about Arian.
Ada Ukonu, a master’s student from Teachers College sitting with Arian outside his classroom, asks him to talk about his day, and they begin the interview for the next installment of his newsletter.
“We went to Safety City,” the third grader says, speaking quickly and energetically about a recent class field trip, focused on traffic safety. Ukonu diligently transcribes. “Before you cross the street, you look three times to the left and three times to the right,” he says.
For half an hour every day of the week, for the entire school year, Arian meets with Ukonu to improve his reading and writing. Their sessions are part of the Teachers College Reading & Math Buddies Program, which brings TC students into several Harlem schools to work one-on-one with the lowest performing students. The Buddies tailor each meeting to the individual needs of their students.
“Arian’s my most talkative,” Ukonu says on the short walk back from the public school on 123rd Street to the Teachers College campus two blocks south. “He tells really elaborate stories. But he can’t always read and write what he says.” So Ukonu, a clinical psychology student at TC, frequently has Arian tell her stories, which she writes out in newspaper form and presents to him in their sessions.
The Reading Buddies program—which this year serves 100 students in three neighborhood schools—is one of several TC efforts to directly improve the educational outcomes of neighborhood children. But it’s different than many TC efforts in Harlem in one key way: It’s not about research or academic coursework. It is really an intensive tutoring program solely for the participating students in neighborhood schools, who are at risk of falling far behind their peers.
The program fits into a large and complex mosaic of activities that brings this Ivy League institution into struggling neighborhood schools. Teachers College at Columbia is one of the most highly regarded institutions of education in the world—in the U.S. News & World Report, it has topped the “Best Education School” rankings—yet it is surrounded by some of the toughest public schools in the nation. In the current education climate, with the rise of programs like Teach For America and intensifying criticisms of educational schools, TC is facing increasing pressures to prove its relevance and its worth, professors say. In this context, many educations experts, inside and outside TC, are questioning whether the school’s leadership is doing enough to improve public education in Harlem.
Several large efforts signal a renewed prioritization of community outreach, under the leadership of Susan Fuhrman, TC president since 2005. She established a new Office of School and Community Partnerships in 2007. The administration is also in the process of opening a TC-affiliated public school in the neighborhood this coming fall. Though Teachers College was originally founded with the direct mission of improving educational outcomes in its neighborhood, many within TC recognize that local engagement has not been a central goal for a long time, and argue that a lot more can and should be done.
To many, it is clear that there is now a concerted institutional effort to deepen TC’s local impact, as schools of education across the country face deep scrutiny. Perhaps the boldest component of this effort is the new TC-affiliated public school. But the project has already received criticisms from some education advocates in Harlem and even TC funders who say they are skeptical of the way the school will select students and are generally frustrated by a lack of information months before the school’s supposed opening.
The question of TC’s local responsibility is not isolated from larger questions about its mission and effectiveness, as critics question whether education schools are actually improving education and have the evidence to prove it. The bottom line, for some, is this: If TC can’t make a difference in its own backyard, then why does it even exist?
Perhaps this explains the new push to forge ties locally. “One could not point to Teachers College as an exemplar of an urban institution living up to its local commitment,” Edmund Gordon, founder and director emeritus of TC’s Institute for Urban and Minority Education, says. IUME is aimed at addressing challenges of urban education through research and direct service. “But you could point to TC as a place that at least understands the issue and has made a verbal commitment,” he says. Gordon established IUME right in Harlem, near 125th Street, in hopes of creating energy around community engagement, but it has not picked up a lot of speed yet, he says.
Programs like the Reading & Math Buddies are also designed to help bridge this gap. Alexander “Sandy” Pope—who works with third graders typically at kindergarten reading levels—says the program offers an important intervention: “The chances of the teachers in a normal classroom environment being able to get you caught up three years—it’s almost impossible.” He adds, “We’re not only helping that one student improve academically, we’re demonstrating … that these aren’t students who are incapable of learning—these are just students who haven’t had the proper opportunities.”
Still, some are questioning the sincerity of TC’s institutional commitment, recognizing that it must be essential to TC’s operations. Says education professor James Borland, “We would be blind in every sense, including morally blind, to think that we exist in an ivory tower. … This is our home. We have an obligation to the place where we live.”
At best, TC’s relationship with Harlem is a positive work in progress. “Well, I think we’re off to a good start,” P.S. 36 principal Cynthia Mullins-Simmons says when asked about the relationship between her school and Teachers College. “I would just like for it to continue—Columbia has so much to offer. And let’s be realistic here: We are two and a half blocks away.”
Boiling Point: A Crisis in Teacher Education
If it were up to Teachers College professor of sociology Peter Cookson, the institution would undergo a massive transformation. Cookson teaches part-time at TC and also runs his own educational consulting firm—Ideas without Borders. On his desk sits a pile of photocopied excerpts from his book Sacred Trust: A Children’s Educational Bill of Rights.
“Universities have a great deal to learn … [about] what it takes to make a really successful 21st-century classroom,” he says. Though he says he’s somewhat removed from TC now, he thinks that a substantial rethinking of the institution might be productive.
“The problem with the university is professors get rewarded for the books they write and the grants they get,” he says. “Practical work is not recognized in the academy.” This is a structural limitation that makes it very difficult for TC to be a genuine community-based organization, he argues. Cookson says he likes the idea of Teachers College functioning similarly to a medical school, where students preparing to work in schools would get really intensive, well-structured training, in the toughest schools that matter most.
In practice, TC tries to be both a professional and graduate school. For some, that’s the magic of TC, while others see it as a sign of the school’s irrelevance in a field that needs major reform and stronger evidence of its actual impact.
Gordon, founder of TC’s IUME, says that the problem of the ivory tower can be real: “One of the roles of the institution is the conservation of knowledge, and I think a lot of us take that too seriously. … We have to then move out and apply it.” Lucy Calkins, founder of the Teachers College Reading & Writing Project, which is widely-used throughout city schools, says TC’s obligations are broader than just improving local public schools, which can create ongoing challenges. “Their job is to educate people for the whole world—for the schools that are and the schools that some day may be.”
Outside of TC, critics are catching on, and a movement deeply critical of institutions of education is beginning to threaten and challenge TC to prove its worth. In 2009, in a speech at Teachers College, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that the country’s education schools are doing a mediocre job actually preparing teachers, calling for revolutionary change. The U.S. News & World Report announced in January that it is planning to grade education colleges on an A through F scale, sparking protest from education colleges, including TC.
This national movement, coupled with the rise of programs like Teach For America—which value immediate hands-on experience in the toughest classrooms—has affiliates in the institution reassessing its mission and priorities.
“The whole profession of teacher training is in crisis today,” says TC professor of psychology and education, Deanna Kuhn. “All these questions are being raised about how we ought to be training teachers. I see TC and believe it should be, not a teacher training mill of any kind, but rather, a level above that. It should play a more reflective role in examining the questions and getting evidence on them.”
Others say the criticisms are somewhat misguided. Associate dean of teacher education A. Lin Goodwin says that there are inherent challenges in proving TC’s success. “The one thing that’s very difficult in education is to draw a direct relationship between an action, an input, like a degree program, and an outcome, like student learning, because there’s so many variables involved in that equation.”
Regardless, it is clear to some that the climate is right for TC, as an institution, to reflect on its mission and launch new efforts. And one major goal—the renewed focus on local engagement—could carry great opportunities for TC to prove its legitimacy. But with these new efforts—especially the new TC public school—comes great risk, some say. If efforts to improve educational outcomes fail to make a difference locally, then the school will have a glaring example of its irrelevance. Simply put, the stakes are high.
The Showdown
It’s Wednesday morning at 8:50 a.m., and there’s a lot of chatter in a seventh grade classroom of Columbia Secondary School—a selective math, science, and engineering public school on 123rd Street.
Today is a big day for these middle school students. They’ve been preparing for weeks for an in-class debate—part of an innovative TC-produced curriculum centered on argumentation, with hopes of encouraging students to take a more active role in their learning process.
The topic of debate? Abortion.
First up: Christabel versus Noa. The class oohs as the names are announced and the two students make their way to the front of the classroom.
“We think we should stop abortion, because abortion creates a lot of pain to the person who’s getting it and to the child inside,” Christabel Barbosa, 12, begins.
“But how would stopping abortion help?” classmate Noa Hankin responds. “It would just create more pain, because more people would do it illegally.”
“But also, lots of teenagers use it as a birth control,” Christabel counters.
For the next 40 or so minutes, the loaded topic brings the 12-year-old debaters to all kinds of complex areas of discussion, ranging from the success of foster care, to the racial disparities of American abortions, to philosophical arguments on what actually constitutes human life. TC students keeping time and order in the classroom fade into the background as the students take charge.
“According to the evidence, 667,000 to 677,000 kids get adopted every year … so it’s fair to say that a lot of kids do get adopted,” explains Adhaza Lajara, earning a half-point for the con side, for direct use of evidence.
“But if abortion is not there, then the numbers are going to rise. … There are going to be more and more people that are not going to be adopted, and that doesn’t change how much people are going to adopt kids,” Helen Jin, 12, responds, earning the pro side one point for a direct counter.
Facilitating the “showdown,” as they call it, are several doctoral students, working under Deanna Kuhn, the TC professor who researched and developed the curriculum.
“Most education is pretty passive: sit, be quiet, listen for instructions, let the teacher talk, and spit it back. This is very experiential,” she explains. “The kids are engaged with one another, rather than listening to or even talking to a teacher.”
The curriculum is not necessarily an example of TC’s institutional commitment to Harlem schools. Rather, it is the work of a professor and a group of TC students dedicated to improving local outcomes. And though this kind of functional partnership may not address the education schools’ burgeoning crisis head-on, in practice, the curriculum helps students develop important cognitive and argumentative skills, Kuhn’s research shows.
Students from the school’s sixth grade class—who recently debated whether the U.S. should lend aid to a foreign country being attacked by a neighbor—say the debate gives them relevant life skills.
“I used to argue with my brother, and I never used to see his side. I would always just be stuck on my side,” says Rosie Guzman, 11, a sixth grader from Washington Heights. “But now I’m starting to realize why he would get upset.”
Her classmate, Scarlet Herrera, 11, also says it helps her get rid of her nerves: “Everyone’s looking at you, and sometimes you can’t concentrate,” she says. “But it gets easier.” Guzman adds, “After arguing for about 20 seconds, you realize, ‘I know this well—I’ve studied it for so long.’”
Though successful, the curriculum may not be helping the neediest of Harlem students. Columbia Secondary School, a public school with a strong University partnership, is certainly diverse—recent enrollment figures show that 17 percent of students are black or African-American and 52 percent are Hispanic or Latino. Still, it’s a selective math, science, and engineering school to which students must apply. And many experts in the field recognize that the best education programs must help the toughest urban students in the toughest schools.
New Leadership, New Directions
Enter Nancy Streim.
Brought on by TC President Susan Fuhrman in 2007, Streim, heading the Office of School and Community Partnerships, in many ways embodies Fuhrman’s stated commitment to enhancing the institution’s relationship with Harlem. The two worked together at the University of Pennsylvania, where Streim forged relationships with the Philadelphia school system.
The fact that the partnerships office at TC is so young seems to some alarming at first.
“When I met Nancy, I thought, ‘It’s crazy this is just happening at one of the oldest schools of education in the country,’” Samantha Freeman, a project director with OSCP, says. “I can’t believe we didn’t have this office forever.” But, she says, she realized the office was formed to centralize programs and pre-existing commitments, and to create a broader platform to leverage partnerships.
Explains Dean Goodwin: “She’s [Fuhrman] made things more visible and concrete, and she’s made them more institutional. What Susan said is, ‘This institution is going to have structures in it that signal our priorities as a larger community.’” (President Fuhrman was traveling and unavailable for comment, according to a TC spokesperson).
Streim, talking to a group of funders at a recent dinner event on campus, says TC’s local commitment sets the institution apart from most others. “Universities are not only obliged, but are uniquely positioned to provide services … that foster educational development and human development, especially for children whose educational success can be compromised by conditions of poverty. We should be willing to hold ourselves accountable for the results of our efforts.”
She has a clear vision and, in a way, could be producing an answer to the naysayers who are now questioning the validity of education schools. In his introductory speech, TC Provost Thomas James praises Streim as the perfect link between research and application: “She has a mindset that has the depth and complexity of a faculty member, but she’s got the street smarts of a school reformer who can get out there and really work with people.”
For her part, Streim, in an interview the following day, says she doesn’t really see her work as a way to address any crisis in the field or for TC. The college’s academic and intellectual work is critical, whether or not TC is producing practitioners, she says. “Even if we were not preparing teachers, there would be a place for Teachers College to contribute the big ideas.”
Still, she says her office and work is critically important to TC—which has not traditionally embraced community engagement as a core component. “What’s changed under this administration … is a vision that says that new knowledge is valuable and important and it changes the field. If you can’t put it into practice in your own community, then we’re missing an important obligation.”
Since her arrival to Harlem, Streim has set up a network of partnership schools as a resource for faculty and the foundation for a more sustained relationship. Several other programs bring TC students to Harlem schools directly, and vice versa.
One OSCP effort, the Harlem Ivy Program, partners TC with the After-School Corporation and the New York City Mission Society to bring creative science and engineering programs to local after-school sessions.
At P.S. 92 on 134th Street, TC graduate students run an after-school program that’s far more intensive than babysitting. On a recent Wednesday afternoon in the middle of an empty cafeteria, a group of four fifth grade students sift through Ziploc bags with hundreds of Lego-like pieces in them, searching for ones that match those on the screens of their personal MacBooks.
They are trying to build robots.
They quickly get flustered as they struggle to locate the matching parts and connect them. “It’s really hard to find the pieces,” says Ari Thompson, 10, fifth grader. “I get to build robots for the first time in my life,” she adds, when asked about her favorite part of the program.
Sitting next to her, Brian Bravo, 10, lets out a small shout of joy: “I did it!” Then, after scrolling down the instructions on his computer, he adds, “Oh. There’s another step.” Several TC grad students aid them in their project, which takes about an hour.
At the end of the after-school session, the students test out each robot—which carries sensors that detect objects and knock them away—on the floor of the cafeteria. Parent Sabrina Coppedge-Smith watches her daughter play with the robot, along with her 4-year old son, whom she lets join in the fun. “Even my little one is playing and enjoying it,” she says, adding, “It’s good for the brain. It makes them build critical thinking, it really does.” The concept of robot building as an effective teaching tool is simple. “Picture yourself as a 12-year-old with the ability to make these pieces move,” explains Dorothy Whyte from the Mission Society, one of the program partners.
The program is funded by a five-year grant to support 400 students, says Freeman, the TC project director of the Harlem Ivy 21st Century Community Learning Center. Despite challenges, Freeman says it has been a successful OSCP effort so far. “Columbia is not always seen as the friendliest neighbor in Harlem. We’ve spent a lot of time and effort in getting the partner schools to trust us and to understand we’re coming to help give them services.”
In another, more direct in-class program, TC graduate research assistant Darcy Ronan, through OSCP’s GE grant, works with P.S. 36’s science teacher two blocks north of TC, assisting in curriculum development and classroom management. “It’s a ton of curriculum,” Ronan says on break on a recent Thursday, after assisting science teacher Chris Faulkner with his class on force and magnets. Ronan helps Faulkner parse through and administer the curriculum, and in the classroom, they work as a team.
“She told me we had to do measurements first,” Faulkner says of Ronan. “That was so valuable.”
For Ronan, being in the school is a treat. “This is a natural fit, being so close to Teachers College. Coming to grad school, … the idea of not having kids in my life seemed very sad.” She adds, “Sometimes, you can get the ivory tower mentality and you forget the reality of the schools.”
Faulkner chimes in: “You get that in here.”
Taking Risks: Entering the Lottery
As students and professors continue to expand their neighborhood collaborations inside and outside of the Office of School and Community Partnerships, administrators behind the scenes are pushing forward with a new public school that is shaping up to be one of TC’s most important local efforts.
It is also the riskiest. Streim worked on a similar project at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia with the establishment of a university-assisted demonstration public K-8 school. According to TC officials, they are on track to open the neighborhood public school in the fall, finalizing details with the city’s Department of Education.
Still, until very recently, there was no public information available on the location, the principal, how to apply, and, even within the institution, some professors and students are surprised to hear that it is opening this fall. Outside of TC, in the local neighborhood, some say it seems nearly impossible for the school to actually open its doors in time.
“This is going to be our opportunity to bring together the incredible knowledge, talent, and resources all across the college,” Streim says to funders.
So what is actually known about the school? The goal is to establish a preK-8 school somewhere roughly between 122nd Street and 135th Street, from the Hudson River to around Saint Nicholas Avenue. To move forward with the approval process, TC recently signed a “Memorandum of Understanding” with the DOE, an important step in opening a new school. Earlier this month, Streim had no comment on the location, though this week, she said that the DOE has in fact proposed a co-location in P.S. 133—a public school in East Harlem, by 130th Street—to incubate the school in its first year. The school will start small and build up. Once at full capacity, the hope is that it will enroll around 500-600 students, Streim says, adding that discussions are continuing for a permanent space for the 2012-13 school year.
According to DOE spokesperson Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld, the approval to co-locate the new TC school for one year is scheduled for a vote by the Panel for Educational Policy at its April 28th meeting. If approved, the school will enroll two sections of kindergarten next year for 40-50 students, he said.
This week, Streim also revealed that Jeanene Worrell-Breeden, currently a principal in the South Bronx, will be heading the school. “This is every principal’s dream, to have the kind of resources and partnerships placed right at your building,” says Worrell-Breeden, who has been a principal in the city for over six years. “I jumped at the opportunity.”
The new school is very deliberately not a charter school. It will be a regular district-managed public school with a strong affiliation with Teachers College. Though the details are not yet final, it will likely utilize a lottery system to select its students, by which families in the neighborhood can enter their children into a pool, from which students will be randomly selected.
Representatives from local Community Education Councils—groups that represent neighborhood parents and stakeholders and meet regularly to discuss school policy and instruction—say they have no information about the school and would be shocked to see it successfully open in the fall.
“It’s concerning, especially because the way they are going about this. Have they talked to the CECs?” says Noah Gotbaum, president of the CEC for District 3, which covers parts of the Upper West Side and Harlem. “Why wouldn’t they be in discussion with the community?”
Diane Johnson, Harlem’s District 5 CEC president, says earlier this month that it can’t possibly be opening in the fall. “Right now it’s not realistic, due to the fact that we haven’t received any kind of information on it.”
Pat Jones, former chair of Community Board 9—where TC held a few informational sessions last year about the school, says, “I’m not the least bit skeptical,” she says. “[TC is] committed to making this happen and making it happen well.”
Regardless of differing opinions, there’s a lot more at stake than the approval of local CECs. Though President Fuhrman brought the idea with her to TC, the concept of a school was crystallized, and possibly expedited, by Columbia University’s 17-acre campus expansion in West Harlem. The University, now pushing forward with construction, negotiated a Community Benefits Agreement with a local development corporation earlier in the process that promises numerous givebacks to the local Manhattanville neighborhood, including affordable housing commitments, new jobs, access to University facilities—and a public school.
Streim says the timing was just right: Fuhrman joined TC right as Columbia was moving forward with the CBA for its expansion. “It was just connecting the dots.”
The new school will thus carry at least some of the burden of improving the ever-strained Columbia-Harlem relationship. And TC professor of sociology and education Aaron Pallas says TC’s reputation also hangs in the balance. “Ed schools are struggling to maintain a sense of legitimacy. … Having a school that would fail would be another thing that would be really bad for [the] College. In that sense, it’s a high-wire move to say we’re going to open a school, because the stakes are high if in fact it doesn’t work out well.” Worrell-Breeden, the school’s principal, says it’s only logical that TC—and other education programs—take this risk. “I think every teacher preparation program should be put on the mark. … If you believe in this practice, where’s the school that shows you are doing this?”
The school is also getting off the ground at a time of great tension in Harlem, centered on the DOE’s strong support for local charter schools, which are publicly operated, privately-run operations. Charters have private boards, often selected by lotteries, and, though they are still accountable to the DOE as public schools, they effectively operate outside of the system.
Charter school skepticism seems widespread within TC, and vocal critics in Harlem argue that these new schools take needed resources away from struggling schools and, through their lottery systems, don’t end up supporting a representative local population. Those pushing charter schools argue that the traditional system has failed, and they are providing alternative, innovative choices to parents.
“The TC community school is very deliberately a regular district-managed, so to speak, public school, as opposed to a charter school,” Streim says at the funders’ event. “We had to fight pretty hard to get that agreement, because the Department of Education is so interested in innovations in the charter realm.” Establishing a public school, she adds, gives TC the “ability to demonstrate that you can innovate in mainstream public schools, that you don’t have to go around the system.”
On a personal level, Worrell-Breeden, a Harlem resident since 1997, says she has seen firsthand the lack of innovative non-charter school options in the neighborhood. “I was very intrigued about having a public school option. ... I think there need to be options other than charters.”
Zarin-Rosenfeld from the DOE says in response: “We’re committed to offering a wide range of options for our families, and this administration has opened three traditional district schools for every one charter. This will be a community partnership school that will offer families of all backgrounds in District 5 a new option.”
Still, to some, TC’s effort seems to share a lot of the negative qualities of charter schools. Will it take resources away from struggling neighborhood schools? Will it get special treatment from the DOE because of its tie to Columbia?
“If you want to put a school in District 5, you need to come with your own building,” Johnson from the D5 CEC says matter-of-factly.
Jimmie Brown, a grandmother of two students in Harlem’s P.S. 76 and a member of the D3 CEC, says she’s heard nothing about TC’s school and is skeptical: “This is the thing that bothers me. I have no problem with them opening schools. But you are not helping the community you want to come into when you share space.” (Officials from P.S. 133, the temporary site this fall, could not be reached for comment).
Streim, declining to offer specific details on any possible final location, says only, “It would be a preference not to impose on any school.”
And it’s not only local community members voicing concerns. A group of funders at the recent provost dinner expressed disappointment that TC and the DOE would likely be using a lottery for the school. Only children with parents actively searching for schools will enter, and the neediest kids will likely not have a shot, they charge, echoing a common criticism of charters.
“Are you going to randomly pick people eligible for this?” Tom Crowl, a TC graduate and guest at the dinner, asks Streim during a Q-and-A. “If you have people self-selecting, I’m concerned right there that this may not be representative, because more knowledgeable people will know about it.”
Responding, Streim says, “It is incumbent on us to recruit, recruit, recruit, so that we can reach out across the entire community.” Several funders subsequently speak up, voicing similar concerns over the lottery.
Streim, in a later interview, says she sympathizes with these arguments. “It’s all expected,” she says of backlash at the event, chuckling. “I really value and welcome the passion that lies behind people’s questions. … We’re very, very sensitive to issues of reaching out broadly.”
The problem, she explains, is that there isn’t really any other option. Public schools can be zoned in a specific boundary so that every student in that boundary attends—but that, Streim says, could disrupt pre-existing schools and could also limit the school to just a few blocks, given the density of the city. William Stroud, TC’s director of the partnership schools network, adds, “It’s the responsibility on our part to make sure the pool of students in the lottery is reflective of the community at large—in a broader way than the charters.”
And in response to concerns about a lack of information, Streim adds in an interview earlier this month that it’s just too soon—despite the fact that they are slated to open in less than six months. “I wish we had more to tell them at this point. … At this particular moment, there is no school, there is no lottery.”
Diana Henry, who lives in Hamilton Heights and is looking for a school for her son, says it sometimes feels like she’s trying to get her 4-year-old into college.
She goes to fairs and open houses, and has been all over the neighborhood looking for options. She hadn’t heard of TC’s community school. But she’s interested.
“Having it in the community where there’s a need for it, it’s going to draw people. In the city of New York, when you hear something is associated with Teachers College and Columbia University, it’s something you need to look into,” she says. “The question is: How do I get in?”
Dual Identity
In a large school cafeteria at P.S. 76, Jordan Williams, a five-year-old kindergarten student, is taking a break from class with two TC researchers. On this recent Monday, he’s practicing simple math with a work-in-progress computer program being developed by a TC research group.
“I want to count from zero to 100,” he says out of nowhere.
“That would take awhile,” responds Kara Carpenter, a TC research fellow with MathemAntics, a program of computer activities for teaching mathematics currently being designed as a curricular supplement.
Ligmie Preval, a grad student working on the project, reads from a script and guides Jordan through the interactive counting exercises on her laptop, taking careful notes of his actions and choices. With cartoon animals on screen, the software is supposed to help students develop different counting tactics. Ideally, it should respond to each student’s individual performance, making it a useful tool for a classroom with a wide range of skill levels.
“Can we try a harder one?” Carpenter asks. After saying yes, Jordan goes off on a tangent about Transformers character Optimus Prime, happy to chat with the two TC researchers.
“Optimus Prime knows how to count numbers,” Carpenter says to him.
“No! He fights crime,” Jordan responds.
This work is part of a large project for a diverse group of Teachers College researchers and students. For Jordan, MathemAntics offers sporadic math help, playtime on a computer, individualized attention, and a break from the classroom.
“There are little teaching moments,” Carpenter says. “How could a computer pick up that he’s frustrated? You see some really amazing gains.”
As TC pushes forward with new partnerships, direct school interventions, and its very own public school, perhaps many in the neighborhood identify the institution with this project. It is dual research and support—the intersection of TC’s academic and practical worlds. It brings the Ivy League to Harlem.
Professors must operate in these two worlds, and it’s not always easy. Malik Shabazz, another kindergartner testing out MathemAntics, staring at 16 animals on the screen, is unsure of where to begin. His mind wanders, and he fiddles with the mouse. “That was harder than I thought,” he says.
But, at the end of the day, the answers lie inside the classrooms and in the Harlem neighborhood, says Gordon, IUME founder. And because of that, it can be an uphill battle for TC. “Most of the senior professors … did not grow up thinking that their future and their academic status were tied to what was happening in the ghetto.”