Room 2307 James
2900 Bedford Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11210
718-951- 5325
Program
Description
Introduction
We welcome you to the emotionally rich, intellectually challenging and
deeply rewarding world of teaching, and we invite you to share with us a
vision of teaching as it continues to evolve in the Undergraduate Program
in Adolescence Education and Special Subjects at Brooklyn College. Perhaps
of all the professions, teaching carries with it the greatest
responsibility; we teachers are responsible for the lives of other people’s
children. We offer young people ways to gain access to new worlds, to
deepen understanding of their own worlds and to act consciously and
ethically to change the world. We struggle to develop nurturing
relationships with our youth and strive to nourish them with our
knowledge, wisdom and compassion. But teaching is not only about doing for
others. Teaching provides those who teach opportunities to continually
learn about themselves and others in a place like no other - the
classroom. While teaching demands that we fight to create possibilities
for our students, as we would for our own family members, while it demands
a commitment to learning as much as possible about our subject matter, our
students and our educational system, and while it demands that we think
critically and act with moral and political consciousness, it also demands
that we continually work on ourselves. If we remain open, if we are
willing to be self-reflective, and if we risk exploring the unfamiliar,
teaching can help us realize our own potential to be full human beings.
The
undergraduate program in Adolescence Education and Special Subjects at
Brooklyn College, which leads to New York City licensing and New York
State certification, is committed to developing teachers, who teach, guide
and inspire, who work as practitioners, researchers and change agents, and
who can respond to the complex educational needs of our city’s young
people. Our programs focus on the urban experience, and offer
developmental and cultural perspectives on what it means to grow up and
attend schools in New York City. We are committed to developing teachers
who not only will succeed in our city’s schools, but will work to change
those schools for the better.
Our curriculum
is interdisciplinary. Our courses approach education, schooling, and
teaching from several perspectives: historical, philosophical,
psychological, aesthetic, moral, sociological, anthropological, scientific
and political. Our curriculum is continually evolving in response to your
needs, to changes in state and city requirements for teachers, and to the
needs of the city’s schools, student bodies, and communities. Each
course offers students practical experiences in the schools, even before
you do student teaching. As you become familiar with schools as political
and cultural institutions, with our city’s cultural resources and with
the lives of our city’s young, you will analyze your experiences through
the lenses of your education courses and your major. Your teachers will
invite you to share your interpretation of these experiences and analyses.
You will also be developing the skills that will allow you to feel
confident in leading your own classes and advocating for your students and
their families.
Teaching is very
challenging work, requiring focused effort, initiative, sensitive
attention to students and open-minded collaboration with colleagues. It is
the work that sustains and extends democratic society. It will draw upon
all your skills and interests, for experience is inside and outside, and
the skills that are required to know the world are as diverse as
experience itself: language, logic, the use of tools to scan the skies,
the earth, the eye. Teachers offer our young access to the world, to its
richness, complexity, and possibilities, and whenever a child accepts this
gift of teaching, the teacher experiences, once again, the excitement of
discovery and the thrill of achievement. We welcome you to the community
of educators and we will do all we can to help you succeed in this
important endeavor.
Program
Faculty
Stephen E. Phillips Program Coordinator
Konstantinos Alexakos, Mary
Chiusano, Namulundah Florence, Herman
Jiesamfoek, Linda Louis, Priya Parmar, Stephen E. Phillips, Lynda
Sarnoff, Jessica Siegel, Peter Taubman, Barbara Winslow