Undergraduate Program in Adolescence Education and Special Subjects

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