Dean Mary Brabeck Announces Three New Partnerships with New York City Schools

I want to announce three new partnership efforts today, each of which has been at least a year in the making.  One will be in the news today, but all are important in the overall effort to place the Steinhardt School squarely in the service of New York City, and at the same time to use the City as a rich learning environment for our students and faculty.

The first involves a collaborative project among the New York City Department of Education, the City University of New York, and NYU – with Steinhardt in the lead.   The project aims to develop innovative designs for teacher education in New York City that  locate more of the effort in schools themselves; that take advantage of new opportunities in the UFT contract to hire our graduates earlier and to support them through the often difficult first years of teaching; that offer incentives to NYU and CUNY students to learn to be teachers of mathematics, science, TESOL, and Special Education – all shortage areas in New York City;  and that build on a continuous trajectory of teachers’ development that runs from college encounters with the subjects they will teach, through pre-service experiences as students of teaching, through earliest challenges, and on to mastery of the craft.   A Planning Committee that consists of faculty from Teaching and Learning, Arts and Science, and Social Work will guide the development of the project’s planning phase at NYU, while Dean Joe McDonald and Professors Mark Alter and Frances Rust will work with CUNY and the DOE to coordinate efforts.

The second partnership involves the grant of one of New York State’s final charters under the charter school cap now in place to the Ross Global Academy.  With the strong support of Chancellor Joel Klein, the school will open next September in a poor community still to be determined, but easily accessible to NYU.  It will feature the same curriculum - with its focus on the arts, wellness, and intercultural understanding - that impressed so many of us when we visited the original Ross School in East Hampton.  The school is the culmination of a long and thoughtful planning process that began then, has involved numerous Steinhardt faculty, and has been ably tended by the Metro Center’s Bob Durkin as well as staff of the New York City-based Ross Institute.  I will serve on the school’s independent Board, where I will work to encourage mutually enriching experiences for Ross and NYU faculty and students.

The third partnership is an outgrowth of a conversation series that many of you participated in last year – one focused on the teaching of democracy in a time when democracy seems imperiled.  Participating in that conversation also was a remarkable organization called Facing History and Ourselves, which has garnered a well deserved reputation for encouraging and supporting good teaching of historically important but politically difficult topics.  This year, joining what is now a well established tradition in New York of small high school sponsorship, Facing History has collaborated with Region 9 to create the Facing History School.  Located in the Park West Complex on West 50th St – easily accessible from West 4th St. – the new school opened in September, and has already gained a reputation as an excellent school.   Under Robby Cohen’s and Frank Pignatosi’s leadership in Teaching and Learning, and with participation from many others at Steinhardt, I expect to see this partnership lead to an especially productive exchange of learning and research opportunities for students and faculty.

Dean Mary Brabeck