Today is very cold. We are late into the winter doldrums of snowy days. It's been a confusing season weatherwise. With spring beckoning and Daylight Saving time moving us forward an hour on Saturday, it should be warmer,
don't you think? Along with the unexpected winter weather, I've found myself needing to find a "thought partner" to push my practice and re-ignite my enthusiasm for working with faculty colleagues to change the way they see and teach inquiry. I've found interesting bloggers like the Inquiry Ninja and Cult of Pedagogy. I have read articles about research to inquiry practice "every day in every way," and civic action informed by project-based learning. I am fortunate to have brilliant thought partner-colleagues among the librarians, middle school faculty and inspired administrators.
Yet for the purposes of this mindfulness and re-energizing push, Miss Mary Helena Dey is my thought partner of choice. John Dewey's educational progressivism informed Miss Dey's philosophies of teaching and learning. While Miss Dey's innovative ideas of how students learn best were developed around individual engagement, the piece that brought her from Chicago to Providence was that Miss Wheeler had a school for girls. From all I've read, she was intrigued by the idea of creating a curriculum in the "light of the newer educational theory and practice with girls as the center of the interest."
Miss Dey led with calm determination spurred on by Miss Wheeler, a devotee of John Dewey, "with his little book School and Society in her library," and the impending Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the school. Each woman was determined to start the next quarter-century situating the curriculum within the newer educational theory and practice. With the faculty in full support, Miss Dey desired to "change the emphasis from many hours a week of teaching to hours for the girls to learn for themselves and bring their findings to class discussions" She intrinsically understood the value of the constructivist classroom, she also understood that girls should have access to a school that promoted this "new school" theory of teaching and learning. Wheeler was not to be a "world apart" for each girl, "but one where she shared in the outside world and where learning was regarded not as a matter of compartments labeled but all as a part of an enriched living experience."
Miss Dey's essay in the Half a Century of Girls, a tribute collection of memories, reveals a woman who, even years later, did not doubt the course of change she designed when she first came to Wheeler to be the Head of School. She knew to use the word "progressive" cautiously while moving the curriculum toward a personalized and rigorous learning opportunity. I admire her conviction, her ability to persuade people to join her in this revolutionary experiment in New England and her easy acceptance of an educational philosophy that was at times controversial. I always find Miss Dey to be a challenging and steady thought partner. She had such clarity in her vision for the school and for a broadened curriculum that enriched the experiences and life-long learning of the girls; even, I would imagine, on cold snowy New England days. Thank you, Miss Dey.
Yet for the purposes of this mindfulness and re-energizing push, Miss Mary Helena Dey is my thought partner of choice. John Dewey's educational progressivism informed Miss Dey's philosophies of teaching and learning. While Miss Dey's innovative ideas of how students learn best were developed around individual engagement, the piece that brought her from Chicago to Providence was that Miss Wheeler had a school for girls. From all I've read, she was intrigued by the idea of creating a curriculum in the "light of the newer educational theory and practice with girls as the center of the interest."
Miss Dey led with calm determination spurred on by Miss Wheeler, a devotee of John Dewey, "with his little book School and Society in her library," and the impending Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the school. Each woman was determined to start the next quarter-century situating the curriculum within the newer educational theory and practice. With the faculty in full support, Miss Dey desired to "change the emphasis from many hours a week of teaching to hours for the girls to learn for themselves and bring their findings to class discussions" She intrinsically understood the value of the constructivist classroom, she also understood that girls should have access to a school that promoted this "new school" theory of teaching and learning. Wheeler was not to be a "world apart" for each girl, "but one where she shared in the outside world and where learning was regarded not as a matter of compartments labeled but all as a part of an enriched living experience."
Miss Dey's essay in the Half a Century of Girls, a tribute collection of memories, reveals a woman who, even years later, did not doubt the course of change she designed when she first came to Wheeler to be the Head of School. She knew to use the word "progressive" cautiously while moving the curriculum toward a personalized and rigorous learning opportunity. I admire her conviction, her ability to persuade people to join her in this revolutionary experiment in New England and her easy acceptance of an educational philosophy that was at times controversial. I always find Miss Dey to be a challenging and steady thought partner. She had such clarity in her vision for the school and for a broadened curriculum that enriched the experiences and life-long learning of the girls; even, I would imagine, on cold snowy New England days. Thank you, Miss Dey.