Thesis Proposal

Proposal for Thesis: Bank Street College of Education

1) As a new teacher in the NYC public school system, I have been part of two institutions, TFA and Bank Street, with two different/opposing positions regarding the objectives and practice of education.
2) TFA proposes: "One day all children will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education." To do this, the organization recruits college graduates and prepares them to teach in the country’s most underprivileged schools in urban and rural communities.. In an attempt to compete with investment banks and law schools and thereby bring an aura of prestige and selectivity to the teaching profession, TFA has intensely pursued top graduates at top schools (Kopp, ______.)
3) Bank Street proposes to: "improve the education of children and their teachers by applying to the educational process all available knowledge about learning and growth, and by connecting teaching and learning meaningfully to the outside world. In so doing, we seek to strengthen not only individuals, but the community as well, including family, school, and the larger society in which adults and children, in all their diversity, interact and learn. We see in education the opportunity to build a better society. Bank Street College supports the entire spectrum of education, supporting Lucy Sprague Mitchell's mission to "keep one ever a learner."
4) In this paper I intend to evaluate both positions by using my experiences as a TFA teacher and a Bank Street student and by rereading the works that both institutions have used for my teacher preparation. I have chosen to focus my analysis on how both institutions’ unique understanding of child development, assessment and culture imply a purpose of education. Concerning child development I will refer to the works of Piaget, Erikson, Gropper and Dewey. Concerning assessment I will refer to works developed by Teach for America for their own teacher preparation program and to the mathematics program Investigations in Number, Space and Data and the curriculum planning textbook Understanding by Design that I used at Bank Street. Finally, with regard to the understanding of culture I will refer to statements by the founders of each organization Wendy Kopp and Lucy Sprague Mtichell. In addition I will refer to Lisa Delpit’s seminal work from “The Silenced Dialogue” and to readings of the debate between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois.
5) Both institutions have failed to help me develop a clear understanding of the purpose and practice of education. I’ve found that Teach for America does not think critically about defining the purpose of education for the 21st century. On the other hand, Bank Street, though it is intensely critical of the status quo, does not offer clear alternatives.
6) It is my present purpose to clarify my own understanding of the purpose of education. This will help me develop goals for my ongoing professional development now that I will be an alumnus and not an active “student” of both organizations. Specifically, I have the following three aims:
1) I aim to clarify what works for me and what doesn’t work for me about Teach for America’s and Bank Street’s influence on my own concepts of culture, child development and assessments.
2) I aim to me explain why I need to define the purpose of education in order to be an effective classroom teacher.
3) I aim to form a clear plan of action for involving students, parents and colleagues to collaboratively construct educational goals for our classrooms that are informed by a clear understanding of child development, assessment and culture.