Faculty

For 28 years, Gary Stager, an internationally recognized educator, speaker and consultant, has helped learners of all ages on six continents embrace the power of computers as intellectual laboratories and vehicles for self-expression. He led professional development in the world’s first laptop schools (1990), has designed online graduate school programs since the mid-90s and is a member of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation’s Learning Team. Mr. Stager’s doctoral research involved the creation a high-tech alternative learning environment for incarcerated at-risk teens. Recent work includes teaching and mentoring some of Australia’s “most troubled” public schools. Gary was Senior Editor of District Administration Magazine, Editor of The Pulse: Education’s Place for Debate and Editor-in-Chief of ISTE’s Logo Exchange Journal.

He is currently Visiting Professor at Pepperdine University and an Associate of the Thornburg Center for Professional Development. Dr. Stager is also the Executive Director of The Constructivist Consortium. In 1999, Converge Magazine named Gary a “shaper of our future and inventor of our destiny.” The National School Boards Association recognized Dr. Stager with the distinction of “20 Leaders to Watch” in 2007.

Most recently, Gary was the new media producer for The Brian Lynch/Eddie Palmieri Project – Simpatíco, 2007 Grammy Award Winner for Best Latin Jazz Album of the Year. Read more about Dr. Stager here.

This is Alfie Kohn’s second time as a guest speaker at Constructing Modern Knowledge.

Alfie Kohn writes and speaks widely on human behavior, education, and parenting. The latest of his eleven books are The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing (2006) and Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason (2005). Of his earlier titles, the best known are Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes (1993), No Contest: The Case Against Competition (1986), and The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and “Tougher Standards” (1999).

Kohn has been described in Time magazine as “perhaps the country’s most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades [and] test scores.” His criticisms of competition and rewards have helped to shape the thinking of educators — as well as parents and managers — across the country and abroad. Kohn has been featured on hundreds of TV and radio programs, including the “Today” show and two appearances on “Oprah”; he has been profiled in the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, while his work has been described and debated in many other leading publications.

Deborah Meier is currently on the faculty of New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education, as senior scholar and adjunct professor as well as Board member and director of New Ventures at Mission Hill, director and advisor to Forum for Democracy and Education, and on the Board of The Coalition of Essential Schools.

Meier has spent more than four decades working in public education as a teacher, writer and public advocate. She began her teaching career as a kindergarten and headstart teacher in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City schools. She was the founder and teacher-director of a network of highly successful public elementary schools in East Harlem. In 1985 she founded Central Park East Secondary School, a New York City public high school in which more than 90% of the entering students went on to college, mostly to 4-year schools. During this period she founded a local Coalition center, which networked approximately fifty small Coalition-style K-12 schools in the city.

Between 1992-96 she also served as co-director of a project (Coalition Campus Project) that successfully redesigned the reform of two large failing city high schools, and created a dozen new small Coalition schools. She was an advisor to New York City’s Annenberg Challenge and Senior Fellow at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University from 1995-1997.

From 1997 to 2005 she was the founder and principal of the Mission Hill School a K-8 Boston Public Pilot school serving 180 children in the Roxbury community.

The schools she has helped create serve predominantly low-income African-American and Latino students, and include a typical range of students in terms of academic skills, special needs, etc. There are no entrance requirements. These schools are considered exemplars of reform nationally and affiliates of the national Coalition of Essential Schools founded by Dr. Ted Sizer and currently led by Lewis Cohen.

A learning theorist, she encourages new approaches that enhance democracy and equity in public education. Meier is on the editorial board of Dissent magazine, The Nation and the Harvard Education Letter. She is a Board member of the Educational Alliance, the Association of Union Democracy, Educators for Social Responsibility, the Panasonic Foundation, and a founding member of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards, the North Dakota Study Group on Evaluation and the Forum for Democracy and Education, among others.

Meier was born April 6, 1931 in New York City; she attended Antioch College (1949-51) and received an MA in History from the University of Chicago (1955). She has received honorary degrees from Bank Street College of Education, Brown, Bard, Clark, Teachers College of Columbia University, Dartmouth, Harvard, Hebrew Union College, Hofstra, The New School, Lesley College, SUNY Albany, UMASS Lowell, and Yale. She was a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 1987.

Her books, The Power of Their Ideas, Lessons to America from a Small School in Harlem (1995), Will Standards Save Public Education (2000), In Schools We Trust (2002), Keeping School, with Ted and Nancy Sizer (2004) and Many Children Left Behind (2004) are all published by Beacon Press.

Ms. Meier’s weekly blog, Bridging Differences, a collaboration with Diane Ravitch is a must-read for educators and those serious about the future of American democracy.

Visit the Constructivist Consortium’s Deborah Meier bookstore powered by Amazon.com

James Loewen’s gripping retelling of American history as it should, and could, be taught, Lies My Teacher Told Me, has sold more than 800,000 copies and continues to inspire K-16 teachers to get students to challenge, rather than memorize, their textbooks. Loewen’s most recent book, Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History, helps teachers learn to teach history more authentically based on inquiry and access to primary sources.

A sociologist who spent two years at the Smithsonian surveying twelve leading high school textbooks of American history only to find an embarrassing blend of bland optimism, blind nationalism, and plain misinformation, weighing in at an average of 888 pages and almost five pounds. A best-selling author who wrote Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong and Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong. A researcher who discovered that many, and in many states most communities were “Sundown Towns” that kept out blacks (and sometimes other groups) for decades. (Some still do.) An educator who attended Carleton College, holds the Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University, and taught race relations for twenty years at the University of Vermont.

Jim Loewen taught race relations for twenty years at the University of Vermont. Previously he taught at predominantly black Tougaloo College in Mississippi. He now lives in Washington, D.C., continuing his research on how Americans remember their past. Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong came out in 1999. The Gustavus Myers Foundation named his new book, Sundown Towns, a “Distinguished Book of 2005.”

His other books include Mississippi: Conflict and Change (co authored), which won the Lillian Smith Award for Best Southern Nonfiction but was rejected for public school text use by the State of Mississippi, leading to the path breaking First Amendment lawsuit, Loewen et al. v. Turnipseed, et al. He also wrote The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White, Social Science in the Courtroom, and The Truth About Columbus.

He has been an expert witness in more than 50 civil rights, voting rights, and employment cases. His awards include the First Annual Spivack Award of the American Sociological Association for “sociological research applied to the field of intergroup relations,” the American Book Award (for Lies My Teacher Told Me), and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship. He is also Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians.

Read the James Loewen Wikipedia entry.

Born in Toronto, Canada, Peter H. Reynolds shared his entry into the world with his twin brother Paul. Together, they started writing and “publishing” their own books, comic books and newspapers somewhere around the age of seven with the help of their father’s Savin office photocopier. After spending his secondary school years as writer and illustrator of literary magazines, newspapers and his own work, Peter attended the Massachusetts College of Art and Fitchburg State College where Peter received Communications Student of The Year Award in 1983, and Distinguished Alumni Award in 1999.

In 1996, Peter transitioned from his 13 year career as vice president and creative director of Tom Snyder Productions, a leading educational software producer and publisher, to create a brand new kind of animation studio. As Chairman of the Board/Founder of FableVision, Peter produces award-winning children’s broadcast programming, educational videos and multimedia applications.

Peter is also an accomplished writer, storyteller and illustrator, and brings his enthusiasm and energy to every project he creates.

While Peter H. Reynolds is indeed an artist and author, he would rather be known for his mission: to use media to tell stories that matter and challenge us to reach our full potential.

Peter’s best-selling books about protecting and nurturing the creative spirit include The Dot, Ish, and So Few of Me (Candlewick Press). His cornerstone work, The North Star (FableVision), an allegory that raises questions about how to seek out our own unique path through life, has inspired children of all ages around the world as a book, curriculum and musical. The SugarLoaf book series (Simon & Schuster), My Very Big Little World and The Best Kid in the World, are the first of Peter’s many books about an irrepressible little girl who sees the world through creative-colored glasses.

The film version of The Dot (Weston Woods) went on to win the American Library Association’ (ALA’s) Carnegie Medal of Excellence for the Best Children’s Video of 2005 and the film version of Ish was announced as one of ALA’s 2006 Notable Children’s Videos. His other series of original, animated film shorts, including The Blue Shoe, Living Forever and He Was Me, have won many awards and honors around the globe.

Peter’s award-winning publishing work also includes illustrating New York Times #1 Best Seller children’s book, Someday (Simon & Schuster), written by Alison McGhee – a “storybook for all ages” that celebrates the potential we see in our children and the yearning for them to live life to its fullest. In addition, Peter illustrated the New York Times best-selling Judy Moody series (Candlewick) written by Megan McDonald, Eleanor Estes’ The Alley and The Tunnel of Hugsy Goode, Judy Blume’s Fudge series (Dutton), and Ellen Potter’s Olivia Kidney books.

Peter has made his mark in many ways, including founding the Emmy award-winningFableVision, with his twin brother, Paul. FableVision is a turn-key educational media developer and publisher committed to creating positive programming/ products that help all learners navigate their full potential. With offices in Boston, MA, Dedham, MA, Portland, OR, and London, the FableVision team enjoys an international reputation for its unique brand of innovative, technology-delivered storytelling and learning. FableVision’s most popular products include Stationery Studio and Get A Clue, as well as BrainCogs and Essay Express, which were produced in collaboration with Research Institude for Learning and Development. children’s multimedia company,

In 2007, Peter received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from his undergraduate alma mater, Fitchburg State College, in recognition of his “substantial contributions to education and the arts.”

Much of Peter’s spare time is spent giving back to the community ~ revitalizing the businesses in his beloved town, Dedham Square, supporting schools, and serving on the board of several non-profit organizations, such as Horizons for Homeless Children, Everybody Winds Metro Boston and the Dedham Historical Society.

Learn more about Peter, his books and his art by visiting his personal Web site at http://www.peterhreynolds.com.

Dr. Solomon directed the creation of educational materials for the
One Laptop Per Child Foundation. Before that she was the Technology Integration Coordinator at Monsignor Haddad Middle School in Needham, MA and before that taught at Milton Academy for seven years. She is a pioneer in the fields of artificial intelligence, computer science and educational computing. 40 years ago while at Bolt, Beranek & Newman, Cynthia, along with Seymour Papert and Wally Feurzig created the first programming language for children, Logo,. She was Vice President of R&D for Logo Computer Systems, Inc. when Apple Logo was developed and was the Director of the prestigious Atari Cambridge Research Laboratory. Dr. Solomon has maintained a long relationship with the MIT Media Lab and the One Laptop Per Child Foundation in addition to her teaching, consulting and scholarship. Her doctoral research at Harvard led to the publication of the critical book, Computer Environments for Children: A Reflection on Theories of Learning and Education. Cynthia Solomon is also the co-author of Designing Multimedia Environments for Children, with Allison Drum.

Cynthia Solomon’s archive of classic videos about learning and computers, Logothings, may be found here.

Since the late 1970s, Brian Silverman has been involved in the invention of software learning environments for children. His work includes dozens of Logo versions (including LogoWriter & MicroWorlds), Scratch, LEGO robotics and the PicoCricket. An incomparable presenter, Brian is a Consulting Scientist to the MIT Media Lab, a brilliant mathematician, computer scientist and master tinkerer. He once even built a tic-tac-toe playing computer out of TinkerToys.

Sylvia Martinez is a veteran of interactive entertainment and educational software industries, with over a decade of design and publishing experience. She is currently President of Generation YES. Prior to joining Generation YES, Sylvia oversaw product development, design and programming as Vice President of Development for Encore Software, a publisher of game and educational software on PC, Internet and console platforms. Sylvia was also involved in the company’s Internet initiatives, including Math.com, the award-winning web site that provides math help to students worldwide.

For seven previous years, Sylvia was an executive producer at Davidson & Associates/Knowledge Adventure, a leading educational software developer. She designed, developed and launched dozens of software titles including Math Blaster: Algebra, Math Blaster: Geometry and Maurice Ashley Teaches Chess. In addition, she was responsible for Educast – the first Internet service for teachers that provided teachers with free news, information and classroom resources.

Before Davidson & Associates, Martinez spent six years at Magnavox Research Labs, where she developed high-frequency receiver systems and navigation software for GPS satellites.

Sylvia has been a featured speaker at national education technology conferences in areas ranging from the use of the Internet in schools, Web 2.0 technologies, student leadership, project-based and inquiry-based learning with technology and gender issues in science, math, engineering and technology (STEM) education. She holds a Master’s in Educational Technology from Pepperdine University , and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles. Read Sylvia’s blog here.

According to Gary Stager, “John Stetson is the finest educator I’ve ever met and a tireless champion for powerless children.” For more than a decade, John Stetson has worked as a daily volunteer teacher, collaborator and advocate for incarcerated teenagers within Southern Maine’s juvenile prison. He worked side-by-side with Seymour Papert, Gary Stager and MIT’s David Cavallo during the creation and three year life of The Constructionist Learning Laboratory at the Maine Youth Center and continues working in the renamed facility nearly every day.

In addition to teaching kids to build guitars, robots, telescopes and to fall in love with astronomy, Stetson has arranged for college courses to be offered to at-risk high school students and has spearheaded the creation of an instrumental music program in a facility where one would not have otherwise existed. John Stetson is a father of three and holds a Masters degree in educational technology from Pepperdine University