Letters to the Editor

Attention Deserved

Focusing attention on the special education needs of Native Americans with your inspiring article (fall 2008) about Darrell Robes Kipp’s work is most commendable. As a Harvard Business School alum, I have had the privilege of directing an educational resource program at the University of North Carolina School of Education, which has developed an extensive collection of resources for teaching about the history and culture of Native Americans. In North Carolina this is a required element of our social studies curriculum. Perhaps this databank of lesson plans, articles, and the very best websites would be of use to other educators. It can be found at www.learnnc.org.

Jim Barber
Director emeritus, LEARN NC, UNC-Chapel Hill School of Education

I found the article on the Native American language extremely interesting, as an English person having visited Montana. Karen Ogden is obviously a very talented writer. She also happens to be my cousin’s daughter, and I have met her once but hope to return [to Montana] next year.

Edith Both

I thoroughly enjoyed your article, “Kipp’s Trip.” His endeavor to maintain his native language was noble and heartfelt. It is my belief that those who have a clear connection with their heritage — be it through language, artifacts, or history — experience a renewed sense of pride, belonging, purpose, and hope for the future.

Janis Hines Mallard

Let’s Dance?

I enjoyed Lory Hough’s profile of Howard Gardner in the fall 2008 issue of Ed., and I was unsurprised to read that many students find Gardner intimidating. Besides bearing the weight of his reputation, Professor Gardner has been a stickler for (relatively) old-fashioned academic standards amid some equally prominent colleagues who are radically rethinking the teacher-student relationship and the nature of academic evaluation. In fall 1997, I took Gardner’s popular course on cognitive psychology simultaneously with Professor Carol Gilligan’s even more popular course, A Radical Geography of the Psyche. Students enrolled in both courses quickly discovered that unlike Gilligan, Gardner was unwilling to entertain any suggestion that any final paper be delivered in the form of an interpretive dance.

Jay Gabler, Ed.M.’98

Rural Needs

I am from Korea. I was interested in the story “Boon, Not Boondock” (fall 2008) by Elaine McArdle. I experienced both rural and urban schools, and I know how they are different and, in my experience, how inferior rural school systems are, thus I would like to study education for unprivileged people and create special education programs in museums, art centers, schools, and various community centers. Differences in life can be derived from the lack of human studies such as art, music, literacy, history, and philosophy.

Yaejin Lim

Love Letter

I enjoyed reading the stories of love at the Ed School (fall 2008) as I fondly recalled our own. Peter Wood, Ed.M.’89, and I were seated one row apart in Kent Chabotar’s class, Financial Management and Control of Nonprofit Organizations — a very romantic setting, indeed — when we met in 1988. He had come from Nairobi, Kenya, and I from Cheyenne, Wyoming. East meets West, you could say. Maybe it was because our cultural backgrounds were so different, or maybe because it was a little romantic, we wrote letters to one another during our year at HGSE. We delivered them on the sly — I’d put one in a stack of books belonging to him; he’d drop one in my bike basket parked outside my fallingdown flat; or one of us would stash one in an empty carrel in Gutman knowing the other was heading that way. Twenty years later we are still in love, made all the richer over the last 10 years by the raising of our daughter, Bella. Although it’s been many years since I last wrote a love letter to Peter, maybe when he reads this it will have the same surprise effect it had in Cambridge.

Libby Crews Wood, Ed.M.’89

Wrong Read

Many thanks for mentioning my latest book, The Body in the Gallery (fall 2008), but I’d like to correct the entry. It’s an adult mystery, not young adult, although the series is popular with and appropriate for teens. I did write four juvenile mysteries some years ago and currently have a young adult novel, Club Meds, out from Simon & Schuster. The protagonist is a ninth-grade learning disabled boy who is bullied. I’ve always been grateful for the encouragement about my writing that I received from David Cohen, Jay Featherstone, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Ed.D.’72, Chuck Willie, and the late Inabeth Miller while I was at the Ed School. I think they knew before I did the interesting detour my career would take, a detour that became a permanent path.

Katherine Hall Page, Ed.D.’85

Let’s Coordinate

If we want our students to achieve at high levels, common sense and research dictate that they must first be healthy. Students who are malnourished, who have asthma or poor vision, or who are struggling emotionally are unlikely to succeed academically. Kudos to Ed. for dedicating its summer 2008 issue to the link between health and education. As the executive director of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), an organization representing 175,000 educators worldwide, I commend you for your comprehensive coverage of this topic, especially in areas that are frequently overlooked in health-related discussions, such as teacher-student connectedness, the quiet problems, and violence. One topic area was overlooked, however: the importance of a coordinated approach to school health that addresses the physical, emotional, intellectual, and social well-being of students and staff. ASCD’s Healthy School Communities is one such example. Using our approach, school health teams and district health councils convene stakeholders from the community and school — including students — to develop action plans. The result? Schools in the United States and Canada that engage the community to identify and address school health ensure that service delivery is well coordinated, a full range of comprehensive resources have been identified, and that duplication of effort is eliminated. Our ultimate goal is to help schools and communities work together to create healthy environments that support learning and teaching.

Education is one of the most successful public health strategies. We commend Ed. for helping to recast the definition of a successful learner — moving from one whose achievement is measured solely by academic tests to one who is knowledgeable, emotionally and physically healthy, civically engaged, prepared for economic self-sufficiency, and ready for the world beyond formal schooling.

Gene Carter
Executive Director, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

Disorderly

I read with interest your interview with Neal Baer, Ed.M.’79 (summer 2008), and though I respect his commitment to educate important medical and psychiatric issues through entertainment, I am dismayed that the depiction of Sally Field’s character confirmed many of the stereotypes of people living with bipolar disorder. Presently, the prevailing view is mostly occupied with despair, danger, and drain, particularly in the wake of such incidents as last summer’s Virginia Tech campus shooting in the United States. Little media attention is paid to acknowledging those who contribute to the social good in spite of, or because of, living with a mental health condition. A case in point, Time magazine’s 100 list two years ago featured Dr. Craig Venter, the genome maverick. Though he has quite publicly self-described himself as having bipolar disorder, there was no word of this in the article. The Patrick Kennedys and Kay Redfied Jamisons are too often judged as exceptions rather than the rule. Largely missing in the public discourse is the recognition that many people successfully manage their mental health issues.

Who might be inspired to seek treatment or create structures for wellness if there were more discussion? Even without modern treatments for depression, Abraham Lincoln served as president of the United States and Winston Churchill as prime minister of England.

Lucinda Jewell, Ed.M.’80
President, Depression Bipolar Support Alliance - Boston

Correction: In last issue’s In the Media section, we listed author Barbara Miller’s degree year as ’75. Miller, in fact, received her master’s in ’91.