The Making of Lecturer Terry Tivnan

Posted August 23, 2016
By Terrance Tivnan

As Terry Tivnan noted in a piece he wrote last fall on Medium, he’s been at Harvard a long time. More than five decades to be precise, starting as an undergraduate at the college and eventually teaching “big courses” at the Ed School on educational research and statistics. He remembers learning under famed dean Ted Sizer and the days when Larsen was filled with first-graders from the overcrowded Cambridge Public Schools. Still, when asked to write about his long career, he thought, “I have almost nothing to say.” But sure enough, he started writing and 1,500 words later, he found his story.

1948

I was born and grew up in Salem, Massachusetts, the Witch City. My early teaching experience was giving directions to visitors looking for the Witch Museum or the House of the Seven Gables. Biggest influence on my path? There were lots of educators in my family. My father was a school principal in my hometown, so all of my teachers knew me and my family. (That nudged me toward good behavior in school.) My older siblings set high standards for the rest of us, but they also made school easy for me because they were always talking about what they were learning. I got a head start on almost everything.

1965

I was lucky to attend Harvard College. I met friends who combined being very smart with being very friendly. I loved courses in psychology and child development. My professors included Jerome Bruner, Robert Brown, George Miller — all world-famous scholars — and I got to meet Beatrice Whiting, who was not an official professor because she was a woman, but she later became one of the first female tenured professors at HGSE.

1968

I discovered HGSE. Dean Ted Sizer was teaching a course about public education, and he graciously let me, a lowly undergraduate with no formal experience in education, join the class. I learned that HGSE was a special place at Harvard.

1969

The M.A.T. Program at HGSE — studying to become a teacher was so exciting! Virtually the entire HGSE was involved in that program. The interests ranged from kindergarten through grade 12, so some students were learning to become high school math teachers, some were working on middle school social studies, and some of us, like me, were learning about beginning reading in elementary school. Almost everyone was combining coursework with practice teaching. “So what is your placement?” was an instant conversation starter. Or even better: “So have you taught a lesson to a real live class?” Everyone was nervous about moving from observing classes taught by master teachers to being the one at the front of the room. We knew we had a lot to learn!

Fun fact: I got to do some of my practice teaching right in Larsen Hall. The Cambridge Public Schools were crowded, and Harvard provided a bit of help by allowing a first-grade classroom on the lower level of Larsen. What fun it was to have a classroom of first-graders right here on Appian Way. It put everyone in a good mood. The children loved being in the Larsen Hall castle. We took field trips to Gutman Library. We should try this again!

1970

Teaching first grade! Fun, exciting, demanding, and exhausting. It was an amazing experience. I was lucky to be with a supportive principal (thank you, Don Pierson) and wonderful teacher colleagues. Lots of field trips and projectbased learning. Lots of nonworksheet math lessons. Lots of creative ways to teach reading and writing.

1974

Back at HGSE in the doctoral program. I loved Professor Dick Light’s statistics course, and I was lucky to become one of his TFs the following year. I enjoyed all of the research courses and discovered I was good at translating and interpreting research ideas so they could be tools for colleagues doing education research. For me this was another kind of teaching.

1980

Someone was needed to teach a course at the Ed School on research methods, and I was asked to do it. I was worried that teaching a course might delay progress toward my own graduation, but Professor Courtney Cazden carefully pointed out to me that this was a special opportunity and I would be wise to accept. I am glad I listened to her advice.

2016

Fast (fast) forward, I am very proud to have taught courses that have been popular for students getting started in statistics and research. I love my big courses. We have new statistical software and apps for teaching our students, but many of the fundamental ideas are the same as those that were part of my courses years ago. My background teaching first grade always comes in handy. Every year I learn something new about research and statistics from my students. I hope they get to learn something about how to be a good teacher.