Stories about students and alumni

As a student in the Mind, Brain, and Education Program at HGSE, Jenny Woo often found herself wishing that other parents could hear what she was hearing in her classes. “It would ease the angst,” says Woo, Ed.M.’18. She knows that today’s busy parents can feel overwhelmed by an internet-driven world filled with information, opinions, and “expert” advice on how to raise children. The questioning and doubt that sometimes results can be paralyzing. “As a parent, you want to know what is right,” says Woo, a school administrator, cognitive neuroscience researcher, and a parent herself. But raising...

Get into college, and earn your degree: these are the hopes, and often the explicit instructions, of parents who aspire to see their children achieve a college education. But is graduating from high school enough to prepare a student for the transition to college? For affluent students, the answer is obvious. Campus visits, summer camps, afterschool activities, and internships aren’t optional; they provide the experience necessary to succeed in college and thrive in the workplace. After four years of teaching AP World History and AP Psychology in a predominantly low socio-economic area of...

As director of an instructional design education company, Heather Miller, Ed.M.’00, spends a lot of time in classrooms and sees a lot of tired students. She wasn’t surprised with older kids, but when she started seeing more and more sleepy elementary students, she knew something was going on. After talking to these kids, it became clear that technology was partly at fault. “These young children were playing video games or interacting with screens until quite late in the evening,” she says. Even kids who went to bed earlier had difficulty falling asleep, possibly due to blue light from devices...

Sara Trail, Ed.M.’17, learned to sew from her mother and grandmother when she was just four. She was so good at it that by the time she was 11, she was teaching classes of 20 to 30 other kids on Sundays at her church through the Grace Temple Sewing Studio, which she started. It was fun and a way to make simple things like pillows and tote bags. Two years later, she wrote a book called Sew with Sara, produced a related video, and even had her own collection of designs for Simplicity patterns. Eventually, parents asked her to lead sewing activities at birthday parties. But then when she was 17...

Want to make your students or kids laugh? Considering standup comedy to supplement your education salary? Jane Condon, Ed.M.’74, author of the new cartoon book, Chardonnay Moms, shares five secrets about her own success touring the country and appearing on shows like The View and Today  as a professional standup comedian. Nuns can be helpful. “This is where I learned in high school to pass notes and whisper funny jokes. Thank you, Sister Mary Conleth, Sister Magdocia, Sister Vincentia, Sister Rose Immaculata, Sister Marylena. But biggest thanks to Sister Edwardette who scared me daily. No...

In April, author Jean Marzollo, M.A.T.’65, died. Marzollo was the author of 150 books, including her most famous, the I SPY series, where readers try to find objects within photographs taken by Walter Wick. In honor of Marzollo, we decided to rerun a Q&A we did with her that ran in our summer 2010 issue. Jean Marzollo, M.A.T.'65, considers herself lucky that she graduated from the Ed School at the time that she did. "It was the late '60s, a boom time for early childhood education," she says, citing the creation of both Head Start (1965) and Sesame Street (1969) as examples. During this...

Long before recent graduates Sade Abraham, Ed.M.’18, and Diana Saintil, Ed.M.’18, arrived at HGSE, they wondered whether there was a way to change the outcomes for low-income, first-generation college-goers by giving them the tools to thrive in academia. The statistics bothered them: College graduation rates linger at 14 percent for students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds compared to 60 percent for students from high-socioeconomic backgrounds. Also, many students from low-income backgrounds who make it to college drop out within the first six-to-eight weeks on campus. As they soon...

Beginning today, June 7, and running until June 10, the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge will host several performances of Bluelaces' original production, SUDS, which takes the wonders of going to the laundromat and transforms it into an exhilarating adventure filled with water, soap, and bubbles. Find out more about Gertzman’s work, and how her time at HGSE inspired and aligned with her passion for theater.

The Saul Zaentz Fellows Program is designed for Ed School students enrolled full-time in the Ed.L.D. Program or one of the 13 master’s programs, who demonstrate continued commitment to early education. The 10 students in the inaugural cohort have just completed their fellowship year, which included a variety of field placements that show the diversity of the work currently being done in the field of early education. “The Zaentz Fellowship has given me so much access to knowledge and opportunities related to the latest research in the early education field, and the relationship between that...

Read more from Jaclyn Eichenberger, Ed.M.'18, and Lena Jeong, Ed.M.'18, at Usable Knowledge: "Getting Out of the EL Silos."