Introducing Teachers College
Letter from the President
As both an alumna of Teachers College and its new president, I welcome you to the nation's oldest and largest graduate school of education -- a place whose founding vision was to bring educational opportunities to all members of society, and whose faculty and students, time and again during more than a century of leadership, have demonstrated the power of ideas to change the world.
Our legacy is the work of a long list of thinkers and doers that includes James Russell and John Dewey; Lawrence Cremin and Maxine Greene; Edmund Gordon and Isabel Maitland Stewart; Mary Swartz Rose and Morton Deutsch; Arthur Wesley Dow and William Heard Kilpatrick.
These are people who created fields of inquiry. At Teachers College today, our work is about living up to their legacy by ensuring that we not only build knowledge, but enhance its impact by engaging directly with the policymakers and practitioners who will put it to use. Because of our preeminence, it is both our privilege and our obligation to focus our coursework and our research on the questions of the day in each of the fields we serve. To that end, we favor no ideology or single methodology, but instead seek answers that meet the genuine needs of teachers and other practitioners, and the children they ultimately serve.
Whether you plan to teach, conduct research, serve as an administrator, or pursue a career in health or psychology -- or even if you are already active in one of these fields -- at Teachers College, you are undertaking a journey that will change your life and the lives of others by unlocking the wonders of human potential.
As you explore this catalogue, I urge you to remember that the education you will receive at Teachers College is as much about the people you will meet -- your professors and your fellow students -- as it is about the knowledge you will find in books. So as you join with us in our work, open your hearts as well as your minds. Only then will you truly be able to say -- as I proudly do -- that you have learned everything you needed to know at Teachers College.
Susan Fuhrman,
President
Teachers College, Columbia University
More on the Experiences of Muslim Students in NYC Public Schools
The Daily News reports on a study by TC faculty member Louis Cristillo, which shows, among other things, that Muslim students in New York City are more likely to get attacked for their religion on the street, in stores and in restaurants than in the city's public schools. Preliminary results of the study were released last year. Published: 1/4/2009
Teachers College's experts recommend how to identify and deliver education to gifted students.
A report written by experts at Columbia University's Teachers College presented recently to West Hartford's Board of Education by recommended district leaders to rethink how they identify and deliver education to gifted students. Published: 12/29/2008
American Muslim Teenagers: Torn Between Religion and Culture
Dr Louis Abdellatif Cristillo, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, studied experiences of Muslim boys and girls in New York City public high schools in a recently completed three-year research initiative. Published: 12/21/2008
Alert: How Does Your School Present Islam to Students?
Last month the School Library Journal blog "Nonfiction Matters," published a post, "Alert: How Does Your School Present Islam to Students?" quoting Sandhya Nankani, who was hired by Louis Cristillo, an assistant research professor at TC, to develop a curriculum guide for TC Student Press Initiative's volume of Muslim youth oral histories, "This is Where I Need to Be," published last spring. On Thursday, Nankani writes in "Nonfiction Matters" as a guest blogger with "Great Resources on Islam, and Being a Young Muslim in America." Published: 12/18/2008
Plot Twist: The Newbery May Dampen Kids' Reading
Lucy Calkins: "I can't help but believe that thousands, even millions, more children would grow up reading if the Newbery committee aimed to spotlight books that are deep and beautiful and irresistible to kids" Published: 12/16/2008
Study details the power of negative racial stereotypes
Changes in social standing such as falling below the poverty line or going to jail made people more likely to be perceived as black and less likely to be seen as white, researchers say. Published: 12/9/2008