Saturday morning on the campus of UVM could not have been more picturesque, with fall foliage on full display, the University green festooned with nature’s palette of reds, yellows, and oranges, a colorful canopy of welcome to the many alumni and friends who had returned to the campus to celebrate the University’s 223-year existence.

In Memorial Lounge, the College of Education and Social Service faculty and staff were on hand to welcome returning CESS alumni, students, and parents, who had gathered for a breakfast reception, and the occasion to honor and hear from several current students present on their research opportunities and travel experiences undertaken as CESS students.  

Greeting were offered by Cindy Gerstl-Pepin, Associate Dean of the College of Education and Social Service, who welcomed those in attendance and introduced faculty and staff in the room. She explained that the background music heard as people gathered was a piece entitled, “Eastern Themes,” composed by David Jacob Lester, CESS Music Education major, in collaboration with students at the Inner Mongolia University College of the Arts, in Huhot, China, while traveling there with other CESS students as part of the college’s travel abroad program.

Dean Fayneese Miller in her remarks extended the Homecoming welcome, saying she was thrilled to see so many in the room who had decided to spend the morning at CESS’s reception.  “We have some great students and faculty” she said, “who are here and are going to share with you what they are doing in the college.” She explained that CESS students are actively involved in research, and are encouraged to participate in the global aspect of the college, so when leaving they have a greater understanding of difference, now so important in navigating and meeting the complex challenges they will face in today’s world.  “Knowing how to teach young people who come from different backgrounds, understanding that the world is no longer in the place you are, but beyond borders that have been broken down, shattered, even crushed,” she said, to emphasize her point that the experience of teachers today is not limited to communicating to someone in the same classroom or the same school but to a global community unimagined as crucial even a few short years ago.

Dean Miller introduced the morning’s student and faculty presenters who she said would showcase the importance of research opportunities and global citizenry experiences offered by the college, and the integration of both into the CESS curriculum. 

First to the podium to report on their international experiences were Kyla McNally-Anderson and Alanna Merchant, both seniors in CESS’s Elementary Education program.  Each student for her semester abroad studied at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT), in Auckland New Zealand, with whom CESS has a program partnership.  Kyla said she initially wanted to go to Australia, but when she learned of the program created for Elementary Education majors in New Zealand by Ellen Baker, CESS Director of Teacher Education, she jumped at the opportunity.  “The program,” she said, “is set up for education students, where I was able to teach in a 5^th grade classroom and take classes I needed for graduation.” She singled out a class she took in Maori culture, where she met students with whom she remains in contact. “I wanted to push my self out of my comfort zone and live in a place on my own that was completely different to me.  Overall, I wouldn’t change a single thing about my experience and where I went.” 

Alanna followed with her own experience, saying, “I was able to student teach in a primary school with five-year olds, which was one of my best experiences I had there.  I was also able to take education courses similar to those I would have taken in CESS, as well as Maori leadership course, which proved to be one of the most interesting and useful course I have ever taken.”  She recounted how she was able to travel and explore both the North and South Islands of New Zealand, as well as visit Fiji and Australia.  As did Kyla. 

Both students agreed that they learned a great deal from their travel experiences.  “I learned so much about myself as a person while abroad,” Kyla said. “I opened myself up to meeting new and different people from all over the world.”  She explained how living with two Norwegian roommates “opened her eyes to yet another culture, allowing me to learn about their way of life and other things I had always wondered about.”  Alanna echoed Kyla’s learning curve experience.  She too, said, “I learned incredible amounts about myself, about New Zealand as a country and its culture, and about teaching during my time there.” 

Both also said their academic experiences taught them a lot, each gaining new perspectives in their classes on both teaching and education that they asserted would help make them better teachers.

Next to the podium was Lilly Callahan, a graduate student in the Early Childhood Special Education program.  Llly talked about her research into homelessness and early intervention programs undertaken with Jennifer Hurley, CESS Associate Professor of Education, and program coordinator for the Early Childhood Special Education Undergraduate and Graduate Programs.  “What drew me to my current project was its importance as an issue around the country, where almost one quarter of the homeless population are children under the age of six.”  The work she is doing with Dr. Hurley, she said, “in gathering information about promising practices and challenges involved in collaborating with families who are homeless and receiving early intervention services,” will prove vital to support those providing early intervention services. The problem in getting services to this population in need, she continued, is often made more difficult given that many of the children have disabilities, which compound the need for services.

Lilly said one takeaway from her experience is an appreciation that “everyday activities that most people take for granted are almost always day-to-day struggles for people who are homeless, let alone having a child with a developmental delay, and finding resources to help.” Her work with Early Intervention teachers in the field has opened her to the ways these special educational professionals work with families and their efforts to support infants and toddlers with disabilities, using a ‘home visit’ model, which redefines the notion of ‘home.’ 

Lilly had special praise for CESS in offering strong graduate student research opportunities and academic projects with faculty.  “Without opportunities for research, a student could get lost being one of many in a class or program.  Fortunately CESS offers a unique and special experience for its graduate students to work collaboratively with professors,” who are passionate about the work that they are doing.

The final student to the podium was Lila Gilbreath, a senior in Secondary Education, Mathematics major. Lily recounted how she became involved in the research she is doing with her advisor Carmen Petrick Smith, CESS Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education.  “When a sophomore, I took a class with Dr. Smith in ‘Technology in Education,’ and she asked me if I’d be interested in helping with the research she was doing regarding computer games in math classes.” For the remainder of her sophomore year she spent collecting data and making observations about student engagement and behavior while working on a computer game designed to help students better understand fractions.

During her Junior year, she said, “I worked with Dr. Smith on a new game designed to study student understanding of angles,” which afforded her the opportunity “to go into a local elementary school classroom to implement the game with students, one on one, and to interview them about the ways the game affected their understanding of ‘angles.’”

Lila said that the work she started with Dr. Smith is now the subject of her Honors Thesis.  With Dr. Smith’s guidance, she said, she is continuing her research with a project she planned and designed into Teacher Pedagogy and Student Engagement.  Saying that “the use of technology in the classroom is unavoidable, and to dismiss it would be a disservice to students, but more importantly, its implementation must be done in ways that insure its benefit to the students using it.”  She concluded, “The research Dr. Smith and others are doing is incredibly important to the future of education.  I know I will implement a variety of technologies in my classroom in the future, and look forward to learning more and different ways to do so.”

Next up to the podium was Alan Tinkler, CESS Assistant Professor in the Secondary Education program. Alan continued the presentation thread of pedagogy and engagement started with the students, commenting first on several slides taken during a trip to China and Inner Mongolia with Lila and Tegan Garon, also a CESS Secondary Education Math student.  To segue way into his remarks, Dr Tinkler highlighted one slide showing the profound respect for heritage in Inner Mongolia, featuring the horse as a powerful image both of the past and of China’s charge into the future.  It was this ‘charge into the future’ that he said constituted the bulk of the time spent in partnership with faculty and students at the Inner Mongolia Normal University. 

“For the past several years,” he said, “there has been a robust exchange program with the Inner Mongolia Arts College in the Inner Mongolia Normal University.  This past year,” he continued, “Dean Miller challenged students and faculty to identify research opportunities that built upon this existing partnership.”  And so he and Lila and Tegan put together a proposal for a research project conducted with those at the Inner Mongolia Normal University to talk about engaged pedagogy and engaged learning.

“The interest in China,” he said, “grew out of an article that Dr. Carmen Smith shared with Lila and Tegan, which demonstrated something interesting about math instruction in China.  That interesting something,” he said, “is a commitment to developing a conceptual understanding of math over procedural process, work that is consistent with what you heard about earlier from Lila with respect to engaged learning in mathematics instruction. Lily and Tegan were eager to explore the Chinese system so they put together the proposal that was subsequently accepted. 

“Not surprising,” Dr. Tinkler said, “the proposal included references to John Dewey, a graduate of the University of Vermont in 1879, and who is held in high regard in China for his commitment to experiential education.  In mathematics education you see his influence resonating across the spectrum of engaged learning.”  And so the trip was an opportunity, he said, to share and exchange the pedagogical thinking that is happening within our secondary education math program about enquiry and engaged learning, and then to examine and see how this is being developed and played out in China.

Dr. Tinkler told of one remarkable experience they had, where sitting in on a calculus class conducted in Chinese, Lila and Tegan were able to follow the lecture, tracking the mathematics and getting a sense of how the lecture being delivered really worked to enhance conceptual understanding. 

Dr. Tinkler couldn’t end his presentation without demonstrating the difference between procedural process and conceptual understanding.  Taking a paper poster board from beneath the podium, he started with a simple equation which he solved with what he called, his “good friend FOIL*,” at which there was a murmur of recognition from the audience. But when offered a more complex equation, now moving to his next poster page, “FOIL fails,” he said, as laughter rippled through the room.  Turning serious, he said, “One important thing about the inquiry method is that it posits an idea about how to think about math problems, by bringing students together to solve the problem in a fashion that provides a method that is useful for subsequent instruction, by enhancing ones conceptual understanding of the problem.  A method developed in the engaged inquiry process,” he said, “allows not only for the problem to be solved, but also to be extended into problems across the domain, a radical shift from the procedural process method,” still commonly in use in today’s classrooms.

Dr. Tinkler concluded his remarks by expressing his gratitude to Dean Miller for challenging students and faculty to imagine meaningful exchange opportunities.  And to Lila Gilbreath and Tegan Garon for sharing this opportunity to travel to China to see first hand what is happening with math instruction in China, and to share comparable work being done at CESS.

Following a short question and answer session, the program came to an end. 

* In elementary algebra, FOIL is a memory aid for the standard method of multiplying two binomials.