Slovakia and More
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a series of features on recipients of the Judith Oliver Brown Memorial Award. The award, named after the late 1963 Keuka graduate, is supported by Brown’s family and the Class of ’63. It is designed to assist students pursuing culturally-oriented Field Periods.
What began as a Skype session with high school students in Assistant Professor of Education Klaudia Lorinczova’s native country of Slovakia last year has turned into a Field Period opportunity for Keuka students.
The students will have the chance to travel to Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Austria during a summer Field Period.
Junior Tyler Kroon is among those who will travel to the three European Union countries.
“I’ve been fortunate to grow up as part of a family who places a high value on experiencing other cultures, so after reading about Judith Oliver Brown, I was excited to discover her love for travel, too,” said Kroon, a unified childhood/special education major from Canandaigua.
And while Kroon may be a seasoned traveler—he’s been to such countries as Italy, Fiji, and New Zealand, among others—he expects this Field Period to be “especially eye-opening.
“We will have the opportunity visit the high school we began Skyping with, so we will have the chance to interact with those Slovakian students,” he said. “This is particularly interesting to me because I believe that our education in the U.S. is narrowly focused. I would like to bring my experiences from schools in other countries into my future classroom to provide my students with a more culturally diverse education.”
Kroon and others on the trip will tour local landmarks, town centers, castles, and manor houses. The group will also explore the cities of Prague, Nitra, Banska Stiavnia, and tour the United States Embassy in Bratislava.
“Not only do I want to learn about the culture and history of the three countries we will visit, I want to develop the ability to function and interact with the people who live there,” said Kroon. “And I want to gain an understanding of important historical and political events that have helped shape Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Austria.”
Kroon is also interested in art, “so this trip will be an amazing opportunity to take photographs of castles and other sights unique to central Europe. I’m especially hoping for free time on this trip to people-watch and sketch scenes from the various places we’ll be learning about.”
Snapshot of a Graduate: Katlyn Rosenbauer
Where can a Keuka degree take you? This is the 10th in a series of snapshot profiles on members of Keuka’s Class of 2012.
Bloomfield resident Katlyn Rosenbauer
Katlyn Rosenbauer ’12 graduated magna cum laude in May with a degree in unified childhood and special education with an emphasis in child and family studies.
The Bloomfield resident credited personal and professional connections made with Keuka faculty, staff and Field Period internship supervisors for molding her into the educator she is today. According to Rosenbauer, her student teaching “sponsor”, Kelly Donlon, a first-grade teacher in the Prattsburgh Central School District, gave her a great reference and suggested to the director of Childtime Learning centers in Penfield, N.Y. that Rosenbauer would be a good fit for a job there. While Rosenbauer has been teaching summer curriculum to school-age children at the Penfield center, she’ll become the lead teacher for preschoolers in a few weeks.
“In such a tough job market, having an impressive resume with experience really does put you one-up on everyone else applying for those same jobs post-graduation. That’s where Field Periods come into play,” Rosenbauer said, referring to Keuka’s annual internship program, which provides 140 hours of work experience or exploration each year. “I got this job before graduating which is a great feeling considering the teaching job opportunities in New York state are scarce.”
According to Rosenbauer, Keuka’s “small-school family atmosphere has truly shaped me as a professional. From the amazing education department to Field Periods to the personal connections you make, Keuka has definitely prepared me for the real world.”
To explore what might be in your future with a Keuka degree, request more information
Snapshot of a Graduate: Chris Mazella
Where can a Keuka degree take you? This is the eighth in a series of snapshot profiles on members of Keuka’s Class of 2012.
Chris Mazella earned a master’s degree in literacy this spring, after receiving an undergraduate degree last year in adolescent education with concentrations in social studies and special education.
He is now triple-certified in literacy, special education and social studies, a factor that “thoroughly impressed” the hiring principal at Thompson Middle School in Richmond, Va., where he accepted a post as a special education teacher for students in 7th and 8th grades.
Mazella received invitations to interview for different special education posts in five of the schools within the Richmond Public Schools district after attending a March Teacher Recruitment Day event in Rochester. The Depew resident met representatives from Richmond and stayed in contact after the event. Of the five interviews, he netted three job offers from that district.
But if it weren’t for his first Field Period internship as a freshman, Mazella might never have discovered he was a natural in the classroom. With an interest in journalism, Mazella enrolled at Keuka as an organizational communication major. But his plan to conduct his first Field Period at a newspaper failed to materialize and instead, he found himself exploring the classroom arena.
As they say, the rest is history. He came back to campus, switched his major to adolescent education and never looked back. His work-study supervisor in Keuka’s mailroom was so impressed by the growth she observed over Mazella’s four years that she nominated him for the College’s Experiential Learner of the Year award in 2011.
Mazella said he highly recommends that any student teachers seeking a position out-of-state attend Teacher Recruitment Day, facilitated at Keuka through the Center for Experiential Learning. However, the value of that networking event pales in comparison to “the dedicated faculty that helped us every step of the way,” he said, citing Keuka education professors such as Dr. Andy Beigel, Dr. Pat Pulver, and retired professor Dr. Diane Burke, as well as Dr. Chris Leahy, associate professor of history. Even his student teaching placement supervisor, Thomas Barden of Marcus Whitman High School, helped solidify the kind of teacher Mazella said he hopes to become.
“Without their guidance and support,” said Mazzella, “I would not be where I am today.”
To explore what might be in your future with a Keuka degree, request more information.
Alicia Pakusch a “Tremendous Asset” to Two Divisions
By Amanda Harrison ’12
Editor’s Note: This is the sixth of six profiles of nominees for the 2012 Student Employee of the Year award that will be presented at the Annual Student Employment Awards Luncheon April 16.
Alicia Pakusch, a senior adolescent education major, has received numerous awards and recognitions during her four years at Keuka.
Now, she’s being nominated for another: Student Employee of the Year.
Pakusch, who works for the education and social work divisions, was nominated for the award by her supervisor, Paulette Willemsen, secretary in the education division.
According to Willemsen, Pakusch is “a tremendous asset to the education and social work divisons,” and said she is “dependable, reliable, hard-working, and [comes] to work on time and with a positive attitude. She has excellent communication skills, is extremely organized, reliable, and computer literate.” (more…)
Child Care Credential Offering Expands Job Options
Thanks to its long-running Field Period internship program, and five courses already offered each year, Keuka College will have a near-seamless transition for students – both degree-seeking and non-matriculated –to earn a state credential in early childhood education.
The New York State affiliate of the National Association for the Education of Young Children has offered a credential known as the ITCCC (Infant/Toddler Child Care Credential). In formal documents from the state’s affiliate in Albany, the credential is described as giving “formal recognition of those who display a specialized knowledge of infant and toddler development, the partnership of caregivers with the families of the children in their care and professional practice based on respect for the individuals, the system and themselves.”
Approximately 12 hours of coursework is required by the state in four areas: infant/toddler development (birth to 36 months), family and culture, environment and curriculum, and assessment and evaluation. The state requires applicants to have obtained at least three of those credit hours within the last five years. Additional on-site work experience, known as “field work” and a professional portfolio are also required before an applicant can be awarded the credential, but it could be possible to complete requirements within one year.
Deb Dyer
According to Deb Dyer, assistant professor of education, the credentialing body has already looked at five Keuka courses and confirmed they fulfill the state’s educational component. This means undergraduates may add the credential and the process to obtain it within a degree program they are already pursuing. In addition, those in the work force seeking to add the credential to their resume can also look to Keuka for help, because the College offers courses to non-matriculated students, or those who are not seeking a specific degree.
According to Dyer, the state requires either one year of direct experience caring for infants and toddlers in a licensed setting, or two semesters of supervised “field work” plus six months work experience in a licensed setting. All total, 480 hours of documented work must be completed.
Keuka’s long-running Field Period program, requires each student to complete a 140-hour internship each year at a real-world work site, and would provide nearly half the hours required for the field work component, Dyer said. That means a Keuka student who conducts a Field Period at a child care facility or service site could count that time toward the credential requirement, she said.
A professional portfolio that includes extensive documentation of an applicant’s competency across the four areas of study and across the stages of birth to 36 months is also required. According to Dyer, the portfolio must include documentation across each of the four areas, and the types of documentation must vary at least twice within that, including a photo or video journal, work samples such as communication with families or record-keeping systems, written observation from another person on the candidate’s interaction with infants or toddlers, or an essay discussing an ethical dilemma. Keuka professors would work with applicants and mentor them through submission of the portfolio, Dyer said.
“If they want our help, we can help them with the field work or maybe they have some of the hours already,” she suggested.
According to Dyer, the latest state day care regulations call for one year of specific training for infants and toddlers for those seeking “lead teacher” roles in a day care center, and advises obtaining the new credential. Day care centers in the state are moving towards a “star rating” system, she said, and centers that employ more staff with the credential are more likely to receive higher ratings.
“I think the marketability [of this] is another advantage in a tough market that may put you ahead of the pack,” Dyer said.
For more information on the new credential, go to: www.earlychildhood.org
Teaching Sign Language in Senegal
Nicole Caparulo makes the sign for "Africa," an arc of the hand from left to right.
Editor’s Note: This is the fifth in a series of features on recipients of the Judith Oliver Brown Memorial Award.
Keuka junior Nicole Caparulo of Corning is combining her interests in special education and sign language this month by conducting a Field Period internship at a residential school for deaf children in Senegal, West Africa.
Caparulo is a unified childhood/special education major with a concentration in American Sign Language (ASL), and discovered the West African school through Martha French, associate professor of education. A friend of French’s, Dr. Angela Bednarczyk, worked 20 years at Galludet University’s Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center, and now works as assistant to the educational director at the Renaissance School for the Deaf (L’Ecole Renaissance des Sourds) in Dakar, the capital city of Senegal.
According to Bednarczyk, the Renaissance School for the Deaf was founded in 2007 and follows the Senegalese national curriculum with instruction based on the use of the Francophone West African sign language. The school serves 35 students and has five classrooms, five teachers, and a deaf teacher in training. Each year, students attend whose ages range from 4 to 16.
Caparulo said she expects some elements of ASL will carry over to the sign language used in Senegal, but compared it more to a dialect.
“I am very interested in deaf education, special education, diversity and being open and accepting differences and ways to do things. That plays a major part in education, because you need to be able to do things and experience them,” said Caparulo.
“Special education teaching just stands out for me, along with sign language,” she added. “It’s such a beautiful language, how could I not be drawn to it? It’s always been a passion and now I have an opportunity to learn about it. I’m taking advantage of that. (more…)
Polishing Student Teachers ‘Til They Shine
College President Jorge L. Díaz-Herrera and Mary Ellen Morgan
The Keuka College Adjunct Professor of the Year makes no bones about her strict supervising style. If a student teacher appears to be slacking off and she knows they can do better, Mary Ellen Morgan won’t let up for a minute.
Indeed, when the Penn Yan resident was called to the stage Dec. 11 during Keuka’s mid-year conferral of degrees, a portion of her introduction included comments from a student whose respect Morgan had earned.
“I absolutely hated Mrs. Morgan … Even as I say this, I love her and everything was for my own good. I grew so much with her help and I always knew where I stood. Her criticisms never stopped, but that was a great thing,” the student wrote.
Morgan said she smiled hearing it, because she knew exactly who wrote it, and knew he was capable of more.
“I know that I am hard on the kids,” she said, using her favorite word for the student teachers under her care, “especially the first couple weeks. I wanted him to achieve and I stayed right on him. [Student teaching] is such a short time frame, I want them to get the best of it, so I come down on them because I want to make sure they get their feet in the doors.”
Since 2001, the Penn Yan resident has been supervising student teachers in Keuka’s education division, meeting weekly with them and their mentor teachers on location at schools across Western New York. Student teachers may work in districts from Waterloo to Watkins Glen to Wayland, perhaps as far as 60 miles from the Keuka Park campus. Morgan first “filled” a spot in the supervisor ranks by a friend who moved to Germany and has been involved ever since. Morgan’s daughter graduated from Keuka in 1988, and Morgan’s family moved to the Keuka Lake area full time in 1996. She has also worked with the College Rotoract Club, affiliated with the Rotary Club of America, and took a group of students to Gettysburg last year for a Rotary conference.
Morgan brings a total of 32 years at Elmira City Schools to her work, having taught seven years at the elementary level and 26 years in secondary level classrooms. During many of those years, Morgan served as a sponsor teacher for a semester for young college seniors completing their student teaching rotations. That’s an edge she believes she brings to her supervisory role.
(more…)
Meet New Faculty: Alice Harnischfeger
Editor’s Note: This is the eighth in a series of profiles on new, full-time faculty members.
One of the things that convinced Alice Harnischfeger to apply for a teaching position at Keuka was the same thing that convinced many students to apply for admission: the College’s commitment to experiential learning.
“Though we can learn much from textbooks, nothing in the ‘real world’ is textbook,” said the instructor of education, who has been teaching for more than 20 years. “The world offers myriad experiences and Field Period offers the chance to try a career before graduation so the students can get as much out of the world as they can.”
“The College’s philosophy matches my own, and I like the education department, the friendly atmosphere, and the beautiful campus. I also find the College innovative. I am excited to be here.”
Harnischfeger is completing her dissertation for a Ph.D. in education (with a concentration in teaching and curriculum) at the University of Rochester’s (UR) Warner School of Education.
“I was teaching at Penfield High School while I was a part-time student at Warner,” said Harnischfeger. “But I wanted to have the entire Ph.D. experience, including the opportunity to work on research and collaborate with fellow students more, and the ability to attend informational meetings and lectures more frequently. So, I left Penfield to be a full-time student at the University of Rochester.”
Harnischfeger was “one of those kids who always wanted to be a teacher. The aspect about teaching that is most appealing to me is just simply—and not at all simply—the people. I have always been a ‘people person’ and am fascinated by trying to understand them, both as learners and as individuals.”
After high school, Harnischfeger was told not to go into teaching because she would not find a job, so she pursued a bachelor’s degree in psychology. But the siren song of teaching was too strong to resist, so she volunteered at Rochester School for the Deaf (RSD) before receiving her teaching certification in English, science, and special education.
“I was eventually hired as a teacher at RSD and taught just about everything,” she said. “I taught there for two years and at National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) as an adjunct professor.”
Harnischfeger also taught “everything” at Penfield High School for 16 years, “including special education, English, science, social studies, math, and sometimes health, too. I guess I’m a real jack of all trades,” she said. “The one continuous area I taught was English.”
Harnischfeger, who has also taught at SUNY Brockport and U of R, teaches Societal Prospective in Special Education and Educational Psychology at Keuka.
As a teacher, Harnischfeger has “always taken student teachers because I learn just as much from them as they learn from me. I love their passion and enthusiasm, and I love how they question things and their creativity. I love working with students new to teaching and I find it exciting for them.”
Harnischfeger’s dissertation is titled Identifying Construction in Relation to School Practices on Students who are Alternatively Placed in a School that is Considered Successful by State Standards.
“I want to focus on kids who have fallen through the cracks,” she said. “These are the students with no ‘label’ and other less-obvious students not recognized by the school. My goal is to always consider diverse needs, including those which may or may not be obvious.
“In schools that are considered successful, there are always a certain percentage of students that are not successful,” continued Harnischfeger. “Those are the kids on whom I want to focus. I want to get my students to understand the definition of diversity includes the full student and their needs.”
According to Harnischfeger: “I try to tell my students to teach the whole person, not just teach the content. This ties back into my research interest of trying to understand how people construct identity. I want my students to assist others in seeing the richness in each person as a unique individual and learner. It also connects to my interest in discerning the boundaries of diversity and in recognizing the resources inherent in our ‘differences.’”
Meet New Faculty: Jack Westbrook
Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of profiles on new, full-time faculty members.
Photo by Case Hamilton '12
With 20 years of experience working as a middle and high school math teacher, Jack Westbrook has more than prepared himself for life at Keuka.
Westbrook received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics and master’s degree in mathematics education from SUNY Geneseo. His first career move was as a seventh and 11th grade math teacher at Harpursville (N.Y.) Central School. After a year, he moved on to Hilton (N.Y.) Central School, where he taught all levels of math from non-Regents, ninth grade to Pre-Calculus.
Westbrook says that teaching high school math and college math are alike.
“I have actually found teaching here to be more similar to teaching high school than I thought it would be,” he said. I guess teaching is teaching.”
As for the differences, Westbrook says discipline issues are completely different, and the amount of time and effort the students and professors put in are complete polar opposites.
Westbrook chose Keuka for the “smallness” and for the chance to do something new. He also liked how “Keuka gives everyone a personal touch” and he would like to bring this into his classes.
With many years of teaching expereince, Westbrook hopes to bring a different perspective to his classes that include Secondary Math Methods, College Algebra, Math for Elementary Education, and Developmental Math. This new perspective comes from Westbrook’s experience with students who struggle with math, and he hopes to be able to help guide them through.
“I also think the wisdom from experience will help me give strong advice and strategies to the students in my Secondary Methods class,” he said.
Even though he is new to Keuka, Westbrook knows how vital Field Period is to the College and he is going to encourage his students to “use Field Periods to get more experience in schools, whether it be volunteering, or just helping out in the classroom.”
Westbrook already wants to do more than his fair share, and he’s eager to dig his hands into the main work of a Keuka College faculty member.
“I’m looking forward to advising students in the future.”
English Professor Wins Professional Development Award
Just because you’ve got a Ph.D. doesn’t mean you stop learning.
That’s the perspective of Jennie Joiner, assistant professor of English, and winner of the 2010-11 Excellence in Academic Achievement award, given by the College’s Office of Academic Affairs. The award recognizes Keuka faculty members who have demonstrated to their colleagues an exceptional commitment to advance the knowledge base of their academic or professional field.
Within the realm of literature, Joiner’s interest includes depictions of masculinity, with a focus on the writings of William Faulkner. Her doctorate, from the University of Kansas, focused on the subject of marriage and masculinity in Faulkner’s fiction. Here at Keuka, Joiner created a senior seminar course last spring focusing on the fiction of Faulkner and Toni Morrison. The course followed the presentation of her paper, “William Faulkner’s Hearth and Toni Morrison’s Oven: The Slow Burn of Masculinity in Go Down, Moses and Paradise,” in October 2010 at a scholarly conference on Faulkner and Morrison held in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
Not only was the class well-received by students, but a longer version of Joiner’s paper was solicited by an editor of the Faulkner Journal and published in August of this year. Another paper of hers, “Constructing Black Sons: Faulkner’s ‘Barn Burning’ and O’Connor’s ‘The Artificial Nigger,” was solicited by the Flannery O’Connor Review last year and published in the 2010 volume. She is already at work on a new manuscript that examines Faulkner’s sexual geographies, or the relationship between place, cultural institutions and sexuality.
“I don’t think students always recognize we have our own research agendas as well. Part of being a faculty member is continuing to be a student and continuing my own education. It doesn’t stop with a Ph.D.,” she said. “What you learn with a Ph.D. is how to keep doing your own research.” (more…)
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