Hi Everyone,
I often ask myself "Who am I and what am I doing here?"
This seems to be an appropriate forum for briefly answering those questions.
I am 2nd semester student in the general childhood education program.
I am also in the process of a career change. I taught for a couple of years long ago - one year of student fieldwork in a children's home and 2 years as an assistant at Trevor Day - and then decided to go to law school so that I could work for progressive change in our society on a macro/system-wide level. I have now been a lawyer for about 15 years. I am the Deputy Director of the U.S. Legal Program at the Center for Reproductive Rights, a national non-profit that works to protect and advance reproductive rights and health. (Basically what this means I do is bring lawsuits to challenge state laws that restrict women's access to abortion, deny minor's access to confidential reproductive health services, or discriminate on the basis of sex). I have worked in this field for virtually my entire career. It has been a challenging and rewarding 15 years. Nonetheless, I am now looking to explore and use some of my other interests and abilities by moving back into teaching. In particular, I seek the directness of teaching, the immediacy and interpersonal nature of the work, the diversity of skills and tasks involved, the creative challenge of providing interactive and accesible learning experiences, and the fun (not all the time, of course) of working with kids.
So, I think that pretty much tells you who I am and what I am doing here. I am excited about this course as I really loved social studies as a child (I still remember the brand name of an atlas I was given to keep in 3rd grade social studies), and I have not yet had a chance to teach it. I have take one on-line course previously (through Bank Street at the Museum of Natural History) and I found it to be a lot of work but a great learning experience. I was impressed by how much thoughtfulness and effort many of the students brought to it.
Bonnie