Dear Commons Community,

It was a grand evening last night at the Graduate Center’s Commencement at Avery Fisher Hall.  President Bill Kelly and Provost Chase Robinson presided over the ceremonies for our 400 plus doctoral  and  masters degree graduates.  The main speaker was David Nasaw, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Distinguished Professor of History.   Honorary degrees were given to Lawrence Weiner,  a founding figure of conceptual art, who has had a flourishing career since the first presentation of his work in California in 1960. The Bronx-born artist, educated in the public schools of New York, is today a great exemplar of that brand of wide-ranging innovation that changes minds, challenges perceptions, and has helped to keep New York the cultural capital of the world.  And Robert Wilson,  widely acknowledged as the theatre’s leading avant-garde director and playwright, he is also a celebrated painter, sculptor, designer, and video artist, who has done trend-setting work as performer, choreographer, and sound and lighting director. He is perhaps best known for having created, with composer Philip Glass, the monumental and tradition-shattering opera Einstein on the Beach.

For me the special moment was when the fourteen Urban Education doctoral graduates came to the stage and  were hooded.  One of our graduates, Kirsten Cole, brought her young sons, Max and Zeke, down the aisle with her.

Congratulations to all!!!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Upon learning that she would be involuntarily transferred to another Illinois school, Ellie Rubenstein, a fourth-grade, teacher submitted her resignation in the form of a video.

In the 10-minute spoken resignation, posted on Youtube Tuesday, Rubenstein explains why she is quitting and addresses several major problems she says she has faced as a teacher in the U.S. public education system.

“I was proud to say I was a teacher,” Rubenstein tells the camera, after describing how she abandoned a career in public relations to “do something meaningful” with her life. “But over the past 15 years, I’ve experienced the depressing, gradual downfall and misdirection of communication that has slowly eaten away at my love of teaching.”

“Raising students’ test scores on standardized tests is now the only goal, and in order to achieve it the creativity, flexibility and spontinaety that create authentic learning environments have been eliminated. … Everything I love about teaching is extinct,” she continues.

Rubenstein’s resignation stems from a dispute between four Lincoln Elementary School teachers — Rubenstein included — and North Shore School District 112 administrators. As Highland Park News reports, Rubenstein and her colleagues received letters detailing their mandated transfer to other schools in the district and were given 21 days to respond.

In the video, Rubenstein states that the letter cited a “poor climate” in the building as the reason for her involuntary transfer. “But the truth is, I’m just not a ‘yes man,'” she claims in her video.

Administrators contend, however, that such a transfer is not used to punish teachers, Highland Park News notes.

It is a sad state of affairs that so many of our public schools have been turned into  test-prep centers responding to mandates of the No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top policies of the U.S. Department of Education.

Tony