Dean Glander's Blog

Welcome to the blog of Timothy Glander, Dean of the School of Education at Nazareth College

Founded in 1924, Nazareth College is a co-ed college with undergraduate and graduate studies in the liberal arts and sciences, and professional programs in health and human services, education, and management. The College is located near Rochester, New York, and currently enrolls approximately 2,800 students. For more information on the College, visit www.naz.edu.

Teachers Who Question

Here's a short essay I wrote for the latest Nazareth College Connections Magazine:

Download Timothy Glander - TEACHERS WHO QUESTION

To view the entire magazine online go to:

Connections, Winter 2010-2011

Happy New Year!

Opening of the Frontier Center for Urban Education

On October 1, 2010, the School of Education formally opens the Frontier Center for Urban Education.  Dr. Shirley Sommers, Assistant Professor of Social and Psychological Foundations of Education, will serve as its first director.  The Center will serve as an umbrella organization for the many urban education inititaives currently emanating from the School of Education.  In so doing, the Center will be able to provide support for these existing initiatives as well as support the development of new initiatives. 

The primary purpose for the Center is to highlight the work of teachers and students in urban classrooms.  It is my hope that in so far as it will participate in analysis and discussion of educational policy, the Center's focus will be on how best to create the optimal classroom and school conditions for transformative teaching.   Moreover, I hope the Center is able to provide an alternative to the ubiquitous view that "academic achievement" can be defined and measured by narrow accountability schemes and I hope the Center encourages a discussion about what should be the social purposes for public schooling today. 

Here's a link to the Frontier Center for Urban Urban Education's Mission Statement, developed by the Center's Advisory Board (including Dr. Sommers, Dr. Laura Jones, Dr. Brian Bailey, Dr. Rasheeda Ahmad, and Jackie Bryant, Director of Teacher Opportunity Collaboratives) is as follows:

Download MISSION STATEMENT - Urban Center

And a link to some of the Center's activities planned for the 2010-2011 academic year:

Download Events for Urban Education Year 2010 # 1

A Tribute to Seymour B. Sarason

Dr. Seymour B. Sarason passed away on January 28, 2010 at the age of 91. Download Seymour Sarason Obituary A member of the psychology faculty at Yale University for many years,  Sarason was well known for bringing a humanistic perspective to bear in addressing the educational, social, and psychological problems faced by children and adolescents.  Such an orientation put him at odds with mainstream thinking in educational psychology with its continued mechanistic emphasis on quantitative research and standardized testing.  A champion of seeing the value of engagement with the arts as a way of knowing, Sarason was also deeply involved in matters pertaining to the education of teachers.  In his 1999 text, Teaching as a Performing Art (Teachers College Press), he argued for the importance of seeing parallels between the education of teachers and the training of performing artists (e.g., musicians, actors, dancers, etc.).  Not to be mistaken with "teacher as entertainer" (which is a terrible metaphor to adopt), Sarason noted that like the performing artist the teacher is primarily concerned with moving his or her students to a deepened and heightened emotional attention to the subject matter at hand.  And like the performing artist, the prospective teacher should audition (to identify natural talent and potential) as part of the admissions process into a teacher education program and the "teacher to be" needed to engage in the rigors of practice in order to perfect one's teaching artistry.

During this time of intense public debate and confusion on how best to prepare teachers, we would do well to reconsider Sarason's ideas.  His voice will be missed.