Sped licensure

sped licensure

Personal Statement of Timothy McKenna

My interest in the Special Education Licensure Program stems from an abiding curiosity about how the mind works. The past two years spent teaching Humanities to 12th graders as well as Algebra and Geometry to ninth graders have provided me with an an enormous amount of data on how young people think. Every time you ask them to do something you get data, data from which you can derive your next move as a teacher.

Some of that data is a record of every educational paradigm that has been introduced since these students first entered school. I can see in it the "main idea initiative", the "paraphrasing training", elaborate schemes for scanning the text, universal phrases like "getting the reader's attention". From worksheets to graphical organizers the most impressive thing you see is how well the kids adapt to whatever we put in front of them. Some of these initiatives have been incorporated into the process of making meaning from text, finding your voice as a writer and understanding the relationships between things. Other initiatives have allowed students to sidestep that process. Students are always trying to adapt to me, to find the energy minima; I am always trying to keep them a little off balance.

From other data one can observe the differences between these young thinkers. Molded by their individual experiences and modified by their current, particular neural patterns, no two students are alike. Some subgroup of students might tend to do anything you ask; that makes me as a teacher feel lulled into a kind of complacency. I'm not so sure that is a good thing. Luckily there is a large subgroup who don't comply with my every wish. And it is through them that I really define myself as a teacher. Every day when I walk into that classroom, I know I have to make a case for why they should care about what I want them to do that day. In making that case I need to consider what it takes to reach each of the kids. To do the job requires an enormous amount of energy, if you don't bring it, they don't reach the threshold of engagement, they might not even notice what we are doing.

I need this certification in order to be able to teach a broad range of the student population. Under current regulations students with IEP's can opt out of my class since I'm not certified. I don't want to lose these kids. I think I have something to offer them.

All of the required professional development in my school has focused on topics in special education. To be honest, I haven't been impressed, have hardly been engaged. I am critical of the process and think the documents available to teachers are, bye and large, worthless, eclipsed in every way by a five minute conversation with a good teacher who has worked with the student. Much of the PD has been a repackaging of ed school promotion for the latest paradigm, a restatement of something I read before in a Research for Better Teaching publication. As a member of the Instructional Leadership Team in my school, I am advocating a move away from this kind of professional development.

I feel we have to tackle the job of instilling an academic culture in our school. No amount differentiated instruction will bridge the gap that forms if school is merely a warehouse for test prep that effectively ends at a tenth (really eighth) grade level of mediocrity. Unless we can shine a light on a rich array of possibilities, unless we can inspire a will to work hard, to risk failure, to have the skills to recover from setbacks, we will continue to have a students who spend enormous amounts of energy in protecting themselves from educational challenges. Students lack confidence, avoid risk, comfort themselves in the acceptance of failure. This cultural void plays out in different ways for different students. The high achievers enter high school test-saturated enough to know that they will pass the the MCAS. They, therefore, don't really need to do much and can rest on their laurels being sure not to expose their knowledge and skill gaps. The middle tier can rest after passing; knowing that we rate our high schools on MCAS pass rates + dropout rates, they might as well stay home whenever they don't want to get up. The rest get what may be our worst efforts, they get all the tricks to get by, like finding the main idea; they may never actually learn to read, or be asked to write anything but the MCAS personal statement about what some character means to you.

For me to "bring it" every day I need to be excited about the ideas, love the stories, express the challenges in a way that each student can buy into. I search for that kind of professional development, I want to hear that from those who teach me, feel their love for what they are teaching. I already accept that all kids can learn, I don't want to be beat over the head with it. Help me unlock the puzzle of how these young minds work.

cover letter

5/10/7

Sandy Andersen
Institute for Professional Development and Graduate Studies in Education
www.spcs.neu.edu/pdp
617-373-8272
sandy@neu.edu

Dear Ms. Andersen,

I am excited about the program for special education licensure. I have spoken to Micky Cokeley regarding the additional coursework to move my license from preliminary to initial.

I spoke to you on the phone a couple of weeks ago about my conflict with prior plans to see my sons from July 1 to July 14. I hope that something falls into place with a program at some other site that I can substitute for the initial sessions. (I am out of town at an AVID training from the 6/25-29 and away the week of 7/28-8/5)

Sincerely,

Timothy S. McKenna
Parkway Academy of Technology and Health
1251 VFW Parkway
Boston, MA 02132
tim@sitebuilt.net
http://www.sitebuilt.net/path/hum12wiki
(857)498-2574 (mobile)
(617)524-0938 (home)

Timothy S. McKenna

12 Parley Vale, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130,
mckenna.tim@gmail.com, (857) 498-2574, http://sitebuilt.net

Work Experience

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2005-2011

High School Teacher at Parkway Academy of Technology and Health(PATH), a Boston Public High School that started in 2005

• I primarily taught Humanities.
  • Prototyped assessment framework and toolset for creating reading comprehension questions and vocabulary resources for source articles from the Humanities courses.
  • Working with the humanities team, developed courses to meet MA standards in ELA and World History II and ELA and U.S. History II.
  • Working with the National Writing Project, engaged in a year long research project on teaching writing in a content driven Humanities class.
  • Produced an online version of the course. Students created online group projects and digital portfolios of student work. I explored the ways in which online coursework changes the nature of learning.
  • Incorporated the use of personal response systems (activevote) for instant item analysis allowing for ongoing improvement in reading comprehension.
  • Developed a case study approach to frame Historical events and ideas based upon shared characteristics.
• Developed and co-taught a pilot course for 9th graders combining Algebra and Physics. The hypothesis was that math is the language of physics and that taught in tandem both would make more sense to young students.
• Contributed to development of an extended day program by collaborating with the administration to create and teach a semester long extended day Geometry course. Used Geometers' Sketchpad as an authoring environment to create exploration modules for geometric concepts and problem solving.
• Robotics team mentor and member of the Instructional Leadership Team.

2001-2005

Research Assistant Boston University department of Cognitive and Neural Systems, Technology Lab

1976-1998

President, Site Built Systems, Inc. a building firm that created over $20 million in new construction, mostly urban infill affordable housing.

• Responsibilities included: worker training and development, site and project management and supervision, marketing, sales, community relations, surety relations.
• Implemented Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing CADCAM technology integrated with estimation, production and job-cost accounting

Education

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• PhD candidate in Cognitive and Neural Systems, Boston University (coursework and qualifying exams complete)
• MA in Cognitive and Neural Systems, Boston University (2003) Research in learning and memory. Projects included: object recognition in satellite imagery, predicting drug resistance in HIV patients using genotype data, CELEST project: development of educational curriculum illuminated by recent understanding of how the brain works
• BS in Physics, University of Massachusetts, Boston (2000)
• 60 graduate credits beyond master degree, 30+ graduate credits in education

Certifications and Additional Courses

• Initial MA DESE certification in English (8-12) and Mathematics (8-12), preliminary in History (8-12), Mathematics (5-8) and English As A Second language (8-12)
• Special Education: 2 years of school based PD on differentiated instruction and inclusive learning. NEU course: Special Education: Foundation for Understanding Inclusive Schools
• Boston Writing Project -courses in Teaching Academic Writing, Revision, Writing Research
• Other Courses: Latin American History and Literature. Oil and the Contemporary Globe. Primary Source courses: Cold War, Africa, jazz and blues, Cuba and Vietnam, Cuba and Nicaragua, China: Enduring Legacies and Radical Transformations, Asia today
• Facing History and Ourselves: Book Burning and Propaganda, Weimar Republic

other Skills

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• Curiculum development using technology. Designed math explorations using Geometers' Sketchpad and online course in Humanities using Mediawiki: http://www.pathboston.com/hum4 (JQuery, AJAX, XSL/XML, javascript, MYSQL, PHP} http://mckennatim.github.com/mckennatim
• Scientific simulation implementation using MATLAB, JAVA and C/C++
• Design using microcontrollers for lab instrumentation, sensor and device control and robotic applications.
• CADCAM integrated with database experience using AutoCad/AutoLisp/SQL/Access
• master carpenter, licensed builder, site supervisor
• Member of A Besere Velt chorus (bass). Play guitar.