To accomplish these goals, this division 3 includes several linked projects over the past two years: writing, program development in higher education, and teaching.
The most significant piece of writing I am producing is the story of my development of my educational ideas. This particular writing is important because it serves as a tool for communication. But it also helps me to develop self-awareness of my own personal psychology and experience -- something not ordinarily included in teacher training, but which I believe is absolutely critical. This writing also includes a section that is dealing explicitly with some of the ideas and thinkers who have influenced me and some of my own ideas. This writing will be completed by November 20, and the final version distributed to committee members by December 2.
Some of the background of my current work was my Social Science divisional project, "Johnston College, Johnston Center, and a Context for Hampshire College." This was a project based on my impression that Hampshire was discussing serious institutional reforms based solely on the personal impression of some faculty. In response, I studied another alternative college for one month and wrote an extensive report detailing Johnston's history, philosophy, and practice. The experience was so fruitful, both as research and as education, that I began work developing the Alternative Higher Education Network to help other students do similar work. I also began discussing my ideas for a new program at Hampshire, which has developed into the Experimental Program in Education and Community (EPEC).
In the academic year 1995-1996, I was on leave. In the fall, I organized a class advertised as a "Student-Led Egalitarian Education Class". Together with several other students from the class, I organized the first conference of the Alternative Higher Education Network at Hampshire in January, 1996. During this year of leave, I visited about a dozen schools (elementary through college), confirming that teaching was the direction I wanted to go in my life.
In the spring of 1996, I worked with a group of about 20 students to build student, faculty, and administrative support for EPEC. Through the spring and summer, I was engaged both in my writing, and in working on administrative details of EPEC, including official recognition of the student-led courses. For the month of July, I also worked full-time in a program for middle-school children in the Springfield, MA public schools, as a teaching intern in science and art. In August, I was working almost full time on publicity and further administrative details of EPEC, while also preparing for the courses I planned to teach in the fall.
I began the final semester of my division 3, fall 1996, by giving a speech to Hampshire's entering class, as well as by designing an experimental orientation group that turned into one of the courses I am now teaching.
In this final semester of my division 3, I am completing my writing projects, sponsoring several EPEC classes, and directing EPEC (including coordinating meetings and community meals, helping clarify the roles of course sponsors and participants, and introducing the program to different parts of the Hampshire Community). In early November, I will be traveling to New College in Sarasota, Florida, to speak about AHEN, EPEC, and Hampshire College; in January, I will be attending the second annual AHEN conference, hosted by the Johnston Center in Redlands, California.
Directing EPEC and teaching several courses is in a sense a case-study, not only of my educational ideas, but of the compromises that must be made whenever theory meets reality. EPEC includes real contact with real students, administrators, trustees, and faculty; EPEC includes publicity work, public speaking, and explanatory writing, to help EPEC participants. This fall, I am teaching one official course in the school of Natural Science at Hampshire, Applied Sustainable Agriculture. I am also acting as a sponsor (resource) for three EPEC classes: "Hampshire Assessment Squad," "Building the New Society: Intentional Communities and Alternative Schools", and "Prince Charming, the Dream Girl, and Other Dreamy Archetypes: A Workshop on Bringing the Unconscious into Consciousness." Teaching Applied Sustainable Agriculture is my official advanced educational activity, and the contract for that class is appended to this division 3 contract. By January 6, 1997, I will write an additional short reflection based on these applications of theory to reality.
I would like my evaluation committee to write my evaluation to demonstrate to prospective employers and graduate schools the level of ability I have demonstrated in the each of the roles I am working on in my division 3 -- writer, reformer, and teacher -- as well as thinker, which serves as a grounding for each of the other roles. I would like, together with my committee, to fully develop an evaluation strategy so that we can assess this ability level. This will inevitably include the impressions of a variety of readers of my writing, as well as some evaluation of my work developing and teaching in EPEC.
My final portfolio will include: