adaeve
| Forum role | Member since | Last activity | Topics created | Replies created |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Member | Jun 20, 2012 (14 years) |
- | 2 | 0 |
- Forum role
- Member
- Member since
Jun 20, 2012 (14 years)
- Last activity
- -
- Topics created
- 2
- Replies created
- 0
Bio
I grew up in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan that directly abuts the city proper. One history of the suburbs call the line between my suburb and the city "the most segregated place in America." The racial segregation and inequality was what first got me interested in education, and started me on a lifetime of learning across borders, both within the United States and outside of it.
My first work with children was at a soup kitchen youth program in Detroit. Later, I did recreational work with kids in Spanish Harlem, and then in taught fourth grade and special education in urban schools of Boston. After moving the Philadelphia, I taught third grade in North Philadelphia until leaving to do my Ph.D. at Penn in the anthropology of education (the study of the role of culture in education). After getting my Ph.D I returned to teaching elementary school, again in North Philadelphia.
Following this I coordinated the urban focused teacher education program at the University of Pennsylvania, leading the urban focused elementary program which included a component in which students studied the neighborhood of the school where they would be student teaching and then wrote a curriculum building from the assets of that neighborhood. After eight years at Penn, I left to become Dean of Faculty at the Wissahickon Charter School--an urban, environmentally focused K-8 charter school in Germantown.
Since leaving Wissahickon Charter School, I am currently living in a town in the cloud forest region of Costa Rica, doing research on environmental education and acting as a consultant to a school and a rain forest reserve, while my wife does her sabbatical work here. Eventually, I hope to work as a consultant related to experiential education, and education for sustainability that connects local and global contexts.
I have two daughters--adopted twins--who are 9 years old (see photo above). They're biracial (African American and European American), so learning what it means to be a multiracial family has included more rich cultural learning.
My wife teaches full time in education at Arcadia and is the Global Connections Coordinator. For fun I like to go biking with my girls, exercise (run, bike, swim, play volleyball), and keep working on my own Spanish. When we're back in Philadelphia we live in South Philly which we love.
Paul