We’re moving!
Join us at the new GSE Newsroom: gse.news.fordham.edu.
The updated newsroom will include faculty, students, and alumni news, as well as feature articles, event announcement, professional development opportunities, and more.
This site will be live as old posts are migrated to the new site but be sure to bookmark the Newsroom for all your future GSE news, events, and announcements.
Photo by Patrick Verel
Two Fordham Graduate School of Education (GSE) students have been honored by the International Literacy Association (ILA) for their efforts to advance literacy for all.
Alex Corbitt, 26, FCRH ‘12, GSE ‘13, and John Maldonado, 25, FCRH ’13, a doctoral student, were named to the ILA’s second annual “30 Under 30” list, an honor bestowed to teachers, authors, volunteers, researchers, social entrepreneurs, and leaders from 12 countries.
Maldonado, a Rego Park, Queens native who graduated with a double major in psychology and English, became a NYC teaching fellow and taught special education at P368K Star Academy in Brooklyn. He is working towards a doctorate in contemporary learning and interdisciplinary research while teaching English at his alma mater, Archbishop Molloy High School in Queens.
He said being named to the list is a validation of what he called the “ugly hours” that all teachers put in—time when they put in extra hours at home, trying to figure out how to best convey information to their students and how to attend to their additional needs.
“As educators, we don’t often get the credit we deserve,” said Maldonado, who is interested in equity and culture, and the roles they play in education. He noted that, beyond his teaching he worked to increase his students’ technological literacy, “in order to give them more career and life opportunities.”
“To be recognized for that work is really validating,” he said. “I’m lucky to be the recipient. But a lot of teachers are doing the same thing.”
For the October issue of New York Teacher, Linda Ocasio focused on GSE alum Alex Corbitt, who was named to the International Literacy Association’s “30 Under 30” List. In the past two years, three GSE students or alumni have made the ILA 30 Under 30. Corbitt joins CLAIR student John Maldonado in this year’s list. Last year, alum Madison Payton was named. Read the full article at the UFT website.
image via UFT and Miller Photography
Arizona is geographically — and culturally — far from New York City. But when the 8th-graders in Alex Corbitt’s Teen Activism class watch a documentary called “Precious Knowledge,” about Tucson HS students fighting for the right to study their Mexican heritage, it resonates deeply. Many of Corbitt’s students at the Bronx School of Science Inquiry and Investigation/MS 331 in Morris Heights are from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico or Ecuador, and they have plenty to say on the topic.
“We can learn about both American and Latino history, past and present,” says Destiny.
Pedro is bothered by an Arizona legislator in the film who calls the Latino studies program seditious and anti-American. “He said it’s anti-American, but isn’t it more American to fight for what you believe in?” Pedro asks.
It’s a good question. And for Corbitt, it’s all about the questions.
“The goal is not to do the thinking for them,” he says. Corbitt, an ELA teacher, believes literacy is not just about reading and writing but about empowering students to become “critically engaged citizens” and that includes questioning the world around them.
In September, Corbitt, age 26 and in his fourth year of teaching, was named to the International Literacy Association’s “30 Under 30 List,” which recognizes “rising leaders” from 12 countries, including teachers, nonprofit leaders, authors, researchers and others at the start of their careers who are promoting “literacy in all its forms to those who need it most.”
John Maldonado, a teacher at P 368/Star Academy in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, also was recognized for his work helping students with autism develop literacy skills.
Read the full article at the United Federation of Teachers website.
Thank you all GSE students, faculty, and staff who helped make our Orientation a success! We wish everyone a great semester.
Dr. Rhonda Bondie will be a panelist for an Innovation in Education webinar on Wednesday, August 17th from 4-5pm EST.
Learn from leading experts about innovations in education. The webinar will include guidance and advice from five panelists, as well as ample opportunity to ask the speakers questions.
Gain insight about educational needs, solutions, and innovations. What are the best strategies for early childhood education? How can schools best inspire and motivate creativity and quality learning? How do programs connect with and offer opportunities to talented low-income students?
Leading experts will discuss a range of education topics which are applicable to anyone interested or involved in education in the U.S. or internationally.
Register
This week, Fordham GSE hosts a group of students from the College of Education at Zhejiang University, located in Hangzhou, China, as part of their American Innovation and Entrepreneurship Summer Camp. The students spent a week touring Los Angeles prior to coming to New York and then will spend a week in Hawaii.
While at Fordham, they will meet with various faculty members and administrators from across the university, as well as visit the JCC Manhattan and the Brooklyn Waldorf School, to learn about the systems and models of American education. 
Fordham lectures will cover topics such as innovation in teaching and learning, entrepreneurship, innovative educational models, and historical and comparative education systems.
On Tuesday morning, the group spoke with Drs. Marilyn Bisberg and Tiedan Huang about Fordham and early childhood education in America before touring the Rose Hill campus and speaking with Kate Kennon of the Gabelli School of Business.
The group prepared a presentation to introduce Fordham to Zhejiang University (ZJU), a leading research university in China with seven campuses and over 48,000 students. The university boasts strong international partnerships and over 700 undergraduate and graduate programs.
Teenagers haven’t left Facebook, but they’re more involved than ever in a virtual archipelago of social media spaces that educators can take advantage of—if they tread lightly, a researcher told educators on July 13.
“We need to unpack the myth … that young people are technological wizards. There certainly are some who are, but not every kid is like that. I think before we use these
spaces in the classroom, we have to think about why we’re doing it, and what we’re walking into,” said Amanda Lenhart, speaking at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus.
Lenhart, a researcher with the Data & Society Research Institute, delivered a keynote, “The Shifting Landscape of American Teens’ Social & Digital Media Use,” at the fourth annual Developing Digital Literacies Conference, hosted by the Graduate School of Education.
“If [educators] ask young people to use a social space, we want to give them options so they don’t necessarily have to have their personal space invaded by the academic and vice versa.”
She tackled topics such as the rise of the smart phone, and teens’ need for constant access, texting, relationships, and privacy.
Read the full article at Fordham News.
Get more insights from conference participants via #FordhamDLC on Twitter.
Thursday, April 7th, 5:00pm
Law School Building, Room Law 3-03
K. Anders Ericsson
Department of Psychology
Florida State University
Researchers have generally assumed that general abilities of memory, intelligence, and creativity matured during development until the beginning of adulthood, but could not be changed and thus limited the acquisition of expert performance. Recent research in many domains of expertise, such as chess, music, medicine, and sports, shows that some types of experience, such as focused appropriate training activities – deliberate practice – can dramatically change the human body (enlargement of hearts and arteries and growth of capillaries) and brain (myelinization and blood supply of nerve fibers), and over extended time modify virtually all characteristics relevant to superior performance, with the exception of body size and height.
The acquisition of expert and elite performance involves a successive development of increasingly refined mental mechanisms that afford experts increased control over their performance. A theoretical analysis of the full range of elite performers’ learning, skill acquisition, and physiological adaptations is now providing the foundation for a scientifically-based account of the human potential that is attainable through optimal development and deliberate practice.
The research has shown that the acquisition of reproducibly superior (expert) performance corresponds to a successive development of increasingly refined mental mechanisms that afford experts increased control over their performance in representative situations. This successive improvements can typically be linked to a sequence of appropriate deliberate practice activities, which a coach or teachers has selected for a particular learner based on their current level of performance. The learners can engage in the practice task which provides immediate accurate feedback, and opportunities for repetition and gradual modifications after reflection.
About the Speaker
K. Anders Ericsson, PhD, is presently Conradi Eminent Scholar and Professor of Psychology at Florida State University. After his PhD in Sweden, he collaborated with the Nobel Prize winner in Economics, Herbert A. Simon on verbal reports of thinking leading to their classic book “Protocol Analysis: Verbal Reports as Data” (1984). Currently he studies the measurement of expert performance in domains, such as music, chess, nursing, law enforcement, and sports, and how expert performers attain their superior performance by acquiring complex cognitive mechanisms and physiological adaptations through extended deliberate practice.
He has edited several books on expertise, the influential Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance consisted of over 40 chapters and 900 pages and the recent Development of Professional Expertise, which appeared in 2009. In 2016 his co-authored book Peak: Secrets from the new science of expertise will be released. He has published articles in prestigious journals, such as Science, Academic Medicine, Psychological Review, Psychological Bulletin, Academic Emergency Medicine, Current Biology, and Trends of Cognitive Science.
He is a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science and a member of Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. His research has been featured in cover stories in Scientific American, Time, Fortune, Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He has been invited to give keynote presentations at conferences of surgeons, musicians, teachers, clinical psychologists, athletes, and coaches as well as professional sports organizations, such as the Philadelphia Eagles and Manchester City.
In its America’s Best Graduate Schools, 2017 edition, U.S. News and World Report ranked Fordham GSE #45 among 180 U.S. Schools of Education. This rank marks a fourteen spot jump over last year’s #59 ranking.
View the full list.
gsefordham.wordpress.com 