Dr. Pat Hulsebosch’s

PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY STATEMENT

Written as part of my 1996 Tenure Portfolio 

    My "project" in life, as I now see it, has been to passionately work for justice towards learning communities in which all voices are heard. During the past twelve years at universities, and for a number of years before, I've worked on this project through my parenting, teaching, administrative work, consulting, research and writing: in other words, through education.  As is true of everyone, the roots of what I do and how I do it lie in  my autobiography. The thread of that life story is woven throughout every section of this tenure and promotion document. In my personal statement I'll  highlight the cultural, theoretical, and experiential underpinnings of my life's work. In the remaining sections of my Portfolio I provide specific examples of the ways in which I have enacted these meanings in my work.

"Real" Work

    Marge Piercy's poem, To Be of Use, perhaps best captures the spirit of my  life's work: 

            The people I love the best

            jump into work head first

            without dallying into the shallows

            and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.

            They seem to become natives of that element

            the black sleek heads of seals

            bouncing like half-submerged balls. 

            I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

            who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,

            who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,

            who do what has to be done again and again.

            I want to be with people who submerge

            in the task, who go into the fields to harvest

            and work in a row and pass the bags along,

            who are not parlor generals and field deserters

             but move in a common rhythm

            when the food must come in or the fire be put out. 

            The work of the world is common as mud.

            Botched it smears the hands and crumbles to dust.

            But the thing worth doing well

            has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

            Greek amphoras for wine or oil

            Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

            but you know they were made to be used.

            The pitcher cries for water to carry

            and a person for work that is real.

   Education, especially undergraduate preservice education, is some of the most real work I know. It consists of numerous seemingly small, insignificant, day-to-day contacts with principals, teachers, and their  students in halls, classrooms, and on the street -- all in a common rhythm that must get done, again and again, week after week, quarter after quarter. To the unaware eye, preservice education might look "common as mud". In this document I hope to help the reader see the work I've done as satisfying, useful and important.

PASSION

      In all that I do, wherever I am, I am a teacher.  Teaching is a calling for me, as, I believe, it must be for all good teachers. Teaching is too demanding a profession for anyone to be able to sustain it well unless that person is deeply committed to education. Few people go into the teaching profession saying that they will be a mediocre teacher. Most remember one (often no more than that) exceptional teacher who made a difference in their life. For me it was Sister Eudes in 4th grade who recognized that I was a down-in the dirt marble player as well as a bookish student. Much later it was Bill Schubert at UIC, who experimented with his own teaching over the three years I studied with him, and who facilitated the formation of the study group that would become the "Bloodsisters".

   Or,  people  remember a number of mediocre teachers whose example they want to counteract. Teacher education students will often say they don't want other  students to go through what they went through. I vividly remember the day, some 20 years ago, when I vowed I would go on to get my doctorate in teacher education so I could break the chain of  "do as I  say, not as I do" professors. I didn't want other preservice teachers to also endure this frustration. (That is also, by the way, a major reason for my decision to teach at NCE where I knew faculty to be committed to modeling the "best practice" they teach.)

     But to teach well, especially within institutions like schools and universities,  requires that teachers be risk-takers for their students, and that they be able, when needed, to independently solve the hundreds of problems that arise daily. It requires that they suspend judgment about the students, parents, and communities with whom they come in contact; that they  be at least  tolerant and respectful of individuals, and, hopefully, value differences among people.

   I learned to be independent the hard way -- by getting married and having my first son in my 16th year. I learned to be a problem solver  by raising two boys as a single mother in my early twenties, and by leaving my family and striking out for a doctoral program and a new life in Chicago as I turned 30. I learned to suspend judgment by a life which led me through summer jobs as a dancer in a night club and waitressing at the White Castle and  Greyhound Bus Station, and through health clinics and food stamp offices  when my salary wasn't enough to support two growing boys. I found that I could learn something  from everyone I worked with. I learned to value differences through these work experiences before I even became a teacher.

   I  learned about passion and commitment and risk-taking through the years I spent teaching at Horizons, a private "alternative" elementary school which some friends  I created in  a rented storefront.  Horizons attracted  families whose children didn't "fit"  in the public school systems in Florida. There was Mark, whose mother was a mathematician and who was doing trigonometry in the 4th grade. There was Brick, whose father was in prison for a murder Brick saw him commit. There were Amara and Maya, whose father  taught about the Cuban revolution at the university and whose parents wanted them to learn to think for themselves rather than follow directions.  And there were many others who'd been labeled LD or BD or gifted or just miserable in other schools. Sometimes it was simply that their parents wanted a place that their children could learn and be happy from 7am to 6pm (all were working parents).

   At Horizon we created a school to which children looked forward to coming each day, even when they were sick or had other good reasons to stay home. This was the 1970's, when behaviorism  and mastery learning were in favor, and, as a graduate of a  program in special education, I was heavily influenced by B.F. Skinner (As a "born-again" progressive and constructivist, I am embarrassed to admit this nowadays). Yet, despite checklists, charts, and a token economy, we were able to sustain interest and excitement partially because we, the teachers, were excited and deeply committed to our students and our teaching. I believe it is this type of commitment, along with a willingness to experiment, that has more influence on learning than any particular teaching strategy.

    The experience of working as a team to create Horizon School from the ground up (we literally built our own tables and scrounged books and supplies) taught me about what wonderful things can happen with a lot of risk-taking and determination. Teaching such a varied group of students (at least in terms of socio-economic class, religion, values, and abilities), taught me respect for differences within a community of learners. And teaching in a school in which parents had a strong voice and were themselves so diverse in what they knew and were able to do, taught me the value of working with whole-school communities. There I also learned that you cannot be for children without being for their families. I later went on to do my dissertation research on relationships between parents and teachers and continue to look for ways to support home-school connections through my consulting and research.

     Although a deep commitment to teaching has been with me a long time, it was Bill Ayers, my colleague and mentor from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), who taught me that passion is equally as important in higher education (if not more so), as it was with young children. Together Bill and I created and taught an in "alternative" undergraduate teacher education for a year as I completed my doctorate at UIC. This was an experience which paralleled, in many ways, the earlier experiences I had of creating an "ideal" school. Throughout this experience, at a time when I was being socialized into the culture of academia at a major research university, Bill helped me to remain true to this valuable, but not always valued, part of my self.

    At the center of all my roles --  teacher, advisor, administrator, consultant, committee member --  is a deep passion for work well done. I sustain this passion  by listening and talking to,  reading about, and watching passionate teachers.  Sylvia Ashton-Warner (Teacher), Marva Collins, Bill Ayers, and each year's award-winning Golden Apple teachers  are all people who affirm the power and potential in passionate teaching. In all of my efforts for the teaching profession, I try to spark and sustain an ardor for the "common" work of teaching because without that, education is lifeless, but with that, much  is possible.    

COMMUNITY

   My lessons on community began early in my own schooling within the community of the Catholic church.  At Our Lady of Perpetual Help, a parochial school in Corpus Christi, Texas,  I  found  a safe and satisfying place in which  I could show my "stuff", and wanted to recreate the same kind of experience for future generations. Being a "teaching nun" seemed the perfect answer to my desire to teach within a community, and so I was part of the group at school that went off  for weekly sessions on our "calling". By Junior High I'd discovered boys, however, and redirected my attention to the teaching profession outside the convent.

   Although I abandoned the idea of living in the religious community, I was seldom, from that time forward, without some sort of "group" with which to share life's work, troubles, and triumphs. After the usual "gangs" in high school, there was the cohort of the "Special Program" that  I went through for my preservice teacher education. Later, I became a member of a team of four in the first grade "pod" at a newly built "open-classroom" school in Shady Hills, Florida. I left that team to join the faculty at a progressive early childhood center,  Learning Space, and later left there with several colleagues  to start our own "alternative" school, Horizons Elementary.

   Horizon was a "home away from home" for our students, or what some of the theorists in parent-teacher relationships call a "home-school", most of whom were there eleven hours a  day, year-round.  We began the school with Kindergarten through third grade, and my oldest son was a student in my classroom. As the years went on and children and their parents asked to be able to stay at Horizon, we added grade levels, experimenting with "family groupings" in which there were multiple grade levels together with a teacher. When I left  I had taught several students for five consecutive years and knew their families well. At Horizon is experienced a learning community and saw how teacher actions and attitudes (such as highlighting everyone's strengths, and solving problems together) helped nurture that community.

   Probably the most rewarding portion of my Ph.D. program began as a study group, and later continued to become  "the Bloodsisters", a network of feminist educators which is still important in my professional life. These smaller communities within larger communities balanced the independent problem-solver in me and taught me the importance of receiving help as well as giving it. I realized that I never had all the answers myself, and that when people work together there is often a creative synergism that is greater than the individuals involved.

   When I moved to Chicago, I was strengthened by being part of a strong politically-active bisexual and lesbian community. There I met people like Sharon Page, a community organizer, and Lynda Myers, a social worker, who had long histories of  organizing for social justice. They taught me to think in terms of systems and context, and to work strategically for change, all of which is now part of the curriculum of the professional courses I teach.  From them I also learned about other cultural communities such as the Deaf community  and the labor movement, and  more about my own "position"  in the world as a woman with working class origins.

    In the last few years I have become  part of another politically active community: the "reform" community working in Chicago Public schools. In that community I have learned even more to appreciate the variety of contributions that people make, from monied business people, to religious leaders, to neighborhood activists. I have also learned to meet people where they are, to suspend judgment, to work alongside of people in whatever I and they do, and to "code-switch" from the language of one culture to another.  

   One of the ideas I stress with new teachers, is that teaching is too complex and demanding for us to try to do it alone. We need to form networks to sustain, support, and challenge each other within  trusting relationships. Experienced teachers who have been successful (who have stayed in teaching and continued to perfect their craft) do this. As a teacher of teachers,  I too seek  out others with whom to discuss teaching, research, and writing. When I first  became a professor I was part of a cross-university "Curriculum Collective" which met regularly to discuss ideas. Later I became part of  feminist study groups, and  I'm now writing my portfolio as part of a study/support group of colleagues all working on the same.

    My current research is with another type of "community", a group of "culturally aware"  teachers who are examining the role that cultural identity plays in our work.  I have been an organizer (with Bill Ayers) of a teacher education programs at the University of Illinois, at NLU in Chicago, and now at Gallaudet, around continuing cohort groups which can form and sustain ongoing relationships among preservice students, and between our students and teacher mentors in the schools. Similarly, I have been active in developing programs which support teacher candidates in joining the "community of educators" early on: as high school students (through the Cabrini-Green - CYCLE's Future Teacher Program), in their first quarter at NLU (through a strong connection to a College of Education advisor and through the University Success Seminars), and in their first professional education course (Participation or what's now called Practicum I). 

VOICE

  Creating circumstances in which all participants are able to be heard is another element  of my life's work. Having spent nine years in an abusive marriage in which I felt I had no voice (or choices), I know first-hand about the wasted potential that accompanies a  position (real or perceived) of powerlessness. Although I attended college while in this relationship, I went through most  years of my undergraduate program not having enough self-confidence to ask, or even answer questions, in my classes. I obediently followed instructions and completed assignments but learned relatively little compared to what I might have had I explored the curriculum more.

    The turning point came on a day which I can still clearly recall on which I saw a film on birthing in a Marriage and Family class. In the film the woman gave birth after having learned about the process through Lamaze classes. She was informed, vocal, and in control, telling the people around her what she needed to give birth well. Having had one child already I knew what a contrast this was to the [then] typical birth experience of being "knocked out" and having the birth done to you. I wondered what it might mean to take more control of my  next birth experience -- of my life.  I decided to pursue my new found interest in women's experiences by taking some electives in the a Women's Studies Department. In doing so I came across a radical notion: feminism - the belief that women are people too with as much capability, right, and power to have a voice as men. Two years later, when my husband once again turned to me, in the midst of an argument,  and asked, "Do you think you  can raise the boys on your own?" I paused, and answered, "Yes". From that point on I've been answering, "Yes" each time either an inner or an outer voice asks me, "Do you think you can ____?"

   My pursuit of voice has, perhaps, been one of the greatest challenges in my career. Much of my teaching approach has as its starting place  "finding voice" because unless a learner surfaces the questions, ideas, and experiences that they bring to the learning setting, they will not be able to actively engage with new ideas. Unless they engage with the material, they cannot truly learn. Finally, as a foremost author on multiculturalism,  James Banks, points out,  only by having all  voices present in the classroom can we hope to teach in a way that responds to our multicultural world and prepares our students to do the same.  I'm excited when I see students and teachers,  who have not had much  experience or confidence with expressing their ideas, become interested and excited when asked, encouraged, and supported in doing so. This excitement over "creating spaces, finding voices" (ala Janet Miller, 1990) is why I particularly love teaching on the Chicago campus where students come with such a rich background of experience, and some awareness of the ways their voices have been suppressed. I learn a great deal from students and love showing them ways to cross the bridge from what they know to whatever "academic" knowledge they don't already have.

    The classroom is one place where I strive to "find voice". My research is another. Much of the service and consulting work that I do with school communities is "evaluation research" in which programs which are funded by philanthropic organizations bring in an outside person to assess "how they're doing", both formatively and summatively. I have been the outside evaluator on several projects in which various members of school communities (teachers, parents, university faculty, foundations) are working together to restructure schools:  the Urban Teacher Education Program in Indiana, the Professional Development School Project at the Chicago Teachers' Center, the Teachers' Academy for Math and Science's School-Community Partnership Development component, and  the Small  School Workshop at UIC.  

   The work these groups are doing is usually complex,  experimental and  evolutionary, and the participants themselves have a difficult time getting a clear picture of what's going on. I interview, write, and  talk with the stakeholders in small and large groups in order to for the participants to "tell their stories" among themselves, as well as  to a wider audience. Through this portion of my work I've seen even more clearly how divergent is the understanding  people have of the same events, depending on their own autobiographies and experiences. No one understanding is more correct than others, but all perspectives are important to the whole. I've learned to be  non-intrusive and facilitative in gathering "data". Few people in school communities which are working towards reform have the time or the patience for formal evaluations apart from their daily work. I've also learned to be a translator and bridge-builder between groups.

    My current research agenda is another area in which the voices of people who are traditionally not heard are brought into the conversation about ways in which teachers might respond to increasingly diverse student populations. For three years my colleague, Mari Koerner, and I have been meeting with six teachers (we started when they were  students in our programs) to discuss the influence of our cultural identities on our teaching.

    The genesis of this group is itself, a story of "voice" in which Mari and I decided that rather than continuing to be dependent on the people who'd mentored us through our doctoral program (and sometimes a little envious of the accolades they received through their leadership in joint projects), we would mentor and support one another in developing our own research and writing agenda. That was 2 1/2  years ago. Since then we have done ten presentations or workshops, co-authored four journal articles, a book chapter, and a special issue of a journal, and now have a book proposal under consideration. We have learned to work together despite sometimes contradictory styles.  We have moved from interviewing   students, to what we now think of as collaborative  "teacher-research" which influences the day-to-day classroom practice of all of us..

    Writing is probably the most challenging  area in which I've developed my ability to have an authentic voice. Throughout my academic career (Kindergarten through Ph.D.) I had felt successful at writing. It wasn't until I finished my doctoral program and attempted to "say" something to a larger audience about my research, that I realized that I didn't know how to do that. My success had all been at synthesizing and interpreting other people's ideas, not conveying my own. The last five years have been a painful struggle to trust my own ideas and ways of expressing them. Bill Schubert, who had been my major professor in my doctoral program, nudged me in this direction by accompanying opportunities for publishing with him with requests for autobiographical themes in the writing I did. (It's much more difficult to write in "academise" when telling your life story.)   Bill Ayers, my mentor in much of my college teaching and reform work, has also been generous as an editor and supportive in affirming that what I have to say is worth taking the time to say well. And it was through conversations with  Jose Rosario, with whom I worked in the Urban Teacher Education Program, about the "burden" of writing as an academic that  I first realized that writing could and should be, not an obligation, but something I do for myself. Now I can hardly believe that no one before ever taught me how valuable (though still scarry) writing can be for understanding my ideas. A recent article bemoaning the decrease in "serious readers" speaks to my new-found realization:

    "Why do [we] keep writing books when most are so little read? Because no other medium permits the spaciousness of time or intensity of concentration to plumb the depths of an experience or an idea....Authors will keep writing...whether they find readers or not, because it's their way of understanding their world." (Sommer, M., 1994, Christian Science Monitor)

    Through people who have mentored me (Ayers and Schubert), the many educators who have entered the conversation about the writing process (such as Toby Fulwiler, Reggie Routman and Lynn Atwell), the progressive education tradition (esp. John Dewey), and feminist researchers who are talking about "connected knowing"  (as described in Women's Ways of Knowing by Belenky et.al.)  I have learned to begin with what I know best (my autobiography) and expand to the world of larger ideas, in my writing.  My involvement in the "Writing Across the Curriculum" faculty development project at NLU two years ago helped to cement the connection between my use of writing as a pedagogical tool, and process writing as an approach in elementary classrooms.

Mirrors and Windows

   I've been described as outspoken,  intense, thorough, and audacious. Recently, while reading  a Frommer's Travel Guide to Amsterdam I was thrilled to "see" myself depicted on its pages:

   "The Dutch aren't particularly emotional or hotheaded, but then they aren't shy about speaking their minds either. They are fiercely independent and yet are so tolerant of other people's problems and attitudes that their country nearly equals the U.S. as  traditional haven for the world's exiles and emigres. ...The uniquely Dutch combination of tolerance and individualism has from time to time allowed scandalous eyesores to develop: the nightly spectacle of hippies sleeping on Amsterdam's Dam Square in  he 1960's; the dubious decision of prominent Dutch cabinet ministers to pose nude in the chambers of Parliament for publication in the Dutch edition of Playboy  magazine." 

    Although who I am and what I do has evolved throughout my life, this paragraph makes me wonder how much of who I am originated in my Dutch heritage.  Reading this simple statement was validating and affirming. I thought there was no one else like me anywhere and I had never been able to figure out how I'd come to be what I thought of as such a strange combination of traits. I am once again reminded of Peggy Macintosh's metaphor of curriculum as mirror and window (Wellesley Center's SEED** Project): a mirror of our own perspectives, as well as a window onto other people's experiences and ideas. My challenge is to constantly keep a mirror on myself so that who I am is part of my professional identity -- the unpopular (e.g., lesbian, working-class), as well as the favored parts of myself. My challenge is to continue to open windows for myself which help me to understand new perspectives and ideas.  My work is an attempt to create an in- and out-of-school curriculum that is made up of both mirrors and windows for all learners.

** SEED stands for "Seeking Educational Excellence through Diversity"