Guest Speaker: Richard Sterling

Next week, our beloved faculty sponsor, Richard Sterling, will be giving a guest lecture along with one of group presentations on TV. Here's a brief biography on Richard Sterling, a current adjunct professor at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Education:

Richard Sterling is the executive director of the National Writing Project. Formerly he was a faculty member at Lehman College, where he was also director and founder of the Institute for Literacy Studies, a research unit of CUNY. He also directed and founded the New York City Writing Project and the New York City Mathematics Project. In 1992 he received a grant from the DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund to develop a national project of teacher research groups in 12 cities across the U.S. As national director of this Urban Sites Network, he worked with teachers and faculty from all regions of the country to develop a body of practitioner-based research documenting educational practice. Richard Sterling is working to extend the work of the Urban Sites project to both rural and urban settings and to develop ways to close the gap between university researchers in education and practitioners in the field. His publication highlights include co-authoring ”The National Writing Project: Scaling up and Scaling Down,’ in Expanding the Reach of Reform: Perspectives from Leaders in the Scale-Up of Educational Reform (RAND, 2004). He is currently working on projects for new teachers under a grant from the Stone Foundation and on issues of adolescent literacy under a grant from the Carnegie Corporation. Since 2003, Mr. Sterling has chaired the advisory group to the College Board's National Commission on Writing in America's Families, Schools, and Colleges.

Is There Not A Correspondence?

Is There Not A Correspondence?

Next week we will be discussing the affects of movies. For your assignment, write the usual one page, double spaced paper on:

A movie or television show that portrayed a situation you have experienced, such as:

• College life
• Dating
• Work
• Cultural & Ethnic experiences (Joy Luck Club, American Me come to mind)
• Or other "specific" "real life" "experiences"

Is There Not A Cause?

And then write about how true to life that film was to your experiences. Did the film accurately capture your experience? Or did the film entirely miss the mark? Or did the film become so ingrained and foundational to the culture, that your experience cannot be thought about outside the context of the film ("It was unreal the way we looked into each others eyes/I made that last second 3-point shot/dove out from that out-of-control, burning vehicle/etc., like something out of a movie!").

Is There Not A Cost?

Then, discuss the implications, if any, of forming perceptions based on movies and television.