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Northern Illinois University

Graduate School

Graduate Colloquium Speaker Spotlight

Deborah Meier, author and activist

NIU students and faculty heard a voice for change in education when Deborah Meier, author and activist, spoke to them on Wednesday, February 11, 2009 at the Barsema Alumni and Visitors Center. Meier is heralded as the Founder of the Modern Day Small Schools Movement. In 1974, she founded New York City’s innovative Central Park East School where, following in the progressive tradition of John Dewey, she set about to provide a better education for "inner-city" children in East Harlem.

Her prescription for reform included smaller schools, more flexible curriculums, and higher expectations for students and teachers alike. 
Meier formed many of her ideas about education when she taught kindergarten. For Meier, teaching kindergarten was the most intellectually, challenging experience she ever had. It was a pleasure to be able to study something together with her students that was as interesting to her as it was to them; in this environment, the teacher and learner were both students. She says what we should offer children is a school that is a place where we find each other interesting and we learn from each other.

This learning community should be a place where is it just as powerful for adults as it is for children. For Meier, that is the essence of teaching. Meier is both a critic and an advocate of public schools. She cringes now when she hears of large schools being turned into smaller schools. Too often administrators and teachers think the small school concept means that if teachers will be able to have more contact with the students things will automatically improve and they jump on the proverbial bandwagon. But if the teachers don’t understand the philosophy behind the small school movement, educators often create no change at all. However, even though she sees problems in public schools as they exist today she still feels that making schools compulsory is a good idea especially when you consider the alternatives. Her advice to pre-service teachers, who will soon be teaching in their own classrooms includes:

  • Find every way possible to nurture the natural curiosity of students because schools should be a place that spark children’s curiosity.
  • Study something together with students that is just as interesting to you as it is to them.
  • Ask questions not only of your students but of yourself and of the system. One question that should always be asked is what is the purpose of education?
  • Join together with students and faculty and learn what it means to be in a community. Use your voice to include families in the process of educating their children.
  • Advocate for your children through unions and your congressional representatives.
  • Push the edges as a teacher. Don’t assume that just because something has always been a certain way it can’t be changed.
  • Brainstorm all the things you can do to change the situation to make a better more inviting learning environment for your children.
  • Remember under all circumstances do no harm. If you find that you have become someone who does harm to children, it may be time to leave teaching.

For students and faculty who would like to know more about Meier ’s ideas, she has documented her story and experience at Central Park East Secondary School in The Power of their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem (1995). Her other books include, Will Standards Save Public Education? (2000); In Schools We Trust: Creating Communities of Learning in an Era of Testing and Standardization; with Ted and Nancy Sizer, Keeping School: Letters to Families from Principals of Two Small Schools; and co-edited with George Wood, Many Children Left Behind (2004). Her webpage can be found at http://www.deborahmeier.com/.

Written by Carolyn Riley, Doctoral Student, Department of Teaching and Learning