Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
I was a Psychology major
in uh...
at Brooklyn College
where I graduated, I got my bachelors there
and as part of a
course requirements
I had to take... I took a course in Child Psychology
and it required that uh...
I do
one day of observation and participation each week of the
semester
and then write up the notes and hand them in
you know it was a course requirement
and a friend of my brother's suggested
that I do this in a school called Beta Elid
Beta Elid is Hebrew for "house of the child"
and it was uh...
bilingual/bicultural school for children ages three to eight
in Manhattan
and...
I had gone to Yeshiva, a Jewish
Day School
uh... so I had
a Hebrew language background
so I went there
and it was...
a... very wonderful school, it was a progressive school
on it's Advisory Board was
a man named uh...
William Heard Kilpatrick... who was a student of John Dewey's
and this was their philosophy, so it was uh...
Hebrew Studies plus
you know, language and culture
uh... plus uh...
sort of a progressive approach
and uh...
and I got involved with the kids doing lots of things
besides taking notes
and that the uh... the end of semester
um...
I was asked by the school
if I could spend some days working at the school
with children… and turns out that
they were approached by a
uh... a psychiatrist
who had an autistic child
and uh
as a as a patient...
and the psychiatrist thought that the child was ready for a group experience
the school wasn't sure
they said they'd take him
for a two-week period
uh... if the parents would pay
for another person being in the classroom
and they had asked me for it
the nice thing about it
is if i did this
i would miss the final exam
and the only way you could miss your final exam
was if you got an 'A' for the course
so I… I aced the course
i went there for two weeks and uh...
they seemed to like the way i uh... approached kids
and they actually offered me a teaching position
for the following year
even though I had never been expected to be a teacher
and i said no... I couldn't do it 'cause uh...
this was uh...
'52
and it was the Korean War and i was on a student deferment and uh...
I expected to be drafted
for better, for worse…
upon the end of the semester i got called for a physical exam and i was
4F
uh...
and so I didn't get drafted
and uh... I had not applied to graduate school which i had hoped to do
at some point
uh...
and there's very little you can do with a Bachelor's degree in Psychology
so I went back and called the school and said: is the job still open?
and they offered me the job
uh... so I went there, I figured I'd be there for a while
but I also thought as long as I'm
acting as a teacher I might learn
I should learn about what I'm supposed to be 'doing'
so I signed up for classes at...Teachers College Columbia, which is in
upper Manhattan
and that's how I began in the field
I started… I did four years there
and then uh...
I uh
decided to become a public school teacher, went one year
in a slum school in uh... Brooklyn
and then I got a call from the Early Childhood Center at Brooklyn College
to be a teacher there, and so I wanted to get back to Early Childhoood
so I
I taught there for three years and uh...
the situation was there was that
you had a three year appointment and after three years
you were out, and they would hire somebody else
meanwhile, I got married and I was trying to think of what i would do
for my future... and I knew I couldn't support myself and a family
on a preschool teacher's salary
so I went on for a doctorate… I finished a Masters
at Columbia
and then went on and completed a doctorate there
after finishing up my degree
I started looking for jobs
uh... there were very few jobs in Early Childhood Education
it was a very small
field
at the time, the field exploded
in 1964
'65
with the
establishment of 'Head Start' and the whole Early Childhood field opened up
but there were very few jobs
uh... I found one job that uh...
I was an Assistant Professor
at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee
I was there for four years
uh... and then...
received a call from uh...
UofI
to come for an interview
and I was interested
uh...
so I came out
I interviewed, I was offered a job
I came here
and that was '65 and and I stayed ever since
'65 until
1997 when I retired