Jessica Wagner, Class of 2007 major: Educational Studies & Anthropology, with concentration in international & urban education

I’m very interested in both urban and international education, and the Educational Studies Program has provided me with ample opportunities to tailor my interests around both topics. It started with the Ed 200: Analyzing Schools course, where I was placed in a dual-language Spanish-English elementary classroom in a nearby school, two blocks from campus. Here I realized that the “local” and the “global” are really one and the same, since I worked with children who had recently immigrated, or whose parents were recent immigrants. The classroom teacher and I formed a great relationship. She invited me back to her class the next semester, and later helped me to find another teacher to work with for my senior year.

As a double major in Educational Studies and Anthropology, I had always known that my senior research project would involve some sort of hands-on fieldwork in a local Hartford school, because I wanted to utilize the ethnographic research methods in which I’d been trained. Through interviewing and participant-observation, my study focused on the construction of gender roles among Latina girls. (See “Girlie-Girls, Tomboys, and Everything in Between: The Messages Girls are Receiving and Sending about their Place in an Urban Elementary School Classroom.”) As if this opportunity to do research at the undergraduate level wasn’t already amazing enough, I also presented my study to professors and graduate students from across the nation at the conference hosted by the Center for Urban Ethnography, at the University of Pennsylvania.

Thinking back to how shy I was freshman year, I can’t believe how far I’ve come to have the courage to stand up and deliver my presentation in front of an audience. Everyone was incredibly supportive, and several professors and graduate students from some of the top institutions encouraged me to go on to graduate school in the near future. It was also an amazing opportunity to learn about the research that scholars are conducting at the graduate level, and really enabled me to see what I want to aspire to in the future.

My advice to current students: Get to know your professors as soon as possible, because the more they understand your academic interests, the more they’ll push you to stretch yourself and achieve beyond what you thought possible. Also, take advantage of the connections and resources available within the Hartford community so that by the time your fourth year rolls around, you’ll be in a good place to complete your senior project. -- Jessica Wagner, March 2007

back to top

Heather Moore, Class of 2008 major: Educational Studies & American Studies, with concentration in minorities in urban education minor: Afro-American studies Heather (center) with her sixth grade students and co-worker at St. Agnes School in Cape Town, South Africa

I was initially attracted to Trinity because of its Community Learning Initiative (CLI), where classes combine academic concepts with real-life applications to the city of Hartford. In my case, the Ed 200: Analyzing Schools course was a great way to make these connections. I was placed in a 7th grade mathematics classroom at the Hartford Magnet Middle School, located across the street at the Learning Corridor, where I learned about urban schooling from different perspectives.

My interests in urban and global learning continued with internships in both Hartford and South Africa. During the summer after my first year at Trinity, I worked with the Children’s Educational Opportunity Foundation of Connecticut, a non-profit organization devoted to expanding private school choice in urban schools. During my junior year, I expanded my horizons beyond the U.S. by studying abroad at the Trinity Global Site in Cape Town, South Africa, where I also taught a reading & writing seminar for sixth grade students. Both of these internship experiences connected directly with Educational Studies courses like Ed 215: Education and Social Change Across the Globe and Ed 308: Cities, Suburbs, and Schools.

I highly recommend that students interested in Educational Studies take full advantage of the learning opportunities that Trinity offers in Hartford and beyond. Take part in the multitude of community-learning and internship placements offered during the school year as well as the summer, and think about ideas they give you about researchable questions for senior-year independent projects. All of the experiences above have helped me to assess urban educational policies -- both in the U.S. and abroad -- and specifically how they affect students of color in public schools. My urban and global learning experiences have been vital to my undergraduate career at Trinity, and have helped prepare me for my future pursuits in graduate school. -- Heather Moore, March 2007

back to top

Jackie Kahan, Class of 2008 major: Educational Studies, with concentration in comparative education

I first became involved with urban learning at Trinity through the Ed 200: Analyzing Schools course. It included a community-learning component that placed me in a first-grade classroom in a nearby school, where I helped the teacher and students with various learning activities. The beauty of this course is the way it integrates theoretically based knowledge from readings with real-life classrooms in Hartford public schools. For me, this experience was very positive and it created an interest to work in a classroom again.

My involvement in global learning arose from several different courses: Ints: 101 Introduction to Latin American and the Caribbean World, Educ 215: Education & Social Change Across the Globe, and a student-taught course on Multicultural Education in a Global Age.  My love of traveling paired with my curiosity about educational systems outside of the United States led me to spend a year abroad. With the support and guidance from my academic advisor, I arranged to study for two consecutive semesters at two different Trinity Global Sites: Paris, France and Santiago, Chile. In the latter, I enrolled in an education course at the Universidad de Chile, which will count toward my Educational Studies major at Trinity. In addition, my experience in Hartford schools influenced my decision to do an internship at a local public school in Chile, which fit well with my interests in comparative education.

I advise students to study abroad, and encourage them to plan ahead by setting up a meeting with your academic advisor to discuss which programs fit best with your interests. And I also recommend everyone to spend time in a Hartford school, or take advantage of the countless other opportunities to tutor students or work in after-school programs. Whatever your interests may be, pursue them in the form of a community-learning course, internship, or extracurricular activity, to help give you an sense of what kind of work you would like to consider after college. -- Jackie Kahan, March 2007

back to top

Jesse Wanzer, Class of 2008 major: Educational Studies & Psychology, with concentration in educational inequalities in urban settings

I took Ed 200: Analyzing Schools in the spring semester of my freshman year and absolutely loved it. Each week I spent 3 hours at a nearby school, MD Fox Elementary, observing what was going on in the classroom and getting involved in the day’s activities, and establishing a close bond with all of the students in that third grade classroom. It was an interesting experience for me in that everything that we were learning in our Trinity class was directly applicable to the real world setting of a Hartford classroom; not many college classes allow you to make those connections.

Taking Ed 200 opened doors to what I could do at Trinity. The skills I learned from that class gave me the necessary background to move up and work on educational research projects. During the summer after my sophomore year, I joined the Cities, Suburbs, and Schools research project at Trinity, and worked with colleagues from the University of Connecticut to learn ArcGIS, a sophisticated computer mapping program. I became a co-author of a special report, A Visual Guide to Sheff v O’Neill, which tracked the progress of magnet schools as school desegregation remedy in the metropolitan Hartford region. Our work also appeared in the Hartford Courant newspaper. Since then I’ve gained additional interviewing skills for qualitative research projects on school choice. These are only a few of the lessons that I took away from my experience and I continue to find more ways to apply them, both inside and outside of the classroom. Getting involved in urban learning at Trinity was probably the best move I made. -- Jesse Wanzer, March 2007

back to top

Sarah Whittemore, Class of 2006 major: Educational Studies, with concentration in inequality and cultural differences

During the fall semester of my junior year at Trinity I made the uncustomary decision to change my major. My true academic passion lay in international educational development and I was determined to pursue this interest for the remainder of my time in college. I sought out possibilities in the Anthropology and Political Science departments and even considered creating my own major before considering the Educational Studies Program.

Like many other students, I had assumed that Educational Studies was solely for students who wanted to become teachers or school administrators after graduation. Fortunately my assumption was incorrect. Through my new major, I enjoyed the support, encouragement, and academic opportunities to explore my interest in international development. During my remaining two years at Trinity my academic ambition led to incredible professional opportunities including living in Brazil and South Africa while studying non-formal education and working at the UNESCO Summit on Human Rights and Education in Geneva. Since graduation I have worked for the Education Development Center, an international non-governmental organization (NGO), and am currently pursuing my Masters Degree in International Educational Development. This summer for my master’s fieldwork I will be assisting with an evaluation of the Filipino Youth Employment Network in Manila, Philippines. -- Sarah Whittemore, March 2007

back to top

Arthur Hardy-Doubleday, Class of 2003 major: Educational Studies and American Studies, with concentration in race and education

Being an Educational Studies major gave me the academic freedom to explore subjects of my interest in the broad context of "education."  I majored in this field because I wanted to figure out why certain people make it and others don't, and began a lifetime of learning into that question.  

After graduating from Trinity I worked as a community organizer in Hartford. This was a sobering experience and I saw first hand the results of Connecticut's segregated school system.   Furthermore, I experienced how complex it was to maneuver through the system. As a youth organizer I employed many of the higher-level theories we learned in class to everyday practice.

Today I work for AMISTAD America, a Connecticut-based, non-profit, educational organization and owner and operator of the Freedom Schooner Amistad. We’re ready to begin our Atlantic Freedom Tour, where we’ll sail across the ocean and teach about the history and impact of the trans-Atlantic slave trade by beaming satellite feeds back to U.S. schools. Working in development, I am challenged every day to justify the value of our education programs to foundations and private donors.  Educational Studies, in combination with my American Studies major, prepared me to be flexible, think through problems, and develop a Rolodex to find answers. -- Arthur Hardy-Doubleday, March 2007

back to top