"She has answers and questions for everything," says one student of Anne Haas Dyson, Professor, School of Education. The student's nice twist accurately describes Dyson's teaching style and her effect on students. They consistently refer to the way she links research, the real world, and their own variety of research topics, finding the common threads. And students often refer to her classes as "life-changing"
"I think intellectual, political, and moral issues of teaching and learning are best understood--and grappled with," says Dyson, "when they are embodied in everyday human experiences of teachers and students, in and out of schools." One student commented on her "incredible incisiveness and insight and her other-worldly ability to give us at once the big and small picture."
A former student remembers that "Anne has a gift for choreographing classes that had students coming away astonished not so much by what Anne thought and knew (although we all knew that we were in the presence of an incomparable thinker), but by what we came to think and know ourselves." Dyson herself echoes a sense of shared mission: "There is nothing lonelier than standing in front of a class when I'm not sure they are, intellectually, with me--and nothing is more satisfying than when we are all making progress together."
In the School of Education, course evaluations contain the question "What did you like least about this course?" On Dyson's evaluations, more than one student wrote, "That it's only one semester."
A specialist in early literacy development, Dyson joined Berkeley faculty in 1984. She received her B.S. in Elementary Education from the University of Wisconsin, and her Ph.D. in Education from the University of Texas, Austin.
Statement
Of Teaching Philosophy
I have been a teacher all of my adult life. I began in the early seventies, in Texas, teaching mainly Mexican American children: young school-age children in a poor Catholic diocese in El Paso, adults in an English Academy, migrant preschoolers and then first graders in a bilingual program in the Austin public schools.
Though I teach only adults now, my teaching sensibilities and broad goals are rooted in my identity, still, as a teacher of the very young. There are huge differences, of course, between the two experiences.
My broad teaching goals and specific course objectives are informed by the differences in the two teaching contexts, and my sensibilities--my ways of orchestrating classes, knowing students, and responding to individual efforts--are informed by the similarities. To begin with the former, I do not want master teachers and scholars to mistake a public school classroom for a selective university; I want them to reach out to and further the intellectual curiosity of all who come to their door. Moreover, I want educational researchers who are able to illuminate--to clarify but not simplify--the overwhelming complexities of urban schools.
In all of my teaching, throughout my career, I have aimed to engage students deeply with their own interests and passions and, still, help them develop common skills. Thus, in all courses, student assignments include school and/or community observations wide reading, and analytic writing; and in all, class meetings regularly involve analytic discussions of classroom data. As a teacher and a researcher, I think intellectual, political, and moral issues of teaching and learning are best understood--and grappled with--when they are embodied in everyday human experiences of teachers and students, in and out of school; conversely, I think teachers immersed in the very human context of classroom life (which is not neat, not orderly, and not predictable) must also see the larger issues implicit in their daily decisions.
Finally, my identities as a teacher of the young and not-so-young merge in the kind of engagement I require of my students. Having struggled to help a 6-year-old realize that fish starts with F, not God or water, I do not equate lecturing with teaching. There is nothing lonelier than standing in front of a class when I'm not sure they are, intellectually, with me--and nothing is more satisfying than when we are all making progress together. Then teaching is its own reward.