Nancy Peterson (Ed.D. ’98 Elem Ed) is back at the Curry School, but under much different constraints than when she was here last. There’s no pressure to go to class or study for tests or write a doctoral dissertation. This year Peterson is on Grounds as a visiting professor working with Sara Rimm-Kaufman in the Social Development Lab associated with the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning.
Peterson is a professor in the Elementary Education Department of Utah Valley University’s School of Education. She specializes in teaching in the areas of language arts and children’s writing, children’s and young adult literature and nonfiction literature in the classroom, and differentiated curriculum and instruction.
Rimm-Kaufman’s research on the Responsive Classroom Approach is what drew Peterson back to Virginia for an 8-month stretch of her sabbatical. “I was exposed to one component of the RC approach several years ago, and have been teaching it ever since,” she said. “It’s gratifying to be here on the front lines of research about something I believe in and pass along to approximately 120 preservice teachers each year.”
Peterson’s presence has also been valuable to the UVA Social Development Lab, Rimm-Kaufman says. Lab researchers are currently analyzing and interpreting results from a large scale study of the Responsive Classroom approach. “Nancy brings 15 years of experience preparing teachers to teach elementary school classrooms. Her input has been incredibly useful to us as we interpret our findings, particularly because she brings tremendous insights about the process of teacher change and about why teachers gravitate toward some classroom practices rather than others.”
“Our teacher education program is young, and as we created it I could offer Curry School expertise to course and curriculum decisions.”
The scholarly environment at CASTL has been especially enriching for Peterson. “I work in an institution where teaching is the number one expectation, teaching load is extremely heavy, and scholarly pursuits easily get lost on the road to good intentions,” she says.
In addition to her work in the Lab, Nancy has taken advantage of opportunities to attend classes taught by the authors of many texts being used in the teacher preparation program at Utah Valley. These include Instruction: A Models Approach, co-authored by Susan Mintz (as well as emeriti professor Tom Estes and the late Mary Alice Gunter); Fulfilling the Promise of the Differentiated Classroom by Carol Tomlinson; and Words Their Way: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary & Spelling Instruction, by Marcia Invernizzi and others.
“Our teacher education program is young, and as we created it I could offer Curry School expertise to course and curriculum decisions,” Peterson says. Now she has been able to watch the authors of those texts live in the classroom. “Really, it’s like I’m part of a Curry School legacy, because we use those books in our teacher education program largely because I was exposed to these specific U.Va. professors in the first place. Now I’m back, observing the source of what we do, which will influence what thousands of students learn.”
by Lynn Bell
