Deborah MeierDeborah Meier

Heather, Lyndsie, Janel

One thing we can be sure of is that the neuronal networks in student brains are related to their own life experience. The things they have seen, heard, touched, smelled and tasted are what connect for them.” (Zull, 102)

“School for many kids was irrelevant, and the extent to which it was relevant, didn't produce lively minds. The same was true for teachers—the environment was barren and sterile. I thought it was amazing that they came to school each day."

Deborah Meier started off as an educator and became a well known author. She wrote in publications and wrote many books. Meier went to Antioch College and also at the University of Chicago.

Books she has written:• In Schools We Trust• The Power of Their Ideas• Will Standards Save

Public Education• Many Children Left

Behind

“The task of creating environments where all kids can experience the power of their ideas requires unsettling not only our accepted organization of schooling and our unspoken and unacknowledged

agreement about the purposes of schools.”

Deborah Meier began as a Head-start teacher in Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia. She has made helping the children in unprivileged communities. She wanted to build productive and meaningful lives for the children involved. Her first greatest achievement, in my mind, was creating the Central Park East School in 1974. This is connected to the Brain Based Learning Theory because she is really into getting the students active in their learning.

Organizations Deborah has been connected with:

• The board of Dissent magazine• The Nation and the Harvard Education Letter• Member of the Education Alliance• The Association of Union Democracy• Educators for Social Responsibility• The Panasonic Foundation• Founding member of the National Board of Professional

Teaching Standards• North Dakota Study Group on Evaluation• Forum for Democracy and Education

Deborah Meier is an innovator. She truly understands how to connect with children and parents in a way that helps to create a productive learning environment. When talking about the school she founded she said, “Once again, the data is clear: 90% of our incoming students graduate and more than 90% go on to college, mostly to four year schools.”

“Becoming a teacher, however, happened by accident. I wasn't in my youth in love with little kids and I thought of

teaching as "typical" women's work. To be avoided.”

• Was there an event that happened in her life that made her want to create these schools in New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia?

• Who else helped her when she was creating these schools (if anyone did)?

• How did she get started in the process of creating schools? Did she make the decision on her own or did someone ask her to make the schools?

• How was she able to keep the schools going and being successful?

• We would like to ask her questions in person if we ever got the chance. We would be able to ask her questions because she is still alive today.

“Good schooling is built on the oldest idea around: you learn by the company you keep.”

She would be a very good mentor to any student who is thinking about being a teacher. She started off working as a head start program, then as a kindergarten teacher and eventually worked her way up and created schools in places where they were in need of them. She did what she believed was right for the children that were at the time going to terrible schools and made it so they are now able to get the schooling they deserve.

• “You don’t prepare for education, school and life is education.”

• I chose Deborah Meier because the New York public schools were tanked and she was a young person who wanted to educate students and their parents. For a while she was successful at what she did. Then parents wanted to take over the schools. Deborah and teachers got the principal’s support, she then founded her own school…elementary school Central Park East district…highest graduation rate/college rate. Her belief in democracy, habits of mind, honest way that she worked with kids and parents worked. And it worked because she understood how children learned and that parents and children have to do it together. Connecting things to what kids already know.” -Charlie

Works Cited• Meier, Deborah. The Power of Their Ideas.

Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon P, 1995.

• "Deborah Meier Homepage." Deborah Meier. 25 Mar. 2008 <http://www.deborahmeier.com/>.