Ellen Doyle (MA ’08 Secondary Education) received a Distinguished Fulbright Award in Teaching. The program recognizes and encourages excellence in teaching in the United States and abroad. Doyle will use her Fulbright to go to India for three months. She will study how Indian teachers and students function under their recently adapted education programs and find ways to incorporate their practices into her own teaching endeavors.
Doyle currently teaches Social Studies at International High School at LaGuardia Community College. Prior to that, she taught Humanities for four years at Fannie Lou Hammer Freedom High School in the South Bronx. Equally, both schools were fundamental to Doyle’s belief in supporting teacher curriculum. She chose to conduct research in India—one of the world’s largest democracies—because of its latest improvements in education. The Indian government has reforms such as Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA-Education for All Movement), a program created in 2001 to bring about the universalization of elementary education. In addition, the Right to Education Act , passed in 2009, entitles all children to free, compulsory primary education; supports secondary education for all children, as well as equitable access to higher education; and commits to country to providing basic education for people who have not completed it. “The goals of these initiatives are in line with recent national reform initiatives in the United States, namely the Common Core Standards,” explains Doyle. “I hope to study how Indian teachers and students have fared under these programs and what lessons have been learned.”
She credits her flourishing career and desire for equality in education to the teachers she had during her graduate work at QC. “I was very fortunate to have had wonderful mentors,” she says. “All three professors in the Social Studies Secondary Education department—David Gerwin, John Gunn and Jack Zevin have influenced my teaching career. Over the past nine years, they have been everything from understanding supervisors, academic advisors, and inspirational teachers to supportive colleagues.”
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