Profile Information

Dean Williams

Japan

Roles

Educator

Levels

Grade 4 (ages 8-9), Grade 5 (ages 9-10), Grade 6 (ages 10-11), Grade 7 (ages 11-12), Grade 8 (ages 12-13), Grade 9 (ages 13-14), Grade 10 (ages 14-15), Grade 11 (ages 15-16), Grade 12 (ages 16-17)

Subjects

Mathematics, Language Arts, Social Studies, Science, World Languages, Computer Technology, Career and Tech Ed, Creative Arts, Educational Support

About me

I'm a junior and senior high school English teacher working at a girls' school in beautiful Kyoto, Japan. I'm interested in all aspects of education, but have concentrated primarily on developing original materials that encourage students to think, to analyze and interpret the content, and then to create original knowledge products that allow them to get "inside" the ideas, to assimilate them into their own intellectual repertoire. WAC (Writing across the Curriculum and Kieran Egan's LiD (Learning in Depth) are two of the main arrows in my pedagogical quiver. I have also spent a great deal of time (endless hours, actually) on studying curricula and educational frameworks, and models from all over the world and trying my hand at crafting my own. My educational mentors are Alfred North Whitehead, Dewey, Kieran Egan, Marlene Scardamalia and Carl Bereiter, Elliot Eisner, and Nel Noddings. I believe that the two purposes of education are 1) to allow civilization to continue by enculturating the next generation with core knowledge, skills, and values; and 2) to maximize the life chances of every individual child. Of these two, is it not so that reason 2 suffers because of an over-concentration on reason 1?