Gene Thompson-Grove
In her role as Co-Director of Clinical Teacher Education, Gene oversees professional support for BTR Clinical Teacher Educators (CTEs), as well as for residents and their mentors, and graduates and their colleagues in partner schools. Gene began her career as a high school English and Social Studies teacher in Watertown, MA, and later was a middle school teacher in Cambridge, MA. She is a founding member of Educators for Social Responsibility, the National School Reform Faculty, and more recently, the School Reform Initiative. Gene was also a Clinical Professor in the Education Department at Brown University, and she worked for the Coalition of Essential Schools and Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown for ten years. For the past twenty years, Gene has worked with numerous reform organizations, schools, and school districts, leading seminars on examining student work collaboratively, understanding school culture, creating professional communities, engaging in collaborative inquiry, developing facilitative leadership, and designing and facilitating adult learning experiences. She comes to BTR from the Public Schools of Brookline, where she spent the last six years as Director of Professional Development and Special Initiatives.
Inspiration to teach:
I spent a good deal of my childhood drawing classrooms and seating charts with chalk on the street in front of my house, and then “playing school” with my best friend, Claire and my younger sisters (who were the students). But it wasn’t until I was in high school and coached a junior high girls’ basketball team that I knew I wanted to teach, and even then, I wasn’t sure that classroom teaching would allow me to coach young people the way I was most interested in doing. It wasn’t until I went to BC and literally stumbled upon an alternative teaching program that I made the connection between teaching, empowerment and social justice – and through my internships in Charlestown, Somerville and Watertown – met the educators who would help me shape my philosophy of teaching and who would, in turn, forever change my life.
About my students:
I was originally a high school teacher, and have also taught middle school, but truthfully, I am most fascinated by and interested in adult development, adult learners, and transformational learning theory.
About BTR:
I am new to BTR as the Co-Director of Clinical Teacher Education, but not to the organization, having coached a Critical Friends Group (CFG) of the BTR staff for the past two years. And while BTR is now “my” organization, I am an active member of the School Reform Initiative (SRI), All Kinds of Minds (AKOM), and the Coalition of Educators Educating Boys of Color (COSEBOC).
In My Previous Life:
Professionally, I was part of founding Educators for Social Responsibility (ESR) and the National School Reform Faculty (NSRF) – now the School Reform Initiative (SRI). I worked closely with Ted Sizer and others in the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) and the Annenberg Institute for School Reform (AISR) at Brown University. I have been an educational consultant and worked have extensively in places as varied as San Antonio, Salt Lake City, Kansas City Kansas, Hartford CT, New York City, Cleveland, and Virginia Beach. Personally, I have coached girls’ softball (tee-ball through middle school), was a Girl Scout leader for eight years, and coordinated Destination Imagination and managed DI teams for five years. I am an active member of the Unitarian Universalist congregation at First Parish in Brookline.
Favorite Thing in the World To Do:
I am from Rhode Island, also known as the “ocean state” – and true to form the ocean draws me. I am happiest near or on a beach – sleeping where I can hear the waves slapping against the sand, reading with my feet in the water, standing on the shore with the roar of the waves in my ears. I got married by the ocean (in Nantucket), we scattered the ashes of our first-born son at the same spot in Nantucket, I have traveled to the outer Cape (Wellfleet, Truro, Provincetown) to vacation with my husband and two children every year since 1986, and I gather with my siblings and their families several times a year at my brother’s house in Newport, RI.
Random thought:
(Not so) Random Quotes:
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. –Annie Dillard
If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Recently by Gene
RSS Feed9.07.11 - Inquiry musings
As the new school year begins, and I begin my new work with BTR, I have been thinking a lot about inquiry. For many of us, “inquiry” is what “teachers do all the time” – teaching, noticing students, adjusting practice, and collecting more data. … [more]
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