5 Great Candidates for Next Secretary of Education
There have been 11 Secretaries of Education and it is not exactly an inspiring list. Right now, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are in the process of selecting who the next one will be. Here are 5 candidates he should consider.
Dr. Clint Smith: Dr. Smith is an award-winning scholar, writer, podcaster, and poet who ”taught high school English in Prince George’s County, Maryland where, in 2013, he was named the Christine D. Sarbanes Teacher of the Year by the Maryland Humanities Council. He currently teaches writing and literature in the D.C. Central Detention Facility.” In addition, he recently finished his PhD at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Part of being a good educator is actually enjoying and promoting the process and importance of learning. Smith embodies those qualities and in burgeoning career shown an ability to be go in depth on important topics as well as having a breadth of interests which he has demonstrated while writing about everything from tax law and public school to “Becoming A Parent in The Age of Black Lives Matter” to “The Greatness of Neymar” and “Historically Black Colleges.” His skills as a poet would allow him to also discuss and advocate for education in a ways not usually seen in a presidential cabinet.
Dr. Ben Mardell: Mardell is a former preschool and kindergarten teacher. Currently, he is the project director of the Pedagogy of Play, a collaboration with the LEGO Foundation and the International School of Billund, exploring how play can have a central part in children’s learning in school. Ben has been associated with Project Zero since 1999, initially as a researcher on the Making Learning Visible (MLV) project and helped co-author Making Learning Visible: Children as Individual and Group Learners and Making Teaching Visible: Documentation of Individual and Group Learning as Professional Development. Too much of the focus of education this century has been on standardized tests. Mardell would bring a different mindset with a focus on playful learning and preparing students to be active citizens in their community.
Dr. Jie-Qi (Jackie) Chen: Chen is the rare person who has experiences teaching toddlers, preschoolers, Elementary Schoolers and college students. Currently she is a “professor of early education at the Erikson Institute in Chicago, and graduate school in child development. She also serves as Erikson’s Senior Vice-President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty” along with being a member of the NAEYC Governing Board. She is the principal investigator of Erikson’s Early Math Collaborative which is a great resource of educators looking to make math interesting, relevant, and fun. How great would it be to have a math pedagogy expert as Secretary of Education?
Dr. Sandra Okita: The intersection between education and technology will continue to grow in the future; the current state of the world where remote learning has become the norm makes this issue’s importance immediate. “Dr. Okita's current research interest is focused on the learning partnership between individuals and technology, and how technology intersects with learning and instructional processes” Okita was recently quoted in an interview saying “The key phrase across all my projects is ‘peer learning.” Peer learners either teach us something we didn’t know or mirror back to us something about ourselves. Sometimes the peer is human, sometimes it is an agent or avatar or a computer graphics character that resides inside a computer. Sometimes it’s a physical robot” It would be an interesting change to have an education secretary who was forward thinking and willing to promote and test new ideas related to the intersection between education and technology.
Dr. Leslie Fenwick, dean emeritus of Howard University’s School of Education
Dr, Fenwick has an extensive career in the world of education. She served as Dean of the Howard University School of Education for nearly a decade. A former Visiting Scholar and Visiting Fellow at Harvard University, Fenwick holds an invited appointment as a MCLC Senior Fellow at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point where she occasionally lectures about character leadership and ethics. Dr Fenwick has extensive experience research and writing about issues related to education. “Dr. Fenwick is a contributor to the best-selling book, The Last Word: Controversy and Commentary in American Education. Her research has been cited by the New York Times and the Center for American Progress. Additionally, her op-ed articles about education, the economy and urban development have appeared in the Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Education Week, The Huffington Post, and Diverse Issues in Higher Education. She has delivered over 150 invited keynotes and testimonies to the U.S. Senate, leading human and civil rights organizations, and at the National Press Club.
Presently, Dr. Fenwick is a member of the Scholarly Advisory Committee for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) – the world’s third busiest museum. A science enthusiast, Dr. Fenwick was appointed by NASA Administrator (director) General Charles Bolden to NASA’s Education and Public Outreach Committee. Dr. Fenwick has a relationship with VP Elect Kamala Harris who is a Howard alum which could also help her candidacy.
