Dana Ligocki

Although born in rural Hershey, Pennsylvania, most of my developmental years were spent in South Florida. I graduated from Florida International University in Miami with a Bachelor of Science in Secondary English Education, and then took a position as a high school English teacher at a large, urban high school. While teaching, coaching dance, and advising the English Honor Society and Class of 2005, I took evening courses towards my Masters in Secondary English Education, which I completed a few years later. In addition, I instructed general teaching labs at FIU for undergraduate and graduate students of multiple grade levels and disciplines. Looking for a new adventure, I took a position as a middle and high school English teacher at a small, independent school in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where I taught and advised National Honor Society for three years. Committed to instilling global ethics and community outreach, I focused on implementing the service-learning approach resulting in a student organized and executed large-scale nighttime walk-a-thon involving over 500 participants and 70 volunteers raising $33,000 to donate to a high school in Gulu, Uganda through Invisible Children, Inc.

Once again, I needed a new challenge, so I enrolled in a full-time, Masters of Education, Education Leadership program at Teachers College, which I completed in May 2008. It was during this program that my life changed. In need of completing an administrative internship, I discovered Columbia Secondary School and fell in love… with the school’s vision, faculty, students, and the community. Luckily, they were in need of a second year faculty, so I was invited to join the team.

Philosophy of Education

“Life-long learner” is a pedagogical phrase one can find throughout educational texts, colleges of education, and school missions and philosophies. The term is thrown around so often it often is merely empty jargon in which the disseminator of this term no longer gives much thought into what this actually means in our classrooms in our schools or in our mantras. I ask, a life-long learner of what? It seems as if this phrase is missing a significant element—a life-long leaner of…

As for me, it is life. When asked to define my intellectual and personal interests, the two merge into one with the simple answer: My intellectual and personal interests are to learn how to learn from life. I am a practiced (yet still imperfect) student of life and the acknowledgment of this position is something I desire all of my students to take not only in the classroom, but also throughout their own lives. It is a position I hope to also teach to my peers, friends, and family. If one accepts their position as a student of life, they will be able to flourish in any discipline, handle any situation, and overcome any challenge.

My tenth grade English teacher taught me how to do this. She stood in front of the classroom on the first day of school behind the stack of novels we were to read that year and blatantly said, “There is only one thing I want you to learn this year, and that is how to think.” What was she talking about? I already knew how to do that! I could spew out facts about history and science, I could read and write quickly, I’ve been doing this for years! But I was wrong. I never really did know how to actually think—to critically analyze, to draw conclusions based on reasoning, to evaluate and make judgments supported with evidence. After the last day of her class, we joked with her that she “made our lives miserable” because we couldn’t help but consistently analyze anything we encountered even if it wasn’t literature—television commercials, life experiences, personal conflicts, or something as simple as waves crashing on the shore. She didn’t just teach us to think, she taught us to be learners of life. She was the most difficult teacher, but she also had the greatest impact on our academic, emotional, social, and ethical development. Mrs. Martin transformed lives for the better—and I wanted to do that, too.

I have never strayed from the desire to be an educator. It is so much more than a job; it is my life. And yes, I analyze it (as a life learner) to glean the many lessons. Teaching in a large, urban high school in Miami taught me the importance of education in order to earn valuable opportunities; it also taught me the difficulties public school students face in a system them is scarce of resources, dedicated teachers, and weighted down by a challenging bureaucracy. Teaching in a small, affluent, independent school in San Juan, Puerto Rico taught me the advantages of a nurturing school community with a strong culture and a small size. Graduate school taught me how to be a reflective practitioner, avid researcher, and effective leader in the classroom, school, and community. It also taught me the perpetuating inequities in American education—the need for public school reform and the means and empowerment to take part in this reform. Not only did I study these inequities, but also I witnessed the inequities in my two contrasting teaching assignments.

All aforementioned life experiences have whet my passion and feeling of obligation to empower every child with the power of thinking—academically, socially, emotionally, and morally. I seek ways to synthesize all that I have learned to figure out the best way to guide a student. Nothing fascinates me more than when I can see a student begin to see the world with a more discerning and empathetic eye. Once this occurs they naturally desire to continue learning in and out of the classroom. Therefore, I strive to guide each student to be capable of this challenge, just as Mrs. Martin did for me. And once a student has this capability, then he or she will naturally become a life-long learner… of life.