Statement from Anna Mazzaro, Montclair State University

Montclair, NJ 07043, USA

If elected as a Member-at-Large on the ISfTE Executive Board, I would work to increase

ISfTE membership from the broad constituency of the teacher in-service community
internationally, including participation by teachers and others who are professionally and
passionately driven to advance education for all teachers and the children they teach.

Since I was a child, I knew I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up. That became a
reality almost 25 years ago. I became a teacher in Uruguay, where I was born There I
started my teaching career and with it, a great passion for education.

In 1999, after teaching for several years in Uruguay, I moved to the United States. This
was a new life for me. I went back to school to get my teaching degree once more! It was
not an easy task. Everything was new to me: new language, new culture, new ways, but
that didn’t stifle my desire to become a teacher in my new country.

My educational experience in the United States shocked me at first. Most of my

professors were simply lecturing to their classes and most of the assignments were
disconnected from the school reality and the needs of students. I became discouraged and
disappointed. I knew very well this wasn’t the way teachers were supposed to be trained
nor the way they should teach their students. I determined to do things differently and
help my students to become excited about learning.

At the end of my second year of teaching, I participated in a summer institute at the Great
Ideas In Science Center (currently PRISM) at Montclair State University in New Jersey,
USA. This was an intensive transformative program for teachers that taught me
innovative teaching approaches and the importance of making students the center of
instruction. The professors and partnered teachers showed me how important a
constructivist approach can be in education and how to implement it in my teaching. The
approaches were adopted naturally because they were modeled in the institute experience.
That summer training was a turning point in my professional life. From then on, I started
to be the facilitator of instruction and not the sole source of it. I looked for ways that
made learning fun and significant. My focus was not to cover pages of a book, but to help
students learn, think, and be excited about it.

Some years later, I started to work for the same Center that gave me the opportunity to
become a much better educator, and so I became a teacher educator. Since then I have
helped design programs that seek to provide teachers with better understanding of the
material and develop the approaches they need to feel confident and make learning
meaningful and interesting.

As a teacher educator, I provide professional development for teachers through:

• Summer institutes designed and implemented as the foundation experience for
elementary and middle grades teachers.
• Visits to school districts to mentor and assist summer institute attendees.
 • Design and production of bilingual programs for videoconferences from Panama.
• Foreign field experiences for teachers that I have co-led.
• Teaching materials for education that I prepare for bilingual as well as standard
classrooms.
• Preparation and delivery of presentations to elementary school students about
rainforests and personal experiences in these ecosystems.

Being an immigrant in the United States has helped me to become more aware and
sensitive to the needs and concerns of bilingual teachers and students. The desire to help
minority populations has driven me to create materials for teachers and students, provide
in-service, translate educational materials, and provide instruction in Spanish to Spanish-
speaking students.

I believe that, like other professionals, teachers need to be constantly updated on new
pedagogical approaches and the latest research. For this reason, I have attended
numerous workshops and taken courses in various areas.

My first experience with ISfTE was in 2003. I was excited to participate in an

international seminar of this caliber, sharing studies and research with colleagues from
around the world. It helped me understand that many needs and difficulties are universal,
and that, as teacher educators, we need to work hard and in close collaboration to
overcome them. Since then I have become a regular attendee of ISfTE (2006, 2007,
2008) and maintained my membership of the society.

As ISfTE moves into its next thirty years, I believe I can contribute experience,
enthusiasm and innovation in helping it better serve all colleagues who work with teacher
professional development.

Some Recent Presentations

Educación Sin Fronteras – MesoAmerican Society Congress, Belize, Oct. 2009.
Education Without Walls - The Importance of Videoconference - EDULEARN09,
Burapha University, Bangkok, Thailand, Oct. 2009
The Use of Videoconference in Education - Barcelona, Spain, July 2009
Using Science in Bilingual Settings – National Association of Bilingual Educators,
Arizona, USA, Jan. 2008
The Value of Videoconference in Education – ISTE, Armidale, Australia, April 2008