LL Spring05.indd - Lehman College

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Helping Teachers Helps Their
Students, Study Shows
4
A new initiative of the New York
City Mathematics Project—a
program of the Lehman-based
CUNY Institute for Literacy
Studies—has shown dramatic
results in improving student
math skills.
The five-year initiative,
called “Teacher Leaders
for Mathematics Success”
(TL=MS), was funded by the
National Science Foundation
and evaluated in a longitudinal
study by the Academy for
Educational Development, a
national educational assessment
organization.
TL=MS involved 280 K–8
teachers in over 20 low-income
schools throughout the
Bronx, who received ongoing
professional development that
improved their understanding
of math and how to teach it.
The program, in turn, had a
positive impact on students,
with almost 90 percent showing
increases in math performance,
regardless of their gender, race,
ethnicity or English-language
skills.
“It’s possible,” concludes Marcie
Wolfe, the Institute’s Executive
Director, “to increase children’s
opportunities for success in
mathematics if their teachers
expand their content knowledge,
develop more enthusiasm
for teaching math, and use a
range of instructional strategies
that are both engaging and
rigorous.” ◆
Theatre Legends Drop By Carman Hall
For ‘Conversations’ with Professor Bill Hoffman
When award-winning
playwright Edward Albee
last visited Lehman College,
as a guest professor in an English
drama course, his hair was considerably
longer, and TV cameras
weren't rolling. This time
around, his appearance not only
was captured for television but it
was also part of an ongoing series
of “Conversations” being held at
Lehman with theatre legends.
Creator and host of the
program is Lehman Professor
William M. Hoffman, well-known
in the theatre world in his own
right. Winner of a Drama Desk
Award and an Obie for his 1985
Broadway play As Is, as well as
Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize
nominations, he has also won
both a Writers Guild award and
an Emmy nomination for his
work in television.
In his interview on “Conversations,”
Albee fondly recounted the
numerous odd jobs he held in Manhattan in his
youth, including work as a Western Union messenger.
He also discussed why each one of his
plays is unique.
Perhaps best known for Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf?—the play that won him the Tony
Award in 1962—Albee also won the Pulitzer
Prize for A Delicate Balance (1966), Seascape
(1975) and Three Tall Women (1994). His play
The Zoo Story first placed him in the public
eye in 1959 and is credited with giving birth to
American absurdist drama.
Among other recent guests on “Conversations”
have been Metropolitan Opera star
Regina Resnik, caberet legend Barbara Cook,
composer and librettist Mark Adamo, theatre
critic Michael Feingold and playwright Lanford
Wilson—and coming up this spring, famed
playwright, novelist and screenwriter Arthur
Laurents.
Professor Hoffman has also brought his own
original works to the Lehman campus, including
this spring's debut of “The Stench of Art.” This
is his third play in a series that has turned into a
trilogy of comic/tragic works critically examining
current American life.
The first play, “Chico De Jazzzz,” examined
the excesses of our criminal justice system, while
Edward Albee on his first visit to Lehman (left)
and appearing on the “Conversations” series
(above), which is taped before a live audience in
Room C-14 of Carman Hall (below).
the second, “Cyberian Nights,” looked at how the
Internet has impacted our lonely, isolated existences.
The third play, he says, “will discuss how the
arts have come to replace other spiritual values
in America. We have come to literally worship art
and artists, building museum after museum that
contain wildly overpriced works that mystify the
masses. Artists often feel under no obligation to
communicate with their audiences.
“In ‘The Stench of Art’ I raise the question if
it is right to worship Art, as the ancient Israelites
worshipped the Golden Calf, before being brought
back to their senses by Moses.” ◆
Coming to Lehman This Spring
Friday, May 6, 8 pm
ALL -STAR LATIN JAZZ TRIBUTE TO
TITO PUENTE
(in Lehman Center for the Performing Arts)
Friday, May 13, and Saturday, May 14, 8 pm
LA BOHÈME (in the Lovinger Theatre)
Saturday, May 21, 12 pm
ATHLETIC HALL OF FAME INDUCTION
LUNCHEON
Sunday, May 22, 2 pm
DRAGONS, DRUMS AND DAGGERS:
ARTS OF IMPERIAL CHINA
(in Lehman Center for the Performing Arts)