This site documents the difficulties I had during my year-long stint at Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP), which happily culminated in a Master's degree and a teaching credential.

I decided to go public with my story because I believe it highlights the disconnect between the public perception about teaching ("we need more great teachers!") and the reality as it exists in education schools, particularly the elite ones ("we need more teachers who agree with us!"). My story also points out the tremendous power that education schools have over their teaching candidates, thanks to the "recommendation" process.

I fought kicking and screaming the entire year, when saner souls with the maturity level of your average adolescent would have either quit the program or figured out a way to grovel in a language that Rachel Lotan would hear. As a result of my efforts, I have tons of documentation--and even better, in a way, no documentation of concerns before the school decided I was unfit for teaching. It's probably tedious to read, but my tale goes far beyond "she said, they said". I hope it can serve as a model for anyone else who runs into trouble.

More Information about Stanford and Me

Opinions

The following are either journals from when I was blogging or classroom assignments:

Grievances

Non-Academic

Academic Grievance

Application Essays

Emails are exact quotes except where noted. I have tried to scrub all names except the ones already known. If I missed one and you see it, please let me know.

With one exception, all emails published here are public, formal notifications or demands. I have not published any private correspondence by the primary people named in this website (except, of course, the misdirected email). The one key exception are the emails my classmates sent about their supervisory experiences. I include these only to demonstrate the degree to which supervisory experiences differed, and I scrubbed these of anything that might possibly identify the classmate or placement school.