Melissa Hammerle
Visiting Assistant Professor of Education Studies
- Office
- Twilight Hall 313
- Tel
- (802) 443-2384
- mhammerle@middlebury.edu
- Office Hours
- S24: Friday, 9-11 AM -please email to schedule.
Melissa Hammerle is the former director of the N.Y.U. Creative Writing Program and Co-Director of The Unterberg Poetry Center in New York City. She has for several years taught and supervised pre-service teachers in Vermont, focusing on the development of teaching competencies through contemplative, self-reflective pedagogies, social justice praxis, and creative inquiry. She has a doctorate in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies from UVM, where she completed research in contemplative education in the context of the intellectual, emotional and psychological growth of students and teachers. Her dissertation was entitled: “Conceptualizing Contemplative Practice as Pedagogy: Approaches to Mindful Inquiry in Higher Education.”
Melissa has taught methods courses for elementary and secondary teaching as well as literacy across the disciplines, the teaching process, literature and writing. At N.Y.U. she directed literacy programs in NYC public elementary and high schools, hospitals and women’s prisons. In her teaching and her research she is interested in the connection between engaged teaching and meaningful learning and the ways in which contemplative pedagogy can provide a mechanism to deepen learning through a process of embodied inquiry in which both student and teacher are actively engaged.
Courses Taught
EDST 0115
Current
Education In the USA
Course Description
Education in the USA
What are schools for? What makes education in a democracy unique? What counts as evidence of that uniqueness? What roles do schools play in educating citizens in a democracy for a democracy? In this course, we will engage these questions while investigating education as a social, cultural, political, and economic process. We will develop new understandings of current policy disputes regarding a broad range or educational issues by examining the familiar through different ideological and disciplinary lenses. 3 hrs. lect./1 hr. disc.
Terms Taught
Requirements
EDST 0237
Educational Psychology
Course Description
Educational Psychology: Learning in Schools
In this course we will expand our understanding of learning and teaching while exploring principles, issues, and research in educational psychology. We will examine learning theories, complex cognitive processes, cognitive and emotional development, and motivation, and apply these constructs to effective instruction, the design of optimal learning environments, assessment of student learning, and teaching in diverse classrooms. (EDST 0115) 3 hrs. lect.
Terms Taught
Requirements
EDST 0238
Ed Psyc: In the Community
Course Description
Educational Psychology: Learning in the Community
In this course we will expand our understanding of learning and teaching while engaging with the local school community, including professionals and stakeholders who support K-12 students in various roles. We will examine curriculum theory, teaching theories, and practices that support social-emotional as well as proficiency-based learning, trauma-informed teaching, and the use of personalized learning plans to support student growth and development. In this way, students will continue to understand and develop effective instructional practices, the design of optimal learning environments, meaningful assessment tools, and effective and engaging teaching strategies for diverse, inclusive, innovative, student-focused classrooms. (EDST 0237; Restricted to EDST Majors, and others by permission) 3 hrs. lect.
Terms Taught
Requirements
EDST 0430
Senior Seminar in Education
Course Description
Senior Seminar in Education Studies
In this capstone seminar for General Education minors, students will engage, analyze, and offer solutions to real world problems in the current landscape of education. We will read extensively in the field, consider multiple research methods and approaches, and enlist community experts. Working across disciplines and collaboratively, students will create final projects that integrate and apply what they have learned in their coursework, developing and enhancing skills for creative problem solving and leadership in the field. Final projects will vary; all students will make oral presentations. (three of five required courses for the general EDST minor.) 3 hrs. Sem.
Terms Taught
Requirements
EDST 0500
Current
Upcoming
Independent Project
Course Description
Independent Project
(Approval Required)
Terms Taught
FYSE 1038
Mindfulness in Education
Course Description
Mindfulness in Education: Radical, Holistic Models of Learning
What is mindfulness? And how is it useful in reframing approaches to education for engaged, critical learning? In this course we will explore the impact of contemplative practices in education, considering such questions as: what is learning and how does divergent or mindful thinking influence how we learn? For example, is there a connection between mindfulness and creativity, attention, memory? We will engage in contemplative practices to consider mindful learning from a personal perspective and review research in the fields of education and psychology that suggests a positive correlation between contemplative practices and the intellectual, emotional, and psychological growth of students.
Terms Taught
Requirements
INTD 0132
Current
Mindfulness & Conflict Skills
Course Description
Conflict Transformation: Mindfulness Skills as Educational Praxis
This course will introduce students to a variety of approaches to conflict transformation (CT) using skills-based practices from the fields of mindfulness and contemplative education. Conflict, as a personal or collective act of disruption, will be examined as a driver for social/political and individual change. We will examine this work through the theoretical lens of social justice and liberatory educational philosophies. Using these frameworks, we will also explore mindfulness-based skills as tools for engaged inquiry, including: identifying shifting conceptual frameworks and mindful states and employing embodied practices as learning praxis.
Terms Taught
Requirements
INTD 0210
Sophomore Seminar/Liberal Arts
Course Description
Sophomore Seminar in the Liberal Arts
The current pandemic, and all the questions it brings to the fore about what we value in a college experience, make this an ideal moment to consider the meaning and purpose of your liberal arts education. At the heart of this exploration will be a question posed by physicist Arthur Zajonc: “How do we find our own authentic way to an undivided life where meaning and purpose are tightly interwoven with intellect and action, where compassion and care are infused with insight and knowledge?” We will examine how, at this pivotal moment of decision making, you can understand your college career as an act of “cultivating humanity” and how you can meaningfully challenge yourself to take ownership of your intellectual and personal development. Through interdisciplinary and multicultural exploration, drawing from education studies and philosophical, religious, and literary texts, we will engage our course questions by way of student-led discussion, written reflection, and personal, experiential learning practices. In this way we will examine how a liberal arts education might foster the cultivation of an ‘undivided’ life, “the good life”, a life well-lived. (The course is open to sophomores and second semester first-year students. Juniors by permission only.)
Terms Taught
Requirements