Robert Oprandy
In Stockton, I have had the great fortune and pleasure to join a stellar core of caring and committed teacher educators in the Benerd School of Education.
The Pacific campus is a Stockton oasis nestled near the Delta. Our students represent the entire socio-economic and a broad cultural spectrum and work very hard to attain the numerous skills they need to improve the educational experiences of their future students. Those I work with have particular interest in working with English learners whose home languages are as varied as the multicultural panoply of Stockton and of California as a whole.
Other students strive to work with the same diverse population as school administrators and counselors.
Having trained teachers in Colombia, Greece, Japan, Panama, Peru, Slovakia, Spain, Uruguay, and throughout the U.S. since my initial work as a teacher trainer for the Peace Corps in Thailand, such cross-cultural opportunities have come in handy in my work at Pacific.
I hope my passion for working effectively with diverse people and in exhilarating circumstances comes across in my courses here. My classes are very interactive; through them, I attempt to model innovative techniques and methods that characterize current (and tried, but true) ESL, bilingual, and literacy approaches to education and to cultural awareness.
My 1999 book, Language Teaching Awareness, published by Cambridge University Press, lays out my beliefs about teacher education, the central emphasis of my research and writing.
Rather than pretending to have the answers on how to work on developing our teaching, my co-author and I offer several avenues through which teachers-in-training as well as experienced teachers can explore who they are (becoming) as teachers.
Equally important are the connections I prod them to make between who they are as people and who they are (becoming) as teachers, and vice versa.
I would love to talk to you about these ideas, my background, and anything else that may be of help regarding your career decisions, so feel free to contact me. roprandy@pacific.edu
If you happen to be interested in sweep (crew) rowing or sculling on the Delta, I may also be of assistance.
Education
|
1988 |
Ed. D., Teachers College, Columbia University |
|
1979 |
M. Ed., Teachers College, Columbia University |
|
1977 |
M. A., Teachers College, Columbia University |
|
1969 |
B. A., Rutgers University |
Research Interests
- Teacher Development
- Classroom Observation
- Listening and Language Learning
- Humanistic Approaches to Language Learning