Published Monday, September 29, 2003
Deciphering Becky: An HGSE Student Profile
By Julia Laughlin
APPIAN STAFF WRITER

Sumerian language? Children’s books? Hot chocolate?

Meet Becky DeVito, a second-year doctoral student in the Learning and Teaching Program.

DeVito found her niche as a sophomore in Cornell’s Archeology Department. But it was during a senior year independent study project where her interest in education began to stir. “[The goal] was to create an activity book to teach middle schoolers about the Sumerian language and culture,” she explains. “I got so interested in the project, and how to communicate difficult concepts and make them fun and interesting.”

This project led to her interest in museum education, and she went directly after graduating from Cornell to San Francisco State University to earn her M.A. in Museum Studies. The degree helped her land her first “actual employment” – in the education department of the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, a museum, which “shaped my ideas about what really good educational programs can look like; they had a lot of participatory, hands-on education.”

From the Midwest, DeVito moved further east to Connecticut, where she worked in the state historical society for two years, matching elementary urban school students with peers from suburban schools; the program encouraged diverse students to work cooperatively, while simultaneously learning about “history and cultural issues.”

After this experience as a practitioner, the 27-year-old DeVito was ready to be a student again.

Her first impressions of HGSE were a tad uneasy. “Being in a class with a professor whose books I had read…I felt a little intimidated,” she confesses. “I really looked up to him.”

Since then, though, she became more comfortable and is more likely to jot an e-mail message to a professor, giving hope to those newcomers to Cambridge who share an awe for big-name scholars.

It helps that DeVito is now an author herself, putting the finishing touches on Deciphering the Past, the activity book about Sumerians she began in college. Each chapter offers a different activity for the reader: to decipher an ancient inscription, for example, or to write a “dragon slaying,” Gilgamesh-style myth.

The book appears to obey DeVito’s philosophy on education. “One of the reasons I wanted to go into museum education is because I wanted to find ways that were more engaging than the traditional lecture style,” she says, citing Sturbridge Village, with its costumed interpreters, as one of her favorites. “I am really passionate about learning through play…not just imaginary play, but actual games that are constructed to have an educational advantage.”

The busy doctoral student also finds time to write picture books for 3-7 year olds. It may have started as an independent study or hobby, or perhaps it evolved from her childhood love of Dr. Seuss and mysteries, but Becky has developed a passion for writing that does not appear will fade in the near future.

When DeVito is not busy writing about the Sumerian language or learning the newest research methods (her favorite classes), she swears by the hot chocolate at Burdick’s on Brattle Street (so filling “you might want to skip lunch,” she reports). Christina’s, worth the walk to Cambridge’s Inman Square, is her place of choice for ice cream, but she laughs as she warns me that the “fresh mint ice cream really tastes like mint leaves…it’s an experience.”

After her studies in Cambridge, DeVito plans to pursue an array of varied but related interests. “I would like to be a professor, encourage practitioners to do reflective practice, and teach research methods,” she says.

But while she imagines herself in the classroom and in museums, conducting research projects and evaluations, she says she will also make room to write children’s books. It seems the girl who used to backtrack and read all of the alternate endings of the Choose Your Own Adventure series now has many tales of her own to spin as well.

Julia Laughlin, a masters candidate in the Specialized Program, is a member of the Appian Board of Editors.