Published Monday, April 12, 2004
She’s Come a Long Way, Baby
An HGSE Student Profile
By Julia Laughlin
APPIAN STAFF WRITER

Little did the busy new masters student know that a paper for her first class at Harvard would provide the backbone for her future dissertation—the culmination of every academic’s education.

Most students write 10-page compositions for their final assignments. For Judah Schwartz’s course, Amy Warren handed in 124 pages. Warren, now a third-year doctoral student in the Human Development and Psychology (HDP) program, chuckles as she recalls that, at the time, she thought that going to such great lengths was “normal.”

The now-Qualifying Paper is officially titled, “Recent Work in Dynamic Assessment of Mathematics in our Schools,” covering such topics as the reliability and validity of different tests. The impressive document has already been published, but “mostly in Canada,” she laughs. Her dissertation proposal is called “MATHPLAN: A New Dynamic Instrument—Validity, Reliability, and Teachability.”

Warren’s varied experience in academia and as a classroom teacher has shaped her research interests. The Virginia native graduated in 1989 from the College of William and Mary with a B.A. in Elementary Education. In her last semester, she met Harry Warren.

A year later, they were married, and Amy moved to New York City to be with Harry, an astrophysics student at Columbia, and to earn her masters in Special Education from Teachers College.

Amy graduated from Teachers College two years later, in 1992. She emphasizes the practicality of the courses she took, and that it was “good for learning how to assess kids.” In fact, looking back, she realizes that it was during her time there that her interest in assessment was emerging.

After graduating, she taught special education as a resource room teacher at an upscale school (Riverside Elementary) in Greenwich, CT; three years later and nine months pregnant, she was hired to teach in Arlington, Virginia. This time, however, 97 percent of students at her school received free or reduced lunch—a study in contrast to the suburban affluence of Greenwich. In Arlington, she reflects, teaching was difficult every single day, but she gradually made progress over the years, especially in gaining respect from her peers.

In 2001, burned out from teaching, Amy decided to return to student-status yet again, this time to build on her aforementioned assessment affinity. She compares assessment to challenging logic problems and “detective work,” as she tries to discover “what makes kids tick.”

At this time, Amy was also thirsty for more theory and research behind “how kids learn,” and how to determine whether a student is disabled or if academic difficulties arise because the student’s first language is not English. These interests likely arose because Amy’s students in Arlington came from over 70 different countries, speaking more than 30 different languages among them.

Harvard, in her opinion, was the perfect place to gain this knowledge, and she enrolled as a masters candidate that year.

Amy credits Schwartz’s course, along with the encouragement of former professor Dean Whitla, to her decision to apply for the doctorate while raising a newborn baby.

And after almost 15 years of living in cramped apartments scattered around the East Coast, the Warren family has just purchased their first real home…in Maryland. This makes Amy a commuting doctoral student. (Amy and her husband wanted stability for their three young children: Paul, a third grader; Christian, a first grader; and Natalie, a year-old girl born during Amy’s second year as a Masters student at HGSE!)

Finished with her coursework at HGSE, Amy visits Cambridge about once a month to assess students and “teach teachers” at local schools and to work on her papers.

When asked how she balances pursuing her doctoral degree while raising three young children, she chuckles, responding, “barely.”

Still, her busyness does not shake her focus or her goals—between cheering on her kids in tee-ball and peewee soccer games and commuting to Cambridge, Mom is well on her way to becoming “Dr. Warren.”

Julia Laughlin, a masters student in the Individualized Program, is a member of the Appian Board of Editors.