Ask Dr. Rose a Question About His Presentation: From Bach to Lady Gaga

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Permalink Reply by Blair A. Borish on September 4, 2012 at 4:57am

Dr. Rose - This isn't a terribly academic response to your lecture, but I wanted to take a minute to let you know how much I enjoyed your lecture.  I am new to the field of education, currently pursuing my M.Ed and Teacher Certification in Secondary English Education.  One of my courses introduced UDL this week and asked us to explore the UDL website, which is how I came across your talk.

For one, I have been a fan of Glee since the beginning and I love that your talk gave me an educationally-valid excuse for one of my guiltiest pleasures.  In fact, I think from watching your talk, I can better articulate what it is that I like about Glee - that it includes so many diverse perspectives, especially of the "outliers."  Glee doesn't always get it right, but I think that the two clips you showed in your talk are powerful examples of times they have.  Additionally, equality - in its broadest sense - has always been very important to me personally and I guess you would say politically.  I've always walked around with this gnawing feeling that the world, with its power structures, is so unfairly unequal to so many populations and individuals.  It's frustrating, but I'm glad to have come across UDL because it gives me a sense of hope.  While I cannot fix all the inequalities of the world, I do believe I could use the UDL framework to try to bring a sense of equity to my future classrooms.  Like I said, I am new to the field and not actively teaching students yet, so I'm not sure what the principles will look like in action in my classroom, but I've read several articles and checklists and I am very excited by everything I have read so far!

Thanks again for the thought provoking talk.

Best,

Blair A. Borish

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Permalink Reply by David Rose on September 10, 2012 at 5:19pm

Hi Blair,

Thanks for your very sweet note and I look forward to following your future contributions to this new field.  By the way, one of the producers of Glee came to give a talk at Harvard and it was very impressive how careful they have been about diversity, etc.  Also, Lady Gaga came to Harvard to launch her new foundation for education - she is very impressive too!!

David

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