Hello EdSynergians! My name is Rob Seitelman and I’m honored to be contributing my experience to this site alongside other distinguished folks.

I believe a little context is helpful in order to engage effectively with the issues we’ll be tackling in my contributions. Currently, I support cross-curricular literacy in grades 4-12 with a platform called Actively Learn. Prior to that, I worked as a lead and classroom teacher focused on Theatre, English, and Social Science.

My primary emphases were two-fold:
1) Engage students’ passion (through the arts) to enhance academic performance, and promote mental and social health.
2) Challenge the status quo

My most treasured possession is a t-shirt I purchased on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. The plain gray tee said “subvert the dominant paradigm” and was worn down to threads before a student of mine heard me talk about how much I missed wearing it and bought me another as a gift.

We have a lot of subverting to do in education, but I believe in thoughtful subversion. I worry that we are too quick to drop initiatives that might work if given some more time to develop and too slow to even think about some given circumstances that we take for granted in the education space.

One thing that I’m passionate about is the power of the arts, specifically the performing arts, in students’ lives and in their education. It can be taken for granted, often eschewed in favor of athletics, and even when not, traditional arts programs often suffer at the hands of the status quo.

The Bay Area is an interesting region to be joining you from. Given our propensity for self-reflection and questioning, there is almost every educational experiment available under the sun in this area. So, hopefully we can explore together, discuss, disagree, and learn from each other.

Please reach me at @RobSeitelman or rob@activelylearn.com