Dr. Roger Passman earned his Ed.D. in Language and Literacy from National-Louis University’s National College of Education under the guidance of Dr. Donna Ogle. He is interested in literacy, educational policy and and practice, and professional development. He has published many articles, presented at conferences internationally, nationally and regionally and is the co-author along with Katherine S. McKnight of the best selling book Teaching Writing in the Inclusive Classroom: Strategies and Skills for All Students, Grades 6 – 12 (Jossey-Bass Teacher)
After receiving his doctorate, Dr. Passman taught at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction’s Language and Literacy Program from 1999-2001. He is currently an associate professor at Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, Illinois in the Department of Teacher Education where he has been since September 2001. He teaches a wide range of classes at both the undergraduate and graduate levels including methods courses in social studies, English education, and reading as well as courses in curriculum development and qualitative research methodologies.
Dr. Passman serves on the editoral board of the Journal of Literacy Research, a publication of the National Reading Conference, and on the Manuscript Review Committee of the International Reading Association. He has been a reviewer of papers for the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association for several years. His research interests include literacy with an emphasis on writing pedagogy, arts integration in the middle school classroom, and school policy and reform.
The purpose of this blog is to afford me public space in which to see what it is that I think. I write about topics that deal with education, particularly literacy, curriculum, philosophy, and especially public policy in the area of k-12 education. In addition, I write about ideas and understandings I have or am developing in many other areas as well. Because I believe that writing is a way to come to know what one thinks and that making thoughts public is a form of response-ability, the forum of the blogosphere is quite a match. It is important to understand that I am writing here for myself and not for anyone else. My writing is intended to disrupt my own thinking, to mull over ideas and arguments. To a great extent, my writing re-presents my current thinking , a process that is often murky and unformed. Nothing I say here is intended to be my final thoughts on anything; they are simply snippets of my thinking that I have decided to make public. Read on…
Dr. Roger Passman 
Thank you for the comment on my humble blog.
I am enrolled in an Ed.D program in NY. I am a teacher of about 20 years in private and public schools, and hope to land an administrative job for next year. I am also obviously aaware in policy. Hope you stop by again, and look over some of my education posts.
Thanks for stopping by my blog. I’m looking forward to following yours!
Nice site!
a pleasant suprise
You wrote about on Helium about —
Connie Eccles wrote: “Teach Family History in Schools! …and our kids will learn to love history”
Yes, teach family history for sure. But what about teaching community history as well? Family history is a place to start helping students understand the value of critically exploring a past that is close to their own lives but it does not go far enough. While your family may be interesting to you it probably has little or no interest to me. Sorry, that’s just a fact of life. Family history, in the end, provides students with little more than the ability to learn about primary source documents and how to analyze those documents. Fitting that family history into a broader context is what makes it interesting. My family immigrated to the United States from eastern Europe in the late 19th century. That fact alone is dull and uninteresting except to me and the rest of my extended family. Were I to connect the story of my great grandparents and grand parents to the larger story of immigration I might have an interesting history to explore.
Nice as far as you go Connie, but in order to have a lasting influence you have to go a little but further than you did.
…. This is my reply (from Connie Eccles)
You missed the point entirely. I was not trying to make history important to you personally but to the students in the class in respect to their personal history. I beg to differ in your assessment. Learning personal history is what opened up my curiosity about history. I now care about the epidemics, the wars, prohibition, medical advances, the depression and more because although it did not affect me, it affected my ancestors.
And as far as it being interesting to the teacher, that is not a requirement. A teacher’s challenge is not just to teach facts but how they apply and matter in the student’s life
Connie:
I think we are talking about the same thing. What I believe is that teaching family history is merely a start. Of course family history should lead to an interest and a deeper study of history in the classroom. I don’t think we disagree, rather, I wanted you to take the argument one step further.