SE2 EP13 Dr Sharon Silverman (Spertus Institute) on helping every student learn

May 15, 2020

Join us for a brilliant episode with Dr. Sharon Silverman, the incoming Chair of the Board of Trustees of Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership. She is an educator, academic, and published author. Scroll down for a full bio.  

Student Voices: We Believe in You 

Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership

This discussion is filled with insights and wisdom about education and teaching and learning practices. It is peppered with personal anecdotes that illustrate Sharon's points and highlight her belief that stories are a great way to learn. A few details to look out for in the discussion: 

• Overall approach: While students have many similarities, each one is different from the next and we need to concentrate on how they differ from each other.
• What is emotional awareness?
• What is self-efficacy?
• What is persistence? 
• Practical suggestions for teachers based on these three components of the Believe In You model. 
• What is "applied Jewish learning"?
• "When you're green, you are growing. When you're ripe, you rot!"

I hope you enjoy this episode and learn a lot. The quality of the conversation more than makes up for the limited quality of the audio recording itself. 

Who is Dr. Sharon Silverman? Learn about her work below.

Dr. Silverman is a founding partner in the consulting firm of TRPP Associates. She is an educator and independent scholar with degrees in learning disabilities and educational psychology. She is the founder and former director of the Learning Assistance Center at Loyola University Chicago where she developed LEAP, an award winning student access and retention program and a learning center at the Stritch School of Medicine. Dr. Silverman served on the Board of St. Augustine College in Chicago, the first bilingual institution of higher education in Illinois. 
 
At Columbia College Chicago, Silverman helped develop The Learning Studio, an academic support center for students. At Harry S Truman College in Chicago, she worked with faculty and staff to develop a robust tutoring and tutor training program.  Dr. Silverman also helped The Adler School of Psychology develop a Center for Learning and Teaching. She continues to be a mentor/reviewer for the Higher Learning Commission.  She is a member of the Board of Trustees for Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago.
 
Internationally, Dr. Silverman was a Fulbright Scholar in South Africa and subsequently received a Fulbright Alumni Initiatives Award for a project, "Sharing Cultures" connecting students and teachers in a virtual learning community at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and Columbia College Chicago.   Other awards include a Rotary University Scholar Grant to continue her work in South Africa and a Fulbright Senior Specialist Award at Suleyman Demeril University in Kazakhstan.  She was an invited keynote speaker at the International Symposium on the Contributions of Psychology to Peace Research in Cyprus and an invited scholar at Kazakhstan-British Technical University in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
 
Dr. Silverman along with Dr. Martha Casazza co-authored the following publications: Learning Assistance and Developmental Education (Jossey-Bass, 1996) and Learning and Development: Making Connections to Enhance Teaching (Jossey-Bass, 1999), and Partners for Innovation in Teaching and Learning (iUniverse, 2005) and Student Voices: We Believe in You (iUniverse, 2017).