Well, it turned out that only two universities expressed any interest. They wouldn’t permit us to have a teacher-training section. We wanted to be able to train teachers, which is why we left the University of Illinois. We sent out notices to sixteen universities that had expressed interest in being relevant to the disadvantaged. They were great in mathĪfter Carl Bereiter left to go to Toronto, Wes Becker took over the project and he and I left Illinois. Did I say math? We also taught them math.
We taught them academic skills, reading, language, science, and ancillary skills like spelling. It was for young, primarily black kids, four and five-year-olds.
Our project was called the Bereiter/Engelmann Preschool. They hired me as a research associate and I worked with both of them for several years. The two guys that heard my presentation were Jim Gallagher and Carl Bereiter. I finally contacted them because I struck out on all of the others. The last place on my list was Institute for Research on Exceptional Children at the University of Illinois, which at the time was one of the most prestigious places in the United States. I had made a tape of some of the early stuff I had done in teaching math and reading to four-year-olds. I had a list of about twenty-four places I might be able to enter education through and I tried all of them. I was given a task of figuring out what kind of exposure was needed for young kids to learn slogans from TV commercials. I assembled a group of preschool kids, and I became more interested in teaching than I did in pursuing the original goals. So I ultimately quit advertising and I tried to get into education. Siegfried Engelmann: I initially got interested in working with kids when I was the research director for an advertising agency.
David Boulton: Let’s start with fleshing out some core assumptions and establishing some shared vocabulary and then go from there into talking about Direct Instruction and your work, specifically with reading.ĭavid Boulton: What I’d like to do is start off with you telling us a little bit of your story, your biographical background, and how you came to have the passion and dedication that you’ve had in trying to champion the things that you’re championing.
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