Forms and Rebar

On the Brandeis campus, next to the Abraham Shapiro Academic Complex where most of our courses meet, is a constuction site that's meant to become the new home for various departments in the humanities. When we started classes last week, this site was an impressive hole in the ground. Today, I noticed a line of concrete forms and rebar marking the beginnings of a foundation. It seemed like an apt metaphor for the foundation that DeLeT students are starting to build for themselves as we continue our study of Jewish texts and the philosopy of education while this week begining on subject matter (how to teach math and reading to elementary schoolers) and a course that's actually titled "Foundations of Education."

The new building, the Mandel Center for the Humanities, is scheduled for completion around the time our cohort graduates in the Summer of 2010, but it won't really become an official building until people start moving into it for the Fall 2010 semester. And we won't really become official teachers until we move into our eventual classrooms in Fall 2010. Over the ensuring years, as Cohort 8 members settle into our new careers, the new building will also settle (as new construction tends to do) until we and the building become established, known, and fully functional.

As we continue our program, passing this construction site every day on our way to class, it will be interesting to visually track this building's ongoing development and match it to our own.