Nothing has given Joan Brodsky Schur more gratification than working in the classroom with students. She feels very privileged to have the freedom to design curriculum and to pass her knowledge on to others. Ms. Schur is currently putting her skills to use as a social studies consultant at City and Country School in New York and as an instructor at the Bank Street College for Continuing Professional Studies. She has been with the former since 2002 and the latter since 2005. Her responsibilities include writing for teachers through the National Council for the Social Studies, specifically on how to teach social studies, writing, American history, 18th and 19th-century world history, and the history of the Ottoman Empire.
Prior to this, Ms. Schur honed her skills in a variety of other capacities. She was the social studies curriculum coordinator, upper school coordinator, high school advisor, and teacher at Village Community School in New York, a teacher and high school advisor at City and Country School in New York, and a teacher at Intermediate Public School 52, among other roles. Additionally, she was a fellow of the TEACH Program in Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, a board member for the Middle East Outreach Council, a consultant for the Lefferts History House, an alumni council member of The Dalton School, the governor of the board of Village Community School, a consultant with the New York Public Library, and a member of the executive committee for City and Country School.
Over the years, Ms. Schur began to feel beholden to share what she developed on a grander scale. This led her to publish her work, speak at conferences, and participate in teacher training workshops. Most recently, Ms. Schur authored “First Feminists of Egypt: The Early Twentieth Century” for the Hagop Kevorkian Center at New York University, “Historical Memory: Thinking Critically about Museums and Monuments with Students” for the European Association of History Educators, and “Lessons on Sufism and Music, Women and Resistance, and the Jataka Tales,” for “Enemy of the Reich: A Muslim Woman Defies the Nazis,” and co-authored “Students as Collaborative Curators: The Effect of World War I and its Aftermath in Turkey and the United States 1914-1923” for the Knowledge Bank Center at Ohio State University. Other notable works include “Twentieth Century Global Activators” for Interact Publications, “The Incense Routes: Frankincense and Myrrh, As Good As Gold” for the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, “The Idea of America’” for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and “Eyewitness to the Past: Strategies for Teaching American History in Grades 5-12” for Stenhouse Publishers. To this day, she remains an author of teaching packets and lessons for PBS Online and a reviewer of “Social Education” for the National Council for the Social Studies.
Ms. Schur prepared for her endeavors by earning a Master of Arts in teaching from the Graduate School of Education at New York University in 1971 and a Bachelor of Arts in English with a minor in history at the College of Arts and Science at New York University in 1969. She also became a certified teacher of junior high school English and 7-12 English in the state of New York.
When Ms. Schur isn’t working, she likes to travel. She has been to more than 30 countries worldwide thus far.