Know Your Teacher!
An Introduction to Mike Andoscia, M.A.
I, Michael Andoscia, am an adjunct professor for Edison College in Fort Myers and for Florida Gulf Coast University. I have a masters degree in sociology and an undergraduate degree in social science education. I began my career in 1993 when I signed on for a two year stint with Eckerd Family Youth Alternatives (Currently Eckerd Youth Alternatives) as a wilderness counselor/teacher. This time in the wilderness with youth who were considered deviant, or who were otherwise unsuccessful in their given social ecologies, was a formative time for me. A two year commitment became a six year adventure. It was in the wilderness program that I developed my philosophy of personal choice (agency) and character development, but also learned to recognize the influence of often unrecognized social forces in the lives of individuals. Often, young men would develop a sense of self worth and character in the woods, would blossom into exceptional individuals, only to be returned to their homes and fall back into the negativity that they'd just escaped. Something was amiss, and I became interested in how society impacts the individual. It was during this time that I decided to pursue a graduate degree in sociology with the hopes of understanding the processes that I was witnessing.
In graduate school under the tutelage of Professors Laurel Graham, Jennifer Friedman, Doneline Loseke, among others, I developed an interest in the sociology of knowledge, especially as it pertained to sexuality. As an educator I was assigned to develop a sex ed curriculum for EYA. During this project I observed how the curriculum, promoted as a means of educating kids, in fact, became a means of controlling the sexual discourse of the clients. Using Foucault's concept of power/knowledge I analysed my own curriculum as a technology of social control. It became the subject of my master's thesis, Polymorphous Techniques of Power.
After six years I left the camp. I took away from the experience many ideas on which I've acted and am in the process of developing. First, I developed a profound appreciation for the natural world and all of the wonders it holds. I have been an active environmentalist in my local community. Secondly, an educational and therapeutic philosophy took root that emphasized personal responsibility and choice as well as an understanding that a teacher or counselor must provide the resources through which good decisions can be made. I understood that "choice" takes place within a social context, a sociological ecosystem. The state of this ecosystem helps determine the quality of the decisions made by individuals. An embryonic sense of Healthy and Toxic Environments began to manifest itself in my mind.
After working with emotionally handicapped students within the public school system for over a year, then working with similar populations in a private school for six more years, this concept of healthy and toxic environments started to root itself in my mind. Perhaps schools, as they exist now, are not healthy environments. Perhaps schools are toxic environments in which students (as well as teachers) either adapt, resist or drop out. It is this concept that I am currently fretting out.
In the meantime, I have my hands full with a beautiful wife, Jennifer, and two equally beautiful and fantastic children, Tekoa and Ainsley. I have also, recently, become a published author. My first effort at published fiction is Stone is not Forever.
It is the ultimate goal that this page may be a forum on which I can develop ideas about some of the things in which I'm interested. Feel free to help me with my journey. Please use the e-mail in the contacts page if you have anything to share with me on matters of schools, education, knowledge and discourse, or any other perspective that might help me (or even confuse me: confusion is not necessarily a bad thing) in my current endeavors.