Fonds F-263 - Selma Wassermann fonds

Selma Wasserman is a scholar, educator, writer, and Professor Emerita in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. She was born in New York City on July 25 1929 and grew up in Brooklyn, attending Thomas Jefferson High School. Wassermann obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from City College of New York (CCNY) in 1950. Following graduation, she married fellow CCNY grad Jack Wassermann and the couple moved to San Francisco, where she began her teaching career at Columbus Elementary School. The Wassermanns returned to New York in 1952, settling in Levittown, Long Island. Following the birth of their child Paula, Wassermann worked in the public elementary school system for three years as Reading Teacher. Her classroom teaching experiences – Grades 1, 2, 5 and 6 at Columbus School in San Francisco (1950-52), Abbey Lane School in Levittown (1952-56) and Lee Road School in Levittown (1960-61) – were foundational for her subsequent academic work. Wassermann returned to CCNY to complete a Master of Science in 1956, specializing in Reading. She then went on to New York University (NYU), where she studied with the educational scholar Louis C. Raths, graduating with her Doctorate of Education in 1962. Upon completion of her dissertation, Wassermann taught for several years at Newark State College in the teacher education program.

In 1966 Wassermann joined the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, which had just opened the year before. Wassermann was brought on lead the development of SFU's new teacher education program, and for many years she served as Director of Professional Programs (PDP). Wassermann created and taught numerous courses at SFU and in 1989 received SFU's Excellence in Teaching Award. Curriculum Studies: Teaching for Thinking (EDUC 483) was her signature course, known by students as the "Delicious Alternative." In accordance with Canada's mandatory retirement law of the time, Wassermann retired from SFU in 2000, but she continued teaching on contract at the university for several years. She taught her last SFU class in 2007.

In her pedagogy, Wassermann is known for her child-centred approach, teaching for thinking and the development of case method teaching, using cases as a vehicle of instruction. In the late 1960s, Wassermann created a set of curriculum materials for Intermediate grade classrooms called Thinking Skills Development Program. Published by Benefic Press (Chicago), they were familiarly known as "Thinking Boxes." When Benefic Press went out of business, the Thinking Boxes were taken up by Coronado Press. Wassermann upgraded and redesigned the materials and also created a new Primary grade edition of the box; these were all published in the mid 1970s. During this same decade, Wassermann oversaw the Vancouver Project, which drew on the work of the New Zealand novelist and educator Sylvia Ashton-Warner. Wassermann was instrumental in bringing Ashton-Warner to SFU as visiting faculty, and the Vancouver Project brought together 9-10 teachers to work with Ashton-Warner to implement her organic teaching and key vocabulary approach in their classrooms.

In the 1980s Wassermann and George Ivany received an SFU President's grant to initiate and carry out a two-year professional development program for primary teachers to promote teaching for thinking in the science curriculum. About a dozen teachers from the lower mainland volunteered to create and carry out science methods that focused on active engagement with science materials. Based on her classroom observations of what teachers were doing, Wassermann began to see the significance of the curriculum framework for students' learning, and she developed her Play-Debrief-Replay framework as a means of promoting active student engagement. The "play" referred to students' active engagement with the provided science materials. This was followed by questioning and responding strategies that elevated students' concept development, which was then followed by subsequent engagement with the science materials. This curriculum framework was later used as a vehicle to promote teaching for thinking in other subject areas. Wassermann and Ivany drew on their two-year field research to publish Teaching Elementary Science: Who's Afraid of Spiders? (Teachers College Press, 1988).

Wassermann undertook another multi-year professional development project in the 1990s, working with nine teachers at Centennial Secondary School in Coquitlam to incorporate case method teaching into the teachers' practice. The group collected and prepared cases for use in the classroom, leading to the establishment of a case study library housed at SFU, the Case Clearinghouse.

Around the same time (mid 1990s), the publisher Simon and Schuster approached Wassermann to develop a set of multi-media early childhood materials rooted in the social studies curriculum. She created four sets of materials around a selected theme – each including a teacher's guide with dozens of activities, artwork, and original music (by John Archimbault). The materials were organized around Wassermann's Play-Debrief-Replay framework, emphasizing active student engagement in the learning process and the development of higher-order thinking skills. The four sets were published by the Modern Curriculum Press in 1995 under the main title Can-Do Kindergarten Programs.

Wassermann continued creating multi-media educational works in the 2000s, including Presumed Enemies (2000) about the internment of Japanese Americans and Canadians during WWII, World History: A Comparative Civilizations Perspectives (2002), My Word! Reader (2009-2012), and the Bearded Dragons series (2013). These last two were productions of an educational software company, Wrinkled Pants Software Ltd, that Wassermann established during this period.

Wassermann has published extensively throughout her career and into post-retirement. Her writings comprise over 20 books and more than 100 articles in ca. 30 journals. Several of her books have been translated into other languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, and Chinese. Her first book appeared in 1966, co-authored with Louis C. Raths and others as Teaching and Thinking: Theory and Application, a work subsequently revised and republished through several editions. Other books include Serious Players: Empowering Children in the Classroom (2nd edition 1990), Introduction to Case Method Teaching: A Guide to the Galaxy (1994), This Teaching Life (2004), Teaching in the Age of Disinformation (2018), and Teaching Reading in the Organic Early Childhood Classroom (in press 2025). In 1988 Wassermann wrote a popular work, The Long Distance Grandmother: How to Stay Close to Distant Grandchildren (4th edition 2000), and from 1999-2001 served as Consulting Editor of a new magazine, Today's Grandparent, writing a regular feature column. Wassermann has also written over 30 children's books, starting in 1956 when she and her husband published the first of the Sailor Jack books, a series that addressed reading challenges.

With her move to SFU in 1966, Wassermann and her family settled in the Vancouver area, becoming Canadian citizens in the 1980s. Her husband of 64 years, Jack, passed away in 2014. Wassermann has one daughter, Paula Snow, and as of 2025 two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, all based in British Columbia.