Meeting Head of School Duncan Lyon

interview2 Lamplighter

Duncan Lyon: Were you here for the big New York City blackout? David Kersey: I was with the school, I’m pretty sure, but it was a summer phenomenon, I think, and I’ve never been here in the summer—always been elsewhere, which is the whole idea of school teaching. Duncan: You mean your whole career is about the summer? David: Well, July and August are the teacher’s favorite words, and I must have had some sense of the summer when I decided to be a teacher, but I don’t think it was foremost in my mind. I hope not. Duncan: What was your first teaching job? David: It was in Brookline, Massachusetts, in a public school on Harvard Street in Coolidge Corner, two streets away from where Jack Kennedy was born. He spent some time in that same school, or at least they claimed he did. That’s home—Massachusetts and Boston—and then I taught for two years at the Landon School in Bethesda. That was my first experience of an all-boys school, and it was boarding, so I was learning to teach by immersion and with boys the same age as those that I would teach later on—fifth and sixth graders in the dorm and a fourth-grade class. David: And where did you start teaching? Duncan: University High School in San Francisco. David: So you taught at the school you went to? Duncan: Yes, I taught at my high school. I was graduating from Berkeley with a degree in history and a former history teacher of mine (Sudie Sides) said, “You should get into teaching. You should come back and teach in our SummerBridge program and you should coach. You should get involved. We need good coaches.” And then the school offered me a substitute maternity-leave position, but I wasn't quite ready. I was 21, and I was very much committed to going back to grad school and getting my master's degree, but they said “You can do it. You've got the chops. So we'll pay for you to finish your master’s degree.” So that was it. David: They captured you at that moment. Duncan: That's right. But they saw something in me that I didn't see myself. And then, a few years later, I was sitting around a table with the Senior Dean and several of my former teachers, and they said they wanted me to be the new Senior Dean. I said what? Why? It should be the other way around. And they were very serious. David: So, were you surprised by these moments where somebody saw something in you? Duncan: Yes, and they said. “You are the history of the school. You understand the history. You appreciate the history. History matters to you. And we are looking for people who can carry this on.” And so they were investing in me. David: I mistook your high school when I saw it in your bio. I thought it was a Jesuit high school attached to the University of

MEETING HEAD OF SCHOOL DUNC AN LYON An Interview with David Kersey h’98, Alumni Liaison San Francisco, but I looked it up, and it’s only been around since 1975. So you were the history of the school. Duncan: I was. I graduated from there in 1987. When we won the basketball championship, it was the first basketball championship the school had won. David: This was a prep school league? Duncan: It was a prep school league, but we actually ended up beating the top team in San Francisco who were the defending state champions. David: What other sports did you play there? Duncan: The founder of the school, Dennis Collins, understood that to attract boys, the school needed a strong athletic program, so when I was graduating from the Eighth Grade at Cathedral, an all-boys school, University High School made me an offer because they said, “You're the scholar-athlete that we're looking for.” And I needed financial aid, so I got a full ride to go there and play basketball, soccer and baseball. David: And, when you came back to University High School, you coached? Duncan: I didn't coach baseball. I coached soccer and basketball. David: Was that a full immersion right from the get-go? Duncan: Yeah. And it was repaying that financial-aid debt. That's how I perceived it. So when I actually got paid I thought, oh, okay, this is it now. David: Okay, you crossed the line. Duncan: And several years later, when I worked at Dalton, whose school motto is “Go Forth Unafraid.” At a meeting some wisecracking faculty member said it’s actually “We Go Forth Underpaid.” That’s when I began to see myself as a professional. By comparison, University High School was provincial and a school that I knew, and knew me, and I felt I was part of a family. At Dalton, I learned that there was a business aspect to schools and that we were in the business of working with families. David: I don't know if I've ever seen myself that way—as a professional. I’ve resisted it and preferred to think of teaching as a vocation, some sort of calling. I think I still do.

Duncan: I identify with that.

David: I wonder if we could go back to Bay Area high schools for a minute—to McClymonds High School in Oakland, and McClymonds’ alumnus and University of San Francisco star, Bill Russell. When I was 13, Bill Russell came to Boston to play for the Celtics, and in the next 13 years, the team won 11 NBA championships. So he was a big part of my growing up—nothing but winning. I’m still pretty green today. So you beat the likes of high schools like McClymonds?

Duncan: Well, we didn't beat McClymonds; we beat a school called Balboa, who were the defending state champions. And I grew up playing on San Francisco playgrounds, anywhere I could find a game against adults. So, Bill Russell and the USF Dons were a big deal to me too. It was great to see when Bill Russell died recently that there were proper accolades for his greatness on the court and off the court.

David: Brown v. Board of Education was handed down in 1954 and my elementary school teachers paid a lot of attention to the decision and all that was going on. But Bill Russell is the one who made sense of things to me—a superb athlete, of course, but also a man of enormous intellect and determination, an extraordinary man—and a black man.

Duncan: So the fact that Russell did all this in Boston was part of his story.

David: Oh, very much part of his story. He didn't like Boston, and for a long time, perhaps until David Ortiz came along, the city's sports suffered from the fact that great black athletes didn't want to come to Boston in any sport. I was always so ashamed.

Duncan Lyon and David Kersey sharing memories and a laugh

Duncan: Right.

David: Part of that was based on Russell's experience there. I think it's different now, but the Boston of Russell’s time was tribal, divided along religious, ethnic and racial lines.

Duncan: I think it's hard for young students, say the K-12 population, to understand someone like Russell, due to recency bias perhaps, or also someone like Muhammad Ali, who was much more than a boxer. At one point worldwide, Ali was better known than the Pope.

David: I think so. He said so anyway.

Duncan: And one of the questions we share as history teachers is what stands up to the measure of time. I've been ruminating on this and thinking about Herman Melville going to his grave and not being celebrated as a great writer. Rembrandt. Even someone like Harriet Tubman—it’s posthumously that we fully appreciate the dimension of all her work.

David: Or Dickinson David: Yes.

Duncan: What I think is so hard about today's day and age is the advance of technology and its proliferation. A friend of mine whom I got to know at Dalton, a guy named Tom De Zengotita wrote a book called Mediated. He's kind of a Marshall McLuhan figure who taught philosophy at NYU, but had one very popular class at Dalton. In exploring what is real, Tom asked his students to imagine being in the middle of Saskatchewan when the car breaks down. At that moment, he says, you're really in reality—a kind of Jack London survivalist state that's real. There's nothing to assist you, it's man and nature. And we've gotten so far from that. We've insulated ourselves, and we are ill-prepared for nature's indifference. But what he was really saying is, our whole life, our whole experience is mediated and that it's not real. It's gotten away from being authentic. He said that the opposite of reality is options. That's what life is about, and it includes education. What parents want to hear is that their child has options. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but I do think that it has shaped our society, where everyone feels entitled to whatever options they want. I can watch any channel I want at any time, and I'm a few clicks away on my phone from getting any food I want. And that lack of perspective on what's real I think is plaguing our society.

David: I was supposed to give the graduation speech last June, but I ended up in Lenox Hill Hospital, so I didn’t make it. I was thinking about talking to the boys about Thoreau's advice to walk into the woods until you get lost and then you will begin to find yourself. This has something to do with what you're talking about, I think. But I realized at some point that the boys we teach cannot get lost, that their parents can call them on the phone no matter where they are on the planet. So I gave it up as a theme.

Duncan: I once gave a graduation speech to a group of 8th graders where the advice was “don't stay dry.” They had gone on an outdoor trip right before their graduation—a hike to a beach one day and a hike back the next day, about 14 miles total. And on the way back, we encountered a major rainstorm to the point where everyone really had to pay attention to what they were doing. And the kids had the best time. They really enjoyed it because there was no technology that was going to protect you from the rain. So it came down to your wits and what you could do. And I saw a side of students that I hadn't seen before. So in this graduation speech, I said most times when it's raining outside, people will tell you to “stay dry,” and there's some wisdom to that, but I advised, “Don't stay dry, get wet. Because then you're your most authentic selves.” It's kind of the same idea as what you're talking about.

David: Yes, just do it. Take chances. Take a deep dive. Walk till you’re lost.

interview4 Lamplighter

Duncan: So, are you optimistic about the youth? David: I'm often asked whether the boys have changed over the time I taught. I don’t have much perspective because I never stepped away, but I think they're much the way they used to be. At least 12 and 13-year-olds seem the same to me over time, and I enjoy them as much as I did 50 years ago. So yes, I guess I’m optimistic. The other day a colleague suggested that somehow I'm well out of things because the new breed of child is different. I don't believe that's true. Duncan: So, at the first faculty meeting in August, I said to the faculty that change and preservation were both possible. David: Yes. Duncan: What do you think most needs to be preserved about Allen-Stevenson? David: I don't want to speak too quickly about this, but some of the answers are obvious—music, for example. I’d hate to see that go because it has marked us as different—particularly at its height. I'm not really sure where it sits right now. And also the balance among arts, athletics, and academics. And I suppose this also shouldn't die. There's something about a boys’ school. There's something boyish about this place. The whole boyland phenomenon. All of it. The good and the bad and the ugly and the beautiful. Yeah, I think that needs to be cherished. I also think that the school is better than it's ever been. I think the faculty is quite remarkable. I keep meeting these young teachers, and I'm very impressed with them. I imagine that this is something you must be thinking about, worrying about probably even. Duncan: Yes, on the preservation side, I agree with you about the music and the overall balance of the 3As. I said to an admissions group earlier today that you wouldn't go into Lenox Hill Hospital and say I'd like 1980s medicine, please. Of course, you want a modern curriculum.

David: Of course.

Duncan: That's what we're about, and you mentioned the quality of our colleagues, and I agree with you. But, I do think that there's some sine qua non when you get to the essence of a great boys’ school, and I think that's knowing every boy, and endeavoring to know them as they evolve—knowing them in a way that their parents don't know, knowing them in a way that they don't entirely know themselves, seeing things in them that they may not see. But I think people shouldn't worry that our music program is going to go away or our commitment to athletics is going to wane or anything of that nature. But it does come down to the use of space and time and where we want to put emphasis. I'm also a big believer in developmental stages and I'm concerned about the impact technology has on development and also the pandemic, and the two in combination. I think the jury's out right now. We'll know years from now, maybe, the full extent of it. David: Now that I'm doing a job that involves the alumni of the school, I’m very interested in the larger school community and pulling it together, and in what direction the school is moving. You and I are going to see Los Angeles alumni in February and I think of the trip as introducing you to them and presenting the school as it is today. So that’s very much in my thoughts—the school today and how it’s perceived.

Duncan: I'm interested in the lives of the alumni and the fact that the alumni with whom I've spoken have been very clear that but for Allen-Stevenson they would have a little different life. They would be less cosmopolitan, less appreciative of the arts and less active politically. And I know, speaking to Sally Cole, Desmond's daughter, that this was something that was really important to her father, the idea of being of the city for the city.

David: Yes, the same thing that we hope happened to the alumni happened to me. I had never met people who were serious about serious music until I came to the school and to the city. I had never listened to opera. I had never had gay friends. A whole world opened to me by being here. I even played the cello in the orchestra for 10 years, and I’d never done anything like that. I, too, became less provincial and more cosmopolitan. I began to take in more of the world. I became a better boy.

Duncan: You can take the boy out of Boston and put some New York into him.

David: That's right. But don't think that I have any love for the New York Yankees. I don’t.

Duncan: We share that. This is interesting to me, what you're saying. John Dos Passos said it is important for one generation to speak to another generation. And I think we need to know how to do that. I once had a chance to meet Studs Terkel. He was in his late 80s at the time, and Dalton was performing his play Working. When I thanked him for coming to the school he said, “No, no, thank you, because this is what keeps me going. Telling the story to the next generation.” To me, that's what schools do better than many other institutions—they tell the story of the past, and they allow the past to be in conversation with the present.

David: It seems conceited of me, but last year I taught the boys who are in the Eighth Grade now. I am a lot older than they are, but if you asked them, I think they would tell you that I was able to bridge that generation gap and that we were all together as we took up American history.

Duncan: Well, I know your Allen-Stevenson story is far from finished. That's my hope.

David: Mine too.