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Why I Teach by harriet blanchard My earliest memory of a day that changed my life was Wednesday, September 9, 1959, and I remember it as though it were yesterday. That was the day I entered room 4 of the Squantum School – first grade – the big leagues. Kindergarten had been OK, but from the moment I saw the oversized Sally, Dick and Jane primer, I was hooked on books. And I wouldn’t be read to; I would do the reading. Then I met Miss Rabinowitz and knew I wanted to be a teacher. I never wavered from that dream. Fast forward to September 1977, my arrival for the beginning of the Choate Rosemary Hall academic year. The school that welcomed me was still working out some of the kinks from the relatively recent merger of its Greenwich and Wallingford partners. The 1978 Commencement would be the first combined one. I was the Director of the laboratory nursery school and a child development teacher. What I had absolutely no appreciation of, however, was that I had not stopped being a student. When people occasionally ask me how it is that I chose to stay at one school for my entire career, my answer is simply, ”Why would I leave?” Where else could I have tried my hand at so many different things, to have expanded my interests and my knowledge, to have grown in myriad ways?
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Challenging and rewarding years in the Dean’s Office and Residential Life Office consumed me during the ‘90s, but by the time I moved to the Teaching and Learning Center in 2003, I thought I’d probably made the last big change. The TLC was fairly new, the position meshed well with my pre-Choate Special Ed work, and fit with my interests in neuroscience and cognition. But then in 2006, Cyrus Cook, the then-English department chair, asked whether I’d be interested in covering a term of English 100 so that a colleague could teach a new English elective. That was an offer I never saw coming, but I didn’t waste a second before saying, “Sure!” And I love the English classroom; it uncovered a passion I did not know existed. Don’t think that was the final chance I had to learn. In September 2013, I received an email from Director of Curricular Initiatives Katie Jewett, and in the Subject Line space was written: ”Harriet, are you feeling spontaneous?” To my astonishment and delight, it was an offer to attend a conference run by Charles Fadel of the Center for Curriculum Redesign held at the Organisation of Economic and Co-operative Development in Paris (as in France, not Maine). I sat next to the deputy minister of education for Sweden; cooperative learning had never been so good. Ideas gushed, cascaded, splashed, and swirled from minds that were extraordinary. Ideas based on hard neuroscience, on long-standing respected theory, but discussed and debated from a wide range of cultural perspectives. In the mid–20th century, Alvin Toffler wrote, ”The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” Choate Rosemary Hall understands this need for prudent, creative innovation and adaptation. A great example of this is the Journalism course that is now being offered. Rather than focusing on content (because no one can keep up with even the new information that has sprouted just while you’ve been reading this), the students will work in teams and on their own to develop their skills of critical thinking, research, analysis, communication, collaboration, metacognition, ethics, persuasion – invaluable tools for learning and living today and in the future. So things and people change. Happily, though, what has remained constant during my tenure have been the generosity, talent, and dedication of my colleagues (the best friends a person could have), the wisdom and commitment of the administration, and the spirit, intelligence, and courage of our students. No one has ever disappointed me at Choate, and I relish the time spent with all I live and work with, but it is the students who are the reason I get up in the morning, and they repeatedly take my breath away with their vigor, insight, questions, and certainty that all is possible. Excerpted from a talk given by faculty member Harriet Blanchard to the Choate Rosemary Hall Board of Trustees.
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