F ROM THE HEAD OF SC HOOL
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Nathan Clendenin
equipping students to live lives of virtue, impact and joy. As you’ll see in our 2015 Strategic Plan (which is inserted in this his winter, just as we were finalizing magazine), we have kept that task squarely a strategic plan to carry us bravely into the at the center. Our plan’s No. 1 goal: crafting future, we learned of the passing of Bob a faculty full of “life-changers” — genuine, Johnston, headmaster of Durham Academy curious, passionate, striving, generous and from 1969 to 1977. Then and since, I have accountable teacher/learners who nurture, learned quite a bit about one of the most inspire, engage and challenge students as principled and generous educators in our they model the path to moral, happy and school’s history. productive lives. I never met Bob Johnston, but his Elsewhere in the 2015 Strategic Plan, reputation and legacy make me proud to strands of Bob Johnston’s legacy are serve Durham Academy and eager to cover plainly visible: some ground with the baton I now carry. • An energetic recommitment to Consider Bob’s immense impact in community engagement. Immediately after just eight years in Durham. He was at the arriving, Johnston made sure DA was not helm when DA launched our Upper School aligned with the segregationist schools program, built our Ridge Road campus, founded in the 1960s. He knew that DA graduated our first senior class, established could play an active role in building mutually The Hill Center and funded our first beneficial relationships in all sectors of scholarships. Durham. Hundreds of Durham Academy • An expansion of need-based graduates point to Bob as “that one special financial aid. Johnston understood that teacher” who changed their lives, the mentor academic excellence and socioeconomic whose standards of excellence made them diversity were intertwined. He sought stand a little taller on campus and work a passionately to bridge gaps where little harder once they graduated. As alumna economic need kept bright, capable Valerie Kennedy Miller ’81 told me, “Mr. J. youngsters from attending DA. kept in touch with me for decades. He sent • A celebration of individual learning presents for each of my milestone birthdays styles and distinct teaching methods. and advised me on several job transitions.” Johnston established The Hill Center, Valerie’s stories of “Mr. J.” sound eerily knowing that not all children learned the similar to those I’ve heard about Dennis same way. He also championed bold Cullen, Tim Dahlgren, Debbie Suggs, Lou teaching, off-campus experiences and Parry, Margarita Throop, Jordan Adair, Gail extracurricular enrichment. Walker, Dave Gould, Teresa Engebretsen, The passage below, posted on Sheppy Vann and so many other veteran DA Facebook, ends with words that capture teachers whose vocation calls them to go the personality and impact of a man of above and beyond the conventional bounds integrity — one who changed the course of of classroom instruction. several schools and many thousand lives. Durham Academy teachers strive not My dad, Robert D. Johnston, passed merely to deliver curricular content, lift test away peacefully yesterday at the age of scores or shuttle students to fancy colleges. 83. ... All the expressions of admiration Our task is at once simple and immense: and appreciation for this great man, who
impactfully led four schools as headmaster (Durham Academy, University School of Milwaukee, Charlotte Country Day School and Rabun Gap Nacoochee School), are much appreciated. My sister, brother and I, along with his seven grandchildren, miss him immensely, and are grateful that so many of you do too. He felt your love in his dying days. He passed in contentment, the embodiment of the life well-lived. I miss you, Dad. He was a good man. — Tim Johnston It is tempting to imagine that excellence in 21st century schools derives from efficiency, technology, globalization and the like. To be sure, Durham Academy’s new strategic plan will accelerate many of our future-focused programs — from flipped classrooms to the robotics team, from a new science center to partnerships with Chinese schools. But all these innovations must grow from roots of character and purpose. Such roots are embodied in fundamentally moral, happy and productive human beings like Bob Johnston and the pantheon of life-changing DA teachers. As Valerie Kennedy Miller put it in a recent email, “DA is an anchor that has held a community of super smart and aspirational people together through the decades. We are all bound by that thread of connection and the history that surrounds it.” I hope you’ll read the 2015 Strategic Plan with this thread in mind. Having worked for 10 months to gather opinions, clarify aspirations and prioritize our goals, we are focused and fueled to push Durham Academy toward greatness. In so doing, we will never forget that the deepest root of true greatness is goodness.
Michael Ulku-Steiner, Head of School @ MrUlkuSteiner