Grotoniana | All Things Groton Vaughn Winchell
support the athletic enterprise as assistant athletic director and coach of lower teams in girls soccer and lacrosse.
John Nagler ’03
F
our years after graduating from Groton, John Nagler ’03 is back as a history intern. “It’s a great one-year gig to have right out of college,” he explains. “I’ve got a partial teaching load, which allows me to focus on my work and sit in on other classes all over the School including,” he adds with a smile, “the shop.” John found teaching at Groton attractive for a number of reasons. In addition to the chance to work with his old teachers, few places could be more ideal to teach American History, the focus of John’s studies at Brown University. “I’ve got energetic students and unbelievable autonomy. I’m afraid Groton is spoiling me rotten.” What’s more, John wrote his senior honors thesis on Endicott Peabody. After acquiring an historical intimacy with the Rector, the opportunity to return back to the womb proved to be irresistible. But it’s teaching young minds, not just tracing Peabody’s steps in the Schoolhouse, that John finds most thrilling. After discovering on the first day that several of his students weren’t sure who was president during the Civil War, John knew he had his work cut out. “Believe it or not, it just made me more excited to know that I’d be the first to expose my students to our remarkable history in great depth.” In addition to teaching two sections in American History, John plans to lead a tutorial this winter on Groton’s founding and teach a spring elective on the Cold War. Though John is fresh out of college, it’s not the first time he has been charged with introducing students to new ideas and experiences. He spent several summers teaching woodworking and leading canoeing trips at Pine Island Camp in Maine, and recently spent a summer in Istanbul teaching English. Given his passion for history, the School, and working with kids, it’s hard not to conclude that teaching at Groton is a natural fit.
32 | Quarterly February 2008
Henry Walter, Liza Williams, Cynthia Tripp
Cynthia Tripp
A
native of Lincoln, Massachusetts, Cynthia Tripp comes to Groton as a one-year sabbatical replacement for Ann Emerson, who is enjoying a year away during 2007-2008. A current resident of San Manuel, Arizona, and Epping, New Hampshire, Cynthia will teach Drawing, Printmaking, and other studio arts courses. Before her retirement, she spent 24 years teaching fine arts courses at Lawrence Academy and had also taught at The Cambridge School of Weston, Salem High School, New Hampshire, and Maynard High School, Massachusetts. Cynthia received her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art, her M.F.A. from Ohio University and her M. Ed. from Fitchburg State. She enjoys traveling, especially in central and South America where she has spent time sketching, painting, and photographing local inhabitants and sites of interest. While at Groton, Cynthia resides in Emerson House. She enjoys working with the students at Groton and creating more interaction between Groton students and those at Lawrence Academy.
B
Henry Walters
orn under a benign but wandering star, Henry Walters has moved through his 24 years always with the intention of heading someplace else. As an infant, a case of jaundice turned him sallow from top to toe, a condition the doctor prescribed out of him with a constant dose of sunlight. Sitting in front of the window, absorbing it, he became absorbed by all things pedestrian, the back and forth of
feet, the hops and flits of sparrows, the now ebbing, now lengthening shadows. When he could walk, he got lost in a wood humming with strange languages. In time, he studied Latin and Greek at Harvard University, taking time off to teach and be taught in Ghana and in Rome. After graduation, he lived in western Ireland as an apprentice at a school of falconry, training birds, training people, and being trained by both. He arrives at Groton as an intern in the Classics department, teaching first- and second-year Latin and an English tutorial about different ways of seeing. What excites him most about the School is the unlooked-for, the chance to speak with faculty and students whose wanderings, whether in thought or in body, exhaust the mapmaker’s colors.
Liza Williams
L
iza Williams comes to Groton from Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, where she taught courses in American and European History, including seminars in African-American history and gender studies. She studied political theory and history at Dartmouth College, where she earned an A.B. in 2005. While at Dartmouth, she acted as a senior editor for the Dartmouth Law Journal, worked in a number of election campaigns, and first became interested in teaching while serving as a peer tutor. In 2006, Liza spent several months researching competition law in the antitrust practice group at White & Case LLP in Washington, D.C. Liza is attracted to the vibrant community at Groton and hopes to help her students realize the great and varied resources that daily surround them. She is excited to be working with students who think for themselves, contest preconceived notions, and feel the pride that comes with the challenge of discovery. As a surfer who has grown up appreciating the thrill of catching the perfect swell, she thinks teaching is analogous to hanging 10: “It places you right on the edge of your seat with your students as you navigate an unfamiliar text.” At Groton, Liza instructs courses in both world and American history, helps coach the JV Girls Soccer Team, and serves as the head of a girls dormitory.