Hackley Review Summer 2019

HACKLEY HACKLEY REVIEW SUMMER 2019

LE AR N I N G FRO M VARY I N G P E R S P EC TIVE S

Why Choose Hackley for Lower School?

Hackley is more than just a school. It’s more than an institution or a way of life. It’s a community. A collection of students, teachers, alumni, residents and parents with many different backgrounds and interests who are brought together with one goal in mind: to teach our children. It’s more than math and science classes. Students are learning art and music and history. They are learning about language and culture and, also, nature just by being on campus or walking to the Wellness Center. The experience on campus is so robust that everything the children are doing can be considered a teachable moment.

One of my favorite things about Hackley is seeing the kids running into the lower school in the morning with big smiles on their faces.

Whether they are carrying a school project, their musical instruments, their lacrosse sticks or their snow clothes, I often notice that no one is walking into school—everyone is running into school, as if there was a prize waiting for them when they enter the doors.

It amazes me every day. When you think about it, there is a prize for them—one that I am just beginning to realize and that they won’t understand until after they graduate. The prize is the caring nature that each teacher and faculty member enters the same doors with each morning. The prize is the teacher’s ability to share knowledge with them and the fact that everyone, including the lunch room staff, sincerely cares about each student.

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H A C K L E Y R E V I E W S U M M E R 2 0 19

Contents 2

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From the Head of School

Growing Through Discomfort: Julianne Puente ’91’s Journey in Jordan

4 Hilltop Updates

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A career educator learns the growth that comes from learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

By Suzy Akin

Strategic Plan Implementation: Markers of Progress

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End Note

Service-Learning: Education in Meaningful Problem-Solving

Reaching for the “Why.”

Learning beyond boundaries as we integrate Service-Learning into the AP Spanish program.

By Diane Remenar

16 Immersed in Multiple Perspectives: The Spring 2019 Casten Trip to Israel and Palestine Hackley students learn the value of candid exchange as travelers in the Middle East.

By Steele Sternberg

Suzy Akin Editor Chris Taggart Primary Photography Alphabetica Design

© Copyright 2019 Hackley School.

All rights reserved.

By Lesley Turton

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from the head of school

In early May, just days before the Class of 2019 left campus to start their Senior Projects, I delivered a talk to the assembled class in King Chapel. The seniors were about enter a unique phase in their Hackley careers, setting classwork behind and leaving the Hilltop for three weeks of internships and work experiences. As the final chapel speaker of the year, I shared insights I hoped might be helpful to them.

Rather than draw from many years of formal education, I focused on lessons learned through experience. The process of creating and delivering the talk reiterated for me the power and endurance of learning that lies at the intersection of student interest, context, and experience. In the parlance of Hackley’s strategic plan, Redefining Excellence, this is “learning beyond boundaries.”

In a conventional sense, schools are constructed with and defined by boundaries: classrooms, subjects, departments, grade levels, etc. The compartmentalization of an education provides important opportunities for students to learn about discrete areas of knowledge and develop the attendant skills in discrete stages. Across the K-12 spectrum, this approach takes students from writing words to research papers, from learning the 50 states to studying the complexity of democratic institutions. Under the guidance of expert teachers, students develop an interest in a subject or idea, which is then deepened through further study. In this way, the boundaries of grade or discipline serve a valuable purpose by helping students and the school organize learning and knowledge.

The world, however, is not necessarily organized into discrete and bounded structures. The most interesting questions and persistent problems span disciplines and even nations. Schools must rise to the challenge of preparing students for complexity and ambiguity, extending learning beyond the boundary of a classroom.

By its title alone, it is clear that Hackley’s strategic plan, Redefining Excellence: Learning Beyond Boundaries, is focused on providing boundary-pushing learning opportunities for our students and faculty. The plan, which was endorsed and adopted by the Board of Trustees in September 2018 and then published in the Winter 2019 Hackley Review, builds off the strengths of Hackley’s academic heritage and seeks to provide new and increased opportunities for students to develop interests, contextualize their studies, and learn by experience in service of our aspirational Portrait of a Graduate.

This edition of Hackley Review highlights some of the existing experiences that are already pushing beyond the traditional learning environment. One story focuses on a new initiative in the Modern Languages curriculum, expanding the AP Spanish classroom through the use of service-learning as a pedagogical approach. Now in its first year in an AP-level course, this exciting approach creates powerful learning opportunities for students to use their language skills to forge meaningful cross-cultural connections, gaining an appreciation for communities beyond the Hilltop.

Schools must rise to the challenge of preparing students for complexity and ambiguity, extending learning beyond the boundary of a classroom.

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2018–2019 Board of Trustees

Hackley Parents’ Association

Officers

Officers

John C. Canoni ’86, President

Deborah-Ann Linnett, President

While we continue to seek new opportunities, there are certainly examples of learning outside of the classroom that have long been present in Hackley’s approach. The Casten Family Trips have been a mainstay of our global education program since 2001. This spring, a group of 19 students and three faculty journeyed to Israel and the West Bank. The itinerary was carefully designed to promote dialogue around the political, religious, and social issues present in the region, giving travelers the chance to hear directly from those living there. The piece focuses on this recent trip and captures the powerful learning made possible when complex issues are explored in context and through direct experience. Increased travel, both domestic and international, remains central to the vision of the future for Hackley and our students.

Sy Sternberg, Vice President

Readers will recognize the resonance between the story on learning across cultures, the Casten Trip piece and a profile of Hackley alumnae Julianne Puente ’91. As the deputy headmaster and dean of students at King’s Academy in Jordan, Julianne has seen firsthand the power — and challenge — of learning in diverse environments, ones that push conventional boundaries and structures. Her leadership story also points to the enduring power of a Hackley education and the ways the lessons learned on the Hilltop imprint on a student and shape the direction of their life and work.

Jumaane Saunders ’96*

Philip C. Scott ’60

Christopher T. McColl, Director of Admissions

Cicero wrote the line est rerum omnium magister usus, translated as “Lessons learned from experience are the most lasting.” This ancient wisdom rings true today, with abundant examples present in the Hackley of today. I hope you enjoy reading this edition of Hackley Review and that it expands your understanding of the school and our shared direction.

Advisory Trustees

Teresa S. Weber, Director of Advancement

John R. Torell IV ’80, Treasurer Maria A. Docters, Secretary

Erica Napach, Executive Vice President

David A. Berry ’96 MD, PhD

Sally Kesh, Administrative Vice President

Sherry F. Blockinger ’87 Christopher P. Bogart Roger G. Brooks Thomas A. Caputo ’65 H. Rodgin Cohen Dawn N. Fitzpatrick

Kaya J. Duggan, Middle School Vice President Alex Sarro, Lower School Vice President

Jason J. Hogg ’89

Fran Rowbottom, Secretary

Eric B. Gyasi ’01*

Calvin Chin, Treasurer

Linda Holden-Bryant

Nora Shair, Assistant Treasurer

Keith R. Kroeger ’54 Kaveh Khosrowshahi ’85 Michael H. Lowry Harvinder S. Sandhu, M.D. Sarah Unger ’03* Maureen Wright Pamela Gallin Yablon, M.D. *Alumni Trustee Honorary Trustees Herbert A. Allen ’58 Daniel A. Celentano John T. Cooney ’76 Marvin H. Davidson Jack M. Ferraro H’63 Berkeley D. Johnson, Jr. ’48

James L. Abernathy ’59 John J. Beni ’51 Harold Burson Robert R. Grusky ’75 Koichi Itoh ’59 Michael G. Kimelman ’56 Timothy D. Matlack ’70 Jonathan P. Nelson ’64 Diane D. Rapp Conrad A. Roberts ’68 Lawrence D. Stewart ’68 Susan L. Wagner Hackley Alumni Association, Inc.

Officers

Michael C. Wirtz P ’29, P ’31 head of school

Diana Tapper, Upper School Vice President

Christie Philbrick-Wheaton Galvin ’00, President Sallyann Parker Nichols ’87 Vice President Daniel E. Rifkin ’89, Treasurer Timothy L. Kubarych ’06 Secretary

Leadership Team Michael C. Wirtz, Head of School Philip J. Variano, Associate Head of School Steven D. Bileca, Assistant Head of School Peter McAndrew, Director of Finance and Campus Planning Anne Ewing Burns, Director of Lower School M. Cyndy Jean, Director of Middle School Andrew M. King, Director of Upper School

Susan E. Akin Director of Communications Hackley School adheres to a long-standing policy of admitting students of any race, color, religion, gender identity, and national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender identity, or national or ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship or athletic and other school-administered programs.

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hilltop updates

David Berry ’96 Leaves Hackley Board

Roger Brooks Ends Hackley Board Tenure

David Berry ’96 leaves Board of Trustees after nine years of service. Since joining the Board in 2010, he has served actively on the Audit and Buildings & Grounds Committees and as a member of a Strategic Planning Working Group. His work as Chair of the ad hoc Committee on Health & Wellness helped to put in place a foundation for Hackley’s wellness initiatives. David has been especially generous with his time when connecting with alumni through Hackley’s Networking Initiative. He has mentored some of the school’s brightest scientific minds and they will be forever grateful to him for his guidance and counsel. At their June 1, 2019 meeting, the members of the Board of Trustees voted to name David an Advisory Trustee. We are grateful for his dedicated service.

Roger Brooks P ’11, ’14, ’15, ’20, ’23 this year ends his time as a Hackley trustee. Roger first joined the Board in 2008 and has served in many capacities including as a member of the Lower School Director Search Committee that brought Anne Burns to Hackley, the Committee on Economics & School Culture, The Legacy Campaign Volunteer Leadership Council, and on a Strategic Planning Working Group. Most recently, Roger has served on the Buildings & Grounds Committee. Roger’s written and spoken words powerfully inspired philanthropic support from numerous Hackley families, and his commitment to keeping a watchful and analytical eye on tuition increases has been important to the Board.

Likewise, his often varying perspectives during Board deliberations resonated powerfully with the school’s mission statement. Roger was the source of the inspiration to display a full-scale reproduction of the Monet that hangs in the Johnson Center for Health and Wellness, forever commemorating that transformational gift. At their June 1, 2019 meeting, the members of the Board of Trustees voted to name Roger an Advisory Trustee. We are deeply grateful for his leadership and service.

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Keith Kroeger ’54 Concludes Historic Trustee Service

Koichi Itoh ’59 Concludes Term as Advisory Trustee

Keith Kroeger ’54 has decided to retire from the Hackley Board of Trustees, effective June 30, 2019. Keith first joined the Board in 1977, making him the longestserving Trustee in school history. In over 40 years of service, he has contributed to Hackley as a mentor, a speaker, and most important, an architectural advisor.

As a member of the ad hoc Campus Planning Committee and then the Buildings & Grounds Committee, he has played an invaluable role in designing and advising on many of the spaces we see around campus. Keith’s aesthetic values simplicity, natural light, and a sense of openness; the single-loaded corridors of the middle school are a direct reflection of this approach. His designs on- and off-campus have won awards, including his 1985 re-design of Goodhue Memorial Hall into the Kaskel Library which won the Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects. Keith’s commitment to spreading beauty and light through his thoughtful design of the Hackley campus has been an extraordinary gift to the school. Few can claim such transformational service to their alma mater; his shaping impact will remain with us for generations to come. By vote of the Board of Trustees, Keith has been named an Honorary Trustee.

Koichi Itoh was first elected as an advisory trustee in June 2007 and in that role, has been an advocate for Hackley’s expanding global education efforts, including improving student and teacher understanding of Japan and strengthening Hackley’s ties to his native country.

Most notably, Koichi hosted Casten Trips to Japan in 2008 and 2012 and has been instrumental in connecting Hackley with the Tamagawa School in Tokyo. With Koichi serving as a resource, the relationship has built over the years and the schools enjoy a productive visit and exchange on a regular basis. As Hackley’s 2004 Wendt Visiting Scholar, Koichi has given back to Hackley in other ways. He traveled all the way from Japan to serve in that role and taught multiple memorable classes during his visit. Koichi was also our 2010 Commencement speaker. While continuing to live in Japan, Koichi remains a loyal alumnus, serving as a mentor to alumni through our Networking Initiative, and traveling to the Hilltop for Alumni Day as often as is practical. He also has welcomed Hackley visitors when they are in Japan. We are grateful for his service.

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hilltop updates

Anne Burns Leaves Hackley

After 10 years of dedicated leadership and service on the Hilltop, Anne Burns has decided that the 2018-2019 school year will be her last at Hackley. Anne arrived at Hackley after the unexpected passing of Ron DelMoro in the late summer of 2009. Although initially hired as a one-year interim, she fell in love with the beauty of the campus and the warmth of the community. Over the last ten years, Anne has made Hackley her professional home, leaving a lasting and positive impact on the Lower School.

Her tenure has given her the opportunity to hire many of the school’s current lead teachers, while mentoring and supporting her entire faculty. In addition, her support of the assistant teacher program has helped launch the careers of many early career teachers. Her impact as a curricular leader and change agent is just as significant.

From strengthening and standardizing the literacy program to supporting the expansion of Singapore Math, Anne’s wise and gentle touch helped shape a great deal of what makes our Lower School program so strong. We deeply appreciate Anne’s steady leadership and her deep knowledge of elementary education.

Prior to Hackley, Anne held a variety of positions in the greater New York City educational community. She was Executive Director and Head of School at the Harlem Day Charter School and Acting Head of School and Principal at The School at Columbia. Prior to those roles, she spent 14 years at The Brearley School, starting as a teacher and departing as the Head of the Lower School and Assistant Head of School. In recent years, she has maintained educational connections beyond Hackley, serving on numerous education boards, most recently as a founding trustee of the Brooklyn Prospect Charter School. In her next chapter, Anne looks forward to educational pursuits in the city...and a shorter commute!

Anne takes great pride—and deservedly so—in the relationships formed with students, and with the progress of the Lower School under her leadership. We will certainly miss Anne, and we wish her well.

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Lisa Oberstein to Join Hackley as Director of the Lower School

Following a nationwide search, Lisa Oberstein has been named Hackley’s next Director of the Lower School, effective July 1, 2019. Lisa’s warmth, expertise in elementary education, strong track record of educational leadership, and alignment with Hackley’s mission and values made her an outstanding choice to lead the Lower School.

For the last four years, Lisa has served as the Assistant Head of School / Director of Curriculum and Faculty at The Caedmon School, a pre-kindergarten through 5th grade independent school in New York City. Under her leadership, the school adopted a new math program, strengthened its communication with parents, and created programming to support graduating fifth graders with essay writing and interview skills for their independent middle school applications. Before Caedmon, Lisa worked at The Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn, NY, as a second grade teacher before serving for three years as the Lower School Curriculum Coordinator. In that capacity, she partnered with faculty to develop a “Changemakers” curriculum there, elevating the discussions around diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Lower School by focusing on “non-traditional” heroes, such as women scientists and lesser known Civil Rights activists.

Lisa comes to her leadership work with deep teaching experience across many elementary grades and in

different kinds of schools. She has taught every grade, kindergarten through fifth, providing her a deep understanding of elementary and early middle school education. She has served as a guided reading and science teacher and coordinated an after-school program.

She gained classroom experience in a variety of schools: a New York City public school, a Jewish day school, a school for gifted and talented, a K-12 independent school, and a Montessori-inspired independent school for grades pre-K through 5th grade. Her knowledge and skills are further strengthened by her advanced degrees, one a Master’s Degree in Elementary Education from Mercy College which she received while completing the New York City Teaching Fellows program and a second in Private School Leadership from Columbia University.

Lisa is a lifelong learner, bringing a strong vision and curriculum experience to the Lower School, something that is particularly important as Hackley looks to implement Redefining Excellence throughout the school.

Lisa’s passion for elementary students, faculty, and education drew people to her candidacy throughout her time on campus, and her experience working with parents and the skills she has developed as a communicator throughout her career will help her strengthen the partnership between home and Hackley.

Please join us in welcoming Lisa to Hackley.

Strategic Plan Implementation MARKERS OF PROGRESS Strategic Plan Implementation Making Progress on Multiple Fronts Since the plan’s adoption by the Board of Trustees in September 2018, the Strategic Plan implementation group has made tangible progress against key objectives in Redefining Excellence: Learning Beyond Boundaries.

Group members have been charged with specific short -term and long-term goals in the broad areas outlined in the strategic plan, specifically:

Significant work has been done in moving towards the positive programmatic changes that will shape the school for the years to come. The full committee met several times and individual working groups have been formed to help capture a range of creative and thoughtful solutions in line with the school mission and the Portrait of a Graduate. Here is a quick overview of progress made in various elements of the plan.

• Redefining a Liberal Arts Education • Building for the Future • Promoting the Hilltop as Learning Hub • Nurturing a Culture of Wellness

Redefine a Liberal Arts Education

Build for the Future

Under the leadership of Assistant Head for Academic Affairs Steve Bileca, the first edition of Hackley’s K-12 competencies is now complete. Our set of eight competencies include Written, Spoken, and Creative Expression; Inquiry, Literacy, and Research; Quantitative and Digital Fluency; Critical Thinking; Team Work; Character and Responsible Citizenship; Understanding Perspectives; and Well-being. Each competency is further defined by a set of 4-6 skills that, taken collectively, will enable us to bring Hackley’s Portrait of a Graduate to life and guide future curriculum design. As a cornerstone of Redefining Excellence, we anticipate fully integrating the competencies into Hackley’s academic program over the coming years. We will begin the process in 2019-2020 by implementing the language of the competencies into our classroom work with students, our boarding program, our parent conferences, and our narrative reports.

“Affirming Hackley as a national leader in teaching excellence” is an important goal of Redefining Excellence, and we are making important strides here as well. Examples of successes include hosting the NYSAIS Roleplaying, Games, and Simulations in the Humanities Classroom conference in May and a presentation on Service-Learning by David Sykes and Emily Washington at the Private School Public Purpose conference in early March. Hackley is also actively engaged in conversations with local area universities about professional development and research opportunities that may lead to broad range of new ideas, while providing professional development for our faculty.

New Upper School multi-disciplinary and independent curricular options for students have been created and will be available for 2019-20 school year, including Independent Research in English and History; Food and Power: The Science and Politics of What We Eat; and Collaborative Storytelling and Role Play Gaming.

Because diversity, equity, and inclusion are core to our community and central to Redefining Excellence, Hackley is actively expanding its reach to diversify the faculty with perspectives and backgrounds under-represented in our classrooms. To this end, Hackley hosted a webinar in April that was promoted to independent school educators nationally, titled “At the Intersection of Policy and Practice: Hiring and Retaining Faculty of Color.” Efforts such as this help promote the school and our commitment to diversifying the faculty.

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Promote the Hilltop as a Learning Hub

Nurture a Culture of Wellness

Modern Languages teacher Emily Washington has expanded her initial iGrant and started broader education of the Hackley faculty on the fundamentals of incorporating Service-Learning pedagogy into the curriculum. To date, Emily has presented to all three divisions, led a daylong Service-Learning overview with the Modern Language department, and established new relationships with community partners in Westchester. Service-Learning programs to date include our 8th grade Spanish students working with WestHab Housing Development to address technological needs of the Spanish-speaking resident Seniors. In April, the AP Spanish students ran a children’s literacy program with visitors to DaySpring Community Center as the direct service component of their year-long Service-Learning project on the effects of poverty on education. The Post-AP Spanish students also hosted two separate Academic Enrichment Nights at Hackley for the children of Abbott House’s Transitional Resource Center.

Renée Pabst, Chair of Health Education, is leading the charge in updating and strengthening the school’s approach to health and wellness. With her help, Assistant Director of the Upper School Chris Arnold reworked the peer advisory system to engage more robustly the 9th and 11th grades. In addition, Lower School teacher Roni Kanter launched the Healthy Breakfast Service-Learning Project this past fall with 3rd graders. The program included an exploration of why a healthy breakfast is so important, a sharing of ideas on good nutritional choices, tips on reading product ingredient lists, and an exercise in which students considered factors such as the price, nutritional value, and number of servings contained in a package in selection decisions. The program was capped off by participation in the school-wide food drive before Thanksgiving to benefit the Community Food Pantry of Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown. The Lower School focused on donating healthy breakfast items.

Identification and development of a series of culminating “Big Experiences” aligned with important Hackley transition points is also taking shape. Marrying her work with Senior Projects and her input on a strategic planning working group, Keshena Richardson formed a committee to research this concept and engage in professional development, all with the goal to further define this initiative.

A Creator in Residence program is being actively discussed amongst the visual arts, performing arts, and computer science department heads and faculty. While each department has different needs and objectives, specific programmatic enhancements are taking shape that will elevate the arts in the Hackley community and inspire greater creativity and engagement.

As we approach the end of the 2018-19 school year and celebrate all that has been accomplished, the committee is looking to 2019-20 to establish new goals and benchmarks.

In the months to come, several faculty groups will participate in formal professional development programs while others will use the summer to refine thinking, evolve ideas and generate new creative ways to bring the plan to life in meaningful and impactful ways. These efforts, which will ensure continued implementation progress over the summer and into next school year, include:

• Multidisciplinary course work

• Curriculum development

• Wellness best practices in teaching and learning

• Faculty professional development

The vision supporting Redefining Excellence continues to inspire and energize our faculty, and we look forward to reporting ongoing developments in the months to come.

• Research centers

• Faculty networks • Elevating the arts, Creator in Residence • Service Learning teaching and education • Hudson Scholars and social engagement • Global education, global and domestic travel experiences • T he “Big Experience”

By Diane Remenar 10

Service-Learning: Education in Meaningful Problem Solving Last summer, as I prepared for the new year in teaching the AP Spanish Language course, I saw some information on an AP teachers conversation thread online about the new Service-Learning component recently piloted in some AP programs, including AP Spanish Language and Culture.

This new dimension of the AP program gives students the opportunity to earn a “Distinction for Service-Learning” commendation on their transcript, earned only when students participate in meaningful Service-Learning projects on both

Espa a global (“indirect”) and a local (“direct”) level.

Right: Children enjoying their craft project created by Hackley students.

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Hackley AP Spanish students created video literacy lessons for the children in a Mexican migrant camp.

Under the leadership of my colleague Emily Washington, Hackley has embedded Service-Learning into the Spanish curriculum in Spanish V and Post AP Language and Culture classes over the last decade. Given this, and Hackley’s commitment to expanding opportunities for learning beyond the boundaries of the classroom, melding Service-Learning into our AP Spanish curriculum presented exciting possibilities, and I set out this year to discover how we could best engage with this opportunity. How might I connect studies in Spanish language with service on a global level? How might we engage Hackley’s huge global network in connecting students more directly with service?

I began by thinking back over my own history and connection with global education to my years living and studying in Mexico. In the 80s through 1996, before joining the Hackley faculty, I taught at Marymount Cuernavaca, located about an hour and half south of Mexico City. I reconnected with a former colleague at Marymount Cuernavaca, who told me about work she and her students were taking on to support children of migrant farm workers. She was planning a trip to their camp in early December, accompanied by alumni and benefactors of the school, in order engage children in the camp in a number of activities, and to better understand what support this community needed, and she encouraged me to join her.

“Service-Learning” vs. “Community Service” “Service-Learning” and “Community Service,” while sometimes interconnected, are not at all the same. The Marymount Cuernavaca project offers an excellent representation of the distinction between “Community Service” and “Service-Learning.” Community Service typically involves the delivery of goods or services to a community one hopes to help, generally beginning with a collection of goods or funds and ending with the delivery of what has been collected. Service-Learning, in contrast, is a teaching strategy, built on thorough and thoughtful work to learn about the community and to understand what the community needs and why those needs exist. The work is grounded in study, research, and other academic components and skills-development anchored in the curriculum.

Depending on how a project is framed, a Community Service component may well be a natural extension of the ServiceLearning project. As students plan and execute a response to the needs identified by the community they have studied, the curriculum provides the tools by which to carry out this deep-dive into learning. As students investigate, research and support the “why,” digging deeper into why this problem exists, they gain skills that will help them address real world problems. Service-Learning is, therefore, an exercise in deep, meaningful problem-solving. Providing our students the opportunity to use the Spanish language as a means by which they can solve a real-world problem, was the ultimate goal of integrating this strategy into the AP curriculum this year.

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Narrowing the Distance: “Direct” vs.

“Indirect” Service Because of their proximity to the migrant farm workers’ camp, my former colleague and her students at Marymount Cuernavaca were able to engage in “direct,” hands-on service through the activities her students developed for and executed with children in the camp. My Hackley students, in contrast, would not be able to travel to Mexico to do the hands-on work, and so ours would be an “indirect” Service-Learning project.

The Marymount Cuernavaca students began with research, working to understand what drives people to migrate, and to understand the structures in their society. The fact-finding trip I took part in supported the student work by assessing the most pressing needs. During our visit, we gathered information, and engaged the children in the camp in various activities. Working on this foundation, my colleague’s students led their school community in a gradeby-grade community service effort to collect various supplies to support hygiene needs in the camps — toothbrushes, toothpaste, etc. The fact-finding trip also laid the groundwork for establishing a relationship with the community partner, which would be extended further when the students traveled to the camp to work with children in the camp when they delivered the supplies.

While my students’ efforts would, by necessity, be “indirect” and from afar, our goal was to diminish the distance and make this learning as direct, immediate, and hands-on as possible. My students and I worked throughout the fall to prepare for my trip. My students connected by email with my friend’s students in a Sociology class. They practiced their Spanish as they built relationships with their Mexican peers, comparing notes about their school days. They investigated the camp itself with Google images, and digested United Nations studies about the human rights issues faced by migrant workers. They came to understand the reality of food insecurity — in places like the migrant worker camps, but also in their own communities. Researching Mexico’s geography, they came to understand how far Mexican workers travel to find labor.

As my students came to know, the migrants are mostly indigenous people, and the children speak both Spanish and Nahuatl, an Uto-Aztec language about which Hackley Spanish students have learned in class. The camp with which Marymount Cuernavaca partners is a temporary home to many children who, for six months of the year,

travel along with parents from hometowns where there are no jobs. This camp, which exports all its produce directly to the United States, using U.S. technology and following U.S. farm protocols, does not permit the child labor that is common in other migrant camps. The families have nothing — living accommodations are bare bones spaces divided by plastic sheets or blankets— but they are together, safer than they would be at home in mountain villages plagued by violence brought on by organized crime. The children are well cared for, and they are excited about school.

Through their research, my students began to understand the complex layers undergirding what might otherwise seem like a distant “community service” project. As they began to unravel the onion, they developed the language-based global perspective that would support their ongoing work.

Looking for a way to engage from a distance with helping these children, my students focused on the value of reading to children to build literacy. They created videos of their classmates reading Spanish-translations of books from the Mo Willems Elephant and Piggy series, and planned a craft lesson to go along with the books, preparing all the necessary supplies to support the children in taking on these projects. I brought the videos and the project supplies with me to Mexico.

As the Mexican children created paper bag puppets from the supplies we brought, their joy in having an actual possession of their own was palpable. Their gratitude, in turn, was a valuable message I carried home to my students so they could begin to grasp the reality of what it means to have nothing at all. At the same time, my students came to understand that living in the camps was actually better than what these children experienced in their own communities. In the camp, families stayed together, and children were safe, fed, and educated.

I returned from the trip with photos, videos, and stories.

Sharing my students’ work with my former colleague created space for a collaboration on both ends, and an opportunity for reciprocity. My students learned about Marymount — it opened their eyes to see how similar this school is to Hackley, in contrast to the expectations they had had about “Mexico.” Further, the videos and photos of children in the migrant camps affirmed to my students that children living in abject poverty are and can be happy. Their work provided an important literacy lesson for the children but also opened their eyes to the lived-experience of a population very different to them.

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Left: Craft project in Yonkers. Right: Diane Remenar at the migrant farm workers’ camp.

Bringing the Lessons “Home” This foray into Service-Learning had provided my students access to an experience that changed perspectives and challenged assumptions. They saw the resiliency, creativity, and resourcefulness of the people there, which in turn challenged them to consider how this resonates in our own context, effectively connecting the lessons they took from their global indirect service experience to their local context, where their service can be direct.

Our students began to ask, what does it mean to be “resourced” in our local communities. It’s hard to grasp the reality of others in our extended community when we ourselves are so resourced. My students set out to research the percentage of children in their own communities who qualify for free or reduced lunch. They had to determine what income level qualifies families for this benefit, and divide it by the number of people in a household.

Most of our students had no idea that people in their own communities struggled with basic needs in this way. The exercise made visible to them the reality of how little families in their own communities live on, and made real the idea of “need.” This new awareness and understanding of the complexities of real-world problems provided my students with the tools to partner members of the community to address genuine need-based issues here in the United States.

“Those people” transform to “our neighbors,” fostering a sense of reciprocal community working together to find solutions.

This spring, my class forged a partnership with WestHab, a non-profit originally founded to address the affordable housing problem in Westchester County that has branched out in a range of community support programs including the Dayspring Community Center in Yonkers, for whom Hackley students planned their Direct Service project. At this Yonkers location, WestHab organizes many events for their community including, but not limited to, youth programs and food distribution. Parents of small children coming for food distribution on April 18, a school holiday, would likely need to bring their children along, and this presented an opportunity for our students to partner with the Community Center by planning activities for those children. Community members who seek these food resources typically arrive early, take a number and then wait until their group number is called before receiving their food. Some arrive as early as 11 am and often do not leave for another couple of hours. It is very organized, but takes much time, and we could easily envision the challenge parents would face in managing small children in the midst of this lengthy distribution process. We saw the opportunity to replicate our Mexico project of promoting literacy to young children by reading books to children and doing crafts

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Left: Hackley AP Spanish students introduce themselves to their partners in Mexico. Right: Leading song and dance in Yonkers.

related to the books on that day. The directors of WestHab warmly embraced our idea.

Through the course of the day, Hackley students read to children, tried to engage older children in reading themselves, and invited everyone to participate in crafts projects.

The day concluded with a session of song and dance, Hackley students leading the singing of Spanish language songs they had learned for the occasion. Grateful parents reported that their children were having a wonderful time and it made their efforts to secure food for the family much easier. The children themselves proved something of which our students perhaps needed a reminder: children are children, the world over. Their laughter, the joy they find in friendship, their eagerness to learn and to share, is universal.

My students reflected afterwards that these children — most of whom are from Latin American immigrant families — seem very much like the students they saw in my videos from Mexico, and it reminded them that communities of need exist not just in faraway places, but here in our own backyard. Having seen this, it adds to their worldview — you can’t unsee what you’ve come to understand.

Oh, and Remember, it’s Part of the AP Thinking about the power of these lessons and the opportunities they create, we almost forget the origin story here: we began seeking ways to build out the ServiceLearning opportunity in response to the new “Distinction in Service-Learning” commendation created for the AP course. Remembering this, however, does not take anything away from the substance of the learning and of the work; instead, the external validation of the “AP commendation” just reminds us that there is academic challenge and value in this work. Already at Hackley we see Service-Learning applied to math and science studies in Lower School classrooms, across Middle School Spanish and Drama classes, and Upper School History classes. How might embracing the deep academic merit inherent to ServiceLearning inspire teachers, students, and their parents to prioritize this learning? How might we apply this thinking elsewhere across the curriculum?

The origin story is beautiful, but the fruition story is even better.

Diane Remenar is a member of the Hackley Modern Languages Department.

Visitors to the Path to Peace project at the Israel-Gaza boarder help create a mosaic that says “Peace” in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.

By Steele Sternberg

Immersed in Multiple Perspectives the spring 2019 casten trip to israel and palestine

We are far from the Hilltop, a group of three chaperones responsible for a contingent of nineteen high school students, many of whom are traveling for the first time.

Our destination is not an “easy” one either: we are bound for Israel and Palestine, a place that frequently headlines international news and, owing to the then-upcoming Israel election, was under specific pressure during our visit. Almost all our students were entirely new to the Middle East and possessed varying levels of knowledge and bias about the region.

Casten Trips are, by definition, adventures into the unknown, yet in some ways, this trip seemed to present more than the usual degree of challenge. When I first proposed the trip, I did so because, as a teacher of the Middle East, I understand how profoundly misunderstood the region can be in America. At the same time, I know just how important it is to the people of the Middle East that Americans understand Israel and Palestine in its full complexity; the United States has had and will continue to have a large role in the lives of people who call that place home, and we owe it to them to ensure our next generation knows something of the reality behind coverage we get across the Atlantic. Now, my fellow chaperones and I needed to engage these students in that vision.

Amidst the work of managing this trip, I found myself feeling grateful. The surprising loci of my gratitude on this trip was a pool table. The hostel that was our home in Jerusalem for seven of our ten nights in the country included a room for playing pool, just off the lobby, and it was in this room where we gathered every night to discuss the day’s events. The table itself was mostly ignored during our conversations. Instead, we mostly sat in the chairs or benches lining the perimeter of the room, turning the green velveted surface into a proxy Harkness table as we listened to one another’s impressions and reflections from the day’s journey.

For me, it was these conversations that made all the work of putting this experience together worth it. Whether it was listening to raves about just how good the falafel really was, or hearing a student declare that they have never seen a place “where history matters so much to everyone,” that pool table provided us the space to unpack our daily experiences and return not just with memories, but with a newly forged ability to embrace the nuances and complexities of Israel and Palestine.

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Clockwise from top right: Biking at a bird sanctuary near the Sea of Galilea. Graffiti in Tel Aviv. On the plane to Tel Aviv.

The best way I can think of giving back is to share some of the lessons we learned through conversations over that pool table.

“I’m surprised about how our guides can disagree so much and yet still kind of get along,” says a sophomore student over our pool table discussion after we return from a day in which we visited the Old City of Jerusalem. For almost our entire trip, we traveled with two tour guides: one JewishIsraeli, named Elad, and one Muslim-Arab-Palestinian, named Samer. Frequently, when one of our guides would explain something we encountered, the other would offer his own take on the same sight.

When Elad pointed out the number of security cameras that watched the entrances to the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, he called attention to the rigor with which Israel pursues security in what is perhaps the densest area of religiously significant sites in the world. Samer quickly responded, “those cameras aren’t there to keep Israelis safe, they are there to spy on Arabs.” He elaborated by explaining the difficult choice many Arab families living in the Old City face: to remain, but endure Israeli surveillance and Israeli neighbors, or leave and surrender claims to houses they’ve likely had in their family for generations.

Elad nods and points towards some nearby roofs; they had a playground on them which was surrounded by metal fencing and barbed wire. Those homes, Elad explains, are owned by Jewish families who had moved into traditionally Arab apartments after those families decided to leave Jerusalem. Fearing for their safety due to their proximity to the remaining Arabs, the state of Israel had paid for the installation of the cameras and the fences.

Elad concludes with a joke, “To some Israelis, my friend, spying on Arabs is the only thing that can make them feel safe, so they spend all their time watching you. Maybe if we were in charge, everyone would sleep a little better and a little longer, eh?” Samer laughs at this, shakes his head, and we move on in our tour.

The disarming power of humor, then, was the lesson I directed the curious sophomore to as she processed this exchange. In a place rife with tension, where every statement is political, and there is no such thing as an objective view, humor can play a powerful role in getting regular people through their day.

Back at the hostel, a senior follows up on this point about humor and co-existence. She says, “Yeah, I noticed that too,

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Clockwise from top right: At the Ben Yehuda market in Jerusalem. Bread seller at the market. Hackley travelers outside the Mahmoud Darwish Memorial Museum in Ramallah.

it is refreshing to me. So many conversations I have with friends at home end when we disagree with one another because we don’t want to make one another upset, but here, it’s like ‘Go for it! Tell me what you really think!’”

Part of Hackley’s mission is to challenge students “to learn from … varying backgrounds and perspectives…,” and all too often we can prioritize locating the different perspectives so much that we lose sight of the fact that this kind of learning also mandates the development of certain skills and mental dispositions. Putting people who see the world differently in the same room, in other words, does not make for much meaningful learning if those people do not know how to talk to one another in a generative way.

Every day in Israel and Palestine our students spoke to people who never have the choice to opt out of conversations where there are multiple perspectives. When it comes to this part of the world, there are simply too many opinions in too little space for anyone to live in the kinds of thought-bubbles that can arise in the United States. When our students sat down to speak with Israel and Palestinian teenagers enrolled in a program called Kids4Peace, which works to

build understanding and friendship between the two groups at an early age, they were immediately bombarded with questions we in American would likely characterize as “a bit too forward.” “Are you pro-Trump?” asked one Israeli. “What about us, do you support the state of Israel?” asked another.

Initially many of our students were shy to respond. When I asked them about it later, they said they didn’t want to offend these kids whom they had just met. Eventually, a brave ninth grader decided to answer some of their question directly, “I have always supported Israel,” she began, “but I didn’t know about the Palestinian situation until I came here and saw what you guys live through every day.” To her surprise, it was the Israeli student who replied, “Yes I feel very similar to you. I obviously support my country, but it was not until I joined Kids4Peace that I felt any sympathy for the other side.”

It took some time for our students to realize that speaking their mind and sharing their authentic selves was not taboo here, but, on the contrary, the best way to forge connections their Israeli and Palestinian peers (I’m told they are now all friends on Instagram…). So, there’s lesson two: when confronted with difficult questions, honesty, while not being the

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Clockwise from top right: Elad, tour guide, speaks to the group outside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem. Biking in Galilea.

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Clockwise from top left: Entering the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem. At the Bahai Gardens, Haifa. Border wall in Bethlehem, between Israel and the West Bank. Ruins of a Roman Fort outside of Masada.

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The old port of Jaffa.

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Clockwise from top left: Sunset at Jaffa. At Jaffa. At the Path to Peace Wall. Our chaperones – Kat Taylor, Jared Fishman, and Steele Sternberg – in Tel Aviv.

easiest way to respond, can forge powerful connections and mutual understandings. It is an approach that can often be overlooked in places blessed with less density and fewer tensions than Israel and Palestine, but it is one I will be looking to cultivate in myself and my students in the coming years.

We ended our trip by watching the sun set behind the Mediterranean from a pier in the old port of Jaffa. Tel Aviv, the largest and most modern Israeli city, has grown to effectively surround Jaffa, which was the Palestinian port town long before the state of Israel ever came into existence. Endings are usually a good moment to reflect on the success of a project, and as I looked around at our students, some thoughtfully staring off into the horizon, some writing in their journals, and some laughing with friends, I felt

immense pride for the effort they’d put forward over the past ten days to learn about and grow from the beautiful, challenging, and complex culture that is Israel and Palestine.

We had set out to help our students better understand the politics, history, and culture of this region, and we succeeded there.

What I believe the two lessons above also show, however, is that, beyond intellectual development, this Casten Trip also helped our students grow in character as they learned how to navigate difficult conversations first hand, from the people who have to do it every day.

Steele Sternberg is a member of the Hackley History Department and serves as Round Square Representative.

“ So many conversations I have with friends at home end when we disagree with one another because we don’t want to make one another upset, but here, it’s like ‘Go for it! Tell me what you really think!’”

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King’s Academy photographs provided by Robina Studios, Wasim Ayesh and Julianne Puente.

Other photographs by Chris Taggart and Armando Passarelli.

By Suzy Akin

Growing Through Discomfort Julianne Puente ’91’s Journey in Jordan

Julianne Puente ’91 claimed Hackley as her own the first time she came to campus with her father. “We didn’t know a school like this could exist. My father asked, ‘What do you think?’ and I said, ‘I want to come here.’”

with my closest friends and my students and it was a day of enormous hope.” She later told Headmaster Walter Johnson that she was inspired by Obama’s words encouraging Americans to do their part in the world.

Accepted to Hackley for Upper School, she became a scholar and a three-sport athlete, winning the Parker Cup and the Mother’s Association Bowl, and returned to Hackley as a teacher after graduating from Cornell. “I thought I was going to be an attorney,” she says. “I thought I’d intern at Hackley for a year or two.” But she came and never looked back.

On that day, after hearing Obama’s address, she turned to her friend and colleague Jenny Leffler and said, “I’m going to Jordan.”

“I love saying I am a career educator — no stops,” she says, observing that the financial aid she received gave her access to a first rate education — and she made it her mission to give that to other kids. In her 14 years on the Hackley faculty, she served in so many different roles it would be impossible to capture all of them—Boarding Associate, Assistant College Counselor, Associate Director of Admissions, musician extraordinaire, Dean, History teacher, and State Championship-winning Varsity Coach.

Julianne might have been comfortable spending her career at Hackley, but “comfort” is not what calls her the most.

In the Fall of 2008, former Hackley colleague John Leistler called Julianne from Amman, Jordan. He had joined the faculty of King’s Academy, and asked if she would be interested in working in Jordan. By January, she was entertaining offers from King’s and another school when the Middle School gathered in Allen Memorial Hall to watch President Obama’s first inaugural address. She remembers, “I was

In 2009, Julianne was appointed as Deputy Headmaster for Student Life and Dean of Students at King’s Academy in Jordan. His Majesty the King of Jordan created this extraordinary school because he wanted to offer students in Jordan and, more broadly, the Middle East, the kind of liberal arts boarding school education he experienced at Deerfield. It graduated its first class in 2010, placing Julianne among the leaders who would celebrate that historic occasion.

Yet talking about her work over this past decade at King’s, she reflects, “It was about learning how to be comfortable being uncomfortable...all of the time.”

Even ten years later, Julianne still considers King’s “a start up,” with all the inherent challenges. She says, “I knew within a day of being there that what needed to be done was huge.” Unable to speak the language, she had to rely on others to communicate for her. “It was humbling,” she says, but this also helped her forge meaningful relationships with the people with whom she worked.

And so began the learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

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Clockwise from top left: Students racing cardboard boats across the King’s pool symbolically transport their own world traveler; High fives at Commencement 2019

King’s set out to offer education rooted in 21st century learning standards that include communication, creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking. Julianne says, “Students are encouraged to question everything around them, including the political systems, social constructs, gender roles, and cultural norms. That is part of why the school was founded.”

This can cause tension — but that tension is where the learning and growth happen. “The inquiry and active debate this provokes are what we need here,” Julianne says. “Where else could this happen? Talk about being part of something bigger than yourself,” she reflects. “We have been able to build something really great and special out there.”

Her Headmaster, John Austin, observes that Julianne arrived at King’s at just the right time. “She’s so full of energy, initiative and creativity,” he reflects, “and she loves thinking through complex problems. She’s just an amazing person.” He believes Julianne has been instrumental in bringing the school forward, building great teams of people.

“Her dedication and loyalty and commitment to kids is the thing that distinguishes her,” he says, noting that she clearly brought the lessons gained at Hackley as a scholar-athlete and a coach to her role at King’s in ways that have helped the school achieve its mission.

“ No matter what, we get up and go to school.

No matter what is happening in the world.

For us, it’s bigger than a school. If you can’t get it done on a school level, then what hope is there on a political level, or on a world stage?”

Hackley AP Spanish students created video literacy lessons for the children in a Mexican migrant camp.

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Center campus, King’s Academy, Amman, Jordan. Photo by Julianne Puente ’91.

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Julianne first visited Hackley at the invitation of Margaret Scarcella ’84, who as a high school student coached Julianne’s 5th grade basketball team back home. Margaret invited Julianne to come watch her play the day she made scored her 2000th point, an accomplishment that to this day places Margaret near the top of the roster of all time top scorers in Hackley history. Margaret’s record (2135) was achieved in just her four years at Hackley, and before the three point line was introduced, making her record all the more impressive. Margaret and Julianne went on to coach Hackley Varsity Softball together.

The New Yorker called the school, at its founding, “Deerfield in the Desert.” While it was a catchy phrase, it was wrong.

“You cannot transplant the culture of one school and put it into another,” Julianne says. And in the beginning, it didn’t work very well. “It took all of us all working together to achieve the School’s vision of a liberal arts experience that was also organic and authentically ‘Jordan.’”

This depended in part on bringing Jordanians into leadership roles at the school. When Julianne arrived, many of the administrators were ex pats who lacked a natural cultural bridge to the students in their care. “It seemed like Boarding School 101 to have people who understand the language and the culture living with the kids,” she says. The faculty and staff speak different languages, practice different religions, different politics, have different views on education, and our challenge is to come together to create a common vocabulary, understanding and ethos. And then we’re going to throw several hundred teenagers into the mix.”

Julianne had to bridge cultures as well, which depended on learning and developing the patience to listen well and hear the things that are unsaid. For example, she talks about meetings with parents and others in the school community, at which, she says,“Greetings are generally a bit longer than I was used to, living in New York.” At first, she didn’t see the value in the elaborate exchange of information that was common to greetings in Jordan, but she came to understand and appreciate the value in that exchange. She reflects,

“There’s a lot to be learned from how it’s done in the Arab world. What’s actually happening through all that ‘hello’ is us establishing some common ground, and then you can go on from there to solve the real problems. There is something about genuine hospitality and kindness that makes anything possible.”

Now, she says, “If people ask me why I have been successful, I say I’ve had 10,000 cups of tea. Talking and listening. You need to hear their stories — and the stories are really powerful.” What we might watch on our news about distant chaos in the Middle East is human, individual, and specific in Jordan. She says, “It’s stories like ‘My house was destroyed.’

Or, ‘I’m Syrian, and I can’t go home.’”

The view from her office on campus is bucolic and peaceful, and yet, in the ten years she has lived there, the region has weathered a financial crisis, Arab Spring, the Syrian civil war, insurgents in Iraq, a war in Yemen, the United States moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and more.

“But for us,” she says, “no matter what...we get up and go to school. No matter what is happening in the world. For us, it’s bigger than a school. If you can’t get it done on a school level, then what hope is there on a political level, or on a world stage?”

We get up and we go to school, and so there is hope for the world stage.

Reflecting on the challenges her time in Jordan has presented, Julianne is grateful for the profound ways in which her worldview has changed. She’s grateful, too, for the opportunity to learn to be a better listener, and the humility that comes along with it.

Perhaps most of all, she is proud of having learned to fail forward — to become willing to try things, take risks, acknowledge and learn from failure, and try again. She says, “I don’t think I would have understood that until I went and failed some. The sun rises the next day. That’s one of the greatest gifts you can give kids!”

Reflecting on Hackley’s mission statement, she reflects, “‘Unreserved effort is just that — it’s not about the outcome, it’s about the process. I’m not talking about decisions that are moral...I’m talking about going for it.”

While Julianne looks forward to another 20 or 30 years as an educator, she already knows how she wants to end her career. “I miss game day,” she says. “You just don’t have that in Amman. The idea of ‘Today’s Horace Mann!’ and high fives with your athletes in the halls.” The dread of the long bus ride out to Brooklyn for the Poly Prep game. The excitement and collective joy the day after a big win. “At the end of my career, I’d be very happy teaching one or two sections of eighth grade history and coaching. Hitting ground balls, taking shots on the soccer field. It’s a nice life.”

Suzy Akin is Hackley’s Director of Communications and

Community Relations.

Jenny Leffler on Julianne Puente What I loved most about working with Julianne was her passion and the way it spread like wildfire. It didn’t matter if we were creating Halloween costumes for our respective teams for the costume contest; or preparing a ribbon cutting and celebration for the Middle Schooler’s first day in the new building; or working through a difficult student issue, Julianne’s passion and spirit made every single hour feel so important and so worthwhile because you knew that those hours would turn into an amazing experience for whoever was lucky enough to be involved.

You can’t “learn” heart and passion, it has to be inside of you, and that is something that remains at the heart of who Julianne is.

Left: to right Julianne on campus and in her office at King’s

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end note

By Lesley Turton, Hackley School Lower School Teacher

Reaching for the “Why” When Hackley launched its Makerspace a year ago, my colleagues in the K-4 Lower School were intrigued, but the prospect of taking students across campus to the new Makerspace seemed daunting.

But then I spent a week last summer learning about Makerspace programs as part of our professional development programs and the avenues for expanded learning in the Lower School program excited me. The Makerspace provides great access to creative, hands-on problem solving. How might my fourth grade students engage in the learning opportunity this provides?

Hackley’s Makerspace inspired me. If I could turn our history lessons into this kind of hands-on problem solving, I knew my students would come away with deeper appreciation and understanding of what they learned.

I did not want my nine-year-olds to feel tempted to use all the power equipment available in the Hackley Makerspace, so I decided to create my own Makerspace right in my classroom.

We began with a series of historical knowledge-based questions framed as problem solving exercises. First, we took on a challenge presented by our Exploration unit. “How do we get to the East fastest to bring back spices, while maximizing space to hold the biggest supply?” The students studied the Caravel ships used by the explorers and worked out their own designs, understanding that a ship with greater capacity would require more and larger sails.

Next, in our unit on Westward Expansion, we asked, “How did the pioneers get across a river?” Presented with the challenge, the students then reviewed the resources and materials that would be available to solve the problem. Each team needed to build a bridge that would span a given distance and support a given weight. Working in small groups, they considered “What other materials should we get?” and then laid out the tools and considered how best to solve the problem. We then tested their solutions, and even the groups whose bridges did not succeed learned important lessons about what it takes to solve this problem.

We were in the midst of this project the very day the old Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River was coming down.

Now that they were expert bridge builders themselves, the students watched videos about how that bridge was built and then talked about what they would have done differently, and then watched the bridge implode!

Finally, we tackled the problem of how pioneers in the Plains would get water for their farms, and learned about windmills that harnessed the wind to pump and distribute groundwater. The students quickly attached this line of problem solving to our contemporary questions surrounding green energy, and the lessons of history became all the more relevant to their lives today.

While engaging in these problem-solving exercises, the students expanded their vocabularies to include words like “caravel,” and learned the origins of the symbolic decorations and the hope for safe journeys these embodied. They learned to be better collaborators, and they began to embrace the process of problem-solving, to think as problem-solvers who set out steps — one, two, three, etc. — w ithout needing a teacher’s lead.

The Makerspace philosophy — even without hammers and saws — challenged us all to think deeply about cause and effect by helping us reach for the “WHY” beyond the rote facts. By transforming “learning” into problem-solving, my students gain meaningful ownership of knowledge because they find and confirm the answers themselves, as well as learning to apply what they have learned to other problemsolving opportunities.

My fourth graders were disappointed when I informed them that we had concluded all the Makerspace experiences I had planned for the school year. Their enthusiasm for more has convinced me to schedule one more problem solving project.

I hope to have the students determine the “problem” themselves based on our next units of History study.

My students will “graduate” from Lower School this year and move on to Middle School, where many more “maker” opportunities await them. The Hackley students who follow them, however, won’t need to wait for fourth grade to begin experimenting with Makerspace work — while I’ve been building this program in my own classroom, my colleagues in the Lower School have found ways to integrate “making” into their curriculum as well. For example, our Kindergarteners visited the Makerspace to create Kalimbas — musical instruments drawn from African and Caribbean tradition built from wooden boards and metal tines — as part of their music study, and our second graders used the Makerspace to create African Masks. Each of these adventures expands our students’ learning and affirms creative problem-solving at the core of our work.

View more Hackley Perspectives at: medium.com/hackley-perspectives

The Copper Beech Society Eduardo Cue ’69: Planning Ahead for Hackley

More than just a school, Hackley was home to me for five years, with some of the teachers becoming my surrogate parents and some of the students my surrogate brothers.

When I arrived at The Hilltop in July of 1964 at the age of 14 (the School insisted I attend the summer session), I had been in the United States for only four years. For the next five years, from eighth through twelve grades, I would be a seven-day boarder, and even on the rare occasions when I went home on weekends as I grew older it was to the empty apartment my parents rented in Manhattan. They lived in Mexico City, so Hackley was my entire life during those formative, often difficult years when adolescents try to find themselves.

It was in that summer of 1964 that I met the late Walter Schneller, who taught a literature class to our group of 14-year olds. He opened my eyes to the beauty of language, and most importantly to the joy of learning and discovering.

There were many other inspiring professors, of course, too numerous to name here, but they were all defined by their love of teaching and concern for their students.

All was not joy and fun, of course. I had a terrible time struggling through mathematics, and meticulously saved all my books on the subject to burn them together after graduation (I never did). I also disliked having to participate in sports, but was required to join the wrestling team. My opponents took good care of me in just a few minutes. As we navigated through high school the gusts of the 1960’s cultural revolution blew through the Quad. It was a difficult time, and some of my classmates have never forgiven the School for what they considered its harsh discipline and outdated rules. But for me those years at Hackley were so fundamental to my development as a human being that including Hackley in my estate plans seems simply obvious.

In the fifty years since graduating, Hackley has never been far from my mind. Over the decades the two basic principles the School taught me — to strive for excellence and show empathy for others, as the inscription “Enter Here To Be And Find A Friend” so marvelously illustrates — have taken on added meaning. And as I travel in an increasingly violent and unjust world I think frequently of the peace and hope symbolized by The Hilltop.

Fluent in English, French and Spanish and based in Paris, Eduardo Cue’s work as an international journalist has taken him all over the world, including more than 70 trips to Africa.

He has served as a US News & World Report special correspondent and as a spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. His work also has appeared in Business Week, The Baltimore Sun, The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post and on the television networks France24, CNN en Español, and I24News. He is particularly proud that one of his photographs was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

For more information, or to talk about the possibility of including Hackley in your estate plans, please contact John Gannon, Director of Development & Alumni Affairs, at 914-366-2654 or jgannon@hackleyschool.org.

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