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English Teacher Razor Adviser to Retire BY L I N DA W E B E R
I will miss the kids of all ages ( 12–70+) who ramble this campus, injecting it with a mix of childlike enthusiasm and mature awareness unique to Hopkins. I truly believe that, if the Hopkins ethos could bedrock global education, our world populations would be happy, thriving, and peaceful. —Canny Cahn
SPRING 2019
Canny Cahn, English faculty member and longtime adviser to The Razor, will retire in June, capping a forty-four-year teaching career, the last seventeen at Hopkins. Canny joined Hopkins in the fall of 2002. She began her career at Greenwich Public School. She taught at Stoneleigh-Burnham School for 25 years while also teaching summer school at nearby Northfield Mount Hermon. Canny epitomizes the Hopkins ethos she writes of—childlike enthusiasm and mature awareness—by bringing a sense of wonder, curiosity, and determination to her classroom. It is no surprise that her favorite elective course to teach is “Dangerous Books,” where she recounts that “great minds and great books trigger intellectual explosions.” When hearing of her retirement, former and current students describe a teacher with equal measures of exuberance and patience, who changed their life. “Canny transformed me into the student and writer that a Hopkins education demands,” wrote Jonathan Zarrilli ’16. “She guided us step-by-step through each element of a strong paper, and made the process fun. I remember being shocked at how marked-up each graded assignment was—especially early in the year, and it made me realize how much she cared about each student she taught.” Teddy Vlock ’16 shares that sentiment. “She was the best teacher I ever had. As a dyslexic person I always dreaded writing until I took her class. Her love and enthusiasm for the classes she taught and the students in them was infectious. She was the person who taught me to love Shakespeare and that will stay with me for the rest of my life.” 13