Milton Magazine, Spring 2011

Milton Magazine

Do you know a good teacher when you see one?

What is the definition of a “good teacher�? Are certain characteristics necessary, if not sufficient?

Spring 2011

Milton Academy Board of Trustees, 2010–2011 David Abrams Brookline, Massachusetts George Alex Cohasset, Massachusetts Robert Azeke ’87 New York, New York Julia W. Bennett ’79 Norwell, Massachusetts Bradley Bloom President Wellesley, Massachusetts Bob Cunha ’83 Milton, Massachusetts Mark Denneen ’84 Boston, Massachusetts Elisabeth Donohue ’83 New York, New York James M. Fitzgibbons ’52 Emeritus Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts John B. Fitzgibbons ’87 Bronxville, New York Catherine Gordan New York, New York

Victoria Hall Graham ’81 Vice President New York, New York Margaret Jewett Greer ’47 Emerita Chevy Chase, Maryland Antonia Monroe Grumbach ’61 New York, New York Kerry Murphy Healey Beverly, Massachusetts Franklin W. Hobbs IV ’65 Emeritus New York, New York Ogden M. Hunnewell ’70 Vice President Brookline, Massachusetts Caroline Hyman New York, New York Harold W. Janeway ’54 Emeritus Webster, New Hampshire Lisa A. Jones ’84 Newton, Massachusetts

Stephen D. Lebovitz Weston, Massachusetts F. Warren McFarlan ’55 Vice President Belmont, Massachusetts Chris McKown Milton, Massachusetts Erika Mobley ’86 Brisbane, California John P. Reardon ’56 Cohasset, Massachusetts H. Marshall Schwarz ’54 Emeritus New York, New York Karan Sheldon ’73 Blue Hills Falls, Maine Frederick G. Sykes ’65 Secretary Rye, New York V-Nee Yeh ’77 Hong Kong Jide J. Zeitlin ’81 Treasurer New York, New York

Contents

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Features: Do you know a good teacher when you see one?

4 “From scho0l to school, aren’t some expectations for teachers a ‘given’?”

Randall Dunn ’83 is acutely aware of the vastly different teacher and constituency profiles, support levels, and bureaucratic constraints that affect schools and their teachers in our country.

Cathleen D. Everett

7 To learn to teach, doctors l0ok to the doctors who taught them.

Medical education has been under­ going reforms marked by words like standards, competencies and outcomes. Still, says Betsy Auchincloss ’69, apprenticeship is the most powerdul model for doctors.

Cathleen D. Everett

10 “Assessment is a good thing when it’s about improving student performance and not just holding schools and teachers in a publicly critical eye.”

At the Manning Elementary School, Ethan Burnes ’89 is helping shape an environment that is productive and rewarding for a particular blend of children and their teachers.

Liz Matson

12 “Today’s academic scene, so geared toward rapid success, can have a negative impact on the effectiveness of teaching.”

Re-creating Othello and exploring molecular biology may have a lot in common, claims Rob Baker-White ’76. The success of both endeavors depends on experimental learning, taking risks, and a willingness to fail.

Erin E. Hoodlet

14 Can you change the dynamic in underperforming schools?

Having witnessed children outpace their peers, and meet higher expectations than they had ever known, Cameron Stephenson ’92 knows how to describe effective teaching.

Cathleen D. Everett

16 The outside observer as coach: Subtlety is key.

To succeed, Betsy Garside ’80 must teach, but not overtly. Her guidance and perspective must be much more subtle, quietly informed by years of experience.

Cathleen D. Everett

18 Tutorial teaching at the War College “Our students have been the movers and shakers,” Sally Paine ’75 says, “and now they’re going to be the thinkers.” Sally’s students from the U.S. Naval War College (in Newport, Rhode Island) are all over the world.

Erin E. Hoodlet

20 Working on the frontier where education and advocacy converge Eli Wolff ’95, leader of Brown University’s Sport and Development Initiative, is not only an advocate and an educator, he is also a scholar, organizer and manager.

Liz Matson

22 A strategist in the making Alice Fischer ’09—a sophomore at Bryn Mawr College—is excited by, and focused on, education in America. Studying sociology, with a minor in education, Alice plans on making a mark in education policy.

Erin E. Hoodlet

Inside front cover: Photograph by Brighid Noone ’12 Milton Magazine

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24 The Question: What is good teaching?

Research argues that no factor influences student learning like teacher effectiveness. What makes a teacher effective, though, is a question tough to answer.

Lisa Baker English Department

30 “Middle schoolers need to understand that adults respect them for what they are experiencing.”

Five of Milton’s Middle School faculty members reflect here on their craft, and identify the tools they need every day to care for and prepare the students in front of them.

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Departments 34 Classroom From rocky rehearsals to a performance that clicks: Dr. Don Dregalla leads chamber musicians’ quest.

Liz Matson

36 Sports Good coaches say, “You can do it”— and they mean it. But on the field, success is collective.

Erin E. Hoodlet

39 Head of School Milton is looking at outcomes as well.

Ten-year re-accreditation process mobilizes self-study.

Todd B. Bland

40 In•Sight 42 Spirit Rally 2010: A riot of blue and orange

44 On Centre News and notes from the campus and beyond

55 Class Notes

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Editor Cathleen Everett Associate Editors Erin Hoodlet, Liz Matson Photography Michael Dwyer, John Gillooly, Erin Hoodlet, William Ormerod, Onne van der Wal, Greg White Design Moore & Associates Milton Magazine is published twice a year

by Milton Academy. Editorial and business offices are located at Milton Academy where change-of-address notifications should be sent.

As an institution committed to diversity, Milton Academy welcomes the oppor­t unity to admit academically qualified students of any gender, race, color, handicapped status, sexual orientation, religion, national or ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally available to its students. It does not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, color, handicapped status, sexual orientation, religion, national or ethnic origin in the administration of its educational policies, admission policies, scholarship programs, and athletic or other school-administered activities.

Printed on Recycled Paper

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Milton Magazine

Do you know a good teacher when you see one?

What is the definition of a “good teacher”? Are certain characteristics necessary, if not sufficient?

Education reformers—theorists, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, administrators—are challenged to name, explicitly, what makes a good teacher. If the competence and skill of a teacher affects student outcomes more powerfully than any other factor, we need to be able to answer this question. How would you describe good teaching?

The answer is linked to our ability to replicate what works and change what doesn’t.

Alumni educators, along with alumni from fields that rely on teaching skills for success, point to numerous attributes. Some common themes do emerge.

The instincts, skills and techniques that appear on everyone’s short list make the picture clearer.

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Randall C. Dunn ’83

“From school to school, aren’t some expectations for teachers a ‘given’?”

Randall Dunn (lower left) with colleagues at the Roeper School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

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ast November, trustees at the Latin School of Chicago were “very pleased” to announce that Randall C. Dunn ’83 would be Latin’s next head of school. Randall’s imprint marks many educational settings: He’s been a teacher, coach, dormitory advisor, and senior administrator—in independent and public schools; in boarding schools and day schools; preschool through high school. Randall is also an educational thinker and practitioner at the national level: He co-chairs the National Advisory Board of the Principals’ Center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

He was selected as a 2010 Fellow in the Klingenstein Program for Visiting Heads of School at Columbia University’s Teachers College. In 2008, in celebration of their 45th anniversary, A Better Chance chose Randall as one of their 45 Honored Alumni.

When Randall comments about effective teaching, he demonstrates his crosscultural immersion in education. He is acutely aware of the vastly different teacher and constituency profiles, support levels, and bureaucratic constraints that affect schools and their teachers in our country. As head of a school for gifted and talented children today, transitioning to one for academically motivated students, Randall shares these observations about the teachers around him.

“Because we don’t have the red tape and bureaucracy that surround public schools, and because we absolutely must demonstrate the value of our educational setting to families, we have to hang our hiring decisions on something more quantifiable than the anticipation that a good, well-trained person will teach well.

Experience in another setting helps, but there’s no guarantee that a teacher who succeeds in one environment is necessarily going to succeed in another environment.

In a new school, you’re essentially starting over, especially in independent schools, where we pride ourselves in having these very different cultures.

“Independent schools and public schools share many more interests than they acknowledge, and more cooperation would help everyone make progress. For instance, there’s nothing in the national teaching standards that is so objectionable to private schools. Put together by thoughtful folks looking at interactive children, they’re broad enough so that private schools should take a close look at them. But at private schools we tend to think we need our own standards. From school to school, aren’t some expectations for teachers a ‘given’? Wouldn’t it benefit us all if we agreed, and could focus resources on building those?

“The ability to connect with children and to understand the context of their lives today is essential, as is deep knowledge of content. However, we need teachers who can couple those strengths with the skill of facilitating. Teachers need to keep up the flow of thinking and talking that goes in different directions, and guide that to accomplish content goals. That’s not easy, especially in public schools, where teachers are responsible for so much.

These classrooms bundle a great range of thinkers, talkers, actors—and often large numbers.

“Mentoring is extremely important, especially for a teacher new to a school.

Remember, there’s no guarantee of

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success in a new environment, regardless of what’s happened before. Mentoring by adults is a great model for what you want teachers to reproduce in the classroom: that exact student-teacher interaction.

Mentoring ensures conversations: serious ones, about what’s crucial for effectiveness here, and light ones, about the nuts and bolts.

“When things aren’t going well, a process should meet the issues of concern headon (we call it ‘evaluation for concern’ here at Roeper). The process should provide methodology to address the problems. It should put up front what’s at stake in the resolution. That said, these processes see variable rates of success, because teaching is an intensely human, personal enterprise. It involves natural emotions, reactions and behaviors that are difficult to change. A teacher’s own experience with education has a huge impact on him or

her. That factor profoundly affects a teacher’s investment in education and sense of a teaching model (positive or negative).

“An assessment model that does work well is a periodic review that is not evaluative. On a cycle of set years, a teacher working with an administrator proposes and embarks on an extensive professional development plan. That allows for great individual growth.

“The narrower and more clearly defined a school’s culture and goals are, the better teachers and students seem to do. You see examples of this in all kinds of settings: KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) schools, small urban charter schools, religious schools, certain public schools and independent schools. In these cases, faculty are very clear about why they’re there, how they’re teaching and why; and families, children and parents, are invested.

The more schools like this become normative, the more likely the public is to sit up and take notice.”

Randall has been the head of school at the Roeper School in Bloomfield Hills and Birmingham, Michigan, since 2004; prior to that he served for seven years as the head of Middle School at the Landon School in Bethesda, Maryland. Earlier in his career, he worked at the Potomac School in McLean, Virginia; in the Brookline, Massachusetts, public school system; at Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts; at Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts; and at Derby Academy in Hingham, Massachusetts.

Randall was born in Jamaica and moved to Boston as a child. After Milton, he earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology at Brown University. Randall later received his master’s degree in education from Harvard University with a focus on human development and psychology.

Cathleen D. Everett

“Independent schools and public schools share many more interests than they acknowledge, and more cooperation would help everyone make progress. For instance, there’s nothing in the national teaching standards that is so objectionable to private schools. Put together by thoughtful folks looking at interactive children, they’re broad enough so that private schools should take a close look at them.”

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Elizabeth Auchincloss ’69

To learn to teach, doctors look to the doctors who taught them.

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ew doctors, with medical school just behind them, have plenty of responsibility and accountability. They take histories from patients, decide about tests, do complex procedures, make decisions about managing problems, and communicate all that with families. Doctors senior to these new practitioners—sometimes barely their seniors—supervise all this activity. This revered and dynamic apprenticeship system undergirds the quality of physicians throughout the United States. Along with the combination of classroom, case-based, and hands-on learning in medical school, this relationship-based learning model produces and sustains the relatively high competency we patients expect of our doctors in this country.

Over the past decade, medical education— both at the undergraduate and graduate level—has been undergoing reforms marked by now-familiar words, like standards, competencies and outcomes. “A revolution, even,” Elizabeth Auchincloss, M.D. ’69 calls the shift in the emphasis of programming for medical education.

Betsy Auchincloss is responsible for making sure that emergent psychiatrists at Cornell Medical College in New York experience “competency-based education.”

She is vice-chairman for graduate medical education, director of residency training, and professor of clinical psychiatry.

Over recent years, aligning training programs in psychiatry so that they teach and measure six explicit competency domains has focused Betsy and peer directors in other subspecialty areas, such as cardiology or pulmonology. These educational leaders are responding to requirements set by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). Through its accreditation responsibilities, ACGME aims to “advance the quality of resident physicians’ education.” How should residency programs be designed to ensure that young doctors acquire complex, measurable skills?

“These regulations, like most regulations, have certain merit and carry certain burdens,” Betsy says. “We have to make sure our programs not only teach what doctors in this field need to know, based on these competency areas, but also measure whether we’ve accomplished that. By signing the formal statement as each resident

graduates, I verify (along with everyone else on the faculty) that this individual is competent and can act independently as a psychiatrist.”

The reform measures involved in ACGME’s “competency-based education” are directed toward the student; it’s the resident who must demonstrate that he or she has acquired complex skills. “Very little attention,” Betsy points out, “goes to what teachers need to do, to get students where they need to be. That’s quite different from competency testing in public education. In that case, if teachers don’t succeed at changing their students ‘outcomes’ they risk losing their jobs.”

While the medical education reform movement hasn’t focused on teaching and teachers, numerous medical schools have hired pedagogical “experts.” These medical schools aim to improve the effectiveness of the many physician-teachers in residency programs. “These experts could be Ph.D.’s in various academic disciplines,” Betsy says, “who have become interested and ultimately specialized in the dynamics of training doctors. But this strategy has had a mixed track record.”

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Doctors tend to look to other doctors—to those who taught them. “Most of the great teachers we have in medicine have learned how to teach through the apprenticeship model,” Betsy explains. “They’ve had great teachers, watched great teachers, had a knack for it, were quick at learning from what they were seeing, and picked it up. They just put these skills into their toolboxes.”

Among a long list of diverse awards in her field, Betsy has won numerous teaching awards. She is a three-time recipient of the Award for Best Voluntary Faculty Teacher given by the residents of the Payne Whitney Clinic; the recipient of the 1998 Klar Award for Best Teacher given by the candidates of the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research; and the winner of the 1999 Edith Shabsin Award for teaching psychoanalysis from the American Psychoanalytic Association.

She teaches psychoanalysis (the psychoanalytic analysis of the mind) and psychopathology through at least four types of recurring encounters with students: the classroom; case conferences; what Betsy calls “trench warfare,” which is on-the-ground work with the residents in the emergency room seeing patients; and “supervision,” which is residents meeting with her once each week to present cases and talk about them with her. “I didn’t learn how to do this by taking any courses

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in teaching,” she says. “I saw wonderful teachers and tried to learn from what they did.”

Betsy loves classroom teaching. “Great teachers are great performers,” she says.

“You have to be more interesting than what’s going on outside the window, frankly. You can’t be boring. You need to be part entertainer—amusing and engaging.

“Naturally, you have to be passionate about your subject matter. And well prepared.

You have to know what you’re going to do in the hour you have.

“Part of what I think my students like about me is that I really do want to learn from them. I find their questions truly interesting. I never get tired of trying to answer them, even if they’re the same questions each year.

“For instance, someone asked the other day, ‘Does Freud have a philosophy of mind? Is there a position in the philosophy of mind that he would hold to, in his theory of mind?’ That’s an interesting question, and I will never really know the answer, but I try to figure it out with students year after year.

“Letting students know that everything they think is truly interesting shows them that I’m trying to learn all the time, too.

It telegraphs that I respect their inquiring minds as much as I do my own.

“I also try to remember, over time, when and how a student asked a question so I can draw it in later, as in, ‘If you remember Ray’s question in the first class, the issue we’re talking about now bears on that.’ Or, ‘Ray’s question touches on issues in the philosophy of science that have never been answered.’ The inference is that Ray’s question is a brilliant one. Even if a student expresses something that’s wrong, it’s probably the same wrong thing that ten other people have thought over the last many years, so it’s important.

Everyone’s questions are elevated in this way. You must communicate your respect for students, even if their knowledge base is different from yours. If you don’t make your respect for students clear, they won’t share with you what they really think, or did, especially if they made a mistake.

“I also try to think out loud. I try to tell my students what I wish my teachers had told me. For instance, I hated when my teachers said, ‘This is the way the mind works,’ without telling me that no one really knows how the mind works. Those teachers could have contextualized things: ‘This is the way we think the mind works, because of such and such, but there are many unanswered questions, so this is the best we can do for now.’

“You need to be comfortable being vulnerable. I had wonderful teachers who said there were things that they, and we, just don’t know. For instance, a recent question

“You must communicate your respect for students, even if their knowledge base is different from yours. If you don’t make your respect for students clear, they won’t share with you what they really think, or did, especially if they made a mistake.”

None of these skills or techniques is taught to those who do the teaching. And every resident teaches others behind him or her in the program. Styles and effectiveness really vary, and it’s not clear to Betsy, or probably to peers in her role elsewhere, how you might remediate those who are competent, knowledgeable doctors, but not skilled teachers.

in ‘supervision’ was, ‘Am I supposed to answer this patient’s question about whether what she experienced was child abuse?’ ‘No one knows the correct answer to that question,’ I told her. ‘You’re going to have to try something, and pay very close attention to the pros and cons, but basically you’re going to spend the next 50 years of your life trying to be a good doctor and answering that kind of question the best you can in any number of different situations.’

“Or here’s an intellectual question: ‘What is the essential nature of a psychoanalytic psychotherapy as opposed to a cognitive behavioral therapy?’ I told the student that people come to blows, arguing about the answer to that. But here are some answers that have been given to that, over the years, and here’s my favorite, and here’s why. I don’t like categorical answers.

Learning is an active thing.

“Making the most of a teaching moment is important, too: knowing what discussion will help a resident gain the most from what’s happening. There’s a technique to getting residents to think about why they’ve made the choices they’ve made.

You figure out the way to help them talk about the theories, the idea base that they used. When they articulate in words the thought process that they went through to do something pivotal—like greeting the patient in a certain way, for example—they

discover that they know, and use, more than they had realized. Residency programs have to teach plenty of practical skills, too. In our field, the key procedure is the interview. So residents love it when we observe them, and give them direct, on-the-job feedback.

“Finally, the best teachers do convey, in a way that is moving to their students, their existential commitment to this idea of being a doctor.”

Figuring out how to build and replicate good teaching is just as challenging in medicine as it is for elementary school teachers. “People who lament that medical education doesn’t focus on pedagogy probably have a point,” Betsy allows. The quality of classroom experience varies, as do different apprentice relationships. “The question of whether and how you train people to be good first-grade teachers is different,” Betsy points out. “More is at stake in first grade. A bad teacher can be a disaster, with an impact that expands over time. Medical education in the United States, on the other hand, is quite good.

It’s pretty well regulated, and teachers are teaching a self-selected group. We can rely on our apprenticeship model. It’s pretty strong, and it’s proven its value in creating good doctors and replicating good teachers over time.”

CDE

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Ethan d’Ablemont Burnes ’89 “Assessment is a good thing when it’s about improving student performance and not just holding schools and teachers in a publicly critical eye.”

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ntegrating students with distinct social and emotional challenges and the general student body is a mission of the Manning Elementary School in Boston’s Jamaica Plain. Ethan d’Ablemont Burnes ’89 has set about the task of shaping an environment there that is productive and rewarding for the children and the teachers.

Ethan is only in his second year as principal of this K–5 public school, but he brings a lot to the table. Ethan was a Boston Principal Fellow at the Ohrenberger Elementary School in West Roxbury and a teacher at the Boston Renaissance Charter School. He was also a policy director with the Boston Plan for Excellence and a policy analyst for the Office of the Governor.

Ethan’s vision for the small, complex Manning School requires teachers with specialized talent and commitment. He isn’t convinced that the programs that build new teachers benefit the teachers or reflect the teaching environment in today’s schools.

“The traditional school of education model is not completely broken, but it’s so controlled by historical forces and institutions, that changing it is difficult. What are the schools of education doing that is really different than what has happened in the past?”

through the long haul. He also wants teachers who are “curious”—teachers who will reflect about their interactions with students, who will question themselves, question what is happening in the classroom, and try a different approach, if needed.

Attending an education school in one city or state, teaching for six weeks there, and then dropping into a classroom in another city or state doesn’t make sense. School systems have particular identities and cultures. Being a new teacher in an unfamiliar environment is difficult, let alone being expected to achieve great results with the students. Ethan is a proponent of programs like the Boston Teacher Residency, a training model based on medical residency programs, where teachers train in the school system where they will be working.

“Teaching is a craft. You need a deep toolbox to meet different students’ needs.

Teaching is just extraordinarily complicated. The number of decisions you make on a given day, on how to move children forward, is huge.”

“If I had to choose one word to describe an effective teacher, it would be ‘relentless.’

You have to be relentless; you have to keep coming back. You have to believe that children can achieve. That’s often not only a belief in your students, but also a belief in yourself. Helping these students succeed takes a lot of self-belief.”

Ethan says that finding teaching candidates who “fit” and bring their best to his school’s mission of improving both behavior and academic ability is difficult.

He looks for people who seem to have the willingness to stick with the children

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To maximize their opportunities to make the right moves, teachers need a tremendous amount of training. They need to be real experts, and base their work on the right set of values. Ethan and his staff recently discussed how to develop critical thinking skills in their students. Figuring out how to design the lessons, do the assessments, and bring these skills into the classroom effectively is sophisticated work.

“Creating an environment where teachers are able to do their best work is crucial.

That’s hard, for all sorts of different reasons, but as an administrator, I have to keep my eye on the ball so that teachers get to be their best selves.”

Great teachers can develop as individuals, but they also emerge from working closely with their peers. The learning environment should facilitate conversations; teachers should be able to discuss issues and work on a common set of goals.

Training teachers to have these conversations and providing them with the necessary information and resources is a big part of Ethan’s job. A recent focus at the Manning is helping the staff review and discuss data—an important best-practice tool.

“You have to hold yourself accountable, and that accountability comes through the data. Assessment is a good thing when it’s about improving student performance and not just holding schools and teachers in a publicly critical eye. Data is only useful if it’s used to improve student performance.”

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts implemented a statewide standards-based assessment program in all public schools in 1998. Testing begins in third grade, and a student must pass the final tests in high school in order to graduate. Although Boston’s program is more than a decade old, Ethan says he and his staff are still learning how to use the data in the most effective way. Receiving the data often enough to generate the right conversations and move toward measurable progress for the children is important.

Ethan is optimistic and enthusiastic about the Manning School’s future, even though he knows there is much work to be done.

“We have a lot of the structures in place for the right things to happen. We have the teams and the facilitators. It takes time to develop the culture. We’ve built the box, but we’ve got to get what happens in the box right. That’s what we’re working on.”

After graduating from Milton, Ethan earned his bachelor’s degree at University of Texas at Austin and his master’s degree in youth policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Liz Matson

“If I had to use one word to describe an effective teacher it would be ‘relentless.’”

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Robert Baker-White ’76 “Today’s academic scene, so geared toward rapid success, can have a negative impact on the effectiveness of teaching.”

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e-creating Othello and exploring molecular biology may have a lot in common, claims Rob BakerWhite ’76, professor and chair of the theatre department at Williams College.

Rob says the success of both endeavors depends on experimental learning, an eagerness to take risks, and a willingness to fail. Today’s academic scene, so geared toward rapid success, and the consumerist culture pervading college education—where the student is the customer to please—“can have a negative impact on the effectiveness of teaching,” says Rob. “Uncomfortable learning,” as Rob calls it, involves putting students in a situation where they’re not so sure of themselves— where they’re presented with evidence or opinion that makes them question their assumptions. “Good teachers create that destabilizing effect for students without making them rebel against the learning situation,” Rob says, “and keep them wanting to move through to the next discovery.

“Teaching the arts in today’s successdriven school culture is tricky: We want our students to take on terrific challenges, but if the outcome is insufficient in some way, we still have to encourage them, nurture them, have them fail in a safe environment where, in fact, they can get a decent grade for failing. You can’t try to create interesting, vibrant, engaging works of art without realizing that you’re going to fail a lot of the time. We have to encourage our students to be daring in their thinking. Daring means taking risks, and taking risks means being willing to fail.”

Rob has been teaching performing arts at the college level for 23 years. After earning his M.F.A. and working in professional theater, he earned his doctorate at Stanford in drama and the humanities and ultimately returned to academia at Williams, his alma mater.

“Directing on a college campus, you’re doing two things at once: You’re modeling artistic behavior, illustrating how to rehearse in a quasi-professional manner. You’re also collaborating with your students on an artistic endeavor, which

requires trust in the students and a certain amount of equal footing that the normal teacher-student relationship may not assume. It’s a powerful pedagogical opportunity. The students are deeply invested, bringing so much energy and personal experience. At the same time they’re absorbing information about language, the playwright, ethical choices the characters make—it’s a very rich breeding ground for learning.”

Rob contends, as most educators do, that universal tenets of good teaching exist across all disciplines. He’s found these principles to be time-tested and true: Good teachers allow themselves to be challenged by their students. “As a young teaching assistant, I was very conscious of needing to know all the answers. After a while I realized it didn’t matter if I didn’t know the specific answer right then— what mattered was that the student was engaged, and had engaged me. I learned I had to be open enough to say, ‘That’s a really interesting question. I don’t know the answer, but let’s figure that out together.’ A willingness to be challenged by your students makes you much more credible and makes their learning more dynamic, more authentic, and ultimately easier.”

An effective teacher creates an environment of engagement and respect. Rob recently adopted a colleague’s simple, but explicit, technique of having his students physically direct their questions and insights to everyone else in the room, rather than to him. He finds this technique both important and incredibly effective.

“I think every good teacher should aspire to find ways to help the students learn from each other,” Rob says. “If students are discovering together, they’ll develop a collective energy in their learning that lasts longer, and means more to them.”

You have to be invested, or else you can’t expect your students to be. “One of the best and most influential teachers I’ve had was Paul Monette, my English teacher at Milton. Paul was extraordinary because he cared so much about the literature. He taught us King Lear, Paradise Lost, Yeats, T.S. Eliot, and we saw him struggle with the language, marvel at the characters, appreciate and discover the nuances of the text. His personal investment in this wonderful, difficult material was inspiring.”

Rob’s research interests include 20th-century Continental and American playwriting, theories of rehearsal and performance, and ecocritical approaches to modern drama.

Rob has worked at the American Repertory Theatre, Seattle Repertory, Empty Space Theatre, Playwrights’ Platform and the Williamstown Theatre Festival. He also coordinated design and program development for Georgetown University’s new mid-campus Performing Arts Center.

Rob has published widely on contemporary theater in leading national and international academic journals and has directed more than 40 productions in academic and professional theater, including performances of Shakespeare, Greek classics, and modern and contemporary plays.

Erin E. Hoodlet

Setting clear expectations is essential.

“On the first day of class, if you talk at the students for 45 minutes, they walk away with an image in their mind that this class will consist of their sitting there and your talking for 45 minutes. If on that first day you talk for 10 minutes and then find some way to engage them—to have every student in that class say something about anything—they walk away thinking, ‘Something is expected of me here. I’ll have to prepare, and I’ll have to partake.’”

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Cameron Stephenson ’92

Can you change the dynamic in underperforming schools?

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aving witnessed children outpace their peers in growth, and meet higher expectations than they had ever known, Cameron Stephenson ’92 knows how to describe effective teaching. “I know what I look for in my environment, which is underperforming urban schools,” Cameron says. She worked formerly with teachers directly, and now focuses on school leadership, “to help administrators reach a place where they can better support good teachers.” Right now Cameron is striving to build results-oriented cultures within two schools in the San Francisco Unified School District.

Cameron works with Partners in School Innovation, a non-profit that partners with individual schools and school districts to change the educational dynamic, to make systemic changes that drive continuous improvement. To schools that implement their program, Partners SI promises significant growth—five or more points, in the California Standards Test in English Language—compared with the average year-to-year growth in California of 2.3 percentage points over the last five years.

Cameron’s colleagues build effectiveness among the cadre of teachers and administrators who are already at work in the system. They promote a model of integrated, powerful processes that are straightforward, but easier to explain than to follow.

The model holds literacy as a primary, pivotal set of skills. It relies on a continuous cycle: Teachers agree on clear

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instructional (standards-based) priorities; jointly they plan and implement strategies to meet those goals; they assess the degree of success by looking at actual student data; they refine the techniques, implement, test, assess, and refine—again and again.

For those who sustain the focus, the gains are profound, shifting everyone’s sense of competence, success and collegiality.

“When teachers are actively learning about their practice, when they collaborate, they love it,” Cameron says. “I’ve even seen veteran teachers value the advice of younger teachers, who are more often trained in this kind of teaching.”

Plenty of cultural forces and old habits resist these changes, however. Teachers are used to teaching “program,” rather than standards. Achieving competence in standards can be demonstrated in data, but looking at data is a new orientation and skill. Holding common conversation, observing one another—physically and through data, surrendering some autonomy: these changes take courage and time.

“Too many teachers and administrators in this environment have not inherently believed that children can succeed, that children can change their own lives.

Therefore, they have low expectations, and children absorb that completely.”

In fact, on Cameron’s concise list of attributes, holding high expectations, “a true belief that all children can achieve,” is the most important. In Cameron’s experience, a short but compelling complex of qualities can distinguish the most successful teachers: • Focusing on results: looking at your practice, being reflective and solution-oriented.

• Having “presence”: managing the classroom. You can develop that presence, over time; you have to be willing to hold the line.

• Knowing how to differentiate: trying to meet individual needs and attributes; never giving up; coming back to the drawing board again and again.

• Being clear about what you want and expect: You know the exemplar. You know where you’re going. Children shouldn’t have to figure that out.

Learning doesn’t have to be a puzzle.

“Too many teachers and administrators in this environment have not inherently believed that children can succeed, that children can change their own lives. Therefore, they have low expectations, and children absorb that completely.”

• Loving children, and loving what you do.

• Being driven by the conviction that every child should have quality education.

Our challenge to change educational outcomes is not simply about education, Cameron notes, it’s about social justice.

“I know that with the right structure and support, all students, regardless of their race or economic background, can go to college. I have seen what’s good for my students at KIPP (the nationally replicated Knowledge Is Power Program where Cameron was a founding administrator); I know the students in the schools I work with now can go to college, too. But without this kind of focus and reform, there’s little chance they will be prepared.”

Cameron’s teaching career began as an elementary teacher in Los Angeles with Teach For America. She then served as a founding staff member of the East Palo Charter School, where she taught fourth grade, served as the Title I coordinator, and managed the after school program. In 2002, Cameron helped to start the first KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) school in the Bay Area, where she worked for seven years, primarily as the assistant principal. Cameron earned her bachelor’s in political science from Stanford University and her M.B.A. and M.S.W. from the University of Michigan. She also completed the New Leaders for New Schools program in 2003–2004 and earned her Clear Administrative Credential.

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Betsy Garside ’80

The outside observer as coach: Subtlety is key

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consultant is an outsider. Often, that’s the point. An organization looks externally when it wants particular help: some expertise, technical assistance, change management, growth, redirection, or strengthening, for instance.

During her career, Betsy Garside ’80 has been on the inside, but recently her role has been as consultant, assisting nonprofits and companies with management and direction. Lately, a large part of that role is coaching entrepreneurs and the leaders who direct non-profits.

To succeed—and for her clients to succeed—Betsy must teach, but not overtly.

Didactic teaching doesn’t work. To be effective, her guidance and perspective must be much more subtle, quietly informed by years of experience taking stock of how people and organizations work.

The guide and the coach are frequently used metaphors for the best teachers, and when Betsy pinpoints the skills that she relies on, parallels with effective teaching strategies are not a surprise.

Possibly the most underrated but critical skill is alert listening. “I don’t know where I picked this up—from my teachers, probably, and absolutely from my father—but it’s been incredibly helpful. My clients do have a body of knowledge, but I can provide them with an accurate reflection of themselves, or help them with a blind spot, or through a tricky situation.

Sometimes I pull together a number of things so they can see a different picture than the one they’ve been holding.

Sometimes I help them figure out where the gaps are. All that relies on intense listening and observing.”

Adults in the working world, like children, have preferred learning styles. “I need to give thought to how a person grasps things and what communication best meets him or her. So often we default to putting words on paper, whether or not that’s the right method. I often put away the presentation and start drawing; we sketch concepts right in the conference room. Sometimes I’ll use pictures as metaphors. As a rule of thumb, thinking about how your audience is going to understand or absorb a set of ideas before you try communicating is a good approach.”

Betsy calls another practical strategy “circling back around.” “Trying to create organizational change, especially with the pace of people’s lives and the volume of clutter, is really tough. You have to circle back to reinforce the change; to anchor it; to make sure the leaders you’re advising are adapting—or to help them adapt; to spot problems and address them before they pop up as obstacles.

“Managing change is a challenge for both my corporate and non-profit clients.

To create change in business, leaders often go full speed ahead, trying many things at once, building their business until it grows big enough that any change becomes too heavy a lift. Then things just bog down; you need a new approach to innovation and management. In nonprofits in particular, the challenge in executing change is that leaders are always doing too much, more than they can do well. This is where I need to circle back around and help keep them focused on the goal.”

Sometimes a surfeit of will and an excess of energy result in a “churning up the water rather than gliding ahead,” Betsy says, using a favorite metaphor from her life as a rower. “I use so many lessons from rowing,” she says, “almost every day.” In this case her advice—although phrased differently for non-rowing clients—is to “take it down two, in two.” In other words, after two strokes, deliberately lengthen the next stroke and make it consciously. “In rowing, reducing the stroke rate increases efficiency and improves boat speed overall. It’s fun to see the same result in organizations.”

Knowing what organizational success looks like—setting clear goals and priorities—is key, but Betsy’s experience is that non-profits classically find it difficult to say, “This is important, but it is not our issue right now.”

Part of the priority-setting challenge is the difficulty in measuring results. A business can see whether an initiative has been successful by looking at how much drops to the bottom line. With a non-profit, either what you’ve done plays out over a long arc, or you haven’t figured out the right proxies to measure outcome. You can use certain “outputs” to gauge progress—like letters to Congress or membership growth or media presence—but finding the right milestones isn’t easy.

One current approach to measurement actually intensifies a negative dynamic: Public perception about the desirable ratio between a donor-contributed dollar and the percentage of that dollar spent on operating expenses may induce what Betsy calls “a starvation model.” That is, forgoing investment in staff training or technology infrastructure that might improve program dramatically. “As is the case with measurements in the education world,” Betsy points out, “cookie-cutter assessments give you some information, but they paint a very incomplete picture.”

Betsy points to “willingness” as a vital precursor to institutional change. Non-profits and their leaders are often enthusiastic about seeking the reflective, outside view that a consultant can provide. A business leader can look left and right, see other entities getting ahead faster or better, and then focus on what he or she might need to do better. How do schools, and teachers, in underperforming districts generate the enthusiasm to seek input and the openness to change?

Changes in the external environment can reliably provoke or inspire an interest in self-study, a consideration of change. In fact, a changing environment can set up the “no-fault” opportunity to get outside help to look at things differently.

Intense internal and external review of public education is certainly under way throughout the country. At the same time, the “changes in the external environment” that profoundly affect the context in which children live and develop increase exponentially every day.

Betsy has worked for more than 20 years in leadership roles at non-profits and in the private sector. She was vice president for communications and marketing at The Wilderness Society, and prior to that, she led communications and outreach at American Farmland Trust. In her work with organizations and entrepreneurs, Betsy defines and develops research-based strategies to build organizations and strong brands. She launched her career at Ketchum Communications in New York and Washington. After Milton, Betsy attended the University of Pennsylvania, where she concentrated in American history.

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Sally Paine ’75

At the War College Empowering career military officers to analyze and defend—while being open to others

“O

ur students have been the movers and shakers,” Sally Paine ’75 says, “and now they’re going to be the thinkers.” Sally’s students from the U.S. Naval War College (in Newport, Rhode Island) are all over the world. When they come to the War College, they are in their 30s and 40s, mid-career men and women of the armed forces—many of whom have held command. The Naval War College is a misnomer: it’s not a college, rather a graduate school offering a master’s in National Security and Strategic Studies.

Since a major revision of the program in 1972 led by then president Admiral Stansfield Turner, the War College has used the Oxford/Cambridge tutorial

method of teaching. In individual meetings, students present their thesis, argument, counter-argument and rebuttal to their tutors, who raise additional counterarguments. Students must communicate, defend, analyze and critique the ideas of others, as well as their own. “To think, you have to know,” Sally quotes her older brother. “You have to have a database, but you also have to know how to use it. You can be Rain Man and memorize everything that comes your way, but if you don’t have a means of analyzing it, what good does it do you?”

This is where the argument/counterargument/rebuttal method comes in.

“Our students are forced to think, ‘I have

© 2008 Onne van der Wal Photography, Inc./vanderwal.com

In Sally’s department—Strategy and Policy—half the teachers are active military officers and the other half are

Ph.D.’s in history, political science or government, all with expertise in different topics. (Members of the department always team-teach—a civilian teaches with a military officer.) Sally is an Asianist.

Her colleagues are classicists, American historians, experts in international relations, terrorism, counterinsurgency, intelligence. “Ours is a hybrid program,” she explains. “We use both seminars and case studies, because while our students’ purpose is contemporary, their data is historical.”

The U.S. Naval War College was established in 1884; its complex is situated on Coasters Harbor Island in Newport, Rhode Island.

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“Our students are adults with a very clear objective in the time they’re here. They expect quite a bit out of this education, and if we miss the mark, they let us know.”

my opinion. Now what’s the very best argument against it? And then, why don’t I believe that? What’s my rebuttal?’ This method forces a person to acknowledge that someone smart disagrees with him or her, which is especially relevant to the students I teach.

“We see these vicious partisan debates where a person on one side of the table thinks the person on the other side is evil, or stupid. The truth is, good, smart people are on both sides. They have different priorities, different contexts. Incomplete data exists in the world, and in order to get something done we have to make leaps.

People make different leaps, depending on where they’re starting from. When you start pulling away the emotions and getting down to the available evidence, you can begin to resolve differences.

“This idea—that smart people may disagree with you—requires a flexibility of thinking, which I think is the fundamental quality an education can provide. When you begin to think flexibly and openly about your own arguments, you may realize your argument doesn’t apply in all circumstances. So you reassess, and build a better foundation for your argument.”

Once a week, Sally and her colleagues have a “bootstrap” session, where they gather to discuss the upcoming case study.

The moderating professor delivers an outline of possible ways to run the seminar; Sally explains this as a form of mentoring. “When I moderate, I often present

different ways of organizing the seminar.

You can organize by course themes, or by essay questions on the syllabus, but I think an important component is chalking things up on the board. Some people require visuals. Others are all ears. When you run a seminar, you have to teach to both your auditory and visual learners.

“A week ahead of time I give my students the list of discussion questions so they have some idea of where we’re going, of what’s happening, so they can prepare.

This helps them become more effective at analyzing. People construe that as ‘giving things away.’ The truth is, that’s our role—to provide, to help, to guide. I think mentoring is sometimes the missing piece in teaching. If you’re not doing that, as a teacher, you’re not doing your job.

Guidance is teaching. Cold-turkey learning you can do on your own. That’s what a library card is.”

How do Sally and her colleagues know whether they’re doing that job? Students are given a questionnaire to rate every seminar, lecture and assignment. They are asked to comment on the effectiveness of the lesson, and their teachers read their responses closely. “Our students are adults with a very clear objective in the time they’re here. They expect quite a bit out of this education, and if we miss the mark, they let us know.”

about and comparing Eastern and Western cultures and traditions. While she admires both, she considers the Western analytical tradition a great gift. “In the West it’s not knowing the square root of two off the top of your head that matters, it’s how you use the square root of two that matters.

We instill this idea in students at a young age, asking them what they think, how they’ve come to that conclusion. Providing students with the data they need, showing them the tools, and then empowering them to analyze and defend their thoughts—while still being open to others—is the goal of effective teaching.”

Sally earned her bachelor’s degree from Harvard University; her master’s in Russian language from Middlebury College Russian School; her M.I.A. from Columbia University School for International and Public Affairs; and her Ph.D. in Russian and Chinese history from Columbia University. The seven books she has written are based on archival research in the many countries where she has lived and studied. Her book Imperial Rivals: China, Russia, and Their Disputed Frontier, 1858–1924 (M.E. Sharpe, 1996) won the 1997 Barbara Jelavich Book Prize.

The opinions Sally Paine presents in this article are her own and in no way represent those of the U.S. government, the U.S. Navy or the U.S. Naval War College.

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Having lived abroad for eight years— with stints in Taiwan, Japan, China and Russia—Sally has spent time learning

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Eli A. Wolff ’95

Working on the frontier where education and advocacy converge

I

f you’re advocating an idea, you’re often educating people about it.

Conversely, if you’re an educator, your advocacy for the beliefs you hold passionately does surface. Eli is both an educator and an advocate. As the new leader of Brown University’s Sport and Development Initiative, Eli is juggling a ball (or two) as surely as he did as a Paralympic soccer player. He is not only an advocate and an educator, he is also a scholar, organizer and manager.

Eli’s field, sports and development, is new, but growing, as organizations, both national and international, look toward sports and physical education as a way to approach humanitarian and development objectives. Eli’s job is to raise awareness and promote ideas that have not before been formally considered part of the conversation about sports, such as discrimination, ethical behavior, gender, race and human rights.

Eli writes academic articles; meets with policy groups; and visits schools and universities. To get traction and make progress, Eli uses a systems change approach: He works with the United Nations and the

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International Olympic Committee at the same time that he “infiltrates” non-profit organizations, schools and student-athlete groups.

“This strategy, going down more than one track at a time, has been effective because you just never know when the tipping point is going to come or what the change factor is going to be.”

One challenging aspect of Eli’s work is connecting scholars and the practitioners. In the past, practitioners focused on implementing and running sports and development programs. Eli wants to

connect the organizers with researchers who are examining questions such as: How are the practitioners making their decisions? What is the underlying pedagogy? How do we evaluate the effectiveness of a program? How does this translate to social change?

“This expanded treatment of sports really needs to happen. So you educate people by raising good questions. In so doing you’re an advocate saying, indirectly, ‘This change should happen.’ You are pushing people a little bit, but you also want to get them to come to the realization on their own.”

To counter resistance to change, Eli tries to show how embracing a new idea or policy could be an opportunity rather than a drawback. An example is the idea of girls playing sports in a culture where this is not the norm. Eli points out that the resistance might not be malicious or intentional—it could be that the idea of girls and sports was just never thought possible for various reasons. Of course, there can also be intentional push back. In each situation, “you need to figure out how to tailor the information and make it accessible.”

Eli still works closely with studentathletes, particularly athletes with disabilities. Having survived a stroke after surgery as a toddler, Eli was partially paralyzed on his left side. This didn’t stop him from playing soccer at a young age, and ultimately playing for Milton’s varsity soccer team. While at Milton, Eli volunteered at a local rehabilitation center. The center’s director encouraged Eli to consider the Paralympics. He was a member of the U.S. National Team and competed in both the 1996 and 2004 Paralympic Games.

“The lack of awareness and understanding about people with disabilities within the sports culture really struck me,” Eli said after the 2004 Games. That experience led Eli’s commitment. “I spent a lot of time as an athlete trying to be an educator.”

Although he is no longer a competitive athlete, Eli tries to be a connecting point for athletes who want to get involved in social justice work. He also leads a group of student fellows at Brown, many of whom are athletes, working on sports and development projects around the world.

Eli describes the many mentors and movers in his life as “positive, supportive, always encouraging, asking good questions, having a global vision with no limitations.

“I try to emulate them, but I consider some of these folks to be on a whole other level. I’m still learning. When I’m working with students and building these coalitions, I remember how much I learned from these mentors.”

Eli works with the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville on building student-athletes and a service platform to encourage and promote a holistic approach to being a student-athlete, particularly in the context of service and community engagement.

From 2001 to 2010, Eli was the manager of research and advocacy at the Center for Sport in Society at Northeastern University. From 2004 to 2006, he led a global effort to include provisions addressing sport and recreation within the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Eli is a graduate of Brown University.

LM

“So you educate people by raising good questions. In so doing you’re an advocate saying, indirectly, ‘This change should happen.’ You are pushing people a little bit, but you also want to get them to come to the realization on their own.”

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Alice Fischer ’09

A Strategist in the Making Setting herself up to shape education policy

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lice Fischer ’09—a sophomore at Bryn Mawr College—speaks with insight beyond her 19 years.

She’s excited by, and focused on, education in America. Studying sociology, with a minor in education, Alice plans on earning a graduate degree in education policy.

“The ripe opportunities for improving education exist, and they don’t all require sweeping change,” says Alice. “The goals are lofty, but the steps to get there are manageable.”

Interning this summer with the New York City Department of Education, Alice worked in the Office of Students with Disabilities and English Language Learners. The department is midstream in executing citywide reform, making schools and teachers accountable for the students in their districts. In past years students with learning disabilities, behavioral issues, or minor physical and mental disabilities were isolated from general students, even sent to schools outside their districts. The department argues that students with minor behavioral and learning issues, and students for whom English is a second language, thrive—have higher test scores and higher graduation rates—when they’re learning in an inclusive classroom, integrated with their peers.

This spring begins the second phase of the reform: standardizing Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). The team that creates a student’s IEP includes the school

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administrator, primary classroom teacher, special education teacher, parents, school psychologist, a professional specializing in the student’s diagnosis, and the student himself. Teachers have struggled to implement IEPs when they don’t have clear expectations about how far along a continuum of services they are expected—or allowed—to go.

“Clear expectations are essential in teaching, and they should start from the top,” says Alice. “Policy leaders need to make clear to the administrators what they are accountable for. That clarity needs to travel down the line, to the principals and then to the classroom teachers. The same way that teachers need clear expectations from their principals and district administrators, students need clear expectations to succeed. Good communication with students and parents is fundamental to that process.

“Effective communication means knowing the students, and knowing how to reach them. Are they visual or auditory learners? What’s life like outside of school?

What languages do they speak at home?

Communicating with other teachers is equally important: What challenges is the student facing in other classrooms?

Perhaps more important, where is he or she excelling?

“Especially in this integrated classroom, ‘beginning with the student’ means being flexible. That means adjusting the way your classroom is set up or the material you’re using; working collaboratively with the special ed teacher or other professionals. Teachers also need to be aware of their own biases. As soon as a teacher—however unconsciously—projects stereotypes or limitations on a student, that assumption becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Flexibility is a concept with real legs in charter and magnet schools, whose popularity has boomed. These are publicly funded alternatives to traditional public schools that are built upon clear goals.

“These schools allow you to get at the same fundamentals in a way that’s more accessible to some students,” says Alice.

“For instance, a teacher in a public school might ask, ‘How long will it take the train to travel from point A to point B’ whereas in a marine science charter school they’d ask ‘How long do the dolphin’s sonar

“Sharing a clear definition of what education means in this country is my greatest hope. I want to be part of the conversation that works toward that definition.”

waves take to travel from point A to point B?’ Skill building is what’s important. No one remembers what facts they learned in eighth-grade history; they do remember, however, how to outline a text, or draw connections between different time periods. Another benefit is that these schools are smaller. Smaller classes in smaller schools are 100 percent awesome as far as attention to students.

“Once the environment is conducive to teaching, the teacher can do her work.

A good teacher is willing to be a learner alongside her students, and she knows how to turn the wrong answers into a learning process. She also sets appropriate boundaries—learning from someone you don’t respect is hard.

“A teacher should make an effort to let each of her students know they’re not just one of many. That doesn’t have to take a lot of time or effort; it can be crouching down to their level while they’re working on a math problem, making eye contact and asking, ‘How are you doing?’

“We talk about ‘pushing’ our students, and that’s important, but not all students are gifted in the same way. Success looks different to different people, and we have to make students feel valued in the way that they’re special, in the way they contribute—we have to engage their talents.

setting clear expectations, communicating effectively, providing the right resources and facilitating idea sharing. No school or teacher should have to reinvent the wheel.

That wastes time. I want to help create an environment in public schools that’s conducive to educating—that encourages people, far beyond graduation, to continue analyzing—anything, everything—and to continue being active thinkers.”

EEH

“The crux of fixing our public education system is at the top. People are so quick to look to the teacher when something isn’t working, but we have to enable our teachers to do their best work. That means

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At Milton

The Question: What Is Good Teaching?

“If we want our students to be addicted to asking hard questions, to be intellectual thrill seekers, then we teach them that not knowing is way more fun than knowing.”

—Jenn Eng, English Department

A

t Milton Academy, we have many luxuries that privilege learning: small, technology-equipped classrooms, abundant resources, eager students. And yet research argues that no factor influences student learning like teacher effectiveness. What makes a teacher effective, though, is a question tough to answer. Public commentary has attributed successful teaching to good instincts at work, or to magic, to an inimitable “withit-ness.” If we were sure, educational reformers point out, we could design and fund teacher training programs to change more predictably the below-average academic performance of America’s children.

Here at Milton, perhaps the question’s relevance is found in our willingness to ask it of ourselves. What is good teaching? Are we a school that attracts and sustains the good teaching we define? Our eagerness to ask might in fact determine the school that we want to be for future generations.

With ten of my colleagues I sit around a Harkness table to tackle this question.

Our conversation highlights departmental differences, our individual teaching styles, our distinct reasons for entering the profession—we wouldn’t be Milton, after all, if we agreed. One thing becomes clear: Even though we don’t pinpoint effective leadership essentials, we know that good teaching benefits, if not thrills, from 24

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trying to understand good teaching. Good teachers crave more time to talk to other teachers about the work they love.

Lisa Baker (English): When you witness good teaching, what are you seeing, hearing, feeling in the room?

Walter McCloskey (English): The good teachers I’ve had created a visible connection between teacher and some number of the students in the room. But that is not a reliable standard.

Walter: And yet we’ve all had classes where the chemistry is off. Then, there are only a certain number of things that a teacher can do.

Lisa: What are some of those things? I’m curious to know how we encourage students to engage.

Josh Emmott (History): Trying to spark in a student’s mind a way of thinking—an idea, a theme, a question that he grabs onto.

Elizabeth Lillis (Science): When students connect their own previous experience with what’s happening in class, even if they don’t connect with the teacher, they are engaging with ideas in and beyond the classroom. Then, we’ve made content really relevant.

Tracy Crews (Modern Language): Learning to speak a language requires doing so many things that are inherently difficult and threatening for an adolescent, so I use humor to help my students feel comfortable with doing what’s unfamiliar.

We laugh together.

Jenn Eng (English): In a discussion-based class, one indicator of good teaching is that the students are talking more often to each other than to the teacher, and they are willing to challenge the teacher, which reveals an implicit knowledge that the teacher’s authority is of inquiry and responsiveness rather than ownership over any particular meaning.

Walter: Well, one would want to say that a sense of humor is a requirement for good teaching, but I don’t think it really is.

Carly Wade (History): Yes, the students’ role is essential: their engagement, vitality and zest in making connections.

Carly: But I would say the opposite.

Walter: I would want to say the opposite, but I’ve had teachers who have not had a demonstrable sense of humor but from whom I learned a great deal. What can I say?

Kim Samson (Science): Good teaching really demands a full investment of the self. Teenagers have a keen sense of how genuine you are.

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Carly Wade

Tarim Chung (English): We’ve also seen in a teacher a classroom persona that’s effective and true, and a public persona that’s quite different, but also effective and true. Maybe we all begin teaching as we were taught—we assume the style of our heroes.

Josh: My favorite teacher of all time had absolutely no interest in speaking to people outside of class, but in class he was the most engaging person. Going to his office hours was like going backstage.

Walter: He was a great actor.

Josh: But here, we live with our students, so the job requires a much greater sense of honesty.

Paul Archer (Classics): Being the classicist, the old-fashioned guy, I think classroom management is also important, best done when not seen. It can create a shared sense of purpose, in a place where differences matter.

Tracy: When students who are not strong in our subject come to class excited—that means something is going right.

Elizabeth: I like when students in my classroom attribute ideas to each other, a sign of a community emerging from the learning experience.

Carly: I try to model that behavior. Very often when I speak, I am connecting students’ points.

Jenn: I love when in April a student references something said in September. The conversation has been alive for them, reverberating in their heads. It gives permission for the rest of the class to believe that conversations can seep out into their real lives.

Carly: Over the years, I’ve learned to teach the students that are in my classroom—to try to meet students where they are and guide the material accordingly.

Walter: I agree with that.

Tarim: Though I wonder if the teachers we remember are the ones that were more generous with us or were those who drew a line in the sand and found some nice way of saying, “This is the standard and you are not meeting it at the moment.”

Jenn: I want to pick up on Paul’s comment about classroom management. We manage a classroom well if students’ fascination with the material and each other will actually tether them to good behavior in a way that our explicit restrictions probably never could.

Tarim: Where does our command of the material fall in importance?

Kim: Being smart, by itself, doesn’t cut it.

Of course, you need to know your discipline; you need to be a lifelong learner, but I don’t think intelligence is everything.

Carly: The more I learned about history, the more I was able to bring every student into the discussion.

Elizabeth: Teaching biology often means saying, “Honestly, I don’t know the answer to your question.” Tomorrow’s understanding of an issue in my field can negate what we think today. That’s fun, but it also makes me vulnerable.

Carly: I have always found that students like when a teacher acknowledges that.

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Paul Archer

Josh: Teaching a mini-course during senior projects was a neat opportunity to try something I didn’t know much about but had a big interest in. I thought that if I could get the students passionate about the topic, we could explore it together as a group. In the right setting, thin knowledge of a subject might not be detrimental.

Paul: We foster independence, their sense of questioning, that they take beyond the classroom.

Jenn: If we want our students to be addicted to asking hard questions, to be intellectual thrill seekers, then we teach them that not knowing is way more fun than knowing. We have opportunities to model that and balance that with credibility.

Elizabeth: In science, we make sure students ask questions that the book can’t answer for them, then examine the data they collect.

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Lisa: Does a competitive environment make better teachers?

Carly: Not necessarily, but none of us wants to be the teacher about whom a student complains. And plus, it’s in the air here: we all want to be masters of our profession.

Elizabeth: How can you improve, if you are new?

Carly: I always asked new teachers to visit others’ classes. I’d ask them to think about what they were seeing that they would do, or would never do—in other words, to consider who they were as teachers.

Elizabeth: That would be a good thing—a visiting requirement.

Kim: And visiting classrooms in other disciplines, as well.

Josh: In history department meetings, we discuss topics at a level that might make someone unable to engage feel sidelined.

If you can rise to the level of discussion, there is a huge reward.

Walter: Well, it’s quite clear that the history department is terribly competitive.

(Laughter) I don’t feel that in the English department.

Tarim: I haven’t felt competition, but I have felt expectation. I’m happy to live with those expectations.

Tracy: The modern language department is almost excessively collaborative. We pool together all that we’ve created as individuals. We are our own greatest resource.

Gregg Reilly (Mathematics): In the math department, we write many of our own materials. Teachers from each course meet once a week to talk about what we’re going to do.

Kim: We do the same thing in the science department. In fact, we designed the faculty room in the Pritzker Center to be a central place where people can share ideas.

Tracy: We all have great things to share.

I wish for more time to teach each other how we teach.

Joshua Emmott

Walter: You mean to share techniques, Tracy?

Tracy: Techniques and actual activities.

Tarim: I’m glad we’re talking about culture. An intellectual, pro-teaching culture is very endemic to this place. And I’ve visited schools where material didn’t matter, teaching didn’t matter. We’re lucky even to be having this conversation, because teaching can be really hardscrabble when values are askew.

Lisa: How do we identify teaching that’s not up to snuff, and how do we address it?

Walter: I assume if a head of department were to hear negative commentary about a teacher, he would address it.

Carly: That is what happens. We have the first-year, the three-year evaluation and subsequent ones, and we depend on department chairs spending a fair amount of time in classrooms.

Jenn Eng

Lisa: Does our evaluation system work?

Carly: I think so. We lay out expectations each year, and if they aren’t met, people move on.

Elizabeth: The proactive new teacher will get the feedback she needs to improve; we do need good ways to help people who want to stay at Milton.

Jenn: How do you get a teacher to have a dynamic understanding of what good teaching is, and how do you get good teachers to intrinsically want to be better teachers?

Carly: I think we hold the bar pretty high here. If teachers don’t have the personal motivation to learn to do well, then they probably shouldn’t be here. We have departmental communities, and department chairs need to be encouraging, teaching and loving the people in their departments for improvement to happen.

And loving can mean saying, “Do it a different way.”

Gregg Reilly

Gregg: We need to evaluate department heads’ evaluation processes.

Tracy: Training can help people improve, but a good teacher has a certain amount of just plain “with-it-ness.” Without it, all the training in the world won’t make you a good teacher.

Gregg: And a great teacher in one setting may not be a great teacher in all settings.

Walter: I really believe that.

Lisa: What are a few things that we know we need to do to keep Milton packed with top-notch teachers?

Tracy: We need to plan time for us to learn from each other.

Kim: Attend classes across disciplines— experience being a student again.

Carly: That’s so valuable. A couple of sabbaticals ago, I studied for a year and I came back knowing more about teaching by a huge factor than I did when I left.

Lisa Baker, English Department

Tracy Crews

Kim Samson

Tarim Chung

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At Milton “Middle schoolers need to understand that adults respect them for what they are experiencing.”

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iddle school years track tremendous growth and change. Students are curious, have boundless energy, and are increasing in sophistication inside and outside the classroom. Each day, middle schoolers take on more responsibility and independence. Their teachers’ goal is to understand them, support them, and help them grow as they transition from childhood to adolescence, all while preparing them for the academic rigor of high school. Five of Milton’s Middle School faculty members reflect here on their craft, and identify the tools they need every day to effectively care for and prepare the unique group of students in front of them.

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How do you know good middle school teaching when you see it?

“A good middle school teacher is almost always ‘on the move.’ Students are engaged, not always doing the same pattern of activities each day—they’re participating, questioning, writing, collaborating. A good middle school teacher changes up what’s happening in the classroom in terms of the period, the week, the month. They must be very attentive to different learning styles.”

—Laurel Starks, Grade 8 World Cultures “I believe that effective teaching is happening when students fill the lulls that invariably arise with insightful observations, thoughtful comments, and questions that extend a topic in new and interesting directions; when they’re willing to take risks by voicing their opinions, explanations or theories in front of peers; and when students reflect their investment in a course by pursuing topics outside of the classroom.”

—Tom Troy, Grade 8 Science “The key is finding the connection that best meets the needs of the student.

When the teacher can uncover how that student best learns, and what stimulates the student’s passion and enthusiasm for

learning for its own sake, the relationship has been forged and the journey on the road to meaningful lifetime success has begun.”

age group and allow them to succeed.

They need to be committed to learning how to love middle school students, if they don’t already.”

— Sue Austin, Grade 7 Science, Grade 7 Dean and K–8 Science Lead

—Liz Gray, Grade 6 Social Studies

What core attributes does every good middle school teacher possess?

Can the skills and attributes of good middle school teaching be built, or must they be inherent in the teacher?

“Middle school teachers have to have great ‘radar.’ Students will often try to hide disappointment or concerns. They’re transitioning toward independence; teaching them to communicate with their teachers and advisors, and to be their own advocate, is really important. A middle school teacher also has to be willing to laugh.

Kids really pick up on the happiness of their teachers, and they need to ‘like’ their teachers at this age. This doesn’t mean always being their friend, but it does mean having their respect.”

“Some of them can be built with a lot of practice, patience and flexibility in the adult. It is easier for an adult who has the inherent qualities of being a middle school teacher to adjust to the content than to have someone who is proficient in the content adjust to the age. You really have to like, understand, and be committed to middle school-aged students to be able to work with them well.”

—Laurel Starks, Grade 8 World Cultures

What are some good “rules to live by” in teaching middle schoolers?

“Middle school is often a division of teaching that teachers avoid, because the kids are testing boundaries and going through tough times developmentally. They are awkward. Anyone who is going to be a middle school teacher has to be completely devoted to learning how to best teach this

— Will Crissman, Middle School Dean and Grade 8 Math

“Meet the students at their level. That can mean that teachers need to be especially attentive to the mood of a class or a particular issue that the students are buzzing about. It also means delivering material in

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a way that is relevant and meaningful to them. These students need to understand that adults respect them for who they are and what they are experiencing.”

— Will Crissman, Middle School Dean and Grade 8 Math “Teach to the whole child. Middle school teachers are less interested in teaching a certain discipline (and the associated content and skills) than we are in fostering the healthy development of the child and their relationship with academics. Also, tomorrow is a different day. Middle schoolers change so fast (physically, mentally, socially and emotionally)—you sometimes just have to present material at the right time.”

—Tom Troy, Grade 8 Science

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“My personal pedagogical approach is to deemphasize my role in the learning process. When students recognize the freedoms they have to take risks and solve problems utilizing their own ideas, the tone of the classroom changes forever.”

— Sue Austin, Grade 7 Science, Grade 7 Dean and K–8 Science Lead

What are the core attributes of every good middle school teacher?

• • • • • • • •

humility ambition energy empathy patience humor flexibility creativity

Good middle school teachers: • never use sarcasm and are completely transparent about their intentions. A middle school teacher should definitely use humor to appeal to students, but never sarcasm.

• never give up on a student, no matter how many mistakes he or she has made.

• make the classroom a physically active space and use physical action in their lesson plans—like role-playing, mock trials and debates.

• don’t skimp on recess! Middle school students’ growing bodies still need lots of physical activity, especially the boys.

• make all academic lessons somehow circle back to the students—their own forming identities, their daily lives.

• are always honest.

• always use kindness and let their students know that they are not alone.

• find a way to like ALL students. Even if you have a hard time with a student, find at least one thing about him or her that you enjoy and admire.

—Liz Gray, Grade 6 Social Studies

Good middle school teachers: • design good questions, and continually assess the work they do with students both in and out of the classroom.

• listen to children’s ideas. Students meet with more success when they are owners in their learning.

• are facilitators in a student-centered classroom. When students are provided an opportunity to take risks and integrate their ideas into the daily lessons, the passion for learning skyrockets.

• serve as mentors and role models for students. They are excited about learning and model that to students.

• are also lifelong learners striving to be the best that they can be each day.

They have a passion for learning, staying abreast of the latest technological trends, discoveries in their subject area, and advances in research about student learning.

• are willing to grow.

— Sue Austin, Grade 7 Science, Grade 7 Dean and K–8 Science Lead

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Classroom From rocky rehearsals to a performance that clicks Dr. Don Dregalla leads chamber musicians’ quest

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n an unusually warm November morning, students hover around the door of Dr. Don Dregalla’s music rehearsal room. Instrument cases and backpacks are strewn across the floor.

A campus-wide game of “Gotcha” is in full swing, and a few nervous students are using the room to hide from being “tagged” out. The students laugh and chat as they unpack their instruments. Don coaxes the students who belong into their seats and those who do not, out the door.

The Winter Concert is three weeks away, and this Chamber Orchestra has only five more rehearsals to master four pieces.

Don quells the cacophony of tuning instruments, and after a moment of silence, he lifts his baton. The first two notes of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C, Op. 21 fill the room. The students are focused and serious, and when the piece is finished, Don gives his critique.

“Notes were pretty good, not perfect, but good. I’ll give the notes an A/A–.

Dynamics were a D, at best,” Don says.

He points out one particular measure and how the students are not giving him double forte.

“Intonation is a C at best. The clinkers occur when you try to do too much.

Overall, I give it a B today.”

A few disappointed students groan and one mumbles hopefully, “Well, at least that’s an improvement over last time.”

They move on to play Louis Gottschalk’s Pasquinade (Caprice), a lighter dance song.

Don is happier with the notes and the dynamics.

The third piece is Mozart’s Four German Dances, K. 602. For some reason the students have not taken to this piece. When the music stops, Don sighs and slouches his whole body down. There’s a long pause.

“I’ll be very honest with you: It sounds like you’re sight-reading,” Don says.

“People are still missing repeats; I don’t understand. This is an easy piece. You need to spend time with this. The piece is not tricky. It sounds like you are only practicing this in class, not on your own.

Between now and Friday, spend time on Mozart.”

Despite the disappointing feedback, Don’s voice is calm and encouraging.

The fourth piece, which they do not rehearse today, is Claude Debussy’s Danses for Chromatic Harp and String Orchestra.

The featured soloist is Class I student Sam Karlinski. Don always chooses a piece to feature a Class I student for major performances.

“There are certainly qualified Class II and III students, but I make them wait so they have something to look forward to. This is a reward for a Class I student’s ability and dedication over the years. Sam has been in orchestra since he was in Class IV. We started talking about doing a piece when he was a sophomore,” Don says.

Don also looks for variety: “I try to find pieces the students will be able to play, but that are challenging enough that they can’t just read and put out with no work. I also avoid pieces that are too challenging for them to play.”

When the Chamber Orchestra meets again after Thanksgiving break, they rehearse all four pieces. During this class, Don’s critiques focus on specific instrument sections and the overall tempo. The students are rushing in places, particularly with Mozart, where Don gently taps the rhythm with his baton and says, “Keep it light.” At the end, the students are rewarded with, “Not bad, it’s come a long way.”

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Don sometimes tapes the students while they are first learning a piece and then plays it a month later so they can hear the improvement. He says the progress they make in just a few weeks can be amazing.

Don stresses the importance of tempo and asks the students to picture couples dancing during Mozart’s era, dancing tall and “stately” to keep the wigs on their heads from falling off.

The Friday before the performance, the students stream into King Theatre for the dress rehearsal. This time the trail of instrument cases and jackets goes from the lobby all the way up onto the stage.

First up is the full orchestra, about 100 students who will perform during the second half of the concert. When they’re finished, the Chamber students stay seated.

On the night of the Winter Concert, the theater seats are filled with excited friends and family. The students on stage have cleaned up nicely. The hooded sweatshirts, Ugg boots, sneakers and jeans have been replaced by black skirts, suits, heels, and even a few tuxes. Not a backpack or instrument case is in sight.

They begin with the Gottschalk piece.

“There’s a little parting going on. The tempo is rushed a little bit. Be very careful. It sounds different here than in the rehearsal room; the sound is fuller,” says Don at the end.

After Beethoven, Don says, “It’s coming apart at the seams, but not too much.

Rushing, it’s all about the rushing.”

During Mozart, Don lightly taps out the beat, bouncing his whole body.

“Some spots in there were really good,” he tells his students.

Don enters the stage to applause and acknowledges the audience as he takes his place. Sam is the last to enter. His harp is positioned at the front of the stage. The students in the audience give him a rousing welcome.

Don faces his orchestra, raises his baton, and the sound of Debussy fills the theater. The students play the piece much lighter than in rehearsal, and the notes seem to float. Sam plays exceptionally well. His piece sets the tone for the night.

Don’s baton is coaxing out the best in his students.

Next up is Mozart. The harp is rolled to the back. The woodwinds and brass

players enter and take their seats. As the piece begins, it’s clear that something magical is taking place—all the practicing and critiquing is jelling onstage.

The students play Gottschalk with lightness and spunk. By the time they begin Beethoven, the musicians are fully engaged and immersed in their music.

The piece is strong and rousing, as a Beethoven symphony should be. The audience rewards them with loud rounds of applause, whistles, and words of praise yelled down from students in the balcony.

A few days after the performance, Don reflects on the evening.

“I always come out of those concerts thinking it’s a lot of work. But it’s a lot of fun, too. By Sunday, I realize there isn’t anything more I can do. It is what it is. I was really pleased with the performance.

That first piece that Sam played, the Debussy, we couldn’t have played it any better than that. There was just something that the students did that night—not only were the notes good, but everybody just clicked. They were listening, they were watching. That piece was wonderful.”

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Sports Good coaches say, “You can do it”—and they mean it.

But on the field, success is collective.

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thletics build confidence—and “playing” demands discipline, hard work, patience, poise. An athlete learns to work with others, challenge herself, and improvise. A good coach is exceptionally powerful. How does effective coaching work?

“My main responsibility as a coach is sharing my experiences and knowledge of the game,” says Amy Hickey, Milton’s head softball coach. “As captain of the ship, I need my players to feel safe so they’re not afraid to try things, to stick their necks out a bit. My job is to be supportive and to challenge them.”

Chris Kane, of the admission office, began working at Milton in 2006. This is Chris’s fourth season coaching the girls’ varsity squash team. A college athlete himself (Chris played soccer, lacrosse and squash at Amherst College), he has also coached

Milton’s boys’ lacrosse program for four years, and this spring he begins his second season with the golf team. Chris recently earned his master’s in education from the School Leadership Program at Harvard University.

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“In high school, coaching is 50 percent winning games and 50 percent teaching players to have integrity,” says Kevin MacDonald, head football coach.

“Building character is a very important role of a coach. My job is to help my players reach their potential, which differs from athlete to athlete.”

“The field is a good place for our students—who are used to being high flyers—to encounter obstacles and learn from them,” adds Chris Kane, varsity girls’ squash coach. “We strive to win, but more than winning, our job is to stress work ethic, resilience and teamwork.”

Correlations between coaching and classroom teaching are many—knowing your subject matter, setting clear expectations, having a passion for your material, being prepared and well organized. All three coaches point to one explicit, and significant, difference: “On the field everything is collective,” says Kevin. “Around the Harkness table success can be an individual thing, but on the field you can’t succeed unless the guy next to you succeeds.”

“With such a diverse student body,” adds

Amy Hickey, mother to Caitlin ’09 and Dylan ’19, has been coaching at Milton for more than ten years—softball, field hockey, and her latest endeavor, Middle School co-ed ice hockey. Amy played softball at Holy Cross; she was the team’s starting pitcher for all four years and captain her senior year.

Chris, “the team dynamic is critical to foster the connections we want our students to have.

“Very strong coaches that I’ve known have put relationships first. People are more important than the sport, but the team will be that much more successful when the relationships are strong. Respecting your coaches, wanting to win for your teammates, being willing to sacrifice personal success for the success of the team—all of that comes from fostering healthy relationships.”

The good coach ran a well-organized, two-hour practice. The bad coach ran a very disorganized three-and-a-half-hour practice. Always keep things simple and consistent.”

“Good coaches let you know they’re invested in you, in your success,” says Amy. “They look you in the eye and say, ‘You can do it.’ And they mean it. They make you know that they believe in you. You’ll get a lot out of a player if she knows you believe in her.”

EEH

“I’ve coached with one really great coach and one really terrible coach, and I’ve learned an equal amount from both,” says Kevin. “The great coach’s motto was ‘keep it simple,’ and he was consistent.

The bad coach switched things up all the time, changed all his plays every week.

Graduating with a degree in biology, she worked as a clinical technologist at Dana-Farber for 18 years before becoming a three-season coach and—most recently—interim director of athletics in the Middle School.

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Kevin MacDonald joined the Milton faculty in 1996.

He has been head coach of the varsity football team for 15 seasons and has led two New England Championship–winning teams (1996, 2008). Prior to Milton, Kevin coached at Archbishop Williams in Braintree, Massachusetts, for 14 years, where his teams won five league championships. He played football at Holy Cross, where he earned his undergraduate degree. Kevin teaches physical education and writing exposition classes.

The Tools in a Great Coach’s Toolbox Regardless of the sport, regardless of the age or experience of the players, Kevin, Amy and Chris agree that certain tools are essential.

Know your game, and start with fundamentals.

“If you don’t know what you’re talking about, your players will see through it pretty quickly,” says Kevin. “Like English teachers, coaches have to stress the importance of fundamentals. If your students don’t know a noun from a verb, they won’t be able to write. If your players can’t block and tackle, it doesn’t matter what sort of fancy, complicated plays you run—you’re not going to be a good football team.”

“Many people say you don’t have to have played a sport to coach it,” says Amy, “but I think it’s important to have been in the trenches. It gives you credibility, and helps you relate to your players and gain their respect. I think it’s a good thing to have the skills, to be able to demonstrate. Coaches have to keep their skills up, stay fresh, and evolve with the sport.”

Make it fun.

“Good coaching starts with players who are enjoying themselves,” says Chris.

“The coach’s job is to make the hard work not seem like work. Athletes should

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have a satisfying sense of their own growth and improvement in order to sustain the effort they’re putting in.”

“On my team, we laugh at ourselves, and I stress the importance of ‘playing loose,’” says Amy. “When my players are working hard because they enjoy it, when they want to be there and I have a hard time getting them to leave practice, I know I’m doing my job well.”

Be prepared, and set clear expectations.

“You have to have a plan,” says Amy. “Less-skilled coaches undervalue the importance of being prepared and setting clear expectations.”

“A coach—like a teacher—needs to be able to break things down to their most basic parts,” says Kevin, “and they need to communicate those parts to their players. The kids have to know that you have a plan—that you’re building toward a goal—and what you expect of them.”

“You also have to be willing to have hard conversations,” says Chris. “You have to set clear standards, and then you have to stand by them and hold your players accountable.”

Listen to your players.

“Asking your players what they think, what’s working, what they would do differently, is important in coaching,”

says Chris. “Ultimately, we’re trying to develop self-sufficient individuals who can make their own good decisions and be prepared.”

“Your players are the ones out on the field, after all,” says Amy. “You have to empower them and let them know you’re paying attention. Some athletes respond well to a hard-edge approach; others are more sensitive; some are easily distracted. A good coach manages the personalities of the team, because it’s critical they all work together.”

Be a positive source of support.

“A coach has to be positive in order to be successful, at least at the high school level,” says Kevin. “You have to be ‘glass half full.’ If your players trust and respect you, they’re going to want to work hard for you, and not disappoint you.”

“A good coach relates to his players— inspires them to work hard and inspires their self-confidence,” says Chris. “The ability to have the kids accomplish hard work without making it seem like hard work is the ultimate goal.”

“I want my girls to believe in themselves,” adds Amy. “They’re all good at something, and they all have something to add. I try to help them capitalize on their strengths.”

Head of School Milton is looking at outcomes as well.

Ten-year re-accreditation process mobilizes self-study.

“H

ow are we doing?” Milton is asking itself. Relative to our mission, relative to our own aspirations, are we on track? Milton Academy has been educating and developing students for well over 200 years.

Every ten years, in “recent” history, Milton undertakes a self-study to comply with the re-accreditation process set out by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC).

What approach to the study helps Milton optimize this opportunity for required introspection? Should we open closet doors everywhere and see whether skeletons lurk inside? Alternatively, should we summarily check the boxes lined up in the NEASC report and assume we’re doing as well as we always have? We are seeking a balance between those two extremes. At this key time, Milton has much to gain— both in process and product—from considering the NEASC questions seriously.

Sharing this effort to step back, take a look, and reach new understanding yields benefits just as important as our discrete findings. We are asking our faculty to recreate what they do in the classroom, daily: involve their students, working together, in tackling and resolving challenges.

points on up-to-date information, to get results for the institution. Not only does this work build collegiality across the School, but few experiences build trust as effectively as working on a common project. We often reference Milton’s complexity; so few schools are boarding and day, K–12, with two distinct divisions, and, in fact, three developmentally appropriate learning environments (Lower School, Middle School and Upper School). The members of these NEASC committees will confront the many needs and objectives that intersect in Milton’s financial, social, academic and extracurricular domains. We can predict securely that faculty understanding and appreciation of work outside of, and different from, their own will grow. As understanding increases, so the likelihood of drawing confident but inaccurate conclusions, or the instinct to blame, shrinks.

The consequence of a well-done self-study is a well-informed School community with deepened respect for colleagues and an appetite for looking at next steps. New leaders from among the faculty will have

emerged, and gained ground in experience and exposure. The stage will be set, the foundation built, for the important goalsetting work that will follow.

The NEASC self-study will have prepared all of us. We will be ready and eager for in-depth, long-range planning. We will be capable of the serious discussion that must happen about School priorities for the future. The NEASC self-study will pinpoint many things that we will want to do, but we won’t be able to do them all at once. Our discussions will inevitably highlight many creative tensions, and require difficult choices among mutually desirable goals. We will, in due course, make explicit and transparent decisions that align our priorities clearly with our resources. I’m confident that together, with every Milton constituency speaking from a seat at the table, we will define anew the promise, power and relevance of Milton Academy in the 21st century.

Todd B. Bland Head of School

Led by faculty co-chairs and a steering committee that includes administrators, 14 committees—each of those co-chaired as well—are implementing our assessment.

Each committee explores an area of importance to school life, as outlined by NEASC. Faculty on the committees have streamed out, seeking answers to questions they will bring back for group discussion. Faculty across all 13 grades at Milton, Kindergarten through Class I, are together taking a measure of our position and progress.

Consider the model: collaborative and diverse groups, working in parallel, focusing fine minds and different vantage Milton Magazine

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In•Sight At Milton’s 2010 Spirit Rally, Class IV students hold their banner high from their section of the bleachers.

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A Riot of Blue and Orange Milton’s 2010 Spirit Rally, leading into this fall’s MiltonNobles games, had something for everyone: a costume relay race, a performance by the step team, and a spotlight on each of Milton’s teams and players.

Boosted by energetic cheers from students in Kindergarten through Class I, emcees Scott Murphy (cross-country), Nik Powers (football) and Henry Russell (cross-country)—all from the Class of 2011—hosted a lively event. Head of School Todd Bland wrapped things up with a promise of Milton hats for all.

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OnCentre Dr. Linda Eyster Inducted into Science Educators Hall of Fame

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his fall, Milton faculty member Linda “Linde” Eyster, Ph.D., was inducted into the Massachusetts Hall of Fame for Science Educators.

Linde has been teaching science at Milton for over 20 years, this year leading Honors Biology and Advanced Biology students. Both current and former students describe classroom experiences with Linde as imaginative, challenging, rewarding, defining—in terms of energizing them about science—and fun. Many Milton

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alumni pinpoint experiences in her classroom as pivotal in their choice of science careers. In support of Linde’s nomination, one colleague said that in Linde’s classroom, “Curiosity is expected, rewarded and reseeded every day.”

Last year, Linde published an article in The Science Teacher, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal for secondary school teachers produced by the National Science Teachers Association.

Her article, “Encouraging Creativity in the Lab,” appeared in the September, 2010 issue.

Linde’s teaching methods—like those of all Milton’s faculty— are inquiry-based, relying on open-ended questions that trigger exploration, rather than experimentation based on “recipes” aimed at predetermined outcomes. The exploration students undertake involves testing, debate, design, analysis and expression. Inquiry-based teaching develops capabilities that benefit young people through adulthood, even if that is simply increased confidence in tackling an unfamiliar situation.

The Massachusetts Hall of Fame for Science Educators was founded in 1992 and since then has recognized 98 teachers—each with a long and distinguished career in science education in Massachusetts. The Hall of Fame is permanently housed at Bridgewater State University, and the induction ceremony was sponsored by the Massachusetts Science Education Leadership Association and the Massachu­ setts Association of Science Teachers. Linde was one of three 2010 inductees.

Sparking the Life of the Mind 2010–2011 “Racial Assignments” Are Powerful, According to Professor Jean Wu

Captain Matthew Pottinger ’91 Entreats Students Toward a Life of Service as the 2010 Veterans’ Day Speaker Standing sharp in his Marine Corps dress blues, Captain Matt Pottinger, Milton Academy Class of 1991, spoke to students about choosing a life of public service at the Veterans’ Day Assembly in the Fitzgibbons Convocation Center. Matt engaged the crowd with stories from his “eclectic” career path, but most important was his message to students to think about how they can serve, not necessarily in the military, but in a role that serves the public. “Do things that are difficult, things that are uncomfortable, and things that are, sometimes, humiliating,” he said, “and you will be rewarded in enormous ways—ways that make you more effective in whatever form of public service I hope many of you undertake.”

After learning the ropes at a news wire service, Matt was hired by Reuters as a reporter in China, which he parlayed into a position with the Wall Street Journal. His experiences in

China made him think “about the rights we take for granted— the rights we enjoy under the U.S. Constitution,” he said. In 2004, Matt was sent to cover the Asian Tsunami. The devastation was the worst he had ever seen, but what struck him was that the first responders were the U.S. Marines and Navy. At this point, Matt decided to become a Marine. After 15 intense weeks of boot camp, he was sent to Iraq where he served in an infantry battalion that was part of the initial troop surge. In Afghanistan, as a junior Marine officer, Matt was “plunged” into an ambitious mission that covered an enormous range of responsibilities. “You had to be a historian, social anthropologist, diplomat, humanitarian, engineer, police officer, mayor, and, of course, a warrior ready to fight at the drop of a hat,” Matt said.

After three tours of combat, Matt has completed his active duty and returns to civilian life and to writing. He is the 2010– 2011 Edward R. Murrow Press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he will focus on writing and research.

On January 5, Tufts University professor and diversity leader Jean Yu-Wen Shen Wu spoke as this year’s Hong Kong Distinguished Lecturer. Dr. Wu, whose work focuses on both race in America and Asian-American studies, shared her thoughts with Class I and II students on how the differences of our race define the overall quality of our lives. Dr. Wu introduced the term “racial assignment,” which is how others often define a person they see walking down the street. It’s something that can’t be controlled; oftentimes, it is not the assignment a person wants. “You may not agree with it, but that assignment has a reality,” said Dr. Wu. “It’s very important, and it has impact on how we’re perceived, how we’re responded to, and how we’re treated.”

this is a “race-blind view.” She urged students to support AsianAmerican and race studies in order to find “what we can do to get rid of racial discrepancies, to bring about racial and social justice.”

The Hong Kong Distinguished Lecture Series, established in 1998, brings a speaker to Milton Academy who raises issues that concern Asia, and helps students and faculty understand those issues as well as the cultures, art and history of Asian countries.

Is History Repeating Itself? Professor Jackson Lears Addressed the Question.

Rutgers professor Jackson Lears’s presentation was titled “Two Gilded Ages: Is History Repeating Itself?” On December 1, as Milton’s seventh Henry R. Heyburn lecturer, Dr. Lears answered that familiar question with a resounding, “No, but...”

Dr. Wu used humor and seriousness throughout her talk as she pointed out common stereotypes and historical missteps in the treatment of Asian Americans.

She also stressed that many people believe race doesn’t matter so much in today’s society, citing the fact we have a president with a multiracial background. According to Dr. Wu,

“Every historian I know has a big but,” Dr. Lears said, which drew laughs from the audience of Class I and II students in King Theatre. “Even if history doesn’t repeat itself, there are important connections between the past and the present.”

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Sparking the Life of the Mind 2010–2011 Dr. Lears said that noting parallels to America today is important, but only to a point. After highlighting some similarities, he named differences, such as the massive labor unrest and “social ferment from below demanding justice” during the turn of the century. He compared that to today’s overall public silence. Lears said even when there is a public outcry, it is not reported by the media, which are controlled by corporate interests. He also pointed to a change in political culture—the worship of money has dramatically increased, while the practice of paternalism has declined.

At the turn of the century, according to Dr. Lears, the U.S. was going abroad looking for resources and economic opportunities. “It was the beginning of empire as a way of life,” he said, and the belief of “America’s capacity to save the world.

“Today’s overseas adventures are cloaked in similar robes of righteousness,” Professor Lears said, and he referred to both President Bush’s and President Obama’s speeches as examples.

Professor Lears stressed that he didn’t want to completely idealize the past and cited today’s rich cultural, religious and racial diversity as a vast improvement.

“However,” he said, “we need to come up with a new language of regeneration,” partly based on the past.

Dr. Lears, Board of Governors Professor of History at Rutgers University, has a doctorate in American Studies from Yale University and is the editor in chief of Raritan: A Quarterly Review.

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Writer Amy Hempel Is This Fall’s Bingham Visiting Reader On November 3, award-winning author Amy Hempel read to students from her body of work as this fall’s Bingham Visiting Reader. Known for her fiction and nonfiction, Ms. Hempel’s stories have appeared in Vanity Fair, Harper’s, Yale Review and the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Introducing the author, faculty member Lisa Baker recalled her first time reading Ms. Hempel’s work: “Up until then, the short fiction I knew achieved its power through more conventional strategies of character and conflict development.

In contrast, Amy Hempel’s stories, some so compact and distilled as to look innocuous, tackled the same subjects—our intimacies, our dyings—word by word, phrase by phrase: factoids and quips and snippets of popular culture commingling with her narrators’ longings and fears—the collision of these bits like shrapnel lodged dangerously close to a heart. Back then, her stories seemed subversive to me, intentionally unhinging our relationships to her characters and their various accidents; now, her fiction seems to me truer to how we actually experience our lives: as a collection of incongruous moments.”

The first story Ms. Hempel ever wrote, “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried,” is one of the most anthologized stories of the last quarter century. The New York Times named her Collected Stories, published in 2007, one of the ten best books of the year; it also earned the Ambassador Award for Best Fiction of the Year. Ms. Hempel teaches writing at Harvard University and Bennington College.

Scotty McLennan, Fall 2010 Speaker for Religious Understanding The Reverend William L. McLennan, Jr., dean for religious life at Stanford University, provides spiritual, moral and ethical leadership for the university—teaching and encouraging a wide spectrum of religious traditions on campus. Scotty McLennan, as he’s better known, is minister of Stanford’s Memorial Church, creating opportunity for multifaith worship, as well as raising and responding to social justice issues and engaging in public service. On Wednesday, October 6, Dean McLennan talked with students as this year’s Class of 1952 Endowed Speaker for Religious Understanding.

Dean McLennan practiced church-sponsored poverty law in the Dorchester area for many years, representing low-income individuals in the general practice of law, including consumer, landlord-tenant, government benefits, immigration, family and criminal law. In the early 1980s, he developed and directed the Unitarian Universalist Legal Ministry, which employed non-adversarial means of dispute resolution, framed clients’ legal problems in the context of their entire life situation, and sought reconciliation with other parties.

Dean McLennan is a recipient of the Rabbi Martin Katzenstein Award, the oldest award given to Harvard Divinity School alumni, “to honor, among its graduates, one who exhibits a passionate and helpful interest in the lives of other people.” Dean McLennan’s primary research interest is the confluence of religion, ethics and the professions, and he’s authored several books on this subject. He and his wife, Ellen, have two sons—both Milton graduates: Will, Class of 2000, and Dan, Class of 2002.

The Endowed Speaker for Religious Understanding is a gift from the Milton Academy Class of 1952, bringing renowned speakers to campus and providing a forum for discussing the diverse faiths practiced in our country and around the world.

Squids in Space

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hen you walk into the Pritzker Science Center these days, you’ll see that the first lab on your right features a large, seemingly empty, water tank. But burrowed underneath the gravel are a dozen Hawaiian bobtail squid that come out at night to eat and mate. These squid are serving as important ground-based testing for an experiment that will send some of their fellow squid up into the cosmos on the space shuttle Endeavor this spring. This space shuttle flight will be the final one before NASA closes the program.

A group of Milton students are working hard with science faculty member Ned Bean to maintain the exact living conditions these squid need to survive.

The squid’s normal habitat is the shallow waters around the Hawaiian Islands. Every night, a student or faculty member feeds the two-inch-long squid their diet of fresh common shore shrimp. The first big accomplishment occurred when the female squid laid eggs. These baby squid are now in a separate nursery tank. Ned and the students will conduct experiments on the next round of eggs.

This unique opportunity for Milton students to work on a space shuttle experiment came about because of Ned’s friendship with the CEO of a commercial space company that specializes in placing experiments in space. Along with Ned, Milton students have worked two prior times on a space shuttle experiment. The first effort was a successful crystal growth experiment. The second experiment involved E. coli bacteria, but the results were lost when the space shuttle Columbia exploded upon reentry in 2003.

The squid experiment is the most interesting one, according to the students and Ned, but also the most difficult because of its complexity.

What makes this squid unique is its light organ, which glows at night and hides its shadow from prey lurking underneath.

The light is powered by a particular bioluminescent bacteria (Vibrio fishceri) that the squid draws in from the surrounding water. Every day it expels the old bacteria and takes in a new batch. Newly born squid can’t produce the light, but within several hours they become bioluminescent as they take in the bacteria. This development gives scientists a close look at morpho-

genesis, which is the biological process that causes an organism to develop its shape—one of the fundamentals of development biology.

The squid experiment came about when Ned learned about the work of Dr. Jamie S. Foster at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Dr. Foster’s work is focused on what happens to this morphogenesis process under micro-gravity conditions. Her

work could open up a new area of scientific discovery about how gravity affects animal and plant development. Over the March break, students will travel to Florida with Ned and visit Dr. Foster’s lab. The squid that will blast off into space will come from her lab, but the scientific work at Milton is important to the success of this mission.

Squid photo by William Ormerod/ courtesy Margaret McFall-Ngai

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Diane Pierce-Williams Is Milton Academy’s Archivist

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ilton Academy’s archive is a valuable treasury of historical documents, publications, photographs and memorabilia that track our long School history. Diane Pierce-Williams, of the library staff, will now serve Milton as our archivist. Diane’s background in library and information science has made her a valuable assistant at Cox Library since 2002. Among her scholarly pursuits and achievements, Diane has studied archiving and is well prepared and enthusiastic about establishing systematic and appropriate collecting and organizing of the data that supports Milton’s history.

Barclay Feather, of the history department faculty, was Milton’s most recent archivist. Mr. Feather established the Academy archive, in a formal sense, in his retirement, and cared for the archive until his death in 2009.

Over the last few months, in her new role, Diane has already begun organizing and expanding the collection of student work, publications, photographs and recordings that constitute the documentary record of our School’s treasured past.

Milton’s archive is located in the basement of Cox Library, and it is open on weekday mornings from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. and at other times by appointment.

Diane continues her librarian’s role at Cox, while committing time to the archives each week.

The Archives Maintenance Fund, a gift from the Class of 1955 given in honor of their 55th Reunion, will help support the upkeep and operations of Milton Academy’s archives. These funds will be used to organize and maintain the quality of Milton’s archives, providing necessary tools such as humidification and dehumidification materials, archival boxes and folders, additional steel shelving, archival tissue, photo paper and other implements.

Lamar Reddicks Appointed Athletic Director

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amar Reddicks, who joined the faculty in 2008, will be Milton’s next director of athletics and physical education in the Upper School. Lamar has been the assistant athletic director and head coach of the boys’ varsity basketball team, and his roots in the town of Milton run deep. A member of Milton High School’s 1996 state championship basketball team, Lamar was inducted into Milton High School’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2007. After captaining the men’s basketball team at Bentley College, Lamar spent eight years coaching at the collegiate level, working with Harvard’s and Boston University’s men’s teams.

Aware of the power of good coaching on students’ growth as athletes and as individuals, Lamar motivates young people and the adults who work with them. As an advisor, teacher and coach, he sets high expectations, builds students’ confidence, and instills the value of good character, all essential for excellence in interscholastic athletics and physical education.

With an appreciation for Milton Academy’s culture, Lamar also encourages students as scholars and artists, exhorting them to contribute to the broader community.

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Since Lamar was in college, he has directed basketball clinics for young children. Students in grades three through eight work with coaches to sharpen their basketball skills and build their confidence. In recent years, his Milton players have helped him run the clinics: “They do a wonderful job working with the younger students,” says Lamar, “and they gain a lot from the experience—just as the younger students gain from those who are older. I’ve always been a believer in mentoring and the importance of the mentoring relationship. Here, both the older and younger students are reaping the benefits.” The mentoring relationship, he says, sets both the young players and their coaches up for success, on and off the court.

“People view success in many ways; I view it as helping young athletes reach their potential, and that potential is different for everyone. The best part about coaching at the high school level is that the students are still developing their interests, skills and talents. I enjoy helping students during the development process—I believe that’s the most important job that a coach has.”

Lamar’s tenure as athletic director will begin July 1, 2011.

Art and Media Center Will Offer Space and Light

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y next fall, visual arts faculty will be settled into a new home, a welcoming environment that, first and foremost, supports student artists. The cast-in-place concrete building, opened in 1970 for Milton’s science program, will be alive with the color, texture and energy of artwork, from concept to finished piece.

The Art and Media Center is now the name of the building that had been known as “Old Science.” Thanks to planning by Jim Selman, associate director of construction and standards at Milton, in concert with the visual arts faculty, the building will look the part by the time the faculty move in this summer. Forming one side of the quad flanked by Cox Library and

Ware Hall, this large building, with what architects call “good bones,” represents an underutilized and desirable asset, particularly for the arts program.

Thus far, improvements are infrastructure-related. Utilities and mechanical systems (heat and ventilation) in the Art and Media Center have been evaluated and are undergoing repairs to ensure the comfort of the faculty and students. In addition, the aged roof is scheduled for replacement.

Without major interior wall changes, plans for the Art and Media Center subdivide the two large common labs, creating four large classrooms: two on the north side, and two on the south side—one of which

houses Bryan Cheney’s current photography program. A fifth classroom will be technologically outfitted as a digital media lab. Each faculty member will have an office large enough to double as a studio. A separate faculty lounge also features a tools and material storage area.

The Nesto Gallery, with its ambitious and multidisciplinary exhibit schedule, will continue to attract viewers on the building’s lower level.

New finishes, according to Jim Selman, can transform appearances, and ultimately, experiences. Jim plans to focus on improving the lighting, and with new colors in the building, on making the look and feel transmit the energy of a place where students make art.

The building represents approximately 45,000 square feet of valuable, underutilized space at Milton. Current residents of the building will remain. Within the building is ample storage for equipment and supplies that support an extensive and prolific arts program. Most of the necessary furniture simply needs to be moved and repurposed, as well.

The renovations leading toward a different arts experience at Milton will continue over the course of this year. The plan is to move furniture and to reconfigure it inside the Art and Media Center right after the closing of School. Fresh signage will beckon everyone in the fall, and with it an incentive to check out the surprises inside.

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Alumni Authors Recently published works

Ask Without Fear!

A Simple Guide to Connecting Donors with What Matters to Them Most

money. Love your donors. The underlying aim of all four steps is to build authentic relationships with your donors because “people are always more important than their gifts.”

by Marc A. Pitman ’91

Marc covers the seven most common fundraising myths and the biggest mistakes fundraisers tend to make. He also provides assessments to help fundraisers communicate more effectively with donors and colleagues.

Many examples are actual stories that illustrate what works and what doesn’t.

Asking for money makes many people uncomfortable—including fundraisers. In Ask Without Fear! Marc Pitman provides readers with simple tools to help face the fear of “the ask” and put the fun back into fundraising.

His book is not only for professional development staff, but also board members and volunteer solicitors. Marc developed a fundraising approach he calls R.E.A.L.—Do your Research.

Engage your prospect. Ask for

Author Brian Tracy writes, “This short, practical book gives you a series of step-by-step methods to raise more money, faster and easier than you ever thought possible.”

Everyone Helps, Everyone Wins: How Absolutely Anyone Can Pitch In, Help Out, Give Back, and Make the World a Better Place

by David T. Levinson ’77 If you are new to volunteering or want to make the most of your commitment, David Levinson’s how-to guide for the socially conscious will tell you everything you need to know. David is the founder and executive director of Big Sunday, a non-profit that organizes 50,000+ volunteers at work on projects throughout California. “Everyone helps, everyone wins” is Big Sunday’s motto.

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David’s book asks simple but important questions: Why are you volunteering? Who needs your help? How big of a commitment do you want to make?

He then offers ways to match specific skills to a particular cause or non-profit. He covers group volunteering; leadership roles; and outlines ten ways to be a good volunteer and ten ways to be a bad one. The book’s appendix contains 52 ways in which you can give of yourself in the coming year, whether it’s donating blood, singing at a nursing home, walking/running/biking for a charity, or helping out at a food bank or animal shelter.

Actor and Big Sunday volunteer Jason Alexander writes, “David Levinson’s wonderful book on volunteering shows you how to do it all: from giving someone a fish to showing them how to fish.

If you have a heart, this book will show you how to share it.”

In Deep Water: The Anatomy of a Disaster, the Fate of the Gulf, and How to End Our Oil Addiction

by Peter Lehner ’76 On April 20, 2010, an oil well owned by BP burst one mile underneath the Deepwater Horizon drill rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The subsequent explosion and fire killed 11 workers.

When the rig sank two days later, the well on the sea floor was torn open, unleashing a torrent of crude oil that continued spewing for the next three months.

In his book In Deep Water, Peter Lehner examines this environmental disaster and tells the story of what happened that fateful day. The focus of his book is what role the U.S. dependence on oil played and what steps the

country needs to take to break this dependence and prevent future catastrophes.

Peter, who has 30 years of experience in environmental law and is the executive director of the National Resources Defense Council, takes on the entire offshore oil drilling industry. He examines the too-close relationship between a U.S. government watchdog agency and the oil companies. He explores structural changes to these organizations that would make offshore drilling safer.

In Deep Water also illustrates the natural richness of the Gulf and puts a human face to the devastation the 200 million gallons of oil wreaked on over 600 miles of coastline stretching from Texas to Florida. These stories and accounts augment his argument that Americans need to cut their dependency on a single fuel and back environmental policies that seek to protect the nation’s fragile ecosystems.

The Truth About Grief: The Myth of Its Five Stages and the New Science of Loss

by Ruth Davis Konigsberg ’86 In The Truth About Grief, Ruth Davis Konigsberg takes an unflinching look at the science behind grieving and challenges the accepted five “stages” of grief that are so entrenched in American society. Ruth argues there is not a set process for working through grief and everyone has the right to find his or her own way to grieve.

Over 40 years ago, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross introduced the five steps of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance—in her best-selling book On Death and Dying.

Kübler-Ross’s work—though mainly anecdotal—developed a large following. Eventually, an

entire grief industry grew based around helping people work through these stages.

Ruth takes a journalistic approach to examining the scientific evidence that shows most people recover from a tragic event more quickly without counseling. She includes stories of people who have put their lives back together after losing someone—stories of resilience that show how each individual adjusted differently. Without diminishing or disrespecting anyone’s means or patterns of grieving, Ruth offers a reframing of the process.

Author Peggy Orenstein writes, “Konigsberg’s challenge to the orthodoxy surrounding death is both profound and urgent. This is one of those books that will change you forever, altering— for the better—your perspective on one of life’s most essential, inevitable tasks: grieving the loss of a loved one.”

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Alumni Authors Recently published works

Short

by Cortright McMeel ’89 Described as Wall Street meets “The Office,” Cort McMeel’s debut novel features a cast of high-powered, Boston-based energy traders, inhabiting a world of intense stress and big money. Joe Gallagher is a gifted trader who—in jockeying to make bets in the face of an impending hurricane—finds himself caught between following the careful dictates of his old-school mentor and the high-stakes demands of his new boss, a ruthless industry maverick. The decisions he makes not only mean the difference between gaining or losing tens of millions of dollars in a single day; they will also portend either happiness or ruin in his life off the trading floor.

Written in a clean, spare style— but with tactile descriptions and humorous, exacting dialogue—

Cort’s prose keeps pace with the fast-track trading world and his ambitious, larger-than-life characters.

“Short does for the world of energy trading what ‘Mad Men’ has done for advertising,” says Sarah Bynum ’90, award-winning author and National Book Award finalist. “You’ll never turn on a light switch again without thinking of this exuberant novel and its unforgettable cast of swaggerers, schemers, and sad sacks.”

Best-selling author James Carroll writes, “The shadow world of the market economy is cold and dark, but Cortright McMeel renders it with heat and light… Short nails the contemporary American condition— pathos and tragedy alike.”

Cort has worked as a commodity broker and energy trader, and he was the founder and publisher of the acclaimed literary noir magazine Murdaland.

Ten Thousand Joys & Ten Thousand Sorrows: A Couple’s Journey Through Alzheimer’s

by Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle ’55 Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle has endured the struggles of caring for a loved one suffering from Alzheimer’s disease: her husband, Harrison “Hob,” was diagnosed at age 72. In Ten Thousand Joys & Ten Thousand Sorrows, Olivia chronicles the challenges, surprises, and “moments of grace” of their journey living with the disease.

Rather than allowing the disease to consume and define this phase of their life, Olivia and Hob make the commitment to negotiate his illness consciously and lovingly, anchored in their Buddhist practices. In this intimate memoir, Hob—a former professor of comparative literature and an ordained Dharmacharya (senior meditation teacher)—is revealed as

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the funny and brilliant man who continues to amaze those around him with his startling insights about his diminishing mind. Olivia’s book is not only a compilation of anecdotes and personal reflections, but also a collection of teachings aimed to help others who are suffering from—or caring for someone with—dementia.

Joan Borysenko, author and founder of Mind-Body Health Sciences, says that the book “is lyrically beautiful and timelessly poignant… We don’t always get to choose what happens in this life, but we can choose to grow in compassion and wisdom as a result. Olivia Hoblitzelle offers valuable, practical methods for doing so. Her suggestions ring clear and true because she knows the territory intimately, in all its pain and promise, and has given us the gift of sharing it.”

The Half-Life of Planets

by Emily Franklin ’90 and Brendan Halpin Liana is an aspiring planetary scientist and a kissing addict.

Hank is a loquacious, but slightly awkward, music lover with Asperger’s syndrome.

In this young adult novel told through their alternating points of view, The Half-Life of Planets is the story of one summer when Liana and Hank’s worlds collide.

Emily Franklin’s new book, cowritten by young adult author Brendan Halpin, addresses the adolescent struggles of discovering and creating one’s identity; dealing with insecurities; breaking free from labels; and navigating the thrills and jitters of first love. The authors create authentic teenage characters who form a poignant friendship, which helps both of them accept

themselves and each other on their own terms. The story has been compared to both Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Rachel Cohn and David Levithan’s Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

A School Library Journal review says, “The authors do an excellent job of demonstrating Hank’s disorder without explaining it in detail. Liana’s chapters… poignantly express her struggles with family issues and her negative self-image. Having both points of view gives readers a better understanding of each teen and the opportunity to witness the same scenes through different lenses, further aiding in understanding Asperger’s.”

The Half-Life of Planets was nominated for the Yalsa Best Young Adult Book of the Year and was a 2010 Top Ten Children’s Indie Pick for the Summer.

This Life Is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone

by Melissa Coleman ’87 Set on the rugged coast of Maine during the 1970s, This Life Is in Your Hands is the memoir of Melissa Coleman, who is haunted by the need to uncover the truth of a childhood tragedy and capture the beauty of a unique way of life.

Melissa tells of her parents, Eliot and Sue—a handsome, idealistic young couple from well-to-do families, who forgo the trappings of society to carve a homestead from the woods.

While they achieve success and recognition, the pursuit of purity and simplicity comes at a price.

Winters are long, summers fre-

netic, and the distraction of the many young apprentices threatens the Colemans’ marriage.

One summer day, when Melissa is seven, her three-year-old sister, Heidi, wanders off and drowns in the pond where she liked to play. In the wake of the accident, ideals give way to human frailty, divorce, and a mother’s breakdown; ultimately, Melissa is abandoned to the care of apprentices. Her true story is both tragic and redemptive.

Author Tom Perrotta says of the book, “Lyrical and down-toearth, wry and heartbreaking, This Life Is in Your Hands is a fascinating and powerful memoir. Melissa Coleman doesn’t just tell the story of her family’s brave experiment and private tragedy, she brings to life an important and underappreciated chapter of our recent history.”

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“My Milton Academy experience, which has proven so important, was made possible in part by the many graduates who came before…

That is why I am also making provisions in my estate for Milton— so that our School can continue to do for future generations what it did for me.”

—David Gannett ’58

Reflecting on his past, David Gannett protects the future

I

always reflect upon my Milton experience as triggering my renaissance curiosity, and providing me with the tools that assisted me in my subsequent academic career, at Middlebury College, and at University of Washington School of Law. From my perspective, the mission of any educational institution is not only to impart information, but also to sharpen the students’ ability to think, analyze, and draw conclusions with some degree of assurance that those conclusions are accurate.

Milton did that for me. I am forever grateful for having been exposed to Johnston Torney’s command of the English language; A.O. Smith’s commitment to Shakespeare; Barclay Feather’s animation in dealing with American history; and Howard Abel’s brilliance in music.

David Gannett ’58 (center) with sons James Gannett and David Gannett, Jr.

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Therefore, why would I not wish to acknowledge, through gifting, my appreciation to the School that contributed so much to my academic and professional progress?

I believe that any contribution should enhance the learning experience of all students. Therefore, I split my gift into two pools: scholarship assistance and support of Milton in general. Any school is best served by attracting the widest and most diverse group of students, including applicants who need financial assistance. It makes sense to me to contribute to the overall operation that benefits all students, but restrict the major portion of my gift to support students who otherwise would not be able to attend Milton.

My Milton Academy experience, which has proven so important, was made possible in part by the many graduates who came before. I am reminded of this on my frequent visits back to campus when I see the vitality of the students and faculty. That is why I am also making provisions in my estate for Milton—so that our School can continue to do for future generations what it did for me.

The real reason I make such gifts: It feels good!

If you would like gift planning information or information about gifts to our endowment, please contact Suzie Hurd Greenup ’75 at 617-898-2376 or suzie_greenup@ milton.edu.

Class Notes 1939

1955

Henry R. Walcott, Jr., died at his home in Cotuit, Massachusetts, on October 13, 2010. His father, Henry R. Walcott, was a 1914 graduate of the Academy. After graduating from MIT, Henry served for three years as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Signal Corps and in the Eighth Air Force; he played a pioneering role in educating pilots in the use of radar to navigate in bad weather.

Rick Crocker won the 2010 Crocker-Robinson Challenge Cup Golf Tournament this year, defeating Paul Robinson three matches to nil. It should be noted that this is the 13th year of competition between these two gentlemen. Mr. Robinson leads in victories six to five, with two years being played even.

1942 Alexander Hawthorne “Sandy” Hadden passed away in his home in Grafton, Vermont, on November 4, 2010. As his obituary read, “Sandy was well known for his intelligence tempered with a tenderness that everyone felt came from the heart of a true gentleman.”

1946 Russell Bourne was recently elected a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Rusty attributes this accolade to his most recent book, Cradle of Violence: How Boston’s Waterfront Mobs Ignited the American Revolution.

1954 Helen “Louie” Hibbard Hays died in August of 2010, after almost a year battling cancer.

She leaves her husband, Whitey, and three children, Daphne, Fred and Sandy, as well as five grandchildren. Friends write, “Louie worked as a hotel designer for many years, but her true love was her family. She will be sorely missed.”

Girls’ School classmates gather for the memorial service of Helen “Louie” Hibbard Hays ’54 on September 11, 2010, in Concord, Massachusetts. Pictured, from left to right, are Jean Worthington Childs ’54, Cynthia Kennedy Sam ’54, Sally Sprout Lovett ’54, Kadie Maclaurin Staples ’54, Liz Biddle Barrett ’54, Sally Chase Flynn ’54 and Cynthia Hallowell ’54.

Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle wrote a newly released book titled Ten Thousand Joys & Ten Thousand Sorrows: A Couple’s Journey Through Alzheimer’s. The book has received endorsements from the Dalai Lama, Daniel Goleman and Peter Matthiessen.

Interviews with Olivia have appeared in the Huffington Post and the Boston Herald.

Olivia also maintains a blog on Psychology Today.

1958 Lisa Hartmann Blake lost her husband, Jim, on January 30 as the result of a heart attack while cross-country skiing near their home in West Dummerston, Vermont. Jim was an avid swimmer, skier, and a very talented carpenter, as well as an enthusiastic teacher and mentor at World Learning in Brattleboro.

Lisa has two children and three grandchildren living next door and many fellow Bahais nearby.

Rosamond Tudor van der Linde ’54 held a book reading in November in the Boston area for her latest book, A Piano in Every Room. She read a few excerpts and reminisced with family, classmates and friends, and signed many copies of her book for the audience. Rosamund, center, is pictured with Milton friends (from left to right) Liz Biddle Barrett ’54, Kadie Maclaurin Staples ’54, Jean Worthington Childs ’54, Cynthia Kennedy Sam ’54 and Cynthia Hallowell ’54.

Neil Goodwin has written a book titled We Go As Captives: The Royalton Raid and the Shadow War on the Revolutionary Frontier. The book was published by the Vermont Historical Society.

Several members of the Class of 1955 gathered for Al Scullin’s 74th birthday at the Belmont Nursing Home. Pictured from left to right are (first row) John Arnold, Al Scullin, John Adams, (back row) Paul Robinson, Edward Francis and John Damon.

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1977

ing investment there. Aryeh won the 2010 “Digital Rising Star in Asia” award from CampaignAsia, one of the leading advertising publications in the region.

Sally Warburg Bliumis-Dunn recently published her second book of poetry, titled Second Skin. Her poems have been published in the Paris Review, Poetry London and the New York Times.

In 2002 she was a finalist for the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize, and she was asked to read before the Library of Congress in 2008.

1994

1989 In December, Lieutenant Colonel Peter S. Blake of the Marine Corps was promoted to commanding officer of Marine Attack Squadron 311. Son of Francis Blake, Jr. ’57 and godson of Neilson Abeel ’58, Peter lives in Yuma, Arizona, with his wife, Molly, and their daughters, Helen and Leah.

On December 9, 2010, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Blake ’89 (left), United States Marine Corps, assumed command of Marine Attack Squadron 311, the “Tomcats.” Peter and the other pilots in the squadron fly the Harrier attack jet. Among other luminaries (such as former Senator John Glenn), VMA-311’s alumni include Red Sox great Ted Williams, who flew for the squadron during the Korean War. Peter has deployed twice to Iraq in connection with the current conflict, and the squadron may deploy to Afghanistan during his command tour. Pictured with Peter is Sam Williamson ’89, a former Marine infantry officer, who left the Marine Corps as a major.

1998

1990

Sebastian Meyer is a freelance photojournalist based in Iraq.

His work has appeared in Time magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and Telegraph magazine. He’s recently created documentary videos for the British daily newspaper The Guardian, as well as a short film based in Afghanistan for PBS.

David Zug and his wife, Megan, are excited to announce the arrival of their second son, Julian “Garrett” Zug, who arrived on June 25, 2010. His older brother Gavin is welcoming him into the world.

1991 Meg Foley Burke ’91 and her husband, Marc, welcomed their son, Andrew Edward Burke, on September 14, 2010.

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1999 Matt Ford and Carrie Chan ’00 were married on August 21, 2010, at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

2006

1993 Aryeh Sternberg has been working at GroupM in Vietnam as interaction director, leading the digital marketing division for the past year and a half. GroupM is the media-planning agency for WPP, the largest advertising and marketing conglomerate in the world. GroupM Vietnam is the largest advertising agency in Vietnam, responsible for more than 30 percent of all advertis-

1996 Nicholas Grossman married Ar-tara Satraroj in Thailand on December 26, 2009.

Theo Emery was recently selected to be a Pentagon correspondent for the Boston Globe.

Marc Pitman, fundraiser and author, has released a fundraising training book titled Ask Without Fear! Marc has been featured on Fox News Boston, The Strategy Room, and Good Day New York.

Laura Beatrix Newmark was married on December 4, 2010, at the Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. Milton was well represented with fellow classmates in attendance: Lynn Rasic, Ali Johnes, Ken Natori and Bess Williamson. Laura and her husband, Matthew, live in New York, where she manages an international chef and works in messaging and strategic partnerships for a start-up global media firm.

Dan Charness has recently moved to New York City to pursue a career in music. His song “Summertime Delight” won first place in the 2010 Indie International Songwriting Competition. You can learn more about Dan’s work at dancharness.com.

Walter Hinton ’95 and his wife, Monica, welcomed their first two children, twin girls, on November 29, 2010. Alexandra and Charlotte Helen Hinton were born at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

Nicholas Grossman ’96 married Ar-tara Satraroj on a beach in Thailand on December 26, 2009. Joining the celebration were (from left to right) Mike Cubell ’96, Andy Kay ’96, Eliot Wadsworth ’96, Craig Cetrulo ’96, Brina Milikowsky ’96, David Goldweitz, Robinson Jacobs, Caroline McCloskey ’96, Tristan Patterson, Dan Cubell ’96 and Phil Schmid ’96. Milton grads not pictured but in attendance were Jonathan Grossman ’85 and Gillian Grossman ’92.

Matt Ford ’99 and Carrie Chan ’00 were married on August 21, 2010, at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Milton friends in attendance were (from left to right) Chris Chao ’99, Maisy Samuelson ’00, Rebecca Leventhal ’00, Derrick Chan ’98, Amanda Burrage ’00, Rob Higgins ’99, Scott Sadlon ’99, Pat Donovan ’99, Terrence Burek ’99, Adam Perold ’99 and Justin Walsh ’99.

Michael O’Brien ’96 and his wife, Beth, welcomed their son, William O’Brien, on July 24, 2010. Will arrived weighing 10 pounds and measuring 21 inches long.

Members of the Class of 1999 gathered in Weston, Massachusetts, for an annual post-Thanksgiving reunion, organized by Mike O’Neill. Pictured from left to right are Andy Walker, Lauren Gallo, Conor French, Luke White, Scott Rutherford, Tom Kramer, Quentin Weld, Kristin Ostrem, Duke Gray, Joanna Ostrem, Nicole Boyar, Otis Berkin, Nick Gauchat, Mike O’Neill, Pat Donovan, Beth Pierson and Ben McGuinness. Also in attendance but not pictured was Dan St. Clair.

Mike Silverstein ’97 and his wife, Kim, welcomed their son, Sidney Louis Silverstein, to the world on September 23, 2010. “Sid the Kid” is off to a great start. Mike and Kim live in Los Angeles, California, with Sid’s big sister, Ivy, and their curmudgeonly cat, Poker.

Julia Coquillett MacIntosh ’00 and her husband welcomed their second daughter, Danielle Sophia MacIntosh, born on April 26, 2010.

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Eliza Talbot ’01 married Matt Cutrell ’00 on September 4, 2010, in Marion, Massachusetts. Four generations of Milton graduates joined the celebration. Back row (left to right): Morgan Blum ’02, Karen Blumenthal ’01, Emily Cutrell ’02, Cindy Talbot ’91, Natalie Gallagher ’62, Bill Ames ’62, Anne Stone ’42, Galen Stone ’39, Matt Cutrell ’00, Eliza Talbot ’01, Susan Cheever ’65, Nick Clark ’65, Daniel Gerrity ’66, Jane Talbot ’63, Peter Wilder ’61, Jamie Hunsaker ’65, Meri Talbot ’89, Peter Talbot ’61. Front row (left to right): Michael Polavieja ’00, Mark Angeloni ’00, John Sullivan ’00, Max Litvak ’20, Abe Litvak ’23, Bo Hurd ’00, Chris Feige ’00 and Vera Gerrity ’00.

The first ever Milton-Nobles Alumnae Soccer Game took place Saturday, November 13, 2010, on a beautiful day at Nobles. Congratulations to all the attendees for an excellent event and a great time. The team: Devon Angelini ’94, Nika Mone ’94, Ashley Phillips ’04, Anne Duggan ’02, Eliza Skinner ’03 and Michaela Sewall ’00.

Milton’s 2010 Men’s Alumni Soccer Team: Beginning in 1984, the men’s graduate soccer teams from Milton and Nobles have met each year in a rivalry that has endured over time.

Milton emerged victorious this year, and the record is now 11-11-6. Front row (left to right): Zac Trudeau ’05, Cam Skinner ’05, Sheldon Bond ’05, John Chang ’08, Doug Sibor ’05, Ken Lin ’06, Ben Lin ’09, Ethan Sewall ’94. Back row (left to right): Keith Caldwell ’02, Trevor Prophet ’07, Jon Wells ’78, Mike Chao ’08, Chuck Hunnewell ’66, Darnell Nance ’02, Mark Jenson ’08, Elliott Hays-Wehle and Ted Hays ’70.

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The youngest members of the Milton Men’s Alumni Soccer team helped buoy this year’s squad to a 6–1 victory over Nobles in the annual competition.

Pictured from left to right are Ken Lin ’06, Mike Chao ’08, Mark Jensen ’08, John Chang ’08, Trevor Prophet ’07 and Ben Lin ’09.

In Memoriam Jennifer Pham, a member of the Class of 2012, died as the result of a cardiac event on Sunday, January 16, in a hospital near her home in New Jersey.

Jennifer was a devoted member of Millet House; she loved her English classes, appreciated the beauty around her, and found great pleasure in the diversity of her friends.

Once, in talking about her early experience at Milton, Jennifer said, “Milton was the only school I applied to, and I didn’t know quite how I would get here, but I could visualize myself here so clearly. Milton is so welcoming.

You can be yourself here, whoever you are. One of the most valuable things about Milton is what you learn out of class: how to build relationships, how to get along, how to persevere.”

On Thursday, January 20, a memorial service was held on campus in Jennifer’s honor.

Upper School students, faculty and staff were joined by members of Jennifer’s family in a

tribute to her life and her time here at Milton. Both Nicole Colson, head of Millet House, and Head of School Todd Bland were among those who offered eulogies at the service. *** “Jennifer was an extraordinary young woman. It was clear to all of us who lived with her that one of Jennifer’s primary goals was to become an integral member of Millet House; she certainly was. Jennifer was kind to everyone. The Millet House community members experienced her genuine care and compassion for their feelings. Jennifer truly gave of herself in a myriad of ways. She forged special relationships with faculty children, who related to Jennifer’s genuinely joyful nature. It was important to Jennifer that her Millet House sisters felt her presence and support. They did. In ways both tangible and intangible, Jennifer left the community a more beautiful place than she found it.

The genuine kindness Jennifer exhibited toward others will not dissipate simply because she is no longer physically with us. We, as individuals and as a community, are forever changed by our brief time with this extraordinary young woman.

The knowledge that her impact is permanent can be a source of comfort and strength. Yes, Jennifer is gone, but her joyful nature, compassion, and kind-

Deceased

1938 Tarbell Clay Hoes

1928 Robert G. Fuller

1939 Henry R. Walcott, Jr.

1932 Lewis Perry, Jr.

1940 Warren Arnold Mary Hunting Smith

1934 Martha Allis Cowan 1936 Helena Edgell Franklin Susan Miller Jackson 1937 Daphne Withington Adams

1942 Nicholas G. Andrews Alexander Hawthorne “Sandy” Hadden 1947 Donald W. White

Jennifer (third from left) with her advisee group during dorm bowling night.

ness remain behind. Somerset Maugham once noted that goodness is the most powerful force in the world. Our proximity to Jennifer’s goodness has made each one of us a better person, and it has strengthened the Milton community.”

But above all she was a generous and joyful spirit. She was called by many an angel, and that she was—and is. Jennifer possessed the finest qualities of human character. In this way and in many others, she was a model Milton student.”

— Nicole Colson, Millet House Head

—Todd Bland, Head of School

*** “My life was made richer by my connection to Jennifer, but also by what I have learned from all of you who knew her best: her sisters in Millet, her many friends, her teachers, advisors, mentors and her very close cousin, Ashley.

Jennifer was an inspiring student with a wonderful mind—a writer who could make amazing connections between seemingly unrelated topics. She was creative. Active in theater, and in speech; she inspired her audiences.

1948 Charles C. Abeles Joanne Sage Ceraso 1950 Timothy F. Nichols 1952 Charles B. Flynn 1954 Helen Hibbard Hayes 1956 Robert C. Cabot Daniel H. Stebbins Helen Twombly Watkins

*** To continue Jennifer’s quiet but profound influence on the School, Milton Academy established a scholarship, with the following words: The Jennifer Pham Memorial Scholarship was established in 2011 to honor the memory of Jennifer Pham, a Millet House girl who died during her Class II year. This fund supports a young woman with exceptional promise.

If you wish to participate in the scholarship fund, please send contributions to the Milton Academy Development Office, and indicate your desire to allocate the gift to the scholarship.

1959 Donald E. Cummings 1961 Corinna Prentiss Shillingford 1969 Jeffrey R. Hewitt 1974 Gordon Sherlock 1996 Anne Harrison Hawley Friends/Former Faculty Daniel Gregory Mary E. (Myers) Stubbs

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Join us for

Graduates’ Weekend 2011 Friday, June 17, and Saturday, June 18

This summer, what better way to spend a weekend than laughing with old classmates, sharing with former teachers, and indulging in good food and drink, all while learning about and enjoying the Milton of today?

Friday • Register and reconnect as you arrive on campus.

• Join alumni of color for our second annual cocktail reception.

• Enjoy a festive party with cocktails, food, live music and fellow grads as we celebrate reunions for alumni with class years ending in six or one.

• Relive your high school days by staying overnight in the Milton houses.

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Saturday • Visit favorite spots on campus and experience new ones, including the Pritzker Science Center, on a studentled tour.

• Honor graduates at the Memorial Chapel Service.

• Discuss Milton’s present and future with Head of School Todd Bland, during a conversation about the state of the School.

• Relive Milton lore in a review of photos and memorabilia from the archives.

• Hear from Milton students and faculty during panels about life at Milton today.

• Get up to bat or cheer on your side at the alumni baseball game.

• Engage your mind in classes taught by Milton faculty members.

• Play in the sunshine and enjoy a barbeque lunch on the Quad at the familyfriendly outdoor festival.

• Harmonize along with old favorites at the Alumni Glee Club Sing led by Jean McCawley.

• Indulge your artistic side with jazz, dance and theatrical performances by Milton students.

• Gather with your classmates for intimate cocktails and dinner at the class parties.

For the latest reunion information or to register, visit the “Alumni” pages at www. milton.edu, or call Nick Macke in the alumni relations office at 617-898-2113.

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