S P O T L I G H T
George Reichenbach ’47 and Jean Murdock, wife of Bob ’47.
Classmates Birger Johnson and Deke Warner ’32.
Alumni Trustee Jennifer Reed ’78 A school monitor and class committee member at Taft, Firkins lettered in field hockey and ice hockey and during her senior year was co-captain of the ice hockey team. Firkins graduated cum laude and received the Cunningham Award. She served as class agent for three years. Firkins received her BA degree from Harvard-Radcliffe in 1982, where she was a three-year co-captain of the ice hockey team. She earned an MA in English from Middlebury’s Bread Loaf School of English in 1987 and an M.Ed. from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education in 1991. Firkins currently teaches for Urban Scholars at the University of Massachusetts - Boston, an academic enrichment program serving talented inner-city youth in the Boston public schools. For two years, she was the program’s high school coordinator, responsible for overseeing curriculum development, hiring teachers, and recruiting students. She has worked as program coordinator for Magic Me, a non-profit providing intergenerational, community service programming to youth and elders in Boston’s urban neighborhoods. From 1987 to 1994, Firkins taught English and was director of college counseling at Walnut Hill, a high school for 16
Summer 1997
the visual and performing arts. She currently serves on Walnut Hill’s board of trustees. From 1990 to 1993, she was a teaching fellow at Harvard College for Dr. Robert Coles in his course, “The Literature of Social Reflection,” for which she three times received the Bok Award for Excellence in Teaching. Firkins began her teaching career at Taft, where she taught English, worked in Admissions, and coached ice hockey, field hockey, and thirds lacrosse from 1983 to 1985. Firkins has also worked internationally. She spent two summers in Kenya doing volunteer development work and, during a nine-month solo-journey through Asia in 1986, worked in refugee camps in Thailand. In 1990, she returned to Thailand, leading a group of American high school students who built a rural school and taught in refugee camps. She has continued her work with refugees, helping The Women’s Commission for Refugees develop curriculum on human rights issues and, most recently, as a member of The Knitting Project, a non-partisan group which sent over twenty-five tons of wool and knitting supplies to women in the former Yugoslavia. Firkins lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband, Dennis Barr, a psychologist and educational researcher.