Around the pOnD
taft Welcomes the Class of 2018
The Taft Educational center is the largest Advanced summer Placement Institute in New England, offering workshops for close to 1,000 teachers each summer.
Building a Community of Educators through tEC IN 1975, longtime Taft physics teacher
Ed North organized a summer workshop for fellow teachers on Taft’s campus. The workshop’s goal: to help teachers become better at teaching. Fast-forward to this past summer— the 39th for those teacher workshops, which are now offered under the umbrella of the Taft Educational Center (TEC) and continue that original mission set out by North. Nine hundred thirty-five veteran and new teachers from across the globe traveled to Taft this summer to devote some of their vacation to growing their skills as educators. While the workshops were originally focused on advanced classroom skills for physics teachers, participants now choose from 75 workshops over a five-week period, honing their teaching skills and subject expertise in
c ALoNg wITH NEw sTudENTs, Taft welcomed 17 new faculty members this fall. Front: sara Patterson, Patrick Pothel, Lisa klein, Matthew Mullane, diana Lacasse. Middle: Martin Aspholm, Kaitlin Orfitelli, Rosy cohane-Mann, ranbel sun, Michael corbelle, stuart guthrie. Back: Micaela desimone, Lauren Henry ’99, Franz ritt, Jillian stanley, Jeremy Lacasse and Jonas katkavich P’12. Peter Frew ’78
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Taft Bulletin / Fall 2014
everything from art history to multivariable calculus. The majority of today’s TEC workshops are focused on teaching Advanced Placement (AP) courses. The Center has been approved by the College Board as an Advanced Summer Placement Institute and is the largest such institute in New England. TEC’s instructors are the key to making the workshops such a great experience. “Most of our instructors have been AP readers in their subjects and have scored AP exams,” says Al Reiff ’80, who serves as director of TEC. This past summer, seven Taft faculty members were among those who presented workshops at TEC. One of the greatest benefits to TEC participants is the community of teachers that they gain while at Taft. “Many teachers are actually in isolation throughout the school year,” Reiff
says. “Physics is the perfect example. If you are the AP physics teacher, you are it—most schools only have one AP physics teacher. When TEC participants are here they get to spend a week with a dozen people who are as passionate and excited about that subject as they are. That’s something they don’t get during the other 51 weeks a year.” The time spent with other participants in the dining hall and outside the classroom can prove to be invaluable. “Getting to discuss issues with teachers from other disciplines like art, government or English gave me a perspective I might not get in my math classes,” says Rob Papp, a math teacher who participated in five weeks of TEC workshops this summer. “I learned how different teachers deal with discipline issues, difficult lesson topics, and how they use assessment for learning.” j
m Arianna Bowden and Tyrek Edwards. Kathryn Foley
taft Summer School Challengers Soar sINcE 2005, Taft has welcomed Work hArd. Carry in equal amounts
resilience, perseverance and humor. Be nice. Recognize the edges of your comfort zone—and then step right over them. Get to know your teachers well. This was just some of the advice that Headmaster Willy MacMullen ’78 offered to students during his welcoming address to new students and families on arrival day. Two hundred new students joined the Taft School community this fall. In all, 596 students are enrolled at Taft this year— the school’s largest student body ever. As always, the admissions process was highly selective: Taft received 1,670 applications for the 200 spots available for new students this year. Students hail from 34 states and 32 countries (Taft’s student body includes 100 international students from countries including Brazil, Bulgaria, Egypt, Georgia, Germany, Lithuania, Moldova, Mozambique and Somaliland). Thirty-seven percent of current students are receiving financial aid. In all, Taft has 113 day students and 483 boarders. Sixty-three current
students are the children of Taft graduates, and 24 students have a grandparent who attended Taft. Students of color make up a third of the student body. “Horace Taft had an idea that you could be a school that tried to do a number of things at the same time, and that all these goals could come together, like strands in rope, in a unique and enduring mission, which would bind us all together,” MacMullen said during his remarks on arrival day. “Taft called it the ‘education of the whole student,’ a traditional, liberal education—at once intellectual, moral, aesthetic, spiritual and physical—and that’s what we will begin tomorrow. Taft thought you could be a school of profound intellectual rigor, achievement and challenge; high expectations of honor, perseverance and integrity; and warmth, humor and love. And every year we set out, once again, to become that school we have always been and the one we are not yet. It’s glorious work we do, and you are now part of it.” j
two academically gifted students from the Challengers Boys & Girls Club in Los Angeles to campus each summer to participate in Taft’s Summer School. LA resident and Taft alumnus Lisa Firestone von Winterfeldt ’85 worked with Challengers founder Lou Dantzler and Taft’s former admissions director Ferdie Wandelt ’66 to establish the Challengers Scholars program at Taft. Challengers Scholars receive an all-inclusive scholarship, funded in part by the Roger S. Firestone Foundation. This year, 14-year old Tyrek Edwards and 13-year old Arianna Bowden made the trip east. At Taft, Tyrek honed his acting and photography skills while preparing for the geometry class he faced this fall back in LA. Arianna studied both algebra and literature at Taft, and also created ceramic pieces for every member of her family. j
Taft Bulletin / Fall 2014
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