TABLE TALK
HARKNESS
TO GO!
As comfortable in hiking shoes as in his own skin, history teacher Michael Hanewald ’90 P’22 savors the idea of putting a Harkness table anywhere on the globe, and as the assistant director of Lawrenceville’s Harkness Travel program, he gets to do just that. Hanewald told The Lawrentian how a study-abroad trip as a student planted the seeds of his passion for experiential education, which has allowed him to share once-in-a-lifetime discoveries with students. You are the middle of three generations of Lawrentians. How did you wind up here as a student? I came to Lawrenceville after what would’ve been my junior year in high school, but I did two years in a public high school, and then I was a Rotary Youth Exchange student in Austria for a year. And then you eventually found your way back to campus in 2008. What was behind that? I always knew I wanted to come back here. That was always a goal, to be able to teach at Lawrenceville, where it meant something for me. You’re a big outdoors enthusiast who might be known as much for the teaching you do outside as around the Harkness table. I was selected as a Ropes Course instructor my junior year in the spring. I only had the opportunity to do that one year on campus, but I got a job immediately with the company that built our ropes course, and I managed it with the School. Right away, from my two summers working for that company, building and facilitating, 22
people said, “You should teach. You’ve got something going on in your interactions.” Sounds like there was already a teacher inside, trying to find its way out. I’m the third child of four, the middle compromiser, listener, empath, so experiential education started to kick in in terms of me thinking, This is a path for me. Without knowing it, the year abroad in Austria had primed my engine for further experiential education. Lawrenceville had long done summer abroad, but it was you who really developed this idea of international Harkness travel, correct? I had the opportunity to create an international travel program, and so that just tacked onto who I was, what I was building, and how I had been learning. How do you explain to people what the true educational value is in a Harkness Travel experience? Harkness Travel puts the idea of people gathering in a circle to get into deeper conversations, wherever you travel. You
have curriculum, you have preparation, and you’re going to spend the time to engage something meaningful. That’s how we design our lessons in our class, so we transfer that model into a location and ask the same questions. That’s no mere sightseeing tour. Are we doing the Chevy Chase European Vacation? No. What we’re trying to do is find the opportunity to engage the people and the place, and meaningfully honor subjects with purpose. We might not go to the biggest attraction in the city, because our focus is something different. So you’re placing the emphasis on exploring concepts as much as on the location itself. Yes, and this is a wonderful way to steward leadership. What John Hughes [director of experiential education] and I have designed is a program that has the educational purpose with kids meeting beforehand, but they are also going to be a teacher, leading a discussion.
T H E L AW R E N T I A N
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