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FAREWELL TO TWO LONG-TIME TEACHERS
KIT FAREWELL TO TWO LONG-TIME TEACHERS Marcia Ruff School Historian
MICHELLE LANE
When Lower School Science Teacher Michelle Lane was 13, she applied to Roeper and had an interview with George Roeper . The details of their conversation are hazy “because I was a teeny bit intimidated,” but she still remembers the sense of his presence, his kindness and curiosity . Sadly, her family couldn’t afford to send her, but Michelle always kept Roeper in the back of her mind .
Michelle grew up to become an educator . She was teaching at Friends’ School in Detroit when, in 1999, she applied for a Team Teacher opening at the Lower School with Carolyn Borman in Stage IV . In those days, Head Teachers hired their own Team Teachers . Carolyn chose someone else for her Team Teacher but recommended Michelle to Mary Windram in Stage III, who also needed a Team Teacher . Michelle taught alongside Mary for one year and then the next year, long-time Lower School Science Teacher Emery Pence moved over to become Middle School Director . Michelle became a Science Teacher for Stages III and IV, the position she held until she departed last summer . Both of her daughters, Abby ’10 and Ruthie ’12, were “lifers” at Roeper .
The goal of teaching science for Michelle is to “help kids uncover their questions about the world, figure out how to ask those questions and how to pursue answers to those questions,” she said . “Also, I felt like I was mission-driven to connect children with the world . I really firmly believe the world needs people who love the world, and particularly the natural world . ”
As a teacher at Roeper, Michelle made extensive use of the possibilities contained on the Lower School campus, frequently taking students to the creek and exploring the grounds in other ways . She offered a wild foods elective, teaching students about the edible plants to be found around them (the ones without confusing poisonous look-alikes!), such as burdock root, wood sorrel, dandelions, purslane, and apples from a gone-wild tree near Tire Mountain that produced fruit every other year that she and her students made into applesauce .
A meticulous scientist herself, Michelle approached science from multiple perspectives . She frequently had students create botanical drawings to sharpen their powers of attention . One memorable crossdisciplinary unit came after she, Art Teacher Jarie Ruddy, and Spanish Teacher Sara Mendez attended a Monarch Teacher Network training on monarch butterflies . That fall all the Stage IV students devoted their elective time to studying monarch butterflies — the butterflies’ relationship to Mexican culture, an artistic perspective through creating a monarch ofrenda that was displayed at the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the science of observing and nurturing monarchs through their lifecycle .
Early in her teaching career, Michelle realized that independent schools were the right setting for her because the small class sizes allowed her to be more responsive to each student and she could have the freedom as a professional to develop her curriculum and electives . “One of the things I really, really appreciated at Roeper is the absolute freedom that I had to design learning experiences for my students,” she said . “That gave me the opportunity to both follow their passions and mine, and that kept it fresh and interesting . “
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After 21 years at Roeper, Michelle will miss the “quirky, hilarious kids” and the chance to watch students grow and change all the way through high school . She’ll also remember the process of watching children come to Roeper and adjust to this “somewhat disorienting but freeing kind of atmosphere . Some of them go through this tough time when they’re kind of gnarly, where they’re testing everything . I think that was a fairly common kind of syndrome, especially with kids who had been wounded in previous experiences,” she commented . “But to see these children come and acclimate and realize that all they had to do was be who they are, it was a gift to be part of that process and be able to provide that for them .”
Several years ago Michelle started an online Master of Arts in theopoetics and writing at Earlham College’s Quaker seminary, a program she’ll now pursue full-time . While she doesn’t see herself back in a classroom, Michelle recognizes that being an educator is who she is . “I’m always about uncovering things and then sharing whatever I can,” she said . “I’m recognizing that more about myself now, I think, than I even saw it when I was a day-to-day teacher, when I was completely immersed in the process and the work . ”
Reading and writing intensively as a graduate student again, Michelle sees her writing as a new way of educating . “I see writing as an opportunity to touch people in ways that finds a place inside of them that’s growing,” she said . “I feel this sense that what I most want to do with my writing is to help people grow hope, to be able to step back, to be able to look at a larger piece of who you are or where you are in the world and get perspective and to not become too swallowed in the agony of existence that we are all encountering, now more than maybe we ever have in a collective sense . ”
Michelle is publishing on medium.com, where you can follow her work . Here are two earlier essays she has written: one on taking Roeper students to the creek, and one on monarch butterflies: https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/ calling-all-earthlings-34284dac890c and https:// berrywoman08.medium.com/pilgrimage-of-themonarchs-130c18040221 F
DIANNE O’CONNOR
Lower School Science Teacher Dianne O’Connor, a knitter by avocation, also knit together a long career as a teacher, drawing together strands from her childhood, her education, and the many collaborators she found over the years . All were in service to her goal as an educator, which is to instill “a sense of wonder in the world and a lifelong interest in asking questions and finding answers . ”
As someone for whom collaborating is a way of being, it’s not surprising to hear Dianne describe her path to Roeper by describing the people she met along the way . The first is her father, a farmer, an engineer, an inventor, and a naturalist, with whom she roamed the woods as child, asking questions and learning a careful way of seeing nature . As an early childhood education student at Wayne State University, Dianne was inspired by mentors at the school’s lab nursery school, which was affiliated with the Merrill Palmer Institute, Detroit’s famed child development research center that was an important contact for Annemarie Roeper when she came to the city in 1941 .
From those contacts, Dianne learned about the summer camp at Roeper, where she taught for several years and had her interest in Roeper heightened by directors Bill Booth ’71 and Barbara Van Oast and their way of relating to children . At a summer workshop on teaching math to young children, Dianne found that the other teachers she connected with were Roeper teachers, including Stage II teacher Margot Biersdorf .
Together, all these educators presented a way of teaching children that is the foundation of Dianne’s philosophy: a child-centered, strengthbased approach that commits to seeing each child for who she or he is . Realizing that was the philosophy at Roeper led Dianne to apply to the school in 1980 to become a Team
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Teacher with Pam Doyle in Stage II and then a Head Teacher in Stage III and later back in Stage II . “Roeper has changed in many ways over the years, but you can still see this (approach) in the classrooms,” said Dianne . “I came with these values, but being at Roeper allowed them to be nurtured over the years . ”
Dianne stepped away from Roeper in 1992 when she and her husband, Patrick O’Connor ’78, adopted their son, Leland ‘10, and then daughter Lily ‘12, from South Korea . Dianne took five years off while the children were young, although she also worked part-time during that time as a case worker for the adoption agency she used, became a Master Gardener, and landscaped and knit for clients .
In 1997 Dianne returned to Roeper as a Lower School Science Teacher, which she has been teaching until retiring before this school year . Over the years, Dianne has continued her habits of collaborating with other teachers and students at the school . She and the other Lower School Science Teacher Michelle Lane taught cross-Stage outdoor education classes, and she and Lower School Art teacher Mary McGeehan taught Art and Science classes . Dianne reached across campuses to Upper School Physics Teacher Dennis King, whose students came to Dianne’s Stage III class to teach a Physics of Toys class . Several students did Senior Projects with Dianne’s classes, including a Nature Trails class by Charlie Krysinski ’10 and a physics class called Moving Things by Ben Fallert ’09 .
The equity work pioneered at Roeper by Diversity Director Carolyn Lett also enlarged Dianne’s frame . She felt a profound shift after attending the People of Color Conference that elevated her interest in educational equity . Dianne became involved with Brilliant Detroit, a program that establishes neighborhood centers in the city to provide educational and social support services for families of young children .
At first, Dianne taught science classes in the summer . “I wondered if I would have to do things differently there, and what I found was that I could operate the same way,” said Dianne . Brilliant Detroit’s Co-Founder and CEO is Cindy Eggleton, a former Roeper parent whose son Zach attended Roeper for a time . The organization is based on the same child-centered, strength-based approach that Dianne finds inspires every child to ask questions and find answers .
Having retired from Roeper after 35 years, Dianne will spend more time with Brilliant Detroit . She is currently teaching remotely and she is hoping to be able to develop a science curriculum for the organization . In addition, Dianne is on the Board of the Roeper Institute, the non-profit organization within the school whose mission is to expand the reach of the Roeper model . Its largest focus right now is A Matter of Equity, a project to provide professional development in gifted education for Detroit public school teachers . While knitting, gardening, and walking will continue to fill Dianne’s time after Roeper, she also has her eye on outdoor activities like snowshoeing to help her pass through the pandemic winter with grace .
F Having retired from Roeper after 35 years, Dianne will spend more time with Brilliant Detroit — a program that establishes neighborhood centers in the city to provide educational and social support services for families of young children — based on the same childcentered, strengthbased approach that Dianne finds inspires every child to ask questions and find answers .
