Teaching Today at Tower Hill School | 2019

TEACHING

TODAY at Tower Hill School

2019

MISSION Tower Hill School prepares students from diverse backgrounds for full and creative engagement with a dynamic world. Each student is provided with an educational experience that emphasizes the development of an inquisitive, discerning and critical mind; the value of being creative and aesthetically sensitive; the appreciation of physical well being; the ability to collaborate and to function as part of a team; and the growth of character.

CONTENTS WELCOME

By Elizabeth C. Speers

PLANTING SEEDS OF PRIDE

By Paula Hall

MAKING A POSITIVE IMPACT

By Marina Attix

DIFFERENTIATING INSTRUCTION

By Mary Jane Martin

ROOM FOR ART

By John Bartlett

EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

By Susan Miller

SUCCESS IN CHEMISTRY

By Liz Brown, Ph.D.

LANGUAGE LEARNING AND A TALKING STATUE

By Harry Neilson, Ph.D.

STUDENTS FRONT AND CENTER

By Megan Cover TEACHING SELF-ADVOCACY

By Jessica Douglass

BREADCRUMBS, CLUBHOUSES AND DESSERT: STUDENT-CENTERED, PROJECT-BASED LEARNING

By Kathryn Reese

SKILLS TO WORK AT GOOGLE

By Tara Fletcher

FOR THE LOVE OF BOOKS

By Jean Snyder

100 YEARS AGO ... AND TODAY

By Andrea Glowatz

INTEGRITY IN THE CLASSROOM

By Lisa Somers

HAUNTED MINDS: WHY I TEACH HORROR LITERATURE

By Coleen Hubler

THE SCIENCE OF HAIR

By Ann Sullivan

THE DELIGHT AND POWER OF MATHEMATICS

By Noreen Jordan THE ART OF THEATER

By Matt Kator EFFORT, ENERGY AND ENTHUSIASM

By Drew Keim

COLLEGE ADMISSIONS: FOCUSING ON FIT

By David Toomer THE ART OF STORYTELLING

By Jill Zehner GRADUATION SPEECH

By Heidi Chu ’19

GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT THROUGH MANDARIN

By Wendy Liu, Ph.D. 1

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WELCOME Dear Tower Hill community and friends, Each year at Graduation, I ask our teachers and coaches to stand to be recognized; teaching is truly one of the most noble professions in the world.

Teachers are the caretakers of hope, and strong schools are committed to the ongoing development, recognition and support of faculty. At Tower Hill, it is our teachers and coaches who deliver the school’s mission each day. Their expertise and passion challenge and nurture our students’ academic and personal growth in extraordinary ways.

In commemoration of our Centennial in 2019, Tower Hill launched this new publication to celebrate our teachers and to pay tribute to those who teach at Tower Hill today. These essays illustrate the talent in every division, across many grades and departments, from the Tower Tots’ Morning Meetings to Advanced Chemistry in the Upper School. The many perspectives and insights shared within demonstrate the incredible depth and quality of teaching at Tower Hill.

We thank the faculty members who volunteered to contribute to this volume. In so doing, they have created an instant heirloom for the school and have started what will become an annual showcase of Tower Hill’s curriculum, as well as the intellects and pedagogy of our dedicated faculty members.

Also included is a student speech from last year’s Graduation, which gives testimony to the impact Tower Hill teachers continue to have on the lives of so many students.

Please enjoy this inaugural edition of Teaching Today at Tower Hill School and be sure to thank a teacher who has impacted your life.

Elizabeth C. Speers Head of School

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Marina Attix | Sept. 4, 2018 | First Day of School

MAKING A POSITIVE IMPACT A smile in the morning, a genuine wave in the afternoon or a twirl from a little girl passing in the hallway: Making a positive impact on someone’s day is a lot easier than you might think. I went into teaching because I wanted to shape the lives of others. Soon after I began, I learned how much others touched my heart, shaping me. This past June, I was lucky enough to watch seven of my first-ever students graduate.

I felt so proud to know that I had a little part in their upbringing. Despite the relatively short time I spent with these students, keeping in touch with them and all my students has brought me years of happiness and influenced the person I have become.

When I tell people I teach 3-year-olds, the reactions I receive range from laughter, to praising of my perseverance, to certain doubting of my sanity.

However, most people don’t realize how rewarding the experience truly is. As an early childhood teacher, I have the capability to share my happiness with others as well as impart invaluable knowledge on young, impressionable minds. I offer many hours of meaningful experiences in a nurturing environment, sprinkle them with enthusiasm and sing along the way.

What could be more fun?

Knowing I have an impact, no matter how small, on who a person will become leads me to believe I have made an impact on the rest of the world. Besides, who else will compliment the Hello Kitty pajamas you wore on Pajama Day? Who else will remind you that you smell like flowers and your hair rivals that of princesses? Sometimes all you need is a little reminder that you can make someone else happy, feel loved and feel important. Teaching has provided me with that reminder every day.

Whenever you need a smile or a laugh, be sure to stop by the Tower Tots classroom. We may need some time to warm up to you; however, you are sure to leave with a few hugs and a fuller heart, feeling satisfied.

Marina Attix Lower School Faculty

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John Bartlett | June 19, 2019 | Photography Camp

ROOM FOR ART The art rooms at Tower Hill embrace a long tradition of providing environments where kids are empowered to create and learn in a wide spectrum of ways. The art rooms are places where students feel free to experiment and take risks that lead to unforeseen paths of discovery. As we celebrate the past and dream of the future, we teachers talk a lot about how to best prepare our students to reach their potential and to develop tools for successful and fulfilling lives.

We are very lucky to pursue such goals as part of a community that values the arts as an integral part of an exceptional education.

Our teachers spend a lot of time asking questions about how to be facilitators of learning. We talk about student-centered learning and critical thinking, projectbased learning and collaboration, interdisciplinary themes and harnessing new technology. We work to inspire self-directed learners, confident in their abilities to grasp new concepts and skills; to be effective communicators (both verbally and visually); and to be inventive thinkers.

We work to foster each student’s confidence in his or her ability to tackle challenges. How to develop original ideas and figure out how to give the ideas

form. How to understand and articulate complex and abstract ideas. How to take chances, fail with grace, have the grit and perseverance to get back up and grow. How to decipher the endless visual barrage of social media and popular culture. How to interpret and respect diverse cultures. We work to cultivate an appreciation for art in all its forms and a reverence for art history. These are challenging goals, but we pursue them with outstanding students and resources at Tower Hill.

As an art teacher I sometimes get the question, “How do you work with a room of kids with a big range of artistic ability?” Art is created with skills that can be learned, and the process is always at least as important as the end result. We have all seen kids who struggle with a medium or process only to discover they love it and explode with newfound confidence. Our Art Foundation curriculum for ninth graders has evolved into an ideal environment for such revelations. Students get a taste of all the electives we offer in high school. In four quarters they get to try woodworking, ceramics, studio drawing and painting, and photography—both digital and darkroom. The kids have a blast, and it is really fun for the teachers, too.

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Room for Art

Each student passing through the Visual Art and Design Department will be enriched by experiencing an array of creative processes. As a parent of a Lower School student, I am continuously amazed to hear of what happens in my son’s art classes and to see what he creates. I look forward to his journey through the art programs with all the other little Hillers. I believe that whatever kind of people they become and whatever paths they choose in life, their experiences in the Tower Hill art rooms will be invaluable.

John Bartlett Visual Art and Design Department Chair

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Liz Brown, Ph.D. | April 15, 2019 | Honors Chemistry

SUCCESS IN CHEMISTRY I still remember the first day that I set foot in a chemistry classroom my sophomore year of high school. My best friend was my lab partner, I had a brand-new TI-84 calculator—the height of technology at the time—and a deep-rooted fear that this would be the class to bring me down. It didn’t take long for me to fall hopelessly in love with the subject, with its nuanced vision of a sub-microscopic world and with the elegance and absurdity of how perfectly my previous science knowledge nestled into place, the central, illuminating piece to the puzzle. It was also the dynamic and fearless woman, Mrs. Lang, at the helm of this class, who so unapologetically offered herself up as a guide to me and my peers, that drove me to college and then graduate school to soak up every ounce of chemistry I could find. Ultimately, I returned to teach high school chemistry in the hopes that I might, in some small way, pay tribute to her enormous impact on my life.

Success in chemistry requires thinking about the world in a way that most students have yet to encounter.

How does one model something that is so small, the structure of which even the most powerful lasers can only begin to illuminate? Conversely, how is a student to conceptualize the mind-bending size of a mole and then use this metric to discuss chemical reactions they have never experienced? And, how do we teach

students to approach problem solving in a class where no two problems are the same and the traditional stepwise process fails?

My response to these perennial problems has been to integrate student experience and intuition into every lesson. I have a penchant for anthropomorphizing molecules, asking how molecules “feel” in a given reaction or likening polarity to a tug-of-war between molecules, even directing students to get up in class and play-act a battle between two elements of differing properties to explain periodic trends. In my class, the periodic table is a 9’x9’ rug, a scientific yellow-brick road that models the changing elemental trends across rows and columns. Stoichiometry, the boogey-man of chemistry, is explored through the lens of baking; Tom Brady and his cheating scandal (or was it?), aptly named “Deflategate,” serves as a perfect tool for integration of gas laws and data analysis; obscure molecules become celebrities during the annual “Molecule that Changed the Year” poster presentation.

What lessons have I learned from my four years in the classroom at Tower Hill? There is no one way, or one right way, to teach chemistry; my approach changes yearly, as do the students. The only constant in the evolution of my work remains my

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Success in Chemistry

complete and ceaseless love of my subject and of my students. Every student has the potential to become a successful chemistry student and to hone their skills of observation and analysis, if only they see the relationship between their study and their lives. It is this view, one that I realize I inherited from Mrs. Lang so many years ago, that drives me to create a classroom full of wonder, of unanswerable problems, of joy and unreserved inquisitiveness, of silly metaphors and brightly colored molecule projects, of life and of chemistry.

Liz Brown, Ph.D. Upper School Science

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Megan Cover | April 23, 2019 | French 2

STUDENTS FRONT AND CENTER I love stories. They tell me the how, what and why of life’s different pathways: It might be a small decision, a career opportunity, a calling from within or a mutual connection that brings people from all over to a common place. Throughout my lifetime, that draw has been school. As both student and educator, my “home” has been consistently within the community where I have studied or worked, and it is community that fuels my passion for and commitment to education.

Twenty years ago, I joined Tower Hill as a French teacher and had no idea how much this school would shape my story, professionally and personally. What drew me to Tower Hill was its dedicated community of faculty, students, families and alumni. I was also impressed by the school’s commitment to the development of the whole child in mind, body and spirit. In my experience, Tower Hill has nurtured and promoted the unique gifts of many Hillers, helping them unleash their potential in preparation for active involvement within a rapidly changing and complicated world.

The student is front and center in all that we do as educators. In our holistic approach, Tower Hill has never wavered from high academic standards. This may mean balancing traditions with appropriate innovative ideas or programming that honors the past while also staying current and relevant by incorporating best practices from across the educational landscape. Equally important is our emphasis on character education and social-emotional

development. This balance results in greater resilience, adaptability and empowerment. Student wellbeing has become an essential part of a Tower Hill education.

Connections between faculty and students are one of the many strengths of the Tower Hill experience.

These relationships facilitate a natural engagement and openness from all to ensure our common goal of providing the greatest opportunities for each Hiller.

They build confidence, trust and a willingness to take risks. They create a safe environment where community members can be true to themselves, meet challenges, lean on each other for guidance, instruction and assistance, seek out experiences and share their stories openly. Working together to unlock the promise of every member of our community facilitates a supportive and growth-oriented culture.

As a career educator, I feel incredibly fortunate to be a part of Tower Hill, a community that significantly shapes and values each story, continues to connect me with many talented students and faculty, provides a launching pad for individual growth and ingrains the importance of lifelong learning into every Hiller, past and present.

Megan Cover Head of Upper School

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Jessica Douglass | May 16, 2019 | Teaching and Learning Center

TEACHING SELF-ADVOCACY The world is rapidly changing around us—social media has led to always-connected living, smart speakers answer our questions and predict our needs, and technology allows for immediate access to and manipulation of information from nearly anywhere. Our schools are changing, too. Gone are the days of the teacher-centered classroom, where the students sit as empty vessels waiting to receive knowledge poured in by their teachers. And gone also is the traditional ideal of the model student as one who follows rules and processes, takes good notes and asks the “right” questions.

In a true student-centered classroom, rather than the student adapting to the structure of the teaching, the teacher and the curriculum respond to the learner.

What an exciting time to be an educator! And what an exciting time to be a student, also. As our students become more aware of their own voices in the classroom, one of the challenges for the teacher is to help them learn to self-advocate. This is one of the main focuses of the Teaching and Learning Center (TLC).

When helping students find their voices, we model this format: “I understand what you want me to learn is … , the way you’ve asked me to do that is challenging for me because … , I’ve thought of another way that will accomplish the learning goal in a different way. Could that work?” Our students are learning that to be a true self-advocate, they must also be good listeners and engage deeply with their teachers and the work they are doing.

One student this year, frustrated by feedback that asked her to participate more in the conversation, said, “I am participating; I’m just not doing it out loud.” With some dialogue, this student was able to articulate that her teacher wanted her to talk more in class because it was a way for him to understand her comprehension of material and a way for the class to practice engaging with their peers’ ideas. Not sharing in class at all, then, was not meeting either learning goal. However, a conversation with her teacher explaining the challenges for contributing allowed for a common understanding and mutually acceptable goal: one original thought or question and one response per discussion.

As our world and our students change, so do we as teachers and an institution. We still remain true to our values as educators, though we seek to inspire learning, curiosity, empathy and pride. As Tower Hill turns 100, our students are poised to engage in all of these through budding self-advocacy that relies not only on knowing themselves, but on listening to and understanding others as well.

Jessica Douglass Teaching and Learning Specialist

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Tara Fletcher | April 10, 2019 | Modern World History

SKILLS TO WORK AT GOOGLE This article appeared in Tower Hill’s Weathervane e-newsletter on April 12, 2019.

Each year as our seniors begin to finalize their college decisions and look to their next chapter, the inevitable question arises: What do you want to do with your life? Societal pressures can rear their ugly heads in presuming that certain majors won’t translate to getting a job and being workforce ready.

However, according to Cathy N. Davidson, founding director of the Futures Initiative and author of The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World in Flux, it is time to rethink these norms, especially if you want to work at Google. According to Davidson, when Sergey Brin and Larry Page founded Google in 1998, they looked specifically for STEM majors because “only technologists can understand technology.” However, in 2013, Google decided to analyze its hiring practices and compile the data on the employees that had been the most successful in the company in order to determine the most important skills of their employees; to their surprise STEM expertise came in last. In fact, the top seven skills that Google now looks for are all “soft skills”: “being a good coach; communicating and listening well; possessing insights into others (including others’ different values and points of view); having empathy toward and being supportive of one’s

colleagues; being a good critical thinker and problem solver; and being able to make connections across complex ideas.” It looks like Google is looking for Tower Hill graduates!

The history and social studies curriculum throughout the three divisions is a place where these soft skills are honed. A particularly powerful unit in the third grade is one on poverty. In reading Barbara O’Connor’s How to Steal a Dog, students learn to be empathetic toward the family’s destitute situation. To complement the text, these students move out of the classroom in delivering bean soup to Lutheran Community Services for their food bank. According to third grade teacher Paula Hall, “It is an eye-opening unit for some of our students, and it also teaches so many lessons about how hunger, homelessness and poverty are within our community and how we can show our integrity.”

Learning outside of the classroom continues in the Middle School with the seventh grade spending time in Washington, D.C. Tours of the Capitol and the Library of Congress, as well as the popular night walk on the National Mall, coincide with the study of United States history, which is a class that marks a leap forward in

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Skills to Work at Google

the development of critical thinking skills. The writing of the Rowland Historic Preservation paper helps to bring a challenging year of making connections, thinking deeply and fastidiously working on analytical skills to a close.

Furthermore, in the last few years we have remodeled the Upper School history curriculum to make space for an elective system, where teachers design their own courses based on their academic passions, modeling the discussion-based seminars that students will experience in college. The variety of courses offered even sprinkle in a bit of some other social sciences such as psychology, economics, political science and public health. These classes focus on analytical, communication, writing and problem-solving skills.

Classes such as Women’s History and Modern Black America highlight continued issues facing the world today, and students in Epidemics in Society look at civil liberties in the face of a public health crisis.

Students are asked to evaluate and speak up, offering their insights, knowing that they might make mistakes.

They unpack tough questions and are consistently asked to support their ideas, consider others and work together to draw conclusions.

When our seniors walk across the stage at graduation, they are equipped with the skills that can bring them

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success both in college and beyond. Whatever their courses of study, whatever career they choose, they are truly great thinkers! As Davidson asserts, “We desperately need the expertise of those who are educated to the human, cultural, and social as well as the computational.� Multa Bene Facta rings true at Tower Hill with the support of the humanities as well as STEM, and our students leave us prepared for success with the soft skills needed in college and the workforce.

Tara Fletcher History Department Chair

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Andrea Glowatz | May 21, 2019 | Teaching and Learning Center

100 YEARS AGO ...

AND TODAY One hundred years ago, teaching young people involved the transmission of knowledge, and only a fraction of the American population remained in school beyond the elementary level. It is certainly true that society has come a long way in 100 years’ time—and so has Tower Hill School, a place where transmission is less often the modus operandi because another activity more accurately defines behavior in today’s classrooms: facilitation. The evolution of Tower Hill’s robust academic program over the last century can be touted as a move toward the facilitation of critical thinking, a key aspect of which is metacognition, or the understanding of the thought processes involved in learning. Couple this with the research neuroscientists of late can offer us, and we have an entirely separate, and important, academic undertaking. Metacognition and neuroscience alone, however, do not fully substantiate a need for 21st-century institutions to create programmatic changes. The need to evolve a Teaching and Learning Center (TLC) at Tower Hill School, venturing into a new academic subdivision, comes from the individual needs of Tower Hill students and teachers themselves.

As garden-variety information/communication technology has transitioned from being a luxury to a

staple in our lives, students are more distracted and subscribed than ever before—and consequently face a number of stressors. Additionally, expectations and standards in school are higher and ever-changing because the technology at our fingertips can expedite the gleaning, processing and sharing of information.

We as teachers must remember that students do not necessarily process information as quickly as their devices do. So how do we ensure that all students, no matter what their learning strengths and challenges are, can meet the demands of an everdeveloping, innovative curriculum? We facilitate the personalization, individualization and differentiation of the learning process. The TLC does just that.

Established in 2016, the TLC facilitates student learning by providing resources that lead to the growth and success of Tower Hill faculty and students. The TLC exists to help teachers utilize research-based practices, to teach students how to understand who they are as learners and to provide students with learning strategy instruction, which involves individualized coaching in time management, note-taking, written expression, memory building, organization, reading comprehension, assignment execution and test preparation. Learning strategy

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100 Years Ago ... and Today

instruction is an effective way to help students with learning differences improve academic performance, and if a strategy can serve a student who learns differently, then it can serve all students. The additional layer to our system is the teaching component. Implicit in the center’s name is the value our school places on quality teaching—on new developments, resources and support for faculty as they endeavor to enhance and reflect on their practice. If we believe that learning processes are varied (and we do!), and if we believe that improvement is always possible (and it is!), then it stands to reason that students who may be looking to increase or maintain high achievement can utilize strategies from the TLC as well. The TLC is, in fact, for everyone. A little TLC can go a long way! And it’s exciting to think about where we will be in another 100 years’ time.

Andrea Glowatz Dean of Teaching and Learning

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Coleen Hubler | April 1, 2019 | Advanced English Seminar

HAUNTED MINDS: WHY I TEACH HORROR LITERATURE When I first interviewed at Tower Hill, Hugh Atkins, then English Department Chair, asked me the department’s favorite interview question: “If you could develop an elective, what would it be?” I answered enthusiastically, “A course in horror literature.” I think my response surprised him for more than one reason. First, my primary focus in graduate school was Shakespeare’s contemporaries, including John Fletcher, Thomas Middleton and John Ford, playwrights of an era before the rise of Gothic fiction.

Second, horror as a genre is often viewed as “nonliterary.” A reader might select The October Country for entertainment on a dark, autumnal evening, but rarely do serious students of literature concentrate on horror.

Truth is, I’ve always loved a good ghost story. My Baba (grandmother) used to tell me folktales from the “Patch,” a small mining village in eastern Pennsylvania housing Ukrainian immigrants hoping for a better life in America. There, a dead mother visited her child nightly, keeping her little one covered, or a miner walking home late along railroad tracks provided a light for an infernal visitor’s cigarette. My sister, taking her first American literature class at college, used to read me the Gothic stories of Nathanial Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe and Washington Irving. I loved the idea of the headless horseman riding the wind in a blaze of fury after the unsuspecting Ichabod Crane.

As I grew older, I realized that these stories, whether folkloric or literary in origin, reveal elements about our culture, what people most fear or desire, the nightmares that we cannot confront in daylight but in the guise of the supernatural are “safe” for study.

Thus, the folktale of the mother who returns from the dead reveals the very real fear of pregnancy-related mortality in the early 20th century, while The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow examines conflict and greed as a new nation attempts to define its values.

And, despite horror’s reputation, I learned that authors like Edith Wharton or William Faulkner, who are not generally considered interested in speculative fiction, often explored supernatural themes. Even my beloved Renaissance dramatists dabbled in the macabre.

Shakespeare’s witches ensnare Macbeth’s heart; John Ford’s Giovanni holds aloft his sister’s heart on a dagger; Middleton’s Vindice murders a duke with the poisoned skull of his fiancée. All of these writers were skilled in their craft yet did not shy away from horror if it suited their needs, so why should I? So, that is how Haunted Minds came to be. The class has become an exploration of our modern issues through the lens of Gothic literature. As noted horror novelist Tananarive Due asserts, “This is a genre that can really help us as a society confront anxieties, fears, transitions, obstacles.” So we investigate how gender

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Haunted Minds

roles confine and eventually drive a young woman mad in Shirley Jackson’s Hill House. We examine the monstrosity of racism in Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom as he redefines the Cthulhu mythos.

We reflect on the long-term effects of abuse in Sarah Monette’s Drowning Palmer. In all these cases, what I love is students’ willingness to take the dive beneath the surface of the texts. The supernatural draws them in; the real issues that frighten each of us keep them reflecting on our own humanity. For, like it or not, in horror we see ourselves, but we also learn how we might be better if we confront our monsters in the mirror.

Coleen Hubler Upper School English

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Noreen Jordan | May 1, 2019 | Calculus

THE DELIGHT AND POWER OF MATHEMATICS This article appeared in Tower Hill’s Weathervane e-newsletter on April 19, 2019.

Yahtzee, Monopoly, gin rummy, scat, hearts, dots and boxes, checkers, backgammon, Rubik’s cube, poker and Clue: These games remind me of childhood road trips, weekends and lazy summer nights of family rivalry. In those days, my singular focus may have been defeating my siblings, but I am grateful today because the underlying skills required to be a successful player—strategizing, visualizing, analyzing and making calculations—have stayed with me. As I grew older, my record started to improve incrementally, but little did I realize at the time that my reasoning skills and critical thinking skills were evolving too. I may have lost many more times than I won, but I learned from my experience that in order to get better at these games, I had to take chances, make a lot of mistakes, play a lot of games and surround myself with other skilled players. Sound familiar?

At Tower Hill, the goals of learning math are multidimensional and balanced. We don’t want students to simply learn facts; we want them to learn how to think. The Tower Hill curriculum expects students to develop the ability to communicate mathematically, to confidently solve problems and to apply mathematical reasoning for life in the 21st

century. In the Tower Hill philosophy, the word “develop” recognizes that learning math takes time.

Einstein knew this implicitly when he asserted, “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

Our math faculty members understand the values of patience and rigor, engaging students in their own learning, empowered by the math inherent in their everyday lives. It is not the procedural fluency that keeps students engaged, but the understanding of the depth of the math concepts that inspires students and cultivates a joy of doing and appreciating mathematics.

In the Tower Hill math classroom, each student moves through the curriculum at a pace that is suitably challenging, yet, just as importantly, developmentally appropriate. Rigor, challenge, persistence—it’s a good combination, and our students develop these values in their careers here at Tower Hill.

Our unique math program employs a Lower School Math Lab, which guides students to explore math concepts using manipulatives and provides activities that foster curiosity. All students in grades 5 through

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The Delight and Power of Mathematics

7 build a solid foundation in which the curriculum spirals and reinforces the fundamentals necessary for success for algebra in eighth grade. Last winter our Middle School math scholars learned the Japanese logic puzzle KenKen and enjoyed it so much that they spent a subsequent period with the Lower School students teaching them how to do the puzzle at a level appropriate to their development. In the Upper School, teachers work closely with individual students during free periods and recitation, providing support and encouragement, as well as opportunities for deeper discussions and enrichment. Projects promote student creativity through the use of string art and graphing software programs like Desmos and tessellations, while more practical applications like financing a college education or simulating the spread of the Spanish Flu are incorporated into the curriculum in order to stimulate interest in the everyday usefulness of math.

The success of the math program is only possible because of the quality of the students in the building.

The largely student-led Math League team, which consistently qualifies for the state competition, placed third in the state, a best finish for a Tower Hill team. Each of the past two years, two students have qualified for the AIME, placing in the top 5% in the nation in a highly competitive and complex test.

ERB, ACT and SAT math averages are well above independent school norms. And even though we pride ourselves in not teaching to a test, results from last

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year’s AB and BC Calculus exams verified student mastery for those who elected to take the tests. (24 students averaged a 4.17 on the AB Calc exam, and 12 students averaged a 4.17 on the BC Calc exam.)

Several teachers rode down to the Washington Convention Center in D.C. in May to attend the National Math Festival, a biennial event that showcases the beauty, fun and importance of mathematics in the world around us by bringing together some of today’s most fascinating mathematicians for presentations, performances and hands-on events for adults and kids of all ages. The event is free and open to the public, so if you happen to be able to attend some year, join us. If not, play lots of games, make lots of mistakes and encounter the delight and power of mathematics wherever you go.

Noreen Jordan Math Department Chair

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Matt Kator | May 31, 2019 | Lower School Town Meeting

THE ART OF THEATER This article appeared in Tower Hill’s Weathervane e-newsletter on March 8, 2019.

Well-respected arts educator Kelly Pollack said it best: “The true purpose of arts education is not necessarily to create more professional dancers or artists. [It’s] to create more complete human beings who are critical thinkers, who have curious minds, who can lead productive lives.”

It’s an exciting time in the Theater Department at Tower Hill. Through improv, movement, public speaking, story telling, construction, painting and a whole host of other disciplines, we continue to borrow from many to create something new. Be it in the classroom or after school in rehearsal, the students, through the art of theater, continue to develop skills they will carry with them forever.

This year marks the first year theater classes were rostered as a special in all grade levels, kindergarten through eighth grade. Through performance- and nonperformance-based curriculum, the theater faculty work to enhance students’ artistic and academic experiences at Tower Hill. Each grade level curriculum is structured to highlight and aid in the development of the students’ confidence and creativity. As Science

Department Chair Tim Weymouth said in last month’s Weathervane, “After all, aren’t we all practicing learners, forever moving toward mastery?” And so as a theater faculty we continue to question: Is improv better in sixth or seventh grade? When does publicspeaking class best serve to help create confidence where there used to be anxiety? Would Coach Kevin Waesco and Athletic Director Seth Kushkin embrace the football team taking dance classes like players do in the NFL? After a very well received production of Neil Simon’s Rumors and the first of three Lower School Town Meetings in the fall, 2019 started off with a “splash of color.” For the third time at Tower Hill, A Gift of Color was performed by Lower School students. Written by Sara Bush, this year’s production was performed by the fourth graders as their annual musical.

Two weeks later, the eighth grade participated in its annual eighth grade show. This year we discovered How the Eighth Grade Saved ... YouTube! The eighth grade show, a tradition lasting more than 25 years, was re-imagined to mimic the style of the Upper

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The Art of Theater

School Tower Term. An intensive week of rehearsal, dancing, prop and costume-making, sound effect hunting and a lot of smiles and laughter culminated in a performance that was enjoyed by the audience.

Better still, it was a process that was adored by both the Class of 2023 and theater faculty.

faculty, and especially from the students. In a time when the arts are consistently being cut, we are experiencing positive momentum where students see the value of their arts education and embrace the experiences and skills it brings. We hope to be able to entertain you soon!

Later, we saw the culmination of our collaboration with the English Department: Fifth grade’s Fractured Fairy Tales. A favorite of ours, this unit combines playwriting and performance. Students get the opportunity to see firsthand how a good story may not make a good play and why some tricks that work on television just can’t work on a stage.

Matt Kator Theater Department Chair

We rounded out the year with two more Town Meetings, third grade’s “Tower Will” performing Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and, of course, our all-school musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Featuring a cast ranging in age from second grade to faculty, a pit made up entirely of students and their teachers, and sets and lights designed by two seniors, Joseph highlighted the many different (and hidden) talents of our students and faculty.

Tower Hill is lucky to have continued support for theater from the administration, the board and the

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Drew Keim | April 10, 2019 | Upper School Concert

EFFORT, ENERGY AND ENTHUSIASM Mission statements, mottos, slogans, philosophies … Every great organization has at least one of these in some form or another. Music ensembles are no different, either spoken, written or only in thought and practice. I once worked with a group that desired to create a statement that described what it took to be a successful band. The process started much like one would expect: brainstorming all of the positive attributes of groups that they hoped to emulate.

Students began by identifying key characteristics through simple descriptive language that answered our key question, “What makes a band great?” After a plethora of ideas were written on the board, the student leadership focused on three simple words: effort, energy and enthusiasm.

In music, as with most things in life, great things only happen when one (or ideally, the whole) puts in enormous amounts of effort. Practice, both individually and as a full ensemble, is paramount.

Focusing on making the most minute of details as close to perfect as possible takes effort … and lots of it. “Simply being ‘good enough’ is never enough if you want to truly succeed,” stated one young, timid, freshman trombonist. “We are going to have to push beyond the high expectations that the director and the other members of the professional staff set for us if we

were to be successful.” All of the students understood this and showed at every single rehearsal that they were willing to put in copious amounts of hard work and effort over many long hours of practice.

Energy, the fuel that drives all progress, is just as important for musicians as it is for athletes, contrary to popular belief. It is easy to fall into that whole mentality that music is easy and not physically demanding; society tells us this in hundreds of movies and television programs. The cardiovascular and muscular control that is required to excel in the performing arts is right up there with top-tier athletic programs.

What’s more is that everyone in the ensemble has to give 100% at all times since there is nobody ready to “come off the bench” if someone is having a bad performance. We all rely on the collective, absolute focus of every member every time the baton is raised.

Passion for one’s craft helps to inspire increased amounts of effort and energy. The need for enthusiasm in the creative process is often hardest to conjure and maintain. Think about it: In any core subject, one must pay close attention to new material, and students are routinely assessed on their knowledge and understanding. In sports, teams practice for a couple of weeks before competitions

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Effort, Energy and Enthusiasm

begin. For musical ensembles, it is not uncommon to rehearse for weeks on end, sometimes for a three- or four-month long period, before one performance (or two if they’re really lucky) is presented to appreciative audiences. Emotional highs and lows are the norm throughout the process, highlighted by the frequent success or struggles of mastering a new concept or tackling a difficult passage in the music.

It is imperative, however, that at the heart of every performer, the desire to enthusiastically create is never lost.

“Effort, Energy and Enthusiasm” quickly became known as the “Tri-E” (pronounced “TRY”) Method and became a pseudo battle cry at the beginning and ending of each session. As our senior drumline captain stated, “Nothing great will ever be accomplished if we don’t even try.”

Drew Keim Music Department Chair

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Wendy Liu, Ph.D. | May 14, 2019 | Mandarin 7

GLOBAL ENGAGEMENT THROUGH MANDARIN Tower Hill has a vision to design programming around curricular innovation and global engagement so that our students can find success locally and globally in the 21st century.

To support the school’s vision, I was privileged to participate in the Harvard Graduate School of Education Learning Think Tank on Global Education (2016), the Art of Leadership (2017) and Deeper Learning for All (2018). Those opportunities were eyeopening and heart-opening experiences that prompted me to bring the same level of inspiration to my students. We are teaching students of the future who are global citizens. Making those connections from local to global—and from self to the world—enables students to situate themselves in the fast-changing world and identify the role that they could play to make the world a better place.

I take the commitment of teaching very seriously at Tower Hill. I am determined to create an innovative learning environment where students are encouraged to be the thinkers, architects and leaders of their learning journey.

1) Students are paired up with same-age peers in China so that they can exchange language and cultural

learning instantly with the aid of technology.

2) Community members who have personally and professionally engaged in traveling to and from China are invited to serve as classroom speakers to share their insights. Students have the opportunity to engage in research of the topics introduced by the guest speakers and dive deeper into areas of their own interest.

3) A critically comparative lens of viewing world affairs, social issues and history is encouraged as students use innovative tools to present their collections of information from different channels.

4) We take field trips to the Chinatown in Philadelphia and local restaurants so students can experience the culture and use the language beyond the classroom setting.

5) A project-based assessment system is introduced so that students can put into practice what they have learned in class and evaluate the impact and results.

6) An inquiry mindset is instilled in students, and various tools and learning platforms are introduced to students so they can continue to use those tools for

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Global Engagement

exploration after school. Knowledge is not told but coconstructed constantly by the class in a collaborative manner.

7) Think cross-disciplinary approaches. For example, working with the Music Department to create the Jasmin Flowers show; working with the Visual Art and Design Department to compare art from the East to that of the West; working with the History Department to review historical documents in both Chinese and English to find commonalities and differences; working with a few international teachers to engage students in cultural studies through the lens of culinary art.

Within three years, the enrollment of the Mandarin program grew tremendously from 10 to around 100 students, from sixth to 12th grade. Nothing is more rewarding than teaching. The sparkles that I see in their eyes every day give me tremendous joy and energy to continue to do what I love to do.

Wendy Liu, Ph.D. Middle and Upper School Mandarin

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Paula Hall | May 23, 2019 | Experiential Outdoor Classroom

PLANTING SEEDS OF PRIDE While teaching third graders in Dallas, Texas, we often used the analogy of “seed ideas” for teaching writing.

We would play a word game that would associate words by asking, “What do you think of when you think of ice cream? Cone. What do you think of when you think of cone? Snow. What do you think of when you think of snow? Snow day!” All of the responses would then be written down and become instant “seeds” for writing ideas. The day you got an ice cream cone with your grandparents. The waffle cone your uncle always ordered at Katie’s Corner. The excitement of a snow day in Dallas.

Seeds to me have many meanings, especially because I love to garden. My parents were both teachers, and we always had a garden that my brother and I would help to water, weed and enjoy the abundance of tomatoes, peppers, garlic, eggplants … you name it. That joy of gardening was passed to me from my parents. I love to get into my garden after a winter and prepare the soil by raking off the old leaves, adding mulch, pulling out the spring weeds and planning what will be planted where. When I think of teaching, I also think that each year I do that same preparation.

I get my classroom ready, I organize the library, I buy journals for writing and I plan what the year ahead will be like.

Since joining the Tower Hill community two years ago, I have been excited to share in the joy I have for teaching with the joy I glean from gardening. In preparing for the Outdoor Classroom my first year and knowing that there would be a garden, I was intrigued by the possibilities that space would lend to teaching. Watching that space come to fruition and have its official opening last fall was an amazing experience. What could I do with my students to share in the excitement of putting your hands in the dirt and watching plants grow?

This spring, my class helped to plant an herb garden in hopes of using those herbs next fall for our “Soup for Souls” service project. We even added to the already existing strawberry patch with five new plants inside the gate for easier access. The kids then took charge of weeding: learning how to weed, the difference between a plant and a weed, and why weeds need to be removed. We became “gardeners of our school” and enjoyed the opportunities we had planting and caring for our plot.

We then took our talents to the local community and became “gardeners of Wilmington,” where we spent a morning assisting the staff at Lutheran Community Services to plant the community garden there. It was

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Planting Seeds of Pride

there that I shared in a proud and profound teaching moment. Watching 19 third graders get in the dirt to plant over 30 or so tomato plants, pepper plants and beet seeds was remarkable. While yes, the spiders and roly pollies were pretty cool, I saw my students take pride in knowing that they were making a difference in their community by planting seeds that would then transform into food for so many. We had economics discussions on the bus returning to school about the cost of a pound of tomatoes and how many tomatoes we just planted. My students knew that we were supplying residents of Wilmington with fresh food throughout the summer, something we often take for granted.

I find joy in watching students thrive each year in my classroom. I hope I can inspire them to watch their own seeds grow into something of which they are proud.

Paula Hall Lower School Faculty

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Mary Jane Martin | April 26, 2019 | Lower School Literacy Lab

DIFFERENTIATING INSTRUCTION It is my fundamental belief that every child deserves a great teacher! As an educator, I feel it is our responsibility to provide an environment that is conducive to learning. A warm, nurturing atmosphere built upon mutual trust, acceptance and respect establishes a safe learning community. Additionally, we must be cognizant of our students’ intellectual aptitudes as well as their emotional, social and psychological strengths and weaknesses. A caring classroom where a teacher demonstrates enthusiasm for teaching and confidence in her students’ ability to learn is a place every student can be successful. The most important goal to be achieved daily is that our students leave happy, self-assured and excited about their day’s accomplishments.

In a perfect world, our students would come to us as thriving, confident learners of equal cognitive ability. In reality, our students are unique, interesting individuals with diverse interests, abilities and backgrounds.

Therefore, we must be skillful in addressing varied academic profiles and differentiating instruction to accommodate all learners. We must be traditional yet innovative in our approach to instruction and be able to focus on students’ dominant learning styles and preferred modalities. We must come with passions and interests outside of the classroom that we can readily share and encourage the same of our students. If our lessons incorporate a variety of enjoyable activities, cooperative learning and a sense of humor, we can capture their interest and allow them to thrive! Walt

Disney summed it up by saying, “Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends!”

I believe a competent educator is a lifelong learner.

Technology, innovation in brain-based learning and strategies for differentiating instruction are forever evolving. We need to be open to new ideas and embrace learning with the same enthusiasm we expect of our students. “Change” should not be looked upon as needing to work harder; it simply means we need to work differently!

Additionally essential to the wellbeing of our students is a teacher’s ability to work collaboratively with fellow educators. By working as a team, teachers can share ideas, continue to refine their craft and provide a cohesive network of support for their students.

They say, “When you find a job you love, you never have to work a day in your life.” So, it only stands to reason that a great teacher will also leave for the day happy, self-assured and excited about their day’s accomplishments. A career where you can inspire, nurture, motivate, mentor and truly make a difference is a coveted profession and one to be held in high regard.

Mary Jane Martin Lower School Faculty

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Susan Miller | April 1, 2019 | Experiential Outdoor Classroom

EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING “Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.” — John Dewey Learning by doing. That simple definition of “experiential learning” is characteristic of much of the learning that happens in the Lower School here at Tower Hill. We believe that hands-on, active doing that takes place in a broader context is an essential ingredient in meaningful and comprehensive student learning. It is because of this that our teachers intentionally design learning opportunities that encourage students to be exploratory, expressive, creative and communicative—all with the intent of stimulating deeper understanding. At its heart, experiential learning is a very natural and intuitive way to learn.

Schooling is about preparation—preparation for life ahead. And experiential activities are instrumental in developing the key skills that ensure our students can be successful both in and beyond the classroom.

We know the 21st century skills of collaboration, communication, creative and critical thinking, flexibility and reflection will be necessary as our children progress through life, and there are ample opportunities to develop these skills through authentic learning experiences while children are young.

Increasingly, schools are needing to adjust their approach to teaching to adapt to the way students

learn and what they need to be successful in the future. Through designing classroom projects that permit student choice related to content and exhibition of their learning, planning field trips that provide a context for new information and allow deeper investigation into a topic of interest and getting students involved in the community via service opportunities, our faculty are committed to preparing students to be analytical and creative problem solvers and helping them to better internalize new knowledge and skills through real world experience.

Experiential education, in or out of the classroom, requires the following: 1. Equal parts previous skill, theory and investigation — Activities set up so that students have the previous skills and knowledge needed to then investigate a situation with an open mind. This type of scaffolding is critical to ensure students have the right “tools” to navigate an experiential learning activity.

2. A safe environment — The teacher must create a safe space for students to go on a journey of selfdiscovery. This takes careful planning to allow students the freedom to explore without the fear of things going wrong.

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Experiential Learning

3. Time to reflect — Experiential learning activities are not linear and don’t always go smoothly. Reflection is a vital part of the learning process so students have the opportunity to think about what worked and what didn’t.

4. Meaningful and relevant activities — Students are the learners as well as the “self-teachers” in experiential learning; therefore, activities need to have meaning and be relevant to fuel motivation. Students should be driven and fully immersed in the experience; emotional investment in the activity is key to this happening.

5. Big picture perspective — All learning activities should maintain a big picture perspective so that real world connections can be made. Students should begin to understand the complex relationships between different subjects and across different aspects of life outside of school.

On any given day you can walk through the classrooms and see each of these components in place. Students may be researching important change makers in preparation for a Wax Museum presentation or assembling jars of soup ingredients to be donated to a local charity for further distribution in the city of Wilmington. Students may be rehearsing a classic fairy tale in Spanish in preparation for a performance or exploring different types of chairs, how they are made and the purpose of design.

Or take a walk through our Experiential Outdoor Classroom where you can find third grade students

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examining the garden and conferring with one another to ensure they pull only the errant weeds, not the young plants that are poking their heads through the soil. Kindergarteners explore their creative side as they notice the nature around them and use their observations as inspiration as they paint. Our youngest Tower Tots eagerly collect water from the water feature to use in the Mud Kitchen as they stir and assemble and bake many concoctions in preparation for their afternoon tea. And all the while, there are additional children drawing masterpieces with sidewalk chalk, creating music as they strike the pagoda bells and telling stories from the stage to the applause of their audience.

We know that learning is transformation and growth.

We know that children learn by interacting with knowledge and materials in meaningful ways. And we know that students are motivated to continue the learning process when the lesson at hand is relevant to their lives and adds immediate value. Through a combination of intentional design of learning opportunities and letting go of prescribed learning paths, our students are engaged in meaningful learning while developing self-awareness, self-confidence and self-esteem. Experiential learning allows children to see purpose and to enjoy their learning experience while building a strong foundation that will set them on a path to success.

Susan Miller Head of Lower School

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Harry Neilson, Ph.D. | April 17, 2019 | Latin Day

LANGUAGE LEARNING AND A TALKING STATUE The final evening of the 2018 Tower Hill Rome trip, a student asked me to take him to a fragmentary statue called Madama Lucrezia to attach a note he had composed in Latin. I had taught the group earlier that in Rome there are six “talking statues” used by Romans since the Renaissance to post anonymous, often satirical commentary on life and current affairs.

As we hurried through the drizzle, squinting against the headlights of the frenetic traffic in Piazza Venezia, the student never saw my tears of joy, for I was profoundly touched by this gesture that was the fruit of his language study at Tower Hill.

Tower Hill’s founders understood that language learning has been a building block of education since antiquity. Indeed, ancient Roman fathers sent their teenage sons off to Athens or Rhodes to learn Greek, like our college year abroad. Beginning in the Medieval period, the primary purpose of a grammar school was the teaching of Latin and Greek grammar. Until the 17th century, Latin was the lingua franca of Europe’s great thinkers. The classical languages recall the solemnity of ancient learning and are the reason why even today educational institutions define themselves with Latin or Greek mottos such as Tower Hill’s own, Multa Bene Facta.

Great joy can be found in mastering a new language, and the benefits are numerous. It enables the brain to think differently, and, like an actor taking on a role, a foreign language speaker acquires a different personality, or as some have said, a second soul. In extreme cases, fluency in a second language has the power to transform a taciturn introvert into a garrulous extrovert. Furthermore, to become a responsible global citizen, learning a second language is essential.

Because language is the door to the way a culture thinks and acts, it solves one of the greatest mysteries of humanity. In addition, the warmest compliment that one can pay another culture is to exert the effort to learn its language; only then can true empathy for that culture occur. A translation can never provide the full experience of a language’s original meaning; it is and will always be an imitation.

Learning a second language is as important now as it was in the past. In a universe dominated by technologically advanced modes of communication requiring no human contact, because language learning requires face-to-face verbal exchange, it allows for authentic interpersonal relationships.

Furthermore, language learning is by nature interdisciplinary as each language is a reflection of its

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culture, and each language shares traits with the other languages of the human family. As is the case at Tower Hill, whether Spanish, Mandarin, French or Latin, in order to learn a second language, a student must compare and contrast aspects of their mother tongue with the target language.

That drizzly night in Piazza Venezia, as the student affixed his note to others on Madama Lucrezia, I saw that he had hand written, homines ubique sed non humanitatem video (“I see humans everywhere, but I don’t see any humanity.�) Having taught this exceptional young man Latin for four years, I understood that learning a second language had already provided him with the tools to enter adulthood a sensitive and analytical thinker. This is one of the best rewards a teacher could receive.

Harry Neilson, Ph.D. Middle and Upper School Latin

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Kathryn Reese | May 13, 2019 | Reading 6

BREADCRUMBS, CLUBHOUSES AND DESSERT: STUDENT-CENTERED, PROJECT-BASED LEARNING What do breadcrumbs, clubhouses and dessert have in common? They are all an integral part of fifth and sixth grade reading class, of course! In this day of rapid fire stimulation and instant gratification, getting 11 and 12 year olds to savor well-constructed literature is a challenge to say the least. Thanks to a modified version of Harvey Daniels’ Literature Circles: Student Voice and Choice, today’s reading students are as eager to read as they are to play Fortnite ... Well, almost!

conflict, while also coming to terms with a variety of internal conflicts.

Harvey Daniels’ Literature Circle paradigm is a student-centered approach in which students choose the books they read, lead discussions about the book, and even assign their own homework. The fifth and sixth grade reading program uses this model, but with a bit more teacher control than prescribed by Daniels. To kick off the unit, students pick one book from a choice of three to read. They are then placed in a group based on the book they chose. Each book presents a slightly different reading level, but shares a theme. For example, one literature circle unit is called “Sole Survivor.” The protagonist in each book uses survivalist tactics to solve an overarching external

A highlight of the literature circle routine involves daily “clubhouse” chats. This is simply the group’s conversation about the pages they read for homework.

In an effort to keep the noise level down, the students sit beneath their group’s table (the “clubhouse”) to discuss the novel. During the clubhouse chats the teacher plays the role of facilitator prompting discussion points and writing anecdotal records based on student comments.

Students are required to annotate while they read, leaving a trail of “breadcrumbs” to follow should they need to search for textual evidence at a later date. While this is not always a popular assignment, students rise to the weekly breadcrumb challenges to be the first to pinpoint the page of dictated event in the story.

During class time, three groups read silently in the classroom while the teacher takes one group in the hall to read aloud and discuss the book, noting student

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Breadcrumbs, Clubhouses and Dessert

prosody and comprehension. A system put in place to help the students monitor their daily effort ensures the students in the classroom stay on target when reading independently.

Literature circle units wrap up with “vegetables” and “dessert.” The vegetables include an open-book assessment of the students’ comprehension through written response. Of course, children must have their vegetables before dessert, so once the students finish the arduous open-book assessment, they get dessert!

Dessert is the project-based culminating activity in which the students can share their book in any way they wish, as long as they fulfill the requirements specified on a rubric. Each project must be completed during school, with supplies found at school. These projects are the pinnacle of student-centered, projectbased learning. The students’ creativity is boundless, and it is such a joy to hear their enthusiastic conversations about the book as their project ideas come to fruition. Past projects include a movie trailer, a “leather” bound journal complete with entries, a wooden model of a castle built in the woodshop, a play complete with scripts and the list goes on.

In this day of over-stimulation, Middle School reading students are reminded of the power of the written word. The images students create while they read

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stimulate a range of textual interpretations providing a forum for lively discourse in which students evaluate and defend their views. As a result, students recognize the value of forming images in their minds instead of being fed images through visual media. And that is the true dessert!

Kathryn Reese Middle School Reading

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Jean Snyder | May 15, 2019 | Experiential Outdoor Classroom

FOR THE LOVE OF BOOKS As an early childhood educator, sharing books with children is what brings me the most joy. With more than 20 years of attending professional development conferences and reading articles on literacy research, I can effortlessly recite the documented importance of sharing stories with children. The academic benefits of reading supports cognitive development, increases vocabulary, builds phonemic awareness and phonics skills, helps develop longer attention spans and leads to greater reading success—all of which offer parents and educators motivation to read aloud. But truthfully, those are not the reasons why I chose to read to my own children or to the cherubs I have taught. My intention has always been more child-centered: that youngsters will take pleasure in listening to stories, a gift that will light a spark and ignite a love of reading.

My love of sharing books comes honestly, as my father was the quintessential storyteller. I have a few memories of my father reading to me, but possess vivid images of him reading to my younger siblings.

I recall a picture, taken in his library, of him reclined in a chair with two small children precariously sitting on the well-worn arms, and two older siblings leaning over the back engrossed in a story. I could hear the nightly ritual from my bedroom: the scramble by my siblings to find a spot, and once settled, my father enthusiastically reading with altered voices as he

took them to far-away or make-believe lands without ever leaving the house. While he would read any story requested by a child, some of his favorite stories to share were Dr. Seuss books, Aesop fables and thrilling adventures like Treasure Island, The Hobbit and Greek Myths, all read for the mere enjoyment of listening to a splendid tale.

While my father has bestowed untold gifts upon his children, his love of reading is the one that captures my heart. I did not always embrace his view of books and reading, but thankfully, with his never-ending encouragement, I grew to be a book lover. I remember frowning and bemoaning high school summer reading lists that included My Antonia by Willa Cather and David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, only to hear my father say enthusiastically, “Oh, that’s one of my favorites! You will love it.” And for the most part, I did.

Years later, I became the parent sharing beloved stories with my own children. To this day, I have a collection of picture books that I cannot bear to part with because as I sift through the shelves, books like Goodnight Moon, The Very Busy Spider and Owen trigger fond memories of cherished stories, read over and over again to enrich language development and to expand their imaginations. The nightly snuggles, giggles, silliness, occasional tears and pure delight

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For the Love of Books

in books are what I remember, never recalling a vocabulary word taught or questions asked to check comprehension.

Reading aloud lasted for years even after my children could read on their own; it created a trust that I would make time for them and connected us to the stories we read together. Eclipsing all my memories was the wave of emotions we encountered as I read Where the Red Fern Grows. As dog lovers and owners, my children could empathetically connect with a young boy wanting, training and loving dogs. They rejoiced in Billy buying his hunting dogs, were excited as the dogs chased coons through moonlit nights, and became scared and distraught when Ruben landed on an ax. Although they had never experienced the loss of a dog, they were broken hearted when Billy’s dogs died. As the sorrowful words choked up in my throat, the tears streamed down our faces; together, we were saddened and changed by the power of written words.

I encourage parent/child travel through the magical world of books. Create memories by showing up and giving time to your child. Make it fun and exciting!

Read in a tent made of sheets and pillows. Read on the porch during a storm. Turn off the lights and use a flashlight to see the pictures and the words.

Pack a picnic lunch, ball and book and go to the park. As experts reduce learning experiences to only measurable goals, we, as a society, do a disservice to children who should experience the pure joy of reading. The truth is that listening to and sharing

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stories is enough because the organic benefits that accompany reading aloud are abundant. Reading aloud will open their eyes to different ideas, allow them to gain meaning on their own, broaden their imaginations, create an understanding of the world and humanity, and expose them to characters who may, or may not, possess admirable character traits like courage, integrity, resilience and kindness. What more can you ask from a single, enchanting activity?

As I continue my journey with young children, my dedication to reading remains strong; my hope is that my students will become lifelong readers and learners and someday remember that Mrs. Snyder shared great stories with them.

Jean Snyder Lower School Faculty

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Lisa Somers | May 2, 2019 | Homeroom

INTEGRITY IN THE CLASSROOM At the beginning of the 2018-2019 school year, Head of School Bessie Speers spoke of the school’s founders, who she said, “would be so proud that the mission of the school they created nearly a century ago has such integrity. This means that our mission has stayed true.” She announced further that the school’s word for the year would be “integrity.”

I had previously observed that the Admission Overview on the Tower Hill website describes Tower Hill as “a community that values and cultivates character, integrity, service and a passion for learning.” Now it would be my mission as a fourth grade teacher at Tower Hill to show my students how integrity could act as a focal point in our own personal classroom.

I began the search for large wooden letters that when hung on the front wall of the classroom would spell out I-N-T-E-G-R-I-T-Y. I found letters in a variety of styles and colors, which seemed perfect since integrity, itself, is shown in many different forms. This prominent display serves as a constant reminder to my students that integrity is central to all that happens both inside and outside of our classroom.

On the very first day of school we discussed what the word “integrity” represents and described the behaviors that are associated with it: respect, honor, honesty and the courage to stand up for your beliefs.

We talked about how integrity means doing the right thing when no one else is looking. As a class, we then pantomimed various scenarios that my students could find themselves in during the school day. We went on to discuss both behaviors that showed and did not show integrity.

I know that students learn various behaviors and values from adult role models as well as their peers.

When students are taught about integrity in their own classroom settings, they are better able to apply similar principles to other areas of their lives.

In my classroom, I also incorporated integrity by using the book 365 Days of Wonder by R.J. Palacio. The book is filled with precepts or maxims, with integrity being a central component. Each morning when my students arrived, one of these precepts was written on the board. The children first copied the precept into their journals and then made a simple illustration

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Integrity in the Classroom

that they believed related to the theme. Afterward, we discussed how the precept depicted integrity and how we could relate it to our own lives. Although this daily activity took only 5-7 minutes each morning, I believe that the value of it was enormous, and I witnessed the effect of it on a regular basis.

I think our focus on integrity helped my students to believe in themselves and to stand up for their principles. I have particularly noticed that they are more accepting of people who are unlike themselves or who have different educational and behavioral needs. When I see a student showing integrity, I like to applaud them in front of the entire class since positive recognition reinforces behavioral expectations.

The final method that I used to teach integrity directly was through read-alouds. With a literature-based curriculum, there were many opportunities to analyze

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various characters and their behaviors. We discussed the characters’ levels of integrity and ways the characters could better institute integrity.

Since children are not explicitly born with the qualities of integrity, it needs to be taught to them. The classroom is a perfect setting to mold and develop this skill that will surely prepare the student for the future.

When we live with integrity, it means that we let our actions speak for who we are and what we believe.

Integrity is a choice that we make, and it is our job as educators to lead our students to make the right choices over and over and over again.

Lisa Somers Lower School Faculty

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Ann Sullivan | Sept. 17, 2018 | Lower School Library

THE SCIENCE OF HAIR The following article originally appeared on the NAIS Independent Ideas blog, nais.org/independent-ideas, titled “The Science of Hair: A Lower School Lens for Exploring Diversity,” on Sept. 24, 2018.

There is something about hair that young children cannot resist—twirling their hair, braiding each other’s hair, tugging on curls, touching a fresh cut—especially when it is different from their own. They are naturally curious, tactile learners, and on any given day in the Lower School, they can be heard making comments to each other like: “Your hair feels so soft today,“ “Why do you have braids like that?” “I love rubbing your head.”

These types of comments and gestures come primarily from simple observation, but they can be uncomfortable or unwelcome for the recipient. This was sometimes the case at Tower Hill among students of color, and while any specific issues were handled on an individual basis, I discovered that hair presents a meaningful opportunity to open up conversation about diversity among Lower School students.

Anti-Bias Education in Lower School Traditionally, social justice work has focused around discussions with older students. Yet renowned Harvard psychologist Mahzarin Banaji’s research, along with that of countless others, suggests that prejudices form at an early age—and they can be unlearned. Working with young students can build a common foundation for dialogue and make a significant impact down the road.

As a Lower School librarian, I use the anti-bias literature-based AMAZE program to combine ageappropriate children’s literature with skill-building lessons to help start conversations about equity and inclusion. This early childhood program focuses on four key concepts: Creating Safety and Belonging, Understanding Me and You, Valuing Families and Building a Community. Topics I have approached within this framework include skin color, socioeconomic differences, gender bias, family dynamics and feelings.

I also facilitate Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity workshops for faculty and staff members in Lower through Upper School with Director of Social Justice Dyann Connor. After hearing from a few parents that students were impulsively touching children’s hair, she suggested that we incorporate a lesson about hair into our Lower School inclusivity curriculum.

First I looked for children’s picture books about the science of hair. I wanted my lesson to come from a scientific standpoint, addressing any unconscious bias students may have about people who are different from them. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the books I was looking for, so I decided to develop my own lesson.

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The Science of Hair

Creating an Original Lesson Like any teacher implementing an original lesson, a plan needs to be formulated and executed. It states a clear objective, activates prior knowledge, addresses various learning styles and—especially with younger children—has a palpable feature allowing students to conceptualize their learning. Touching and feeling are part of how young children learn.

As a complement to my presentation titled “Knock, Knock, Whose Hair?” which covers some hair basics like color, follicles and keratin, I decided to travel to a local beauty supply store to purchase an assortment of hair extensions that would represent various hair types and textures. I wanted the children to be able to manipulate and experience the hair on an interactive board. I felt that if they had the opportunity to express their curiosity with an appropriate medium, it would discourage the undesirable act of reaching for a classmate’s hair.

Students who had not yet participated in the lesson had a number of reactions to the hair board:

“That looks like witch hair.”

“The salt-and-pepper hair is the softest.”

“The blond braid is like Rapunzel hair.”

“Wow! Look at those red curls!”

Before my lesson, students would come into the library and ask me about the hair board with a look of apprehension. Now when they come to the library, they are familiar with the hair board and love it. It is not unusual to them anymore, which is the heart of

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all inclusivity work. Once differences become familiar, children are more accepting.

Part of a Larger Program This Lower School lesson about the science of hair is just one small facet of our school’s larger Social Justice Program.

“Teachers throughout school participate in antibias, equity and inclusion work in their classrooms and are encouraged to incorporate this essential teaching into their classrooms,” Connor said. “This can be done in many ways, including adding a wide variety of perspectives to the content taught and inviting students to bring their full, authentic selves to the classroom through their stories and personal narratives.

“We have workshops, presentations, clubs, events and conversations for students in every grade level, as well as parent groups encouraging diversity and inclusion at our school,” she adds. “The program continually evolves to meet students, teachers and parents where they are in their own personal journeys.”

Tips for Being Proactive Versus Reactive Parents have expressed their appreciation for our proactive approach to students touching their children’s hair, for it wasn’t just about hair; it was also about diversity, tolerance, kindness and inclusion. If you are considering creating your own lesson about diversity, here are some tips: • • • • • • •

Look for patterns in your students’ behavior.

Find time to start a group conversation before an issue grows.

Partner with diversity experts in your school or community.

Consider which grades are most appropriate for the topic. I found that first graders were just right for the lesson about hair.

Take kids’ questions for what they are; most times, they are just naturally curious about something that is different, and talking about it is productive Incorporate age-appropriate literature into the discussion.

While librarians are often tapped to help add multicultural literature to schools, they can also be the conversation facilitators.

Ann Sullivan Lower School Library Literacy Specialist Equity and Inclusion Coordinator

Dyann Connor | Director of Social Justice 75

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David Toomer | May 29, 2019 | College Counseling

COLLEGE ADMISSIONS: FOCUSING ON FIT It is an exciting time to be director of college counseling at Tower Hill. Members of the Class of 2019 had great success in the college admissions process and are attending many excellent colleges and universities. While many people focus on the impressive “list,” it is always the best “fit” for the student that drives our work.

As Tower Hill prepares to celebrate its Centennial, I would like to share some thoughts on how the college admissions process has changed over the years. While the processes have changed, what has remained the same is that Tower Hill students are in demand at highquality colleges and universities.

In the early 1920s when Tower Hill students began attending college, the numbers of students applying to colleges in the U.S. was much smaller than is the case today. According to the College Board, in 1940 only 6% of adults in the U.S. had earned a bachelor’s degree, and 64% had not completed high school. By 2009, 32% of adults held a bachelor’s degree and the number of those who did not complete a high school diploma had dropped to 12%.

The largest increases in the number of adults completing bachelor’s degrees took place in the 1970s. There are four main factors that seemed to drive that rapid increase. One was the post-World War II baby boom. The post-war economy led to a rapid expansion of prosperity and population. The second

factor is the G.I. Bill. Veterans of World War II, the Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War had unparalleled access to money to fund college education. Third and fourth reasons could be called democratization. In the late 1960s African American students were, for the first time, given access to majority white institutions. This is also true of Latin American students—especially those from Mexican American and Puerto Rican heritage.

The laws that prevented people from Asian nations from immigrating to the U.S. were finally repealed during the civil rights era. By 1970 these three groups of students began to become a significant presence on college campuses. Around the same time many of colleges and universities that had not admitted women became co-educational.

According to the April 23, 1971, New York Times, the 15 schools that comprised the Ivy League Colleges and the Seven Sisters sent approximately 21,000 letters of admission to fill approximately 11,800 seats. The schools sent a combined 45,000 letters of rejection 1971. In 2019 the Ivy League Schools, which are now all co-educational, admitted 23,000 students to fill 14,000 seats. Collectively they sent approximately 240,000 letters of rejection. While news articles usually focus on the most selective, virtually all colleges and universities have become increasingly selective.

The key changes in admissions practices over the past century truly are the enormous increase in

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College Admissions

applications. A broader cross-section of the population aspires to attend college—both in terms of economic and racial diversity. Technological advances enable each student to apply to an increased number of colleges and universities. The advent of college rankings in the early 1980s has led many to focus on perceived prestige rather than academic and social fit.

With all of the changes over the past hundred years, Tower Hill has always risen to the occasion. I am only the second director of college counseling at Tower Hill who has a university admissions background. My predecessor, Jill Lauck, also worked in admissions before moving to college counseling at Tower Hill.

The two successive directors of college counseling before her were humanities teachers who took an interest in students and did some college counseling along with their teaching responsibilities. In the early 20th century, it was commonplace for headmasters and headmistresses of independent day and boarding schools to communicate directly with private college and university deans of admission and would heavily influence who would and would not be admitted. In 1970 the typical Ivy League university received fewer than 8,000 applications. With such small numbers it was possible for a university to employ such a system to help inform decision making. In 2019 the most selective universities received between 40,000 and 100,000 applications, and a system that relied on personal anecdotes and meetings between deans of admissions and heads of schools would be infeasible.

At Tower Hill the College Counseling Office has continued to evolve. We have a staff of four, and we

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have a strong preference for hiring college counselors who have significant amounts of experience with highly selective college and university admissions.

The selective admissions experience gives our staff a deep understanding of the most sophisticated and complex college and university evaluation and selection processes. The size of our staff keeps our counseling ratio low, which affords us the time to work very closely with our students on their college lists and essays. With the tremendous number of applications that colleges and universities receive, students need strong self-advocacy in the form of essays and an excellent application strategy. Tower Hill has built a College Counseling Office for the 21st century, and we will continue to evolve to meet the ever-changing demands of the college admissions process.

David Toomer Director of College Counseling

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Jill Zehner | May 22, 2019 | English 5

THE ART OF STORYTELLING When I was in third grade, Mrs. Cassidy gave our class a project titled “My Family’s Journey.” We had been studying the 13 colonies, and she wanted us to begin to make connections with the brave people who came together to build our nation. She might as well have given me a perfectly wrapped present because I could not wait to share all I already knew about the Griffins and the Kinsellas. According to my grandfather and my Uncle Gene, both proud members of the Griffin clan, my sister and I descended from a long line of kings and queens. Our ancestors fought dragons, rescued damsels in distress from tyrants, ruled with an iron fist or with care and a compass (depending upon which side of the family we were discussing at the time), and, ultimately, left Ireland to share their many unique talents with the rest of the world. While my presentation fell a bit short on factual evidence about the harrowing trip my family members actually took across the Atlantic in the early 1800s—and their lessthan-regal welcome when they reached the shores of Massachusetts—my faith in the art of storytelling took root.

A few short years later, I get the pleasure of encouraging my students to time travel to worlds they have imagined or perhaps never dreamed about visiting before. The sixth grade English, reading and

history courses fall neatly under the banner of Global Journeys. The theme is intentionally broad to allow for wiggle room when exploring the skills and strategies necessary to cultivate creative and critical thinking.

One stop along our adventure occurs when students, dreaming of snow days in dark, dreary January, are transported to the sparkling blue waters of Greece.

The students read an adapted version of The Odyssey, immerse themselves in D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths and continue to explore chronology, geography, government and economics as they begin to connect the past with the present. All of this work naturally centers around wild and wonderful stories.

The students are amazed to learn that Homer, a blind bard who is given credit for composing The Iliad and The Odyssey, memorized epic poetry to share orally when traveling from town to town. His stories are filled with every plot point I treasured as a child sitting at the foot of my grandfather’s leather recliner. Odysseus, a valiant and vain warrior, allows lust and hubris to lure him, and his loyal crew, way off course. The students love to read about the powerful women, menacing monsters and unsuitable suitors who threaten Odysseus’ glorious return home. When deities intervene along the hero’s journey, students draw on their background knowledge about gods and

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The Art of Storytelling

goddesses they read about in D’Aulaires. Students also make a connection to the role that the Greek values of hospitality and loyalty play in the outcome of the classic tale steeped in history but embellished for the sake of entertainment.

The culminating event, our annual Greek Festival, arrives as the students put the final edits on their own clever myths to explain the seemingly unexplainable.

Their creative pieces run the gamut: We have had tales that explain the origin of Pop Tarts, how Hermes created fire engine sirens, a quest for Poseidon’s trident and how the iPhone XZ was created, complete with a cameo from Stan Lee to meld the ancient and modern worlds. The students, in true democratic fashion borrowed from ancient Athens, vote on the stories they believe deserve to be shared on stage.

Wearing chitons, laurel wreaths and often carrying thunderbolts, bows, tridents or hammers forged in Hephaestus’ shop, the newly minted bards carry on the oral tradition begun thousands of years earlier. The only break we take during the festival is to feast, which may be the next best family tradition to storytelling.

The students sit in groups, reliving the legendary tales and happily eating baklava, dolmades and spanakopita.

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Three decades after regaling my classmates—and, I am sure, unnerving poor Mrs. Cassidy—I am pleased to note that storytelling is very much alive and well at Tower Hill. It will continue to be the cornerstone of our humanities curriculum as we embark on our global journeys with the intrepid explorers we have the pleasure to teach each year in sixth grade.

Jill Zehner Middle School English

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Heidi Chu ’19 | June 7, 2019 | Graduation

GRADUATION SPEECH

BY HEIDI CHU ’19, STUDENT GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION VICE PRESIDENT, CLASS-ELECTED SPEAKER My favorite class in Lower School was library. Each Wednesday morning we all assembled behind our fearless line leader and teetered down the hallway, past the kindergarten, first and second grade classrooms, into the white room with the lofty ceilings and tall windows, where shelves that towered above our gaze lined the walls. One by one, we plopped ourselves down on the couch that spanned the entire length of the room, meticulously choosing our spots next to our friends. After shimmying and fidgeting, we’d begin to settle down. Sitting quietly side by side, we’d wait patiently for story time to begin. Eventually, Mrs. Dolmetsch would walk over to the cushioned rocking chair and sit down, carrying a stack of plasticcovered hardback books, yellow and crackling with the smell of age. Gingerly, she’d pluck the book placed precariously at the top of the stack and open its cover with a satisfying crack.

In kindergarten, she read us stories like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We watched as the caterpillar hatched out of an egg on Sunday, ate vibrantly colored fruits in escalating quantities from Monday to Friday, went on a junk food eating rampage on Saturday, ate a purifying green leaf on Sunday and then nestled into a cocoon for two weeks to digest and emerge a beautiful butterfly. For a 6-year-old, the story was nothing short of a fantastical dream gone wrong, resolved with some rejuvenating nap time. And as an 18-year-old, I still

love this story, because it combines my two favorite activities: eating and sleeping. However, looking back on it, we are all still very hungry caterpillars. Using that gluttonous caterpillar, Eric Carle portrays us all.

His book illustrates eating as an extended metaphor for learning. We consume content in our classes in escalating quantities from Monday to Friday, take some time to ourselves on Saturday and finally resolve to getting all of our work done on Sunday.

Occasionally we have some two-week breaks to cocoon in our beds to emerge well rested and relaxed.

That is essentially high school.

In fact, our time at Tower Hill has felt a lot like an extended version of story time. We sat in multiple classrooms every day, listening to stories about Alexander the Great’s conquest of Asia, J.J. Thomson’s monumental Plum Pudding model, Ovid’s tales of godly promiscuity and Euler’s method of solving first-degree differential equations. We even tried our own hand in enacting these stories; we were physicists, philosophers, track stars, painters and entrepreneurs. The crux of our learning was the stories we heard, the stories we loved and the storytellers we loved even more. Our teachers have been our greatest storytellers, equipping us with glimpses of the world and guiding us toward crafting our own. As I walk through the halls of the place I’ve called home for 14 years, I can still hear the echoes of every story

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Graduation Speech

I ever heard here. It was here, through stories, that we learned that our minds could encompass universes inside of them, drawing connections and building ourselves in the process.

And year after year, we became hungrier for more.

Going back to the glory days of kindergarten, another one of my favorite stories was If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. The story goes: “If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk. When you give him the milk, he’ll probably ask you for a straw.”

This story was no doubt a crowd pleaser, receiving giggles from all of us. Upon revisiting it, I can begin to understand why. Like the mouse in If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, as a generation we can be labeled as entitled, impulsive and spontaneously hyperbolic, and it’s hard to blame them. The critiques aren’t wrong. We expect instant gratification and are pretty furious when we don’t get it. But if you want to blame Millennial entitlement on anything, blame it on how we were raised to believe that we could get a cookie and dare to ask for milk, too. Blame it on the mouse.

Upon polling some of my classmates, I discovered that other fan favorite stories included Green Eggs and

Ham, James and the Giant Peach, The Stinky Cheese Man, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Rainbow Fish. In retrospect, it seems that we all had a special affection toward food-related stories. Perhaps it was because food had a lot to teach us about learning to share and understanding moderation. Or perhaps it was simply because imagining the taste of food was the first step toward imagining something that wasn’t there. No matter the story, we would all depart the

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library each week with distant dreams of what existed as nothing more than words on a page.

As we grew older, the books started getting thicker, the fonts smaller and the pages packed with more words.

No longer did we have watercolor illustrations to accompany our stories. Instead, we received a steady diet of sophisticated texts, critical analyses and more complex themes—such as timshel. The closest thing we had to a children’s book was in our freshman year, when we read Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories. The story follows a tale in which a wicked magician from the dark land of Chup, Khattam-Shud, attempts to poison the Sea of Stories, the source of all imagination. The hero, Haroun, whose father relies on storytelling as his livelihood, cannot allow this to happen. Thus, he travels to strange lands to lift a spell from his native country, where he confronts KhattamShud. With character names like Mr. Butt and Snooty Buttoo, reading Haroun felt faintly reminiscent of our days on the couch in the library. Throughout his journey, Haroun realizes that stories are not merely meant to entertain. Rather, stories have the power to connect the past, present and future. Without stories, life would be meaningless. Rushdie wrote Haroun while under a death warrant decreed in 1989 by Ayatollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran, who believed his stories were blasphemous. Rushdie went into hiding and published the story for his son, whom he could not be with at the time. He included an epigraph for his son: “As I wander far from view / Read, and bring me home to you.” On one level, Haroun is a children’s fantasy, but on another, it is a plea for the vital necessity of stories.

The world can be a scary place. Things happen, and it’s nearly impossible to make meaning of them.

Tolerance can be abandoned out of fear, and the unfamiliar can be interpreted as inadequate. Pain incurs loss, and loss incurs more pain. However, it is amidst this tangle of unraveling threads that we need stories most to pull ourselves together. Stories inform us of who we were, are and, more importantly, who we can still become.

Whether you are a pigeon who adamantly wants to drive the bus, a fish who must gather the courage to share its rainbow fins or a frog kicking back with his friend toad, we are all the stories we loved. We are all very hungry. We all feel the weighted duality of timshel within ourselves. We are all in pursuit of our own happy ending.

Today, on our last day of Tower Hill, we sit side by side one final time, listening to one final story. Except this time, after a long-awaited journey of discovery and imagination, we are finally ready to choose our own stories and live them. It’s our story now, and I can’t wait to hear how we tell it.

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Tower Hill School 2813 West 17th Street Wilmington, DE 19806 302-575-0550 towerhill.org

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