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A Masterful Teacher at Work in Hill’s Fifth Grade
A Masterful Teacher at Work in Hill’s Fifth Grade
By John E. Ross
John Daum never totally got out of the fifth grade. Step inside his classroom at The Hill School in Middleburg where he’s been teaching for three decades. Just one glance will introduce you to a world of eclectic excitement he constantly shares with his students.
On the back wall between da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and a picture of Notre Dame, flies a banner celebrating the Tapisserie de Bayeux – the 70-meter long tapestry commemorating the Norman invasion of England in 1066. Just to the right of the banner is a clock face carrying Y Draig Gooch (red dragon), Wales' national symbol. Beneath that is a map of Manhattan, a poster from the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, and a picture of the Colliseum in Rome.
In a recent interview, he also spoke of his own experiences as a 10-year-old when his parents took him to Germany.
“Just seeing things that weren’t in my language amazed me,” John said. “How exciting it was to realize that there were people out there who didn’t speak English. It was scary and fascinating to me that people did not speak English and I couldn’t speak their language.
“It was also very humbling. Sort of fun to think of something like ‘how would I ask for a Coke?’ They had Tic Tacs in Germany. They were orange. They weren’t white. For me, a fifth grader, that was fascinating. How do you ask for an orange Tic Tac?”
That trip sparked a metamorphosis in John equivalent to a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.
“I know that I felt when I came back that I wasn’t the same person anymore,” he said. “My world had gotten bigger, I started looking at books reading about places I’d never been. I just wanted to go back.”
Fifth graders, he added, are definitely mentally ready for events that expand their worlds far beyond their family, the household where they live, and the places they see every day.
“The fifth grade student is very capable, but not yet naturally distracted in the way they are when they’re 12 or 14,” he said. “It’s a very impressionable age. If you can imprint in kids of that age that art is a conversation, that buildings and cities tell a story, they’ll begin to understand the difference between looking at something and seeing it.
“Seeing is far more important. To really see something makes you want to ask questions about it. That’s what education is about, learning to see things and ask questions. For kids to respond to art or respond to architecture or to a city like New York is a wonderful thing.”
Last month, John took students on a field trip to New York, accompanied by Hill teaching colleagues Jill Beifuss and Susan McCaskey and several parents, something he does most years during spring break. Their goal: learning how to see a city.
“Take the Brooklyn Bridge,” he said. “We walked across it and talked of its caissons, towers, the spun wire cables that suspend it, of Roebling, the engineer who built it. We visited Central Park, the first really democratic park. Previously, parks had fences around them, you needed a key to get in, you had to be wealthy. Central Park is open to all, a place where different people come together. It’s a living work of art.”
Born in Washington, D.C. and raised in the Maryland suburbs, John earned his bachelor’ s degree at Ohio Wesleyan University, a masters in fine arts from New York University, and a masters in education from UCLA. He taught for a while in Los Angeles but wanted to move back east to be closer to his parents. Finding Hill School was pure serendipity.
“Hill provides autonomy for teachers to teach things that really speak to you,” he said. “Things you ’re passionate about. You can continue to grow as a person and as a teacher year by year. There’ s new information and a new ways of approaching it. You never know what’s going to click for you or the students.
“The energy and enthusiasm from the kids makes my job so exciting. It never gets old or stale for me. I’m always refreshing my curriculum. I love that great moment when you’re like, ‘ah man, I should have known that.’ And then comes the excitement of ‘oh, I can share that with my class.”
