• Senior Hannah Kaiser is a family friend of the Ohmans (senior Elsa and recent grad Edward). She comes from Sweden, is eagerly awaiting Senior Challenge, and plans to play tennis, basketball, and soccer.
• Junior Sonia Eisenfisz is an AFS student from France. She'll be living with the Noah Katz family, who hosted German Niklas Putschbach last year. Sonia enjoys music, table tennis, climbing, and judo. She also has her own YouTube singing audition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTMpmHc0sV4
----
In late July I attended the graduation ceremony of about 20 volunteers for the Augustine Project. They had completed their 70-hour training program and were preparing for year-long commitments tutoring individual children in the Chapel Hill public schools. I was invited by Debbie McCarthy, the former DA teacher and current Director of the Augustine project (www.augustineproject.org), who will be teaming with Eric Teagarden to lead a dozen DA seniors in the same kind of project. It was inspiring to get a sense of the seriousness of the enterprise, the acuteness of the need, and the depth of learning already evident from the new tutors.
It was also fun to run into longtime Augustine Project volunteer Barbara Ziff, who taught Pre-K at DA for 20 years. She offered three news flashes:
• Barbara is a painter. She divides her time between literacy tutoring and watercolor, acrylic, and mixed media painting. She's had several gallery shows and sold many works. You can see one reproduction below, and many more at www.barbaraziff.com.
• Barbara's son Peter (DA class of 1996) is a truck driver. He and his wife live in Eastern North Carolina with their two young children. Peter has been keeping busy this month transporting loads of cucumbers from farms to markets in Raleigh and beyond. His new truck appears below.
• Barbara's web page designer is Peter's DA classmate Bill vonReichbauer. Bill is a guitarist, teacher, composer, writer, and editor, currently living in Albany, NY. You can see Bill pictured below and catch up on his life and work at www.williamvonr.com.
----
The following remarks were delivered by senior Will Ramsey during last Monday's new faculty orientation meetings for teachers in all divisions.
Good morning. My name is Will Ramsey, and I am a senior here at DA. I am also a musician – I play saxophone in the upper school jazz and rock ensemble In The Pocket. Music is a great passion of mine, providing both an outlet for stress and a medium through which to unite and channel the creative energies of like-minded individuals. I am always looking to learn more, so this summer I decided to enroll in a five-week performance seminar at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. The five-week program is intended to give interested students the chance to expand their musical abilities, become familiar with the Berklee curriculum, and, of course, meet student musicians from all over the country and all over the world. Needless to say, most of the participants plan to pursue a career in music.
Despite sustaining a stress fracture in my right foot and spending four days in Massachusetts General Hospital with a severe urinary tract infection, I finished the program with improved technique and mostly excellent memories under my belt. So significant, in fact, was my time at Berklee, that when scrambling to prepare for this address, I felt it would be just the type of anecdote I needed.
I regard the five-week program as a wonderfully enlightening experience because it showed me that I couldn’t tolerate living with a bunch of musicians. For me, attending a school of music is like eating chocolate cake for every meal of the day, every day of the week. By the end, I was almost glad to go home, if only to escape hearing one more joke about guitar players or one more mention of modal interpolation, substitute dominants, or the imaginary bar line. Just like our mothers tell us, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing, regardless of how much it makes us practice.
I am sure that by this point you are asking yourselves; what the heck does this have to do with Durham Academy? Where is this guy going? Why am I here? Why did I even interview for this job? Not to worry. My point in telling you about Berklee comes to this: I realized that although music brought beauty and joy to my life, it could never be more than an avocation. Durham Academy – my home since kindergarten – has provided me with such a diverse spiritual and intellectual diet that anything less just makes me feel undernourished. Although I imagine most high schools maintain a certain number of interdisciplinary requirements, the environment at DA is such that students feel excited about stretching themselves across multiple fields of study, art, and thought. You’ll find truly remarkable kids here at DA – the cello-playing math prodigy who runs cross-country and still enjoys English class; the student body president who plays softball and finds time to tech for theater productions; the track-running poet/historian who also happens to play violin in the school chamber music ensemble; the star soccer player and devoted science student who skillfully entertains his friends and peers with magic. Students like these are not exceptions, although they are often exceptional – they are common at Durham Academy.
What is it, then, that you as teachers need to know, coming into an environment such as I’ve described? First: be yourself. The teachers I remember, the ones I consider superior, were and still are willing to share their interests and experiences with students and with the school community. Whether it’s the calculus teacher who readily discusses his passion for Schubert, the English teacher who goes out for the winter musical, or the history professor who talks about his days working for the CIA in the Soviet Union, DA teachers make an impact simply by contributing their unique selves to the mix. I won’t say be funny, because that may not be exactly who you are – but it doesn’t hurt.
Second: remain open to all the school has to offer. Teachers have the opportunity to extend themselves far beyond their individual disciplines – advising clubs, coaching teams, assisting with musical or theatrical productions and even starring in them. A great teacher, as you can probably tell, is one who forms a personal connection with the school and students and who constantly strengthens this connection by investing his/her time in as much as he/she can.
Third: be honest to your students and to yourself. This applies not only to your policies in the classroom, but also to your relationships outside. Teachers that are clear in their expectations garner respect from their students, as do teachers that are clear in their principles – clarity in both areas will immeasurably help class productivity.
Finally: remember this school’s oft repeated but still potent mission statement: “to provide each student an education that will enable him or her to live a moral, happy, and productive life.” Every aspect of the schooling process at DA should and does, in my opinion, contribute to the fulfillment of this mission statement – and every aspect of the schooling process starts with the teachers.
There is no manual that I know of that describes how new teachers should go about establishing themselves. A lot of it is, I think, stumbling around and making mistakes until one gets the hang of it. I could give you many more tips, beyond just four, that I think are important, but you’d probably forget them and resent me for presuming to dictate to my superiors. That’s why I’ll leave you with one overarching piece of advice – don’t be afraid to make your own way in this school. You may find that only some or none of my points apply in your case, and that a different approach is needed. That’s okay – in fact, given the unique diversity of this community, I might expect it.
It’s entirely possible that I’m just starry-eyed, that I have an overly romantic view of the school – one born of isolation from other perspectives, perhaps. But I think that you’ll find, as I have, that this is a very special place. Good luck.
No comments:
Post a Comment