Giving Teachers Confidence

The Shakespeare Institute, which will be offered for the first time this June, is the result of faculty initiative, as are the other summer conferences. English instructor Rex McGuinn, who will lead the conference with drama and English instructor Sarah Ream, notes that he has wanted to start a summer program on teaching Shakespeare for a number of years. When he approached the Exeter administration, he received enthusiastic support. The institute will focus on Shakespeare on the page, stage and in film. “We want to give teachers more confidence in their ability to teach Shakespeare and to understand that Shakespeare is not just words on a page,” McGuinn says. “The teachers coming to the institute have something to bring to each other and that’s what it’s all about. My goal is to bring teachers together so they can share their knowledge and experience and learn from each other.”

“It’s a thrill,” says Richard “Hobart” Hardej (right), outgoing director of the Exeter Summer School, “to see students thrive here for a summer and go on to do so well.” Hardej will be succeeded this summer by English instructor Doug Rogers (left), who plans to extend the summer school to middle school students as well.

With the support of the New Hampshire State Humanities Council, the Shakespeare Institute has received funding to enable 10 public school teachers from New Hampshire to attend. Through such initiatives, the summer teaching institutes have a ripple effect that influences high school teaching throughout the United States. In turn, the institutes have impacted teaching at Exeter in significant ways. Tom Seidenberg attended the Math and Technology Conference in 1987 and was asked to teach at the conference the following year. In 1990 he joined the Exeter faculty, and in 1994, he was made director of the conference. “People like me come to this conference, and go back and try to convince their schools to teach this way. They see that you can talk about math. You don’t have to tell people math. You can have a discussion based on give and take.”

Three other members of the math department have also come to Exeter as a result of their summer experiences, including Susan Keeble, associate dean of faculty, and Catherine Holden, who attended EMI. Natalya Vinogradova, an intern in the math department this year, found the Math and Technology Conference through a search on the Internet. A math teacher and native of Russia, she had never been to the United States when she decided to attend the conference in 1999. She returned the following year for the conference and to teach in the Exeter Summer School, then stayed on for the regular school year. “Coming to the conference changed my life,” Vinogradova says. “I would never have known about Exeter otherwise. The Harkness table is a very special system. It’s a great experience to teach here.”

The Internet has made the math and science conferences in particular international affairs, with teachers attending from Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, Korea, Sweden and Mexico. It has also fostered a number of fruitful exchanges. An entire math department from a single school in Bogota, Columbia, attended last year; the school is bringing Tom Seidenberg for a visit to lead workshops for teachers during the school year. A group of math teachers in Australia is planning to inaugurate a conference based on the Exeter model. Seidenberg will travel to Australia as well to consult with them. Here in America, the math and science conferences have spawned a conference for middle school teachers at the Peddie School in New Jersey, also modeled on Exeter’s offering.

Eric Bergofsky gives credit for much of Exeter’s outreach through summer conferences to the late Anja Greer, former chair of the math department who died in 1998. “None of this would have happened without Anja Greer,” he says. “She inspired everything. She went away to a weeklong conference in North Carolina to learn about teaching computer programming and came back convinced that Exeter should have a role in offering conferences for teachers, so that we could share what we do with teachers nationally and learn about what they are doing. She lived to see the math and technology conference grow unbelievably in popularity and prestige, and to see EMI born and to teach in it herself.”

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