Throughout the Curriculum Review, students-who, after all, will be the beneficiaries of the results of the entire process-have been actively involved, and their input has been sought out by the Curriculum Review Committee. "We want to know what it feels like to be a student here," Wolff says. So in February 2001, Wolff invited all students to participate in the review in three different ways, and the response was encouraging: 18 offered to participate in a book club that would read and discuss the same texts the faculty is examining, 77 volunteered to work with study groups and 47 asked to be student consultants.
Howard Gardner's belief was that human beings have a number of intelligences and are endowed with them in an infinite number of combinations. He identified seven distinct intelligences: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic and personal (which he divides into intra- and interpersonal intelligences).
Gardner also realized that schools, public and private, tended to teach to only two of the many intelligences: logical-mathematical and linguistic. This meant that many bright, even brilliant pupils were passing through the system unnoticed, with skills unharnessed.
How might our teaching methods grow if we heeded Gardner's ideas about multiple intelligences?
-From a "Learning About Learning" study group presentation to the faculty
In addition, seniors will soon have another way to participate: a class entitled "Student Perspectives on School: Exploring the Experience of Education," a senior elective Wolff is giving in the spring term. "Students will read and discuss the same texts the faculty is reading," she explains. "Their final project will be to design their ideal high school."
Gloria Gong, a senior day student from Madbury, NH, who serves on the "Our School's Culture" study group, affirms that students appreciate the Curriculum Review process and are eager to contribute. "People are excited about the idea of the Curriculum Review and feel included," she says. "They are really invested in getting to say something about what's going on. People have told me very specific stories-'One winter term, this happened to me'-in the hopes that their concerns will be addressed."
Gong's group has been exploring the hidden curriculum at Exeter, how what is and isn't offered sends a message to students about what the school values. "We talk about implicit curriculum and explicit curriculum," she says, as well as exploring the implications of collaborative learning and the way that grading influences the educational process. The culture study group has also hired a consultant to conduct on-campus research and write a "portrait" of the school's culture.
"We have something close
to a mandate: to learn how to equip our students to live and work ethically in the 21st century." |
Gavin Nurick, a senior from Wilton, CT, is another student "doing time" on a study group-his being "The Structure of Time," which focuses on how students spend their days and nights. Nurick joined the project his lower year, "and from there it's snowballed," he says. The time study group "turned out to be a great group to be on. This past fall we did a time survey; for a 24-hour period, the whole student body and the faculty filled out a detailed log of what they were doing. We'll do it winter and spring terms as well. We're also looking at how students and teachers at other schools use their time."
Nurick says that though he is the only student in his group, he doesn't have any special agenda for the committee-not even decreasing homework and increasing sleep. "Students know that our homework load makes us a distinguished school, so we don't necessarily want to cut back, but maybe doing better quality work is something we want to look into," Nurick says. "A lot of students feel there's a cycle in the workload-one week is tough and one week is easier. They'd like to see the work more evenly distributed. But every student is saying we need more sleep, and that the schedule needs to let us sleep more."
Last year, the full faculty met from time to time to think and talk together about the forces that have shaped education in the past and may shape it in the future, including both technology and globalization. The experience of reading faculty responses to those conversations was a moving one. Those end-writes-many of them passionate-revealed that the topic that had gripped us most was neither technology nor globalization, but ethics. We realized that what we had on our hands was something close to a mandate: a nearly unanimous, faculty-wide desire to learn more about how to equip our students to live and work ethically in the 21st century.
-Ellen Wolff, Introducing a Faculty Week conversation on the teaching of "goodness"
When the second phase of the Curriculum Review winds down, the hard part begins-assembling all the information that has been accumulated thus far and using it to design a coherent program for teaching and learning at Exeter. The Curriculum Review Committee will explore and propose changes to the curriculum, reporting back to and seeking feedback from the faculty every step of the way, ending in a final vote on the next curriculum in the spring of 2004, and its implementation in the fall of 2005.
Gavin Nurick wisely points out that while the answers may seem obvious, with all the varying issues that are being discussed and the many opinions and facts to be considered along the way, in truth the solutions are far from clear. "We're trying to get a general feel from our own community about what we think should change and what our values really are," he says. "We're finding we can't have everything. We're going to have to prioritize what we really want in our days and what we're going to have to cut back on. We have a lot of ideas, but we don't have the quick fix."
A lot of ideas. No quick fix. A vital community of engaged learners growing together. In other words: a typical day at the Harkness table.
A freelance writer and editor, Susannah Clark '84 wrote about Dr. George Vaillant '51 in the
summer 2002 issue.
