Lessons in empathy and identity

McTammany takes this methodology outside the classroom, too. “Mr. McTammany makes a very conscious effort to include the ways in which chemistry interacts with the world,” says Anna Iacobucci ’20, who has taken three classes with the instructor. Last year, her class toured the solar panel installation on top of the William Boyce Thompson Field House and built a manual filtration system to collect microplastics. “When we filtered Exeter River water through, we found all sorts of plastics,” Iacobucci says. “One of the reasons I fell in love with science is because I want to help make the world a better place. Mr. McTammany teaches his students how we can make the world a better place.” 

A PEA science instructor since 2012, McTammany has expanded his social justice efforts to all aspects of campus life. Along with teaching and coaching water polo, he serves on Exeter’s Environmental Stewardship Committee, Campus Master Planning Committee and Curriculum Committee. “Science and technology is not exempt from the work of diversity, equity and inclusion,” he says. “There’s a responsibility that comes with being a chemist. You’re taking nature, you’re taking the earth in some form, and you’re turning it into something commercial, something used that has impact beyond the chemistry lab. ... In my mind, science and explanation is just another way of telling a story. Some people choose poems, some people write scientific papers, but you’re essentially saying the same thing — you’re telling a history.”

History lesson

Fourteen 10th-graders ring a Harkness table in a cozy, corner classroom in the Academy Building. It is the first week of winter term, and History Instructor Betty Luther Hillman asks each student to introduce themselves and share what led them to enroll in History 309: Race: A Global History.

One by one, counterclockwise, the students explain their motivations and aspirations. Maddie Saavedra ’22 sought “a topic that is relevant throughout history, not just a moment in time.” Jasper Knabe ’22 says, “I wanted to study a history that was more than just a timeline.”

To these Exonians, this examination of the past speaks to their present. The topic of race is part of their everyday, not some dusty period whose significance is less obvious to 15- and 16-year-olds. “One of the reasons why I really felt it was important to teach it as a history class is because learning history is all about learning facts,” Luther Hillman says. “Not just to memorize them and spit them back out, but to think about how facts and evidence inform our ideas and our perspectives.”

History 309 is a new course offering, developed by Luther Hillman and department colleagues Cameron Brickhouse and Hannah Lim. The three instructors were inspired to create the class by the school’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day workshops and by what they perceived as students’ lack of a broader historical perspective about the subject of race — regardless of how present the topic is in teenagers’ lives today.

The course description states that race, as it relates to human civilization, is a social construct. Science finds few genetic differences between people of different races and ethnicities. Social scientists thus contend that racial distinctions are a product of society and culture rather than biology. The question asked in the summary in the Courses of Instruction is: “At what point did differences in skin color and other phenotypic traits become significant?” By studying examples across time and place, the students hopefully will gain a deeper understanding of how and why race has been used to classify, define — and divide — cultures. 

“I want them to understand that the history of race is much more about power and exploitation and competition between groups of people, than it is about any biological reality,” Luther Hillman says. 

A Minnesota native, Luther Hillman joined the History Department in 2011. She regularly teaches classes on U.S. history, Ancient Rome, the world in the 20th century, and historical topics related to women and gender. She revised her dissertation at Yale into a book about how self-presentation influenced the culture and politics of the 1960s and ’70s, and she leads faculty and staff on an annual summer community-service trip to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Teaching specifically about race is a new challenge. 

Luther Hillman and her colleagues chose Racism: A Global Reader (Routledge, 2002) to serve as the primary text for this inaugural term. The collection focuses on racism worldwide over a thousand years and consists of original documents, scholarly essays and journalistic accounts of events as they happened. It is one of the few books Luther Hillman could find that viewed the topic through a global lens rather than a strictly American one. It includes subjects such as the caste system in India, African slavery, and the mistreatment by colonizing powers of indigenous populations in Australia and the Americas, and features sources as disparate as Benjamin Franklin, Desmond Tutu and Rudolf Hess. 

“If we can see the true injustice behind racial distinctions, I think it becomes much harder to make statements like, ‘Well, if everyone just worked hard they’d be fine,’” Luther Hillman says. “Because there’s a whole long history that has shaped where everyone is right now that we need to understand in order to move forward.”

As ever, the text is meant to serve as tinder for a Harkness discussion, and on this day the class buzzes when Luther Hillman asks, “Shall we jump into the reading?” after a kickoff discussion about a New York Times story on the racial makeup of the Democratic field of presidential candidates. These are the types of conversations that inspired Nicole Craighead ’22 to enroll in the course. She told her classmates that discussions about race and racism are not something people in her hometown in Connecticut are comfortable having. 

“I believe that open communication can solve most problems,” Craighead says. “Classes like this are immensely important as they allow for a space where a dialogue can be created. ... If discomfort in the topic silences us, it won’t allow for this progressive dialogue to begin."

“What this class has taught me,” she adds, “is how people are born into cultures that fail to recognize racial discrimination. That, in turn, makes it very difficult for change to occur.”

A holistic approach

Race: A Global History represents a new element of Exeter’s deep commitment to cultivating an environment of inclusion. That effort is ongoing in the Health and Human Development Department, which has embraced its purpose of developing the whole child. 

Central to that effort is a redistribution of the curriculum. Instead of HHD courses being required only for ninth-graders or first-year 10th-graders, students now will take courses each year they’re enrolled at the Academy. 

“We had been thinking as a department a lot about how timely topics are with a ninth-grader, and it didn’t really match what their experiences were,” says Michelle Soucy, department chair and member of the faculty since 2008. “If you’re talking about drugs and alcohol with a 14-year-old who is not thinking about it, but we know the high-risk behaviors are [more common among] 16- or 17-years-old, why don’t we have a touchpoint with them?” 

This reorganization presents the team with the opportunity to broaden its messaging beyond traditional health education curriculum to a more holistic approach. Important facets of that are the concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

Soucy says that discussing race, ethnicity and social class seemed integral when the department started thinking about adolescent development in an environment as racially and socio-economically diverse as Exeter’s. Work began with department members attending professional development conferences and collaborating with the Academy’s Office of Multicultural Affairs to develop lesson plans. That effort has expanded with Stephanie Bramlett’s arrival as the school’s first director of equity and inclusion. 

Not every class revolves around topics of equity and inclusion, just like not every class features discussions about addiction or contraception. Cultural competency and implicit bias lessons are more intentional in some classes than others. In Identity, Empathy and Understanding, for instance, an Integrated Studies class that Health Instructor Liz Hurley has co-taught with English Instructor Courtney Marshall, the course summary states directly that students will learn to “think critically about issues of equity in our society.” The instructors have also found that DEI-related issues present themselves indirectly throughout their curriculum.

“You can’t talk about the history of drugs and alcohol in the United States without talking about race,” Soucy says. “Like, why is marijuana a Schedule 1 drug (defined by the federal government as having no medical value and high potential for abuse)? Well, there’s a lot of racial implications behind that, right? Or, why is access to mental health for certain minorities really difficult?”

Critical to every classroom conversation is the assurance it is being had in a safe environment for the students. “Ground rules” posted inside classroom doors underscore that. “We will respect and celebrate our differences — we have much to learn from each other,” and “Anything said in this room will be held in confidence” are among the rules the students must abide by. The goal is to promote discussion without fear of ridicule or retribution.

The instructors feel confident that Exeter students want to have these discussions. 

“That’s one of the comments we get: ‘Let’s talk about race and racism a little bit more. Let’s spend some more time on it,’” Soucy says. “They’re hungry for it.”

Editor's note: This article first appeared in the winter 2020 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.