TEACHER INTERVIEW

Crestwood Country Day School
August 3, 1992
 
 
Q.   You teach history and how long have you been a teacher?
 
A.   Yes,  I've been a teacher for 10 years.
 
Q.   And how long have been here?
 
A.   This is my sixth year.
 
Q.   Were you in public schools before?
 
A.   No. It was a boarding school in Connecticut.
 
Q.   So you know a lot about private schools?
 
A.   Quite a bit.
 
Q.   Influenced by head of the school?
 
A.   Oh, the number of incidents are legion.  It's pretty hard to
     isolate on one.  It was, would be indirect influence by the
     head of the school that I pursued a second masters in
     secondary education.  One, direction; exploring various
     teaching methodology would have been another with their
     encouragement, and certainly here in Crestwood Country Day its
     with Mrs. XXX's direction that I've been given various
     administrative responsibility related to curriculum,
     curriculum development, and this past year, one that stood
     out is that I have had to observe every classroom pre-K
     through the 12th grade a numerous times to look at trends
     relative to gender, multiculturalism, teaching styles and
     ultimately to prepare a report to the entire faculty on this
     observation.  So that has had a direct and immediate impact
     this past year as well as being pretty time consuming.
 
Q.   I bet, so how do you have time to do all of this?
 
A.   Well, there went my prep periods, basically.
 
Q.   O.k.  Influenced by the board of trustees:
 
A.   Yes, the board of trustees in its long-range plans wanted to
     really develop, modernize, update, bring in technology to
     the library.  So with that directive I was asked to head a
     library committee to formulate those plans, particularly a
     five-year plan to present to the board as a group last fall.
     So that was clearly a board initiative, certainly Mrs.
     Madden was involved in it and then I headed the committee
     that put together the research findings proposals, things
     like that.
 
Q.   Influenced by head of the upper school?
 
A,.  I have a very close relationship with the current head of
     the upper school and we work together quite a bit on
     committee assignments and summer school, things of that
     nature.  There is a chance that I will head up something
     relative to student government next year, at his suggestion,
     but that is all in the "iffy" stages right now, but that
     might very well be one.
 
Q.   Influenced by state or federal programs
 
A.   Other than the ordinary run of the mill things in (state name),
     of the minimum number of school days, and things like that,
     no.  Not really.
 
Q.   Can you think of any others besides school days?
 
A.   Being and independent school we aren't bound by the required
     curriculum in (state name) so I would say no, we are not
     basically required to teach certain subjects.  To my
     knowledge and my own immediate concerns, no, I don't feel
     shaped by the federal government nor the State of (state name).
     Speak of autonomy and I feel very fortunate that I sense
     that control in an inordinate amount of things here.
 
Q.   Influenced by parents?
 
A.   Very frequently.  The parents of Crestwood Country Day are
     very active in the education of there children, so I field
     constant calls from the parents.  We've had quite a few
     meetings throughout the year, parent conferences, and one
     always keeps in mind teaching here that the parents hear,
     see and know an awful lot about what goes on, so it has a
     lot of direct and indirect; some conscious influences on how
     you teach, what you say in the classroom; things of that
     nature.
 
Q.   What parent concerns do you feel particularly influenced by?
 
A.   Well, things relative to certain aspects among certain
     parents.  What one says or teaches about religion, various
     religious groups, is an issue.  There is a certain
     sensitivity to controversial social issues like abortion.
     Obviously, sex education one always has concerns there, and
     in my own teaching of history, it is usually relative to the
     religious question.  What is taught, what is not taught.
     Things like that.
 
Q.   Influenced by a professional organization?
 
A.   I belong to several professional organizations and the
     Organization of American Historians, and its stressing that
     geography and history remain in the core of the social
     studies, and be integrated throughout the K-12 curriculum of
     every grade.  I ascribe to that fully and push that very
     strongly here at Crestwood Country Day wherever I can.
 
Q.   I assume you are not part of any teacher's association?
 
A.   Such as NEA, things of that nature?  No.
 
Q.   Influenced by in-service training or continued education?
 
A.   An ASCD conference that I attended just this last March
     about technology and curriculum development in the 21st
     Century gave me an enormous number of ideas about bringing
     CDs into the classroom and _____________ media, that would
     be one.  The second would be the recent publication by the
     American Association of University Women on gender in the
     schools.  That has received a great deal of attention here
     in our curriculum committee, which I also chair.  We have
     studied that since its release; we got it immediately upon
     publication and the committee has read the entire report;
     broken it out among its members, instructed it at various
     division meetings, so we have, that is clearly a direct
     impact here.  Very sensitive to gender ________________.
 
Q.   Who brought that into the school?
 
A.   I did.  It was, obviously we, well Peggy MacIntosh is the
     head of Wellesley's Women's Studies department, and she
     spoke here this Spring, and then the report was released
     about 8 weeks after that, I believe, and upon publication I
     ordered a copy and it came in, and subsequently
     _______________.
 
Q.   Influenced by students?
 
A.   That really happens in some ways almost every day.  One
     learns very quickly who the strong students are; who the
     weak students are; what they respond to; what their learning
     styles -- whether it is visual or auditory, or tactile.  So
     almost day in and day out you are trying to shape your
     teaching to the kids, what works for them to keep them
     motivated, it's really a student-centered classroom in so
     many ways.  I can't think of one clear -- well, actually I
     can think of one.  There is a student who reads far below
     grade level and I discovered in the course of the year that
     part of his problem is simply understanding the question as
     I had written it; that the vocabulary was a little too
     sophisticated for him, so in response to that I kept him
     after class and into his lunch hour for about 20 minutes and
     read the questions to him, and explained and defined words
     in the vocabulary.  And once I did that, his test scores
     improved about 40%, only because he didn't understand what I
     had been asking and he had preped long and hard, and
     _____________ extra help, but yet he was still failing, so
     after we did that, it seemed to work, so it was one incident
     where a student influenced my teaching.
 
Q.   Did you change after that the way you structured your
     questions or for that student?
 
A.   Basically for that student.  The majority of the others had
     no appreciable problem with that, or if they did they began
     to ask "what does this word mean", or something like that.
 
Q.   Influenced by colleagues?
 
A.   Yah.  We do a fair amount of interdisciplinary work here.
     So there is a lot of consultation with the English
     department and my colleague at the junior level who teaches
     that, or _________ papers, but also within the history
     curriculum we go through a sequence of Civilization I,
     Civilization II, so it is incumbent upon me to give
     ___________________ foundation in western thought, ideas and
     culture up to the reformation before I pass them along to
     Mr. Flail, and in return he is obligated to give a solid
     foundation in modern Europe, so that when they come back to
     me for American history, when I make references to say, Nazi
     Germany or the Stalinist period in Russia, then link that to
     American foreign policy, there has to be an element of trust
     that they've been versed in it and I don't have to waste
     time here, so that clearly influences my teaching.
 
Q.   That brings up a thought in mind about students who transfer
     in mid-year, they may not have the same background as your
     students here.  As that every been a problem?
 
A.   Yes.  It certainly makes it difficult when one goes to the
     comprehensive exam at the end of the year, so you have to
     create a new final for them on the one hand.  And in other
     areas, it leaves them with a significant gap because we've
     seen that a lot of schools out there don't teach Greek or
     Roman history very well at all or if at all.  In many cases,
     it's not a required course.  So they will come in through
     here and throughout their careers, in history we keep
     referring to Plato or Aristotle and the assumption is the
     student _______________ you know, so even if the freshman
     level the methodology they read is the same one they use at
     the UofA in their humanities courses.  So they read Plato
     and Socrates, if they read Aristotle's politics, and they
     read Dissidites (?) history of the ________________ war, and
     that keeps coming up over and over, and if they haven't been
     here for that first semester, they're lost.  There's no
     linkage.  We don't get too many who come in mid-year though.
     Very few.  I'd say no more half a dozen in my entire career
     here.  I've had only one this year.
 
Q.   Do students generally stay for all four years?
 
A.   Once they come or you mean, ninth graders entering in?
 
Q.   Yes.
 
A.   I would say fully 75% of them probably do, but that is only
     a hunch.  I don't know.
 
Q.   Describe creative attempt made that was thwarted?
 
A.   In the area of off-campus trips and things like that, there
     use to be a great emphasis on travel.  For example, one year
     people went to Italy for a soccer tournament or the French
     class went to Quebec to view the French culture museum,
     things like that.  Other times there were scuba diving trips
     to Hawaii.  We _____________________ to Diego.  But the
     question of liability reared its ugly head about five or six
     years ago to the point that we rarely take ski trips, we
     rarely take off-campus trips that are any distance, cost or
     that, so that has been one that has been rather bitter for a
     lot of people here.
 
Q.   Describe a failed attempt to influence you?
 
A.   I've resisted some attempts to perhaps change my own
     teaching style.  In many ways I'm a traditionalist and my
     own educational philosophy and I believe very strongly in
     the western tradition of classes, western heritage, and I'm
     very suspicious and in some cases hostile to the trends
     toward multiculturalism that I see in undermining that
     common thread, the heritage that should bind this country,
     _____________ the growth of this country.  So, new wave
     trends for changing that curriculum to be so overly
     sensitive to every interest group out there, I resist very
     bitterly and strongly and changing my teaching style to the
     point where the teacher is no longer a font of knowledge to
     the direction and to where the student   assumes what I
     think is a disproportionate share of their own education, I
     don't agree with it.  I resist and I
     do it either overtly, by speaking out,
     expressing it or if 
     

Q.   What does bureaucratic constraint mean?
 
A.   It raises immediate _____________ images in my mind.  I hate
     bureaucracy, I loathe them.  The more convoluted they are,
     the more ______________________.  I love a streamlined type
     minuscule bureaucracy with channels of authority are very
     clear and understood and there are ___________ layers of
     that bureaucracy.  To me it inhibits teaching, it delays
     change when it needs to be made and it certainly is not cost
     effective.
 
Q.   You feel that describes the school -- that there is less
     bureaucracy, or it does not exist bureaucracy?
 
A.   We're top heavy at this school.  There are too many finals;
     too many positions of authority _____________________.
 
Q.   Do you think public schools could ever be like a private
     school, all the talk about school choice, open enrollment?
 
A.   Only in a platonic or idealistic sense, certainly it could
     but I think it would require radical surgery and I don't
     think it's going to happen in my lifetime, given the
     entrenched power of the school boards, of the
     superintendents of schools and the teacher's union, the
     teacher's associations.  And frankly a bias toward the
     present schools out there, as white elitist, things like
     that.  There is certainly a core of truth to that, but the
     point is that all the proposals of Symington's and the State
     of (state name), I don't perceive this as happening.
     _____________________ but I don't see it happening.  Too
     many vested interests out there.
 
Q.   Do you think if there were open enrollment, total school
     choice, vouchers, what would happen to this school?  Would
     it begin to look like a public school?
 
A.   God, I shudder to think it would.  I would hope not.  It
     depends, I mean it's too hypothetical, I mean it depends on
     what the positions there are at Crestwood Country Day.  Do we
     have to teach (state name) history; do all of our teachers have
     to be certified by the State of (state name).  If they put those
     restrictions, I can't see Crestwood Country Day getting
     involved in it.  If its a complete open enrollment where we
     don't have to change our policy standards or curriculum and
     we can take kids with a public voucher and welcome them here
     to expand our basically our ethnic makeup, that would be
     wonderful.  I would be all for that.  I would love to see
     talented Hispanics, Blacks and Native Americans come into
     this school; I'm tired of this lily-white environment; I
     would love to have a truly multicultural, but a merit
     ability, not tokenism.
 
Q.   Rank the following activities:
 
A.   This is actually very difficult because A & B -- but I guess
     on the whole, I would say:  1=A, 2=B, 3=C, 4=D.
 
Q.   Survey: Is there anything I left out?
                 

 
Q.   Is it difficult to get a job in a private school?
 
A.   Well it depends on quite a few variables, what one teaches.
     Certainly easier to get a job teaching physics, and calculas
     in an independent school than it is to teach history,
     English or a foreign language, for that matter.  It depends
     entirely on your credentials, what your degrees are, what
     your degrees are, how long you've taught, where you're
     willing to relocate, whether you'll take a boarding school
     or not.  There is an enormous number of variables out there,
     but I ______________ the job market is pretty tight.  How we
     teach, what we teach, whether we offer advanced placement
     courses, what emphasis they put on SATs in a given year,
     what are the changing trends in college admissions, so yes
     we are very attuned to those trends out there.  The Advanced
     Placement College Courses offered by the college board.  Are
     you familiar with the _____________?
 
Q.   Somewhat, but I would think that would totally influence
     your curriculum.
 
A.   Well, it does and it doesn't.  Philosophically we have some
     concerns about the ATs.  They are varying quality within the
     discipline so that the American history may be a first rate
     tough exam, ______________________ another discipline.
     Quality work, _______________ or whatever.  But we do feel
     obligated to offer strong advanced placement courses, and
     one reason for that is that we don't give inflated credit
     for honors courses here, we don't have an honors or college
     track like Arcadia for example, so that a kid can come out
     of there with a 4.6 GPA on a 4.0 scale.  But we don't
     inflate that, so our kids, the best they come out is a 4.0.
 
Q.   Does that hurt the kids, competing for slots?
 
A.   Well, it doesn't hurt us too much because with 
     XXX, the college counselor here, he's been here 12-15
     years, a very long time, because he has a great reputation
     with the colleges and the colleges that come in here for the
     two fall college nights that are for all the valley, they
     make it a point to come to Crestwood Country Day.  In that
     time period, a weekend, 50-60 colleges here, just for our
     kids, that they don't go into the other schools.  They come
     for the college night and then they see our kids.
 
     They interview them or just host ____________, you can meet
     with their reps.  Many of them are their admissions
     directors from small liberal arts colleges or their local
     Yale representative or Harvard or Wellesley, or whatever,
     the one who does all their interviews in the valley, so we
     have built that link that to me is one of the best features
     of Crestwood Country Day, our strongest in dealing with the
     parents and the kids.  They get college placement here
     unlike, I think, any where in the valley.  I don't think
     there is a school that touches us; WWW, UUU, public
     can't because you have this poor counselor working with 70-
     100 kids.  Some of whom they don't even know.
 
Q.   So it is almost like XXX, he's marketing the school
     to all these colleges.
 
A.   All these colleges, you bet and given that --
 
Q.   And recruits them, more or less to come in.
 
A.   Sure, and he has been dealing with some of the same men and
     women for 10-15 years.  And he goes to all the major
     conferences and college admissions in the country
     _____________ so he has a lot of networks out there, links,
     and the ability to get on the phone and call them
     personally, Jane Smith at Stanford, saying "Jane, I know
     this candidate looks marginal by your standards but let me
     assure you ....." and we get kids off waiting lists like
     that, or into schools that the standards are here, their
     scores are here, but we can say, "Listen, she has a 3.02
     here at Crestwood Country day, but look at what she took, and
     her work ethics that would be a 3.08 or 4.0, or whatever"
     and it would, and place her phenomenally well accordingly.
     So we are talking first pick of the college curriculum,
     admissions process.