From the Desk of Academic Dean Martha Griswold
By writing this blog, I hope to accomplish several things. I hope to give those who are looking at Chatham Hall an immediate sense of what goes on in our classrooms -- and those classrooms extend beyond the four walls of any classroom or building. I want to let our students know that the work that they do in their classes is what makes this place tick...and that adults in the community notice and appreciate the excitement that our students bring to our academic program. It is important that people see how we work with girls and how classes are framed to best prepare girls for the futures to which they aspire. I also wish to keep alumnae in touch with Chatham Hall, to let them have fun hearing about former teachers and classes. Enjoy!
The Amazing ___________________ Fill in the Blank with the Best Teacher You've Ever Had
October 21, 2011 at 2:04pm
This is a speech I wrote for Chatham Hall's Fall Convocation on October 15, 2011. I have been asked by some to post it, so here goes. I was seven years old when I began to think that I had ESP. At that time, my older brother was fascinated by the Amazing Kreskin, the only person whom I knew of who had ESP. To those of you here who are too young to know of Kreskin, he was kind of a modern-day Houdini -- cheesy and dramatic. He could read peoples minds, hypnotize, and always find his paycheck hidden somewhere in the audience (or the performance was free). My brother read books about Kreskin, acquired the Kreskins ESP board game, and we even attended a show at Springfield, MAs, Storrowton theater. I knew at the time that I did not want to be like Kreskin, he came across as a little supercilious and kind of nerdy, but I was convinced that I could read minds and predict the future as Kreskin could. This feeling of having ESP persisted until I was about 44 when the head of school where I worked at the time decided, in a truly genius move, to invite the entire faculty to take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a psychological assessment which helps to show how people perceive the world and make decisions, the results of which are used to help determine career paths and other future endeavors. This assessment identifies people as introverted or extroverted, intuitive versus sensing, which identifies how they take in information, thinking or feeling, based on how a person makes decisions, and judging or perceiving, based on how they use their thinking and feeling characteristics. We found out later that we were taking the test because there was some discord between one faculty member and what seemed to be the rest of us. We all sat down at our computers, answered the questions, waited the few moments, and were assigned the four letters that described what kind of people we were. What we learned was earth-shaking for me, as well as professionally meaningful. That, as an INFJ, I fell heavily in to the introverted, intuitive categories, was not a surprise. I have always needed to restore alone, with a good book, after spending time with people and I have always taken great store in my hunches -- because I am frequently right. Because humans tend to think of introverts as being shy, I was much comforted to learn that both are just other ways of being. Shy, introverted people sometimes feel that extroverts are more highly valued than introverts. As an introvert, I sometimes thought that extroverts had things easier than I...everyone loves that person who charges into the room and who gets the party started -- and stays for more than an hour. If you are shy or introverted, you sometimes find yourself wanting to be that person. What I learned next, however, made me value myself more. What shocked me, as I read through the explanation of my INFJ character type, it explained that many INFJs think they have ESP. They do not. What they do have is a super-sensitivity to the thoughts and actions of those around them, and a great ability to predict outcomes based on what they know about people. At once I felt validated and a little disappointed -- visions of the Amazing Griswold board game selling used for $1.99 on eBay went right out the window, but this seemed to be a reasonable explanation of what I had been feeling for most of my life. I also felt a sense of undeserved pride because it turns out that INFJs are a rare commodity, making up only 1-3% of the population. What I learned about teachers, was most astounding. The person who was leading us through this exercise and its debriefing, told us that everything says that extroverts would make the best teachers, but that, strangely, most teachers are introverts...and many are INFJs...that rare commodity. At my former school, this was driven home by the scattergram we did of our typologies...33 people in the lower left quadrant of the scattergram...and, way, way up in the diametrically opposed corner, was the dot representing Barney*, the colleague who drove us all crazy. A plethora of INFJs. So basically, anytime you are in a room full of teachers, there is a very good chance you are in a room full of know it alls -- people who think they can read peoples minds, have a significant depth of knowledge, and who know whats best because of the strength of their intuition. And those are the people who are teaching the students of Chatham Hall. So what do all those INFJ teachers provide their students? They do tend to read a lot. Settling down with a good book, after a long day of working with people is one of the best ways for them to refresh -- a benefit of which is their keeping current with their disciplines...broadening and, most importantly to them, deepening their knowledge. Teachers tend to be up on what is going on in the world...especially at as global a school as Chatham Hall. INFJs also seem to intuitively know what will work for certain kinds of students. They adapt, they try different ways of presenting material, and they know the best ways to push their students to move beyond their comfort zones and to achieve. And that is what much of Chatham Halls new strategic plan is about -- student achievement. As we move into the second year of our new strategic plan, academics and the technology to support that program are two of the primary foci. Over the summer, we made great strides in updating technology. All teachers have received or will receive shortly a new computer in order to keep up with those skills that students will need as they move on. The computers are put to good use every day as many teachers use Edmodo and Dropbox to communicate with students and create assignments. We are constantly striving to make our teaching more student centered, with students motivation at the root of what we do. One teacher I can think of is having students direct literary discussions based on what they found to be important while reading. This teacher was pleased, at the end of one particular class, to discover that students had brought up just about all of the passages she would have chosen. And this manner of teaching gave students voice, motivation, and power. The chair of the math department spent time last year researching best practices in teaching math and in teaching girls math. Why is this so important? My Ethics students have learned about priming...subconcious influences that guide decision-making, actions, and emotions. Research has shown that girls are primed by having to indicate their gender on math tests such as the SAT. The mere action of having to fill in a bubble letting the College Board know they are female primes them to do worse on math tests. Ouch. The same is not true for boys. The strategic plan asked that Chatham Hall begin to offer non-Western languages -- something which makes good sense based on the world shrinking every day and the simple fact that a good portion of our student body comes from non-Western countries. Why not offer a language that expands the curriculum to other areas of the world. We are in our second year of Chinese instruction; it is so exciting to pass through Holt during E period and hear Spanish, French, and Chinese emanating from three different classrooms. And teacher intuition would predict that some students would learn a language based on characters more readily than another. Not only has Chinese begun to fill the classroom, but we have a teacher from China who freely shares information about her land and culture, as well as her teaching skills. All of those INFJ teachers who need their summers to regroup, spent time either preparing to teach using the iPad or planning how they could incorporate it into a unit or two over the course of this year. This was no short order. For some of the people sitting behind me, this meant getting to know this iPad inside and out. It meant developing new ways of producing work, submitting homework, commenting on that work, and sending it back to students. For others, it meant developing a new textbook (and saving students hundreds of dollars). Many figured out how to best us e-books, how to teach annotation and note-taking. And they continue to learn. Students are using iPads in their photo classes because their teacher spent time investigating the iPads photo-taking and editing abilities. Our Science Department Chair was explaining to a group of people last weekend that he had found an on-line chem textbook that could be altered...adapted, to include exactly the chapters that he wished, and to which videos of long-deceased chemists such as J. J. Morton, who discovered electrons, could be inserted. A member of the audience asked, Isnt that a lot of work? Yes! But what better way to bring some of the chemists who made startling and important discoveries which guide doctors, researchers, and scientists now, into the lives of students learning chemistry today? Yes! It is a lot of work. It is not easy. Teachers live for this kind of thing though...making learning more accessible and real. Time for a sidebar...we all know that people do not go into teaching for the money, but they also do not go into the profession because its easy. Two skills that have remained consistently important as they control so much of how we present ourselves, and indeed, in many cases are that first impression upon which everything depends, are writing and speaking. The importance which Chatham Hall attaches to these skills is evident in their inclusion in the strategic plan. Writing and speaking across the curriculum will be a focus in the years to come. Whatever career paths students choose, they will have written and spoken in English classes, history, foreign languages, science, math, and art, by producing work appropriate to each discipline. Introverts and extroverts alike will use voice to leave Chatham Hall with strong speaking and writing skills. No amount of intuition can predict exactly what our graduates will be doing soon after graduation or 25 years from now. Technology, how we receive information, and how we produce, are changing at such a rapid pace that much of what we do may seem like our best guess, or hunch about what will work best and what will provide students with the skills they will need in order to be successful in their near and distance future endeavors. Could the Amazing Kreskin have predicted way back in 1967, when I was 7 years old, that our students would be using iPads so extensively that some teachers have not made one photocopy this year? That all of their work would be safely stored in dropbox? That students would study the first book printed by Gutenburg in the 1400s in e-book form in order to fulfill their religion requirement now? Could Kreskin, however amazing, have predicted that a boy, 11 in 1967, would have grown to become the Einstein of his generation, and that that boy would have had the impact on education that Steve Jobs had? That having used an iPad, it would seem criminal to go back? I googled Steve Jobs intuition, because in the eyes of many, he took great risk in following his intuition. I was taken to his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address, which in the past few days has been referred to as the Gettysburg Address of our times, and in which Jobs asked graduates to not let the noise of others (those loud extroverts who were supposed to go into teaching) drown out their own inner voice, heart, and intuition. And when he said those words, he was talking about what teachers do every day, and do best -- engage their students and reach them in the most meaningful way possible...drawing on their inner voice and intuition to shape the learning experience for their students, and on their heart...what dedicates them so passionately to their students and their profession. Thank you. *Not real name!
