My First Year Teaching at Cheshire Academy BY D. ROBERT GARDINER
When Ruth and I arrived at Cheshire Academy in September 1960, we moved into our second floor apartment in Horton Hall, where there was no kitchen. Maintenance responded to my call and assured us that they would convert the hallway leading to our living room into a kitchenette. With that taken care of, I headed to my first faculty meeting on the second floor of Bronson Hall, then outfitted as a chapel, where nearly one hundred teachers were gathered. After about 90 minutes learning the rules and the expectations, we broke up and, in a brief department meeting, Morris Sweetkind, longtime English Department Chairman, gave out assignments and a syllabus for each grade. I would be teaching six classes of freshmen going straight through from 8:10 a.m. to 12:50 p.m. six days a week. (There was no recess). I would have 54 students, the maximum since Mr. Sheriff, headmaster, would allow no more than nine students in a class — and most of the classrooms could barely squeeze in that many. Three of us faculty members had the same schedule, though not all had quite as many students.
By the end of the first month, the drill of doing the same thing for six periods every day became very routine. The two chief advantages were I began to know the students as individuals, and I could apply what I learned teaching the early classes to do better with the later ones. But I also realized that the arrangement of the students was very arbitrary and had little to do with academic strengths and learning ability. Talking in the faculty lounge as the second month started, I said to Arthur Maxson, another ninth grade English teacher, “If I could rearrange my students by ability, I could teach different versions of the same material to the different classes. The students would learn better and I would become a much better teacher.” He just nodded. Across the room Mr. Somerville, who scheduled all 550 students by hand, asked “Do you mean that, Mr. Gardiner?” “Definitely.” “Well, if you will give me a list of your students arranged by ability, I’ll see what I can do.” “But what about the other classes? Won’t that be disruptive?” “Oh, Mr. Sheriff thinks English comes first. Just tell that to anyone who asks.” That was Wednesday; the next day I brought him the list I had made up after struggling with a couple uncertainties. He thanked me and took the list. Monday morning, Mr. Somerville came to my classroom before first period, pleased as he handed me the new schedule for my students. He apologized that he could not fit two students in because they had conflicts that could not be resolved. By the end of the
I began learning how to recognize individual differences in learning styles, in curiosity, and in the kinds of challenges, encouragement, and support to which different students and different classes responded.
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