4 minute read
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.”
Head of School Arthur Sheriff
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 second period three math teachers came to me and asked, “What the hell is going on?” To each of them I replied, “Mr. Somerville told me Mr. Sheriff says ‘English comes first,’” and they walked away.
That day I spent the first 10 minutes of each class explaining to my students why the change was in their best interest because the intent was to help each of them learn better. The rest of the period we put the whole idea into practice. Almost everyone liked being treated as individuals, and their learning and my teaching improved month by month, even week by week. 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.
For the rest of my 44 years at Cheshire Academy, listening to each student, being aware of unexpressed individual needs and potential, and finding the various responses, challenges, and supports to accept and encourage each student was at the core of our growth as learners together.
About 40 years later, while researching the school’s history, I found a statement Mr. Sheriff had written in 1937 when the school was rechartered as Cheshire Academy. These sentences leapt out at me.
Boarding students and faculty living in the upstairs floor of Horton Hall in 1961.
“It is not enough that a teacher be an expert in biology or mathematics or an accomplished drill master. He should be an expert in [adolescents] as well…and such expertise demands character and personality and instinctive sympathy as well as knowledge. …If there is properly an art of education, it must involve the consideration of what is attainable with the material at hand, and the effort, by a method as much creative as scientific, to realize this ideal in its highest form. Thus each student may remain a true individual rather than become the representative of a type.”
So back in 1960 I had arrived at Cheshire Academy ready to teach individuals rather than just classes, to fit hand in glove into Mr. Sheriff’s way of teaching and learning. No wonder I had such a satisfying and fulfilling time helping students learn how to become their best selves. How many nights I went home, and talked with Ruth about this or that student’s achievement or struggle, and returned to class the next day a better teacher and learner with her wisdom.
