Dr. John Paul Aldrup-MacDonald

Laurel Faculty Spotlight

Dr. John Paul Aldrup-MacDonald, World Languages Department Chair

Dr. John Paul Aldrup-MacDonald joined Laurel for the 2020-2021 school year as a Latin teacher and took on the role of World Languages Department Chair starting in the 2021-2022 school year. He oversees languages across all divisions from Kindergarten to Grade 12. This includes French and Spanish in Grades K-12, Latin in Grades 7-12, and Chinese in Grades 9-12.* He has more than 15 years of teaching experience but disliked language learning until late in high school when a teacher gifted him a copy of Pablo Neruda’s sonnets. He said “I realized, upon trying to work through them, that language was the key to a wish I had wished since I was a young child: that other worlds existed, and that there was some magic through which I could visit them. I discovered that there are as many worlds as there are cultures, and that language is the magic of traveling through them. It is no accident that most magic is done through language because language IS magic!”

It is no accident that most magic is done through language because language IS magic!

Dr. John Paul Aldrup-MacDonald, World Languages Department Chair

When it comes to applying LCRG research to language learning, Dr. Aldrup-MacDonald highlighted his colleague Karl Frerichs, who joined Laurel part-time this year to teach Latin. “Mr. Frerichs recognized early on in the year that students crave agency and that they need the right conditions in which they can achieve the growth mindset that we know is central to learning. To foster this in a class with a lot of anxious test takers, he invented what he calls a ‘leave-behind’: a quiz that the individual student can either leave behind for a grade or take away at no penalty to their grade. Thus, students get some agency in their assessment and also some responsibility as well, since they have to determine their level of confidence in their mastery.” He went on to say “I think this little classroom procedure dovetails so well with what we know about girls' learning from LCRG that I immediately adopted it in my classes.”

*See "Curricula & Faculty by Grade" for World Languages in Laurel School's K-Grade 2, Grades 3-5, and Grades 6-8; and "Explore our Curriculum" for Grades 9-12.