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Learning By Doing, Half a Century of Winterim
Learning By Doing
Half a Century of Winterim
by Joe Sheppard
Like other schools in the early 1970s, Lawrence Academy turned itself inside out in a frenzied effort to hurry up and make learning relevant to a generation of discontented, rebellious young people who wanted nothing to do with the values, habits, and morals — or education — of their parents’ generation. New headmaster Ben Williams brought in some new faculty specifically to shake things up and start building a new Lawrence Academy on the foundations of the school that had passed into history with the retirement of Arthur Ferguson in 1969.
Term-length elective courses, hitherto unheard of, were an early step in spicing up the curriculum. Catchy titles such as “No, But I Read the Book,” “Find That Fairy,” and “Revolution” were designed to attract wary students who demanded anything but more of the same. Independent studies sprouted up like mushrooms after a spring rain. By 1973, seniors’ transcripts required two pages because of all the electives and their fancy names.
The curricular bling toned down after a few years, with simple, descriptive course titles replacing the fairies and the revolutionaries, but the shape of a Lawrence Academy education was forever changed, largely due to one of Ben Williams’ new teachers: Vincent P. (“Vin” — never “Vince!”) Skinner, hired in 1971 to teach English — and to reform the curriculum. As Mr. Williams put it in a recent conversation, “I was impressed by his résumé. And I thought John Curran, a strong advocate of change, needed a kindred spirit.”
Though he spent only four years at LA, Skinner left an indelible imprint on the school as the founder of both Lawrence II (later renamed the IIP) and, especially, Winterim, the 50th anniversary of which we are celebrating this year.
Winterim was designed to be “experiential” in nature — students would learn by doing and reflecting on what they had done, as opposed to learning by rote — and, therefore, appealing to a generation that demanded something new and different. The term “experiential learning” was just coming into common use in the 1970s, but the concept is ancient: Around 350 B.C., Aristotle wrote, “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”
Both the winter term and the spring vacation were shortened by a week to make room for Winterim. From a teacher’s point of view, it was a blessing: The winter trimester was interminably long, and by the time March rolled around, everyone was exhausted. The kids, of course, were seduced by the siren call of the long, lazy, three-week vacation that was so close, yet so far away. Add in the student restlessness and discontent of the early 1970s, and it’s easy to see that something had to change.
Winterim promised something new: a replacement for listening and repeating, absorbing and regurgitating — for two weeks of the school year, at least. It would provide, as the 1975 course booklet put it:
Winterim cover illustration, 1972
“… a highly intensive term designed to provide students, faculty, parents, and interested people from the larger community of Lawrence with experiences and learnings not usually found in an academic secondary school curriculum. Winterim is an occasion for students, faculty, and parents to join a partnership in learning and teaching which is primarily oriented towards the development of academic skills in the utilization of resources which have not been fully exploited.”
Lawrence was not the only school to embrace experiential learning. New programs appeared in many school catalogues. However, none has survived — except for Winterim. How has it remained a vital part of a Lawrence Academy education when similar programs at other schools died after a year or two? Retired English teacher and former Winterim Director David Smith ’65 offers an explanation:
“The reason Winterim lasted and grew into one of LA’s signature programs while similar efforts at other schools were soon abandoned is that directors over the years insisted that courses should be genuine learning experiences. Courses that were judged to be mere busy work or disguised vacations were quickly eliminated … The engine behind Winterim’s success is faculty enthusiasm. Free teachers to pursue their own genuine interests, help them create programs to share their enthusiasm in constructive experiences for students, and excitement is largely the result.”
-Aristotle
Keeping the emphasis on learning rather than on merely experiencing, especially in the off-campus trips, has been a challenge for both directors and faculty course leaders since the beginning. Early descriptions of travel courses read like glossy tour brochures: “Explore the bens and glens of Scotland!” “An eight-day sailing experience!” (In fairness, the exclamation points are added, and the course descriptions do describe in detail what would be studied and supposedly learned.) Guidelines were fairly loose, and a “vacation mentality,” to use the phrase coined by retired Assistant Head Denny Blodget, often prevailed.
Mr. Blodget took over as director of Winterim around 1990. “I thought Winterim should be more educational, more rigorous; courses should involve more learning. While some of the courses provided great learning, many did not,” he recalled. Accordingly, he and the Winterim committee instituted a number of changes in the early 1990s:
“The Winterim Committee created new course categories (types of courses offered — personal challenge, cultural immersion, etc.) and new criteria that we would use to accept or reject course proposals. For example, we eliminated tourist sorts of courses — moving from town to town or country to country, visiting attractions and merely looking at things — sightseeing. Trips required immersion in a place and culture, using home stays with people who lived there rather than putting students in hotels. The choice of place would need to be essential to the learning goals of the course (as opposed to “I’d like to visit Rome. What rationalization can I come up with?”). We required courses to have a clear, challenging, specific focus that would engage students and dominate the
two weeks. We encouraged courses that combined an academic focus with experience: archaeological digs, scientific field work, language learning, journalism. We asked that courses be designed to enhance the likelihood that students would learn specific skills and/or develop new perspectives on themselves and the world. And we emphasized the importance of reflection in order for the students to find personal meaning in their pursuits — time for journal writing and group discussion.”
Since 1994, every course description in the Winterim booklet has addressed three required questions: “What will I do in this course?” “What will I learn in this course?” and “Who will lead this course?” In addition, many descriptions start with a specific advisory: “Students must be competent swimmers” or “Students must have a basic knowledge of musical notation.” The big trips are still offered — though they are fewer than a few years ago, for many reasons — but their focus must be specific. A recent offering, Underwater Discovery, required participants to pass a swimming test, and the course description told them that they would “undergo PADO SCUBA training, with the opportunity to earn open-water SCUBA diver certification. Basic instruction includes a three-part training course: confined-water skills, written work, and open-water checkout dives.” While the travel trips have always been glamorous and coveted, it is the variety of on-campus offerings that reflects the amazing creativity of the LA faculty. As David Smith suggested, “freeing the teachers to create courses based in their own personal interests and passions” has always resulted in ‘constructive experiences’ and ‘excitement.’ Longstanding on-campus courses such as Chess Immersion and Quilting have stemmed from teachers’ hobbies.
Often, too, faculty have ventured outside their own comfort zones to offer courses in which they themselves are learners as well as teachers. In 1974, veteran language teacher Roy Davis offered a course in creating illuminated manuscripts; more recently, ESL teacher Andrew Brescia sponsored Game of Drones, a course “using flight simulator software to explore various drone applications while assembling and flying lightweight drones.” The list is endless: radio electronics, a study of Catholicism, restoring parlor organs, songwriting, building your own kayak, pottery-making, etc.
From the beginning of Winterim, there have also been various independent study and community service options, true to the spirit of experiential learning. An important course for many years was The Professionals, a long-running program that allowed a student to work for two weeks with a professional in almost any field. The sponsor had to ensure that the student would be actually participating in his or her job, not merely standing by and watching. For some participants, “doing a Professional” influenced their choice of college major and even their career path.
Many alumni look back on their Winterim experiences as having done just that, in one way or another. And back on campus, the program’s influence on the curriculum has been deliberate and ongoing as well. As John Curran says,
“We anticipated from the beginning that Winterim would influence the regular curriculum and teaching, and that it would have an impact on faculty-student relationships as well.”
While Winterim remains, in the words of current Winterim Director Tony Hawgood, “by far our biggest commitment to experiential education,” he adds,
“We work to make much of our curriculum experiential (doing the work of a scientist, rather than just learning the facts of science, for example).” Anyone who has listened to the rantings of Fidel Castro in Mr. Curran’s Nukes and Commies course or who has blown things up on the Quad in Jim Serach’s science classes has Vin Skinner and Winterim to thank for those unforgettable moments.
“The interesting thing is that Winterim, so clearly tied to the 1970s, has survived all the changes and swings in education over the following 50 years,” notes Mr. Curran. “How this happened, along with the changes and adaptations we have made, is, I think, the real story of Winterim.”
