Milton Magazine, Spring 2004

Milton Magazine Features   

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Understanding adolescence: a fundamental shift Cathleen Everett

     Reflections of Milton students on the growth of identity, cognition and judgment Cathleen Everett

    When teenagers make mistakes Heather Sullivan

    All questions are fair

     Holden Caulfield is still a friend Tarim Chung

      

‘Managing’ the college admissions process Rod Skinner ’72

 :     ‘’  Teaching artistic expression to incarcerated youth Chris Henrikson ’85

   ’ His work is as trite and as profound as helping students

      

Matt Trieschman ’82 at the gateway of the Kennedy Krieger Institute

   ’,       ’          ’  

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Departments      If you were born in 1990, what is your historical context? Educating teenagers about differences Robin Robertson

   Nurturing values Ed Snow

    As deliberately as Nature

  Winning squash teams

   Power in the decisions we make John M. Sussewell ’67

   News and notes from the campus and beyond

  •    

Cerebral transformation Understanding adolescence: a fundamental shift

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o you believe—as many do—that any important brain development is over by the time a child is 3? Evidence points to a contrary reality, one that helps explain teenagers’ zigzagging pathways to adulthood. Groundbreaking scientific work shows that the human brain dramatically transforms itself over the adolescent years.

Aided and stimulated by current technology that allows them to view the workings of the living brain, neuroscientists around the world have gathered evidence that extensive remodeling and reorganization— over roughly a 10-year period—transitions young people toward what we would call a stable maturity. Barbara Strauch, who chronicles the ongoing scientists’ work in her book Primal Teen, calls the teenage brain “a work in progress, a giant construction project. Millions of connections are being hooked up; millions more are swept away. Neurochemicals wash over the teenage brain giving it a new paint job, a new look, a new chance at life. The teenage brain is raw, vulnerable. It’s a brain that’s still becoming what it will be.”

In her book Ms. Strauch reviews the work of Dr. Jay Giedd, among others, who has been scanning and rescanning the brains of hundreds of children and teenagers over the past 10 years, at the National Institutes of Health. He has documented thickening of the brain’s gray matter (“tiny branches of brain cells bloom madly, a process neuroscientists refer to as overproduction, or exuberance”) in early adolescence, followed ultimately by a dramatic thinning down. During this period of “exuberance,” the brain may be “highly receptive to new information, or primed to acquire new skills, particularly those related to basic survival.” Finding exuberance in the teenage brain was the new development.

According to Ms. Strauch, Dr. Giedd found growth in teenagers’ cerebral cortex (gray matter), including the parietal lobes (associated with logic and spatial reasoning); the temporal lobe (associated with language); and, most importantly, the

frontal lobes (the area that helps us plan ahead, understand consequences, and resist impulses). “The frontal lobes, the very area that helps make teenagers do the right thing, are one of the last areas of the brain to reach a stable, grown-up state, perhaps not reaching full development and refinement until well past age twenty.” All elements of the gray matter— neurons, dendrites, synapses, are active in brain development during adolescence, and the full picture includes neurochemicals coursing through the brain, their receptors, as well as new efficiency in connections between neurons.

Have you found yourself stunned, or incredulous, at teenagers’ impulsive, often dangerous behavior, or their clannish dress—or in contrast, at their precise insights? The restructuring of the teenage brain involves an extensive web of systems, affecting their logic, language, impulses and intuition. It reflects a dynamic interaction in which brain biology, genes and environment are role players. These research advances have fundamentally changed our understanding of what goes on during the adolescent years; we formerly looked to genes and environment for the whole, if insufficient, explanation of the course of development.

A key realization is that the prefrontal cortex—home of the limiting, judging, reasoning functions of the brain—is not yet developed and stable, nor are the connections between that center and the impulse or action center. During adolescence, and the restructuring of the frontal lobes, cognition steadily grows: Teenagers become capable of abstract thinking, complex reasoning, planning, conceptualizing the self and social relationships.

The open-endedness of this process is both ominous and fortuitous. In an interactive dynamic, behavior and experiences shape the shifting structure of the brain and the structure of the brain shapes behavior and experience. Teenagers’ brains, as they remodel, are exposed and vulnerable. At the same time, the desire to take risks and experience new things is developmentally necessary. What they

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choose to do may have profound effects, as may elements in their environment.

There is evidence, for instance, that the effects of alcohol and nicotine, or lack of sleep, on teenage brains can have far more complex and damaging effects than on adult brains. The silver lining is that adults can help stimulate the foresight not yet available to teenagers, or help with the effects of big mistakes, emotional difficulties, or negative patterns, and shift the development of the brain as it reaches for maturity and stability.

Ms. Strauch quotes neuroscientist Deborah Yurgelun-Todd at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, as saying, “Adolescent behavior is a necessary, built-in, and temporary phenomenon,” awe-inspiring in its complexity.

Cultures for all time have recognized, in various ways and with diverse ritual, this developmental transition.

Upperclass students at Milton are quite aware of the journeys they have made thus far. Individually and collectively they verify the touch points Barbara Strauch describes in her book. Many of them welcomed the opportunity to share (on the following pages) the experiences that figured powerfully in shaping the self they now bring to the next phase of their lives.

Cathleen Everett

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Highlights of the Journey: Reflections of Milton students on the growth of identity, cognition and judgment Editor’s note: The following article quotes the Class I and Class II students whose photographs appear here, without attributing comments to specific individuals. Missing from the photographs is Stephanie Shui ’04.

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dults hope to see teenagers exhibit the best elements of adult behavior: predicting consequences, planning for the future, controlling negative impulses, appreciating nuance, understanding one’s self. Recent scientific advances are beginning to explain that development of these cognitive skills depends not only on genetic makeup and environment, but also on biology—the physiological development of the brain. While the specific interactions and the sequencing of events within this network of changes are still the subject of intense research, the truth is that teenagers experience an extensive reorganization of social, emotional and cognitive processes. A number of researchers pinpoint between eighth and eleventh grade as the time for the biggest shift in cognitive growth— advances in the connections between prefrontal lobe and other centers of brain activity.

Older Milton students, invited to talk about their progress over the last several years, agree. They detail changes or

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major refinements in their personalities, and can often point precisely to the time when the big shift occurred. Their views of the world are more complex; they apply a degree of self-awareness, humor and grace to their analyses that they admit was not present several years ago.

Many are struggling with the concept of leadership and guiding younger students; they look back with keen insight and empathy at students who are earlier on the same track. Relationships have been and continue to be critically important, including the groupings and regroupings of friends that occur during high school; but they find that they now view others with more openness and appreciation for difference. They wrestle with expectations—their own, their parents’, their mentors’—acknowledging that they can set priorities now in ways they formerly could not. They can articulate general, long-range plans, plans that reckon with unique talents or inclinations they have recognized within themselves. While they note having outgrown certain dependencies and can articulate goals for the future, they are savvy about the abiding questions and challenges they confront as new members of the adult world.

’  “As a senior you finally come in to your own—it’s a relief. As a senior, you are going to your own drumbeat; you’re not worried about stuff like where you fit in.

“During sophomore year I hardened up. I let things slide that shouldn’t bother me, and learned that it’s better to pick your battles. Going away [to a Milton semester-long program] helped, too. I’m stronger and more confident now; I developed self-reliance. I know how to think things through. Right now Milton seems to have been the right decision, but I do have a mix of hurts, anger and regrets.”

“I can see it [brain changes] happening. In Class IV, kids are trying to be someone they’re not, and it’s awkward. By the time they’re seniors, they’ve become a version of the person they were pretending to be.

In my own case, my core personality traits are the same; I can identify with who I was, or see the roots, but parts of me are different. I’ve always been opinionated, for example, but now, even when something seems so obviously black or white, I

Anthony (Buddy) Calitri ’05

Sophie Suberman ’04

Omar Longus ’04

know that issues are more complicated.

As a freshman, I may have expressed my opinions through abstract statements, but those statements were far more absolute than they would be now.

demic identity. When I saw how Milton kids lead their lives—their drive for success, for straight As—I mellowed out. I’m motivated, but I pay attention to what’s important for the long run. You have to decide your own path. I’ve realized more of who I am at Milton because I’m forced to think about it. My identity is set: I want to be a person who is intellectual, athletic and sociable—in the sense that you reach out to people, and people respond to who you are.

place where you can be who you are made me see that society isn’t necessarily so horrible.”

“I think the shift happens between sophomore and junior year. I can see around me that kids in my class have a new maturity.

They see distinctions and nuances. Thesis statements for essays, for example, don’t have to argue for a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ The change is an intellectual thing and an emotional shift, too. We can see things more rationally now, even the points of view and the beliefs we don’t agree with.

The change affects your relationships. In Class IV you’re thinking in terms of social cliques. When you’re working hard to understand yourself, it’s too hard to grasp another’s reality. Now I can separate from myself and understand another person.

Seeing subtleties starts changing your worldviews; you can not justify your own or others’ actions in absolute terms anymore.

“You do need to see both sides of an issue, but you also have to find a balance. You need to understand enough about it in order to make a choice.”

Were you always this reflective? “No, I got reflective at Milton. I sit and think. But Milton students are practically preprofessional. They’re too focused on their aca-

“Earlier, I would judge people more quickly and put them in categories. Now I know I need to get to know people. Some people just have different goals. I’ve met some people who are very nice, but a couple of years ago I would have misjudged them; and others, who should have been friends because we have things in common like football and music, but we don’t click. Friendships are about deeper things, not just whether we have similar likes and dislikes.”

“I like to hang out, and have always hung out with kids society shuns. I step back and evaluate: ‘This kid’s being made fun of.’ Maybe it’s naïve, that some teenager always reacts when a kid may be made to feel badly, but that’s what I care about.

“Milton has shown me an environment, though, where people can be comfortable with who they are. Seeing that there’s a

“When you see younger kids—say seventh grade through ninth grade—you want to ask, ‘Did you lose yourself?’ They are saying ‘that’s me’ and I want to say to them, ‘that’s not you.’ They even sound lost. But they get there. Right now I question myself all the time, to make sure I stay in touch with who I am.

“My parents’ expectations are very clear.

Their expectations are for me to set my own expectations, to take responsibility.

We agree on that goal; I have to find the steps. If I fall five times on the way, that’s okay, as long as I get up. I have a lot going on: I’m an athlete, I’m involved in my community, and I commute more than an hour every day. My focus is on managing my schoolwork.”

“When you are 13 or 14 you have no idea what’s going to happen to you in the next few years. Imagining yourself as an adult, you think only about career choices.

When I was younger, my thinking was more linear: I thought of going from high school to college to a job to a promotion.

Now I’ve learned that there other things that are important, besides the commitment to school and classes—having a conversation about what is happening in the 5 Milton Magazine

Emily Tsanotelis ’04

Fred Lien ’04

Dina Guzovsky ’04

world, for instance. We know more people because of the Internet, etc., but we’re less connected to each other. So having an important conversation with someone makes me think, ‘I’m going to be late for where I’m supposed to be, but this is something I’ll take with me.’ It’s difficult to evaluate priorities correctly. And even as an adult, to assume that my own logic and point of view was reliably right would be arrogant. It’s important to know all the perspectives. Last year this happened, that I realized that. If I’m arguing with you, even a point where what’s right seems

obvious, you may convince me if your evidence is good. Others have their beliefs, and their beliefs are based on something.

It’s so hard to say what’s right sometimes.”

year: Things just clicked in. I made different and better connections with other students, and had a new understanding about differences among people. My selfconfidence grew, so that I said to myself, ‘Why don’t I just go for it?’ I joined things and ran for office and kept growing from that point.”

“As a freshman, I found Milton so different from my old school that even though I had never thought of myself as quiet, or shy, I was, here. It didn’t help that a program before school started connected me with a group of kids that became my only real group of friends. That meant I didn’t have to get to know anyone else. But the greatest change happened in sophomore

   Growing up has never been simple.

Many teenagers at Milton encounter daunting cultural or socioeconomic differences; others experience the disorientation of geographical change. Typical challenges include the constant effort to connect with others, the pain of disciplinary mistakes, the specter of illness or disability, the enduring burden of expectations: the School’s, their parents’, their own. Adolescents’ experiences, according to many neuroscientists, have fundamental shaping power during this “exuberant” period of brain restructuring.

Milton seniors’ comments below outline what needs they feel along the road, what motivates them, what adults or friends do that help or hinder.

In 14 extensive interviews, certain themes were nearly unanimous.

Teenagers hunger for respect and spot it (or its absence) instantly. They ask to be seen at once as an adult (a peer) and a child. Being seen by a trusted adult as a

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Laurel Pantin ’04

person with “potential” (their word) is powerfully motivating. They acknowledge and appreciate patient listeners, people who share themselves, and people who empathize well enough to know inherently what teenagers need— expressed or not. People who care enough to hold them to high expectations—or help them erase personal boundaries—earn praise, along with people who help them toe the line without judging them or nagging. Friendships, places, events and opportunities outside of class serve crucial needs.

 

Hunter Stone ’04

Beatriz Mogollan ’04

“I wrote an essay about how you have to put yourself together for increased physical presence—like birds or animals get puffed up? If you’re rich, money does that for you. Rich kids don’t need to do this.”

“People especially important to me have been supportive, accessible, and they’ve listened. My dorm parent talked with me one time for four straight hours. He said he didn’t want to quit until we were on the same page.”

“I think if kids sense an adult is in their corner, they’re receptive and responsive.

My dorm head, for instance, is someone who has a way of checking up on me— moving me to get things done without nagging. He’s kept me on the ball; he’s the first one to come to me if he thinks I’m having a problem.”

“My coach reminds me of people I know at home: I’m not intimidated by talking in my face—he’s direct and straightforward. I am more comfortable if you show me you’re confident. If you’re not confident, I worry about you as a person.”

“There are such extraordinary friendships in the dorms—with students and with faculty. The support there is tangible. Dorm life slows you down, centers you. It’s easier to be vulnerable in the dorm (and you need a place where you can be vulnerable); everyone is vulnerable there.”

“The way adults communicate sends messages about respect. The ‘we need to move on’ theory doesn’t respect me as a student leader. I was so disappointed with that.”

“I listen to people’s stories; it’s through their stories that we really learn about them. Milton at its best is kids’ willingness to share themselves with others. They extend themselves; I appreciate that.”

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“This teacher showed me what I could do.

He gave me the tools. He made every kid feel special—that they had great potential.

He helped you learn how to express yourself. He has a gift, and he saw that I have that gift, too—of reaching reticent, vulnerable kids. He allowed me to use that gift in class. He knows what each person in the class has to offer. He lets you know that your voice matters, that he respects you.”

Scott Chaloff ’04

“When I was a freshman and adjusting to being at boarding school far away and to whole new academic standards, my English teacher saw something in me; I responded to that. It was the seniors, though, who were what I aspired to be.

They would sneak down to talk to me at night after lights out, they were inclusive, they wanted to be friends with ‘the little guy’—and these guys were varsity athletes, and performers, and musicians and writers. Now the younger kids are looking up to us.

“The people I really learned from were the guys I worked with during the summer.

They were a maintenance crew—I didn’t let on that I was a prep school guy—but working with them every day, we became great friends. I learned so much about respect this way.”

“I’m really so self-absorbed. We’re all so entitled. We think we’re doing a good thing when we’re doing our homework.

That’s for yourself.”

“My experiences in the last few years helped erase boundaries that existed at home: like between being an athlete and being serious about art.”

 “I love to play with my teammates. It was always hard work; we never gave up; we 8 Milton Magazine

Regina Pritchett ’04

depended on each other and communicated in special ways with one another. It was my favorite place to be a leader. I respected them and they looked up to me.”

“I love the outdoor program stuff because the activities are challenging, but you go at your own pace. It’s a totally different way to relate to adults: they’re older, they’re the experts, but there’s no reason to be formal, and we have to trust each other.”

“I’ve gotten interested in photography: through photography you develop your eye for life. It’s kind of a metaphor for your point of view. You can limit yourself and take a deeper look, you can cut things out, you can bring things in.”

 “My best teachers have looked at me as someone with potential; that gave me confidence. They know what I’ve been trying to say and they help me say it.

They’re offering to teach me something and they’re open to me—they’re even willing to learn something from me.

“My football coach has been important to me: He’s a straightforward guy. We connect because football really matters.

He’s committed, and I am, too. He’s at my back and at my side, all the time.”

(About a teacher) “I was young, and immature, and perhaps expected more from her than was fair. She asked for my help with another student and I gave her that. She said she respected me, but it didn’t feel like she did. Finally, this year I realized I had grown past needing her. It was a relief to know that I didn’t depend on her.”

“You can feel his support, his presence for you, his confidence in you. You know he’ll be there for you; he’s loving of everyone. I can talk with him about my feelings and worries, and he gives great advice.”

“She was probably the reason I stayed around, freshman year. She was supportive but tough, old-fashioned, you could count on her. She was hard on you, but I needed that and I could tell it was because she cared about me.”

“The person who mattered most to me had a way of making himself seem not superior, but a friend. He was able to help people when they didn’t really even say they needed help. He had a perception of what we were going through (that is, growing up) and didn’t lose sight of what was happy in our lives.

“I respond to people who have a childish spark, who remember that they were once young, and that it’s necessary for us to have fun.”

“The person who affected me the most was a teacher and a friend. I felt rewarded by him, for the way I thought, or read. I felt empowered.”

Parents have figured greatly as sounding boards, and as reliable advocates. Their expectations, however, are often a key tension and source of stress for teenagers.

Knowing more about who you are, and what you hope to find in the next stage of education and life, means you now may need to move parents from a position they’ve held throughout high school, or maybe longer. As for parents’ personalities, don’t doubt for a minute that teenagers have analyzed parents’ traits.

“I see this in my father and that in my mother,” they often say, and “as an adult I’d like this combination of attributes— and I’ll leave these other aspects of my parents behind.”

Ross Reilly ’04

Sarah Wooten ’04

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time, a brain that is transforming itself so significantly is exceptionally open and vulnerable, hence parents’ desire to control teenagers’ exposure and experiences.

The tension is ancient. Seniors at Milton have typically reached the point of frontal lobe development that enables them to articulate the “big picture,” refined concepts of their parents’ roles and their values.

“They were driving the car and I was in the back seat; now I’m driving.”

That teenagers count on their parents is no surprise. However, during this period when impulse control is less than reliable and consequential thinking is only just coming within reach, parents typically hope for more impact on teenagers’ lives than teenagers allow. Brain development supports survival skills at this time: the need to establish independence, to separate, to seek out the new. At the same

Milton students see parents as part of their journey. They witness changes in their parents as they do in themselves.

“I got closer to my parents when I left.

Maybe now that I’m older there are more things for us to talk about, or maybe not seeing them as much makes me appreciate them more. This year, things are different.

They are more open to my doing what I want to do. They realize that I am my own person.”

“My parents have given me the sense that they will support my decisions. They let me know they believe I’m ready to make decisions. They show their confidence in me and they’re proud of how I’ve changed and grown, and of who I am.”

“My parents expect an Ivy League school, and I don’t know how realistic that is for me. Not only are my chances of getting in questionable, but I’m asking whether it would be the right place for me. You have the sense that you owe it to them—who you are directly results from the situation they put you in—but you do become your own person.”

“My mom is compassionate, organized and bilingual (which I want to be). My dad is wise, experienced, a good listener, and a real presence in a room. People want to hear what he has to say. My family has helped me set my own goals.”

“My dad has worked very hard his whole life. He’s proud that I’m at Milton, and he has very high expectations. He wants me

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to know that this is a great opportunity and it’s my responsibility to make the absolute most of it.”

“My parents don’t beat around the bush.

They make their expectations clear, and I don’t call a whole lot of shots.”

“My dad (a doctor) is quiet and reserved; has the immigrant work ethic. He has the sense that by doing well in school, by trying your best and working hard, you can get what you want. He both pushes me and helps me. I work like he does, and I’m a perfectionist. I want to carry on his values, but not the way that he does. I want more balance.”

“I really relied on my parents when I was far away and had lots of challenging transitions. They helped me—almost every day in the beginning—in the struggle to get my feet on the ground; they just wanted

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me to be happy and I could count on them for reliable support. Both my parents work a ton. They’re really involved in their work. That seems like a fuller life to me than using money just to play hard.

They’ve blended together work and family and balanced them.”

    Speaking of abstract concepts, what about dreams for the future? The cognitive development that occurs during adolescence has been tied to frontal lobe changes that appear on brain scans over those years. “The job of the frontal lobe, Dan Keating of Emory University has been quoted in Primal Teen as saying, “is to integrate the social, emotional and intellectual ramifications of things.”

Milton seniors have apparently reached the level of maturity that involves wrestling with concepts of self and socie-

ty. They are thinking far more broadly than their immediate self-interest, the focus of younger teenagers.

To a person, Milton seniors fervently want, as adults, to understand people, connect with people, help people. Does that goal relate to having recently discovered how complex and interesting people are? Does it relate to the teachers they admire, whose skill is in making connections? They hold the tender hope that they will not compromise themselves.

They speak of balance in their lives.

They are also clear about what adult characteristics have been disappointing to them. In short, they are planning—a newly developed area of expertise.

“When I was 13 or 14, I thought I would go into finance, like my brothers and father. Now I’m not sure. I have dreams, and a deeper appreciation of things I had not fully tried before, and while I know I

“It’s upsetting to me when adults look to fulfill kids’ sense of entitlement, the ‘what more can I do for you’ approach.

“There are many things I’d like to study that I haven’t yet. My dad’s an anthropologist, for example, and I like asking those questions.

“I’ve had to get past the idea that some people at home haven’t had the same opportunities I’ve had. I had trouble with that idea. Milton has certain expectations of me, and I wanted to help set higher expectations for others. Now I know that you have to focus on your own stuff—and then you can get back and help.”

need to be realistic, I may need to do something more unconventional, riskier.

I’ve made some challenging changes, and change, while hard, is important. I’m glad I did; I’m not sure I made the transition all that well, or that it is finished (I’m still finding that out), but after having worked through this much, the rest will be easier: I have the basic steps, now.”

“I don’t like it when adults tell us how to live our lives, that you should act on what you believe, and then they don’t follow through themselves.”

“In the future, I would like to help people. I’m skeptical, though, about whether I’ll be able to follow through. Actually, I would like to be a writer.

“Zadie Smith (young prizewinning British novelist who spoke at Milton) really inspired me. What she said was eloquent.

She knew who she was and what she liked and disliked. She was not afraid of criticism. She was down to earth, honest, humorous, and had an aura—a real presence.”

“What’s important to me is to be able to understand other people, to make real connections, to understand myself and be happy—find emotional and intellectual achievement. When I look back, moments that were most important to me were moments of emotion that were real.

Times I truly regret were not sad times, but times when I had deadened my emotion. I don’t necessarily want to be happy all the time, I want to explore the limits and the ranges of experience: to live a life in which you feel things, for real.”

Cathleen Everett

“The most important thing to me is my integrity. I want to be true to myself, not caught up in those things that are prevalent in society, like greed, mainly. I can’t get caught up in small things.

“I was very disappointed by an adult who didn’t want to get involved in a project for intellectually delayed children, but used a roundabout way of telling me ‘they’ weren’t interested. Why wouldn’t someone want to further a child’s development, or even her own?

“I find it difficult when adults, who have all this time to develop opinions, and to think of all the questions—and all the answers—dominate the discussion. There’s no room to develop other opinions.”

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Accountability and Redemption When teenagers make mistakes

“My experience on this committee has led me to trust students even more than I did before. I trust their good judgment and their goodwill. I’ve also invariably liked the students who’ve appeared before the committee—I’m impressed by the strength and character they show.”

George Fernald, Modern Languages Secretary, Discipline Committee

A

dolescence is an exercise in discovering who we are about to become— trying on styles of dress, political stances or even different types of friendships.

Making a bad choice, following that risky impulse, testing the established limits is part of the territory. The best educators of adolescents, then, are expert at finding the “teachable moment,” of helping teens to realize the implications of their decisionmaking—for better or worse. Enter: the Discipline Committee (DC)—a structured but supportive, fair but firm process that helps a student acknowledge a mistake and begin over.

At Milton, four faculty members and four students sit in a DC. Faculty and students are on a level playing field. They work from an established set of facts (i.e., what happened has already been determined), and their task is well defined. To the facts the committee must add the context of the situation, and determine the right level of accountability for a student who crossed a community boundary. Once the head of school accepts its recommendation, the committee communicates its decision and its rationale to the whole school. The students’ responsibility is real.

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Students who have served on DCs name the experience as one of the most powerful learning experiences they’ve had.

Those who appear before a DC often find it a turning point in their school careers.

They are pained to have disappointed the faculty who believe in them, and surprised at the support they receive in “becoming whole” again.

This system allows the School community to reaffirm its values publicly, again and again. It also helps a student to own his mistake and move past it, finding “redemption” among people who want to see him or her succeed.

An adolescent’s primary job is to differentiate himself or herself from the parents and the adults in his life. Teenagers do that through questioning, pushing back, or through behavior that a family or a community might find problematic. The parents—who must, in turn, differentiate themselves from their children, are meant to respond by holding a child responsible for his or her actions and supporting him or her in moving forward. That is how the dance works, for the best outcome. Adults who refuse to acknowledge the adolescent

transgression, either because they identify, as a parent might, too closely with a child’s perceived success or failure, or because they deny the facts of a particular case, can prevent a student from learning how to behave differently if confronted with a similar situation.

George Fernald (Modern Languages), a charter member of the Discipline Committee, which was instituted in 1972 by former Headmaster David Wicks, serves as secretary of the committee and has sat on nearly a thousand DCs. “I believe in the system,” George says. “It’s not easy to punish students, so you really need to believe in the system. We committee members—four faculty members, four students—have to find a decision that everyone can believe in.”

“It is amazing how the circumstances of people’s lives affect their judgment,” says Chloe Walters-Wallace ’03, a student at Barnard College, who served on the DCs through her role as class councilor. “I learned not to make snap judgments about people. So many things can affect people, and you would never have a clue,”

she says. “It’s not that the DC reveals secrets of students’ lives—because there is the serious confidentiality aspect of the process—but it just reveals humanity.”

“I always assumed that the committee’s recommendations would be divided between faculty and students,” says cohead monitor Tom Myers ’04. “But if there’s a split in opinions, it’s almost always random.”

“The DC experience is a great one, in the sense that you are on equal footing with everyone else in the room,” says class councilor Buddy Calitri ’05, “but it is, after all, about assigning punishment. I’ve changed, because I understand the nature of mistakes now. Don’t look down on people who have made a mistake. I’ve learned to be open-minded, to take a step back, to learn about what happened, which is usually just a situation where someone handled something the wrong way, and see that there’s always more than meets the eye. There is context to take into account, every time.”

“What I liked was meeting people and getting to know them in a whole other way—with equal footing, or on the same

level,” says veteran DC member, Emily Tsanotelis ’04. “Mutual respect is palpable. It’s not like that, among adults and students, in any other setting, at Milton or anywhere else.”

Working toward the truth “We’re only about 650 people [in the Upper School],” says co-head monitor Sophie Suberman ’04. “Even so, it’s hard to get at the truth.”

Sophie hits upon the primary challenge of the process. Identifying the facts of the matter happens before the DC convenes.

It starts with the students involved in an issue, writing up a description of what they did. Getting the facts straight sometimes takes a few days. Dean of Students Lukie Wells calls it “letting the facts unfold.” (David Torcoletti, former dean of students, calls it “focusing on the facts.”)

If you don’t get the facts straight first, then the DC’s job—moving from the facts to the underlying truth of the matter—can’t happen. Was this a violation of trust? Was it a breach of academic integrity? Was it an unsafe choice? The DC uses the facts to answer the question for the community.

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Setting Standards Values translated as limits School rules express the School’s most important behavioral expectations and limits. They function to help teenagers (and adults) learn the impact of individual actions, positive and negative, and the relationship of an individual’s actions and the character of a community. An infraction of either the letter or the spirit of major School rules can lead to penalties up to and including suspension or dismissal. The Student Handbook 2003–2004 (pages 19 through 30) outlines major school rules, other school rules, and computing and network policies and regulations (available in PDF at www.milton.edu).

Abbreviated, the key School rules are: demonstrate complete integrity in all matters; cooperate in dealings with all members of the School community; avoid possession of firearms or other dangerous items, weapons or substances; avoid the use of alcohol or other substances deemed illegal for minors or other members of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; uphold the rights and well-being of others; uphold School policies concerning dormitory visitation; avoid fire hazards, or any behavior that might put other students or School property at risk of fire; uphold School policies when off campus; boarding students may not have or drive cars except when with a parent or faculty member; day students may have cars on campus only to attend School events and return home, or to drive to and from school each day.

Discipline Committee Ordinarily, a student who breaks a major school rule will go to the Discipline Committee, which makes a recommendation of appropriate penalty to the head of school, who will normally follow it—but reserves the right to alter it. The committee does not establish guilt or innocence, but only hears cases of students who admit an offense. A student coming before the committee should expect a penalty of suspension. In some cases, an educational component will also be recommended. The Discipline Committee consists of four faculty members and four

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students, with one of the adults being the dean of students or her designee; and one student being a head monitor.

Dean’s Committee A student who commits a serious offense for which suspension or dismissal is not considered an appropriate response (a determination made by either the dean of students or the academic dean) may appear before the Dean’s Committee. The Dean’s Committee comprises a student leader and faculty members as selected by the dean of students, academic dean or the designated chair of the committee.

Members discuss the offense with the student and decide upon a suitable response.

An appearance before the Dean’s Committee becomes part of a student’s discipline record and is considered by members of the Discipline Committee if the student is subsequently required to appear before that body. A student may appear before the Dean’s Committee twice (though only once for a particular offense) in his/her Milton career. If a student who has appeared before the Dean’s Committee twice commits another offense, he/she must appear before the Discipline Committee.

The Academic Discipline Committee The Academic Discipline Committee has the authority to make recommendations to the head of school or her designee who will normally follow the recommendations, but who reserves the right to alter them.

A student coming before the Academic Discipline Committee should expect a penalty of suspension. In some cases, the committee may recommend the addition of an educational component to the disciplinary response. In such cases, the academic dean or an adult appointed to the task will meet with the student and help him or her design and complete an appropriate project. A second appearance for the same offense or a third appearance for any reason is likely to result in expulsion.

“From the dean’s office perspective, I want students to call their parents before I do,” Lukie says. “Often, they also want to tell their advisors. I usually give parents a call just to say what’s happened and that we’re still collecting the facts. It gives them time to think about how they want to react.

Neither the School nor the parents want to bring a value judgment. We don’t judge students on their mistakes; we judge them on how they deal with their mistakes.”

“I think students [on the committee] are especially important in that they can ask questions that might draw out particular motives or feelings of the person being DC’d,” says Caroline Walsh ’03, a student at Notre Dame University who served on the DCs for three years through her role as a class representative. “Often, the students sitting on the DC have been in similar situations, and this gives the committee a better understanding of the pressures that influence decisions in those scenarios. At the same time, faculty members help the committee to stay focused on the big picture.”

“After we’ve interviewed the student before the committee, we hear from that person’s advisor,” Sophie says. “Then all of the committee members make a personal statement on what we think ought to happen.”

“The DC approach continues to be successful at Milton because it allows students and faculty to converse and work together similar to the way they do inside the classroom,” Caroline says. “Members of the committee show respect for the person being DC’d and for the greater community, which is also affected by certain situations.”

The dean or assistant dean explains DC decisions to the whole School at assemblies, though the proceedings are entirely confidential. “For the sake of the individual,” Caroline says, “these announcements made to the student body prevent the rumor mill that often starts circling after disciplinary incidents. For the entire community, it is helpful to know what rules Milton will not stand to have compromised,” Caroline says.

“While people outside Milton are often mortified when they hear of these public announcements, what they fail to grasp is the twofold benefit of being open about these cases,” Caroline says.

“If a student is suspended,” Lukie says, “we talk about what it’s going to feel like coming back after three days, help them think about ‘re-entering.’ I ask them what it feels like to have done this. It’s important to ask—and not tell them how they should feel.

“We care deeply about students as they move through the process,” Lukie says.

“They are usually so worried about being in trouble, and I think they’re surprised that we hold their hands through the process.”

Working with parents One concern expressed by many present and former committee members is the growing national trend of rejecting the idea that a son or daughter has done something wrong. Instead of realizing the opportunity for a key life lesson and life

experience, more and more parents work to excuse or reframe the situation. They are worried about the effect of a disciplinary action in the high-stakes game of college admissions. This response undermines the system’s efficacy.

“When the pressure [to react in a particular way to an incident] from families increases, our ability to teach decreases,” Lukie says. She says that by trying to take away the consequences or clarify an infraction in their own terms—through a euphemism, for example, parents do their children no favors.

“We ask that parents let us do our job; and we ask them to become part of the process in a positive way,” Lukie says.

“Parents get embarrassed, scared, protective, sometimes combative, then reflective and wise, and sometimes thankful (or not).”

David Torcoletti agrees. “It’s important for parents and the School to become allies. If you want to make a child crazy, have one adult tell him that the truth is ‘x’ and another say that it is ‘y.’

“The best outcome is when a parent says to the dean, ‘Okay, I know what you’re going to do. What do you think we should do?’”

“The committee makes its recommendations on the fullest, most ethical considerations possible,” says George, who finds external pressure to soften penalties or the name of “crimes” worrisome.

Individuals, the community and seeking fairness How far beyond the imperative that a person’s behavior should not cause harm to others should the School’s role go? “Every decision we make is a statement to the community about a particular infraction,” Lukie says. “We communicate institutional values that are in keeping with our mission.”

“I think it’s good that the DCs are announced at assembly. [That it is public] puts a face to the issue. We think about what kind of statement the DC is making to the community.

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“An issue that almost invariably arose at the close of each deliberation was the tension between creating a solution that was tailored to the student’s unique circumstances, versus a ‘punishment’ that would express to the School community the seriousness of the matter,” Caroline says. “It seemed that faculty, and members of the administration in particular, often put more emphasis on how our decisions would affect the student body as a whole.

This struggle really highlighted for me the relationship between the School community and the individuals that comprise it,” Caroline says.

“Besides wanting to be fair and openminded on the committee, I felt it was my duty, and good fortune, to illuminate for other students rules in the Milton handbook which the School was adamant about,” Caroline says. “With the freshmen, sophomores and even Middle School students I met with for peer education, I warned them of ‘risky’ behavior, and let them know the serious consequences that might accompany certain unwise decisions. Sharing my knowledge of the discipline system was always very important to me.”

“Students are mindful of the penalties that have been given for certain infractions in the past,” Lukie says. The School communicates its values in assigning reasonably standard punishment for certain offenses—an academic integrity violation (cheating, plagiarism), for instance, typically results in a five-day suspension, while getting caught with a beer would likely result in a three-day suspension.

“Maybe in a perfect world, there would be no DCs,” says Tom. “But in a way, it’s good. The process strengthens the community and makes a point. Serving on the committee [as a student] is inherently awkward. But I feel like we’re as fair as we can be.”

“Having that ability to empathize outweighs [the awkwardness of punishing a peer],” says former head monitor and current Brown University student Trey

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Hunt ’03. “In the end, you understand that, as a leader, you have to be that much more responsible.”

A teachable moment “I’m impressed by the low rate of recidivism,” George says. “Students seem to get the point,” he says. “The results of the system have been positive in helping people to see themselves more clearly.”

“We use the DC as a teachable moment,” Lukie says. “We talk about how they got to where they were, what they did, the impact of it on others and how they move through it.”

“I saw a dorm-mate of mine really get his act together after being DC’d,” Trey says.

“One of my favorite parts of a DC is when we talk to the student before he goes out. That’s when a lot of the care shows—when one student suggests an idea for how the student can avoid the same situation happening again.”

“First and foremost, this is a teaching process,” Lukie says. “Students almost always think that rules are unfair. This process can help students understand the ‘why’ behind the rules.

“This process can be unbelievably nervewracking for students. But when they realize that the committee is not out to get them, that the adults care a great deal about them—they get a broadened view of adult roles.

“We teach in the classroom, in the dorms, on the playing fields and here, in a conference room, we teach to the mistakes that people make,” Lukie says. “It’s just a continuation of the work we do every day; it’s not separate from it.”

In addition to suspension or expulsion, the committee may recommend counseling, which is protected by confidentiality.

Learning from leadership “Being a member of the committee is a great learning experience for students,” George says. “I’m sure that sometimes the pain [of penalizing peers] is as great as the pain of the student receiving the punishment. It’s hard for students to punish other students, especially because they feel

Motto as Mantra Dare to be true: nothing can need a lie; A fault which needs it most, grows two thereby George Herbert (1593–1633) “Dare to be true,” is Milton’s motto— sometimes its mantra—taken seriously, indeed, contemplatively, by generations of Milton students. In the fall 1998 edition of Milton Magazine, Elise O’Shaughnessy ’76 put it well when she wrote, “‘Dare to be true’ is a fine little exhortation: sturdy, short, imperative…. And I bet I’m not the only Milton graduate who has it dinging away in the back of her head.”

The seriousness with which the School motto is approached correlates closely to the respect that many Miltonians hold for the Discipline Committee (DC) and its work. The committee reports all appearances before it to colleges and universities to which students apply, as evidence of the School’s belief that openness and honesty are of paramount importance.

Typically, integrity violations warrant the heftiest penalties in a DC: dishonesty usually earns a five-day suspension, while drinking alcohol—another serious violation of a major School rule—ordinarily earns a three-day suspension.

In the same edition of Milton Magazine that Elise talked about the Milton imperative, Larry Altman ’54, medical editor for the New York Times, did likewise. “The School blazer I wore more than 40 years ago no longer fits. But the motto on the blazer does, because the words ‘Dare to be true’ are an indelible legacy of a Milton education.”

how much is at stake. Students now also feel more pressure and more stress related to getting into a desirable school [and this may encourage them to violate integrity rules].”

As George surmises, the process for student leaders on the committee can be almost as gut-wrenching as it is for those before the committee—but that discomfort can lead to stronger, more confident leadership.

Tom acknowledges that it can be difficult, as a student, not to take the side of the predominant student view and, while the outcome is public, the often intense deliberations and mitigating circumstances that affect the decision are definitely not public, which can make an outcome tricky to explain. Would he do it over again?

“I would,” Tom says. “It’s cool to see the types of changes you can bring about. If students have power, they can make change.”

Trey says that, of his duties as head monitor, sitting on the DCs was the least attractive part. “But in the end, that was some of the work I felt most proud of,” he says. “It’s empowering to see students have their voice in these decisions, and I usually left a DC with the feeling that justice had been done.

“It’s a cliché that it’s lonely at the top, but I sometimes found it to be true. A lot of leaders wrestle with that. To serve in this capacity means that some people can’t look at you and see a friend, Trey; they have to look at you and see a person with authority and they wonder if you’re selling out,” Trey says.

“I learned that in order not to feel hypocritical while sitting on the committee, I had to try and hold myself to a higher standard of ‘rule following’ during my daily life,” Caroline Walsh says. In fact, students automatically lose leadership positions at School if they appear before the DC.

“I learned that the way you say something is ultimately what colors how another person receives it—particularly peers who do not want to be addressed condescendingly by classmates.

“I also learned about dealing with other people, working in groups to arrive at consensus, dealing with some negative feedback from peers and, in the end, having to be comfortable with decisions you make.

“I learned that leading by example is particularly important when you are in a position to be making judgments of some sort on the actions of others within the community,” Caroline says.

Heather Sullivan

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The Head of School If you were born in 1990, what is your historical context?                                 

W

e know that the demise of one species spells disaster for an ecosystem. Likewise, sustaining human life and culture depends upon maintaining diversity. “We cannot live without ‘the other,’ Rabbi Rolando Matalon told us last fall.

The rabbi came to Milton as the second speaker in the Endowment for Religious Understanding series, given to the Academy by the Class of 1952.

Arguing for the interdependency of peoples and their beliefs, Rabbi Matalon told the students and faculty, “I am I and you have to let me be a strong ‘I.’ You are you, and I must let you be a strong ‘you.’ Without ‘I’ and ‘you’ there is no ‘we’.”

A heady riddle for teenagers.

What does it mean to educate young people, effectively, about differences: cultural, ethnic, racial, religious, personal—or in sexual orientation?

Certainly, as the Class of 1952 knew, we must do this, and do it well. Not only is it part of our mission—we “embrace diversity,” our mission statement says—but also we are close to young people during their most formative years. The messages they internalize now are the messages they will reckon with for a lifetime.

However, as we struggle from time to time to weigh our reaction to an incident—a public insult, an encounter with harassment, insensitivity in dialogue—and to seize adroitly the teaching moment, we are tempted to complain: “But we’ve already dealt with this. Why did this happen?”

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How, in fact, should we measure the “effectiveness” of what we are trying to teach?

What are the indicators that our various inroads result in students who are knowledgeable about cultures and beliefs other than their own, and about the relationship of history to present-day social realities?

The fact is that each year we are talking to different children. I’m not referring to the exchange of seniors for new students, even though this, too, is part of the challenge. I mean that children’s brains change dramatically over their teenage years.

We have learned from recent brain research about the extent of the brain’s physiological change, particularly during pre-adolescence and adolescence. The capacity for understanding, for generalizing, for restraining impulses and considering consequences is less a matter of IQ level and more a matter of biological development.

Bringing home an idea or working to instill a core value is not something done once, expertly, that will stick for all time.

Each year a child brings a different set of personal resources to observe and to think about people who are different from him or herself.

Students can one day be linear, concrete thinkers, focused on the literal fact in front of them and unable to transfer a fact to a concept to a pattern of concepts. Later, they can understand complexity, build and appreciate metaphors, or use concepts to build a big-picture view. We must speak effectively to all these students, at whatever the stage of their development, and we must speak frequently.

The process of educating about difference, therefore, is cyclical and never-ending. We use many media. Perhaps most important is the academic curriculum. We depend in particular upon history, literature, science, ethics and religion, etc., to communicate specifics that together knit a context that supports ideas about oppression, categorization, denial of rights, changes over time. How else will today’s 13-year-old, born in 1991, understand the meaning of a swastika or a civil rights march? We cannot assume that students are familiar with certain historical and cultural contexts, yet awareness of these contexts is essential to teaching successfully about difference.

We use faculty professional development.

Last year, the faculty focused on the implications for their work of the socioeconomic differences among Milton students. This year, faculty considered the results of a multiyear, multischool study on the role of gender in school experience.

We use the hiring process. Last year, students and faculty deliberated at length about the role of a new interfaith chaplain at Milton. The committee proclaimed that among other challenges, “with good humor and sensitivity, the chaplain would provide leadership in promoting reflection among Milton students and faculty about questions of faith and doubt, belief and nonbelief, character and service to others.”

Ed Snow, who joined as interfaith chaplain last summer from the Baylor School in Tennessee, teaches nearly all ethics sections, a class directly connected to educating stu-

South Africa. We hosted a stimulating symposium of scholars: five MIT professors, from the departments of history, anthropology, biology, political science and urban studies, who discussed race from their academic perspectives. Finally, we anticipate an invigorating seminar day, April 28.

Robin Robertson (second from left, front) with friends in the student center

dents to appreciate difference. Ed’s ethics class stresses that the first task for students is to identify a foundation for personal ethics. From family background and the many other influences in life, a student develops his or her own moral code.

Within this context, Ed and the students examine examples of vast differences in quality of life across the nation and the world, and the effect on people’s lives of categorizations superficially assigned to individuals. They look at what a society uses to designate “difference”—economic status, religion, culture, race, gender—and how that designation boxes in people. Ed also teaches a World Religions course, in which he looks at each religious tradition from the point of view of its own merits, rather than in comparison to other traditions. He tries to explore with students the range of thought within a tradition, as well.

(Read more about Ed’s approach to educating young people on page 34.)

We use our administrative structure. Joyce Atkins, assistant dean for community relations, helps to recruit diverse classes, supports students of color once they are here, and promotes the flow of cultural awareness and celebration among all students.

Christine Savini, director of diversity planning, focuses on the adult side of the community, providing strategic help with hiring, resource development and ongoing training.

Assemblies are a rich medium for teaching about and celebrating cultural realities in ways appreciated by all students. Every Wednesday, second period, Classes IV–I

witness the creative expressions of their peers: students eager to communicate cultural highlights and challenges. Add chapel programs to those assemblies, and over the past several months we have enjoyed programs led by student groups such as Onyx, the Latino Association, the Asian Society, and GASP (Gay and Straight People).

We look forward to an upcoming Jewish Student Union assembly.

Among the assemblies that educate us are endowed lectures, and thus far this year we have been privileged to engage with powerful spokespeople and their stories: In addition to Rabbi Matalon, Pat Mitchell, CEO of the Public Broadcasting System, set a standard of professional excellence marked by responsible reporting of important but largely unexplored international situations.

At the same time, her story necessarily involved the particular career challenges she faced because of gender. Zadie Smith, remarkable prizewinning young British novelist read from her book White Teeth about mixed-race and immigrant family life in a gritty north London neighborhood. Within the story of immigrant assimilation, she takes on race, sex, class, history and gender politics, with wit and inventiveness. Anchee Min, author of five books including Red Azalia and Becoming Madame Mao, gripped students with descriptions of her life during the years of the Cultural Revolution in China. Charles Stith, former ambassador to Zambia and Martin Luther King lecturer, echoed Rev. King’s question: “What are you doing for others?” We all enjoyed jazz musicians from the Music Academy of Gauteng in

Infrequently, and yet too often for those of us dealing with them, acts of racial, religious, or homophobic insensitivity (or even aggression) surface in the world of teenagers. Ultimately painful for the perpetrators, these acts provide the School with opportunities to affirm core values, to reject intolerance and hurtful behavior, to underscore the notion that we are connected to one another. We act on a case-by-case basis, with deliberation and care.

Knowing how much to attribute to an adolescent’s not-yet-developed connection between impulse and consequence, however, is difficult. How should we treat the idea that he or she acted too fast, without the accompanying sense of the act’s implications? How should we assess what this isolated incident tells us about the community at large? Is it symptomatic of something, or the isolated act of an immature or misguided individual? How much should we involve the community in a response (beyond public denouncement and explanation)? A community working hard to create an inclusive environment can be unduly discouraged and set off track by too much focus on the act of a single individual. On the other hand, we should not miss an opportunity to teach, again, the values of responsibility, care and understanding. These questions surge and swirl when we must decide what reaction gains us the most positive ground in the learning process.

Our goal is to continue pursuing all roads that lead to better-educated, more culturally aware, responsible and articulate students, with an acute sense of history and awareness of current realities.

Robin Robertson

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Sexuality

and Relationships All questions are fair

“This course is one place,” explains Elinor Griffin, director of counseling, “where adolescents can talk about the things that are most important in their lives right now: identity and relationships. They talk, as they will not, or cannot, with their parents.”

Genesis of a seminar Classic teen comedies such as Caddyshack or American Pie would have us believe that teenagers spend a great deal of energy talking about, thinking about or pursuing sex. According to the Sexuality Information and Education Council (SIECUS) a national, nonprofit organization, the statistics are that more than 60 percent of American high school boys and nearly 50 percent of high school girls have had sex.

But those teenagers are not necessarily ready to manage the challenges and joys of sexual intimacy with maturity, asserts Ellie Griffin, director of Milton Academy’s Health and Counseling Center and, since 1978, the developer and leader of the Human Sexuality & Relationships (HS&R) course curriculum and training.

As a dorm parent, teacher and counselor, Ellie was approached frequently by students who wanted to discuss sexuality, but were uncomfortable doing so (and often ignorant of the facts); they felt insecure in their handling of all sorts of relationship issues and alone in their angst. In response, Ellie set out to equip students to handle better not only the pressure students might feel to become sexually experienced, but also the romantic and

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platonic relationships that are the center of a teen’s universe. Now, 26 years later, the seminar is regularly oversubscribed, requiring a wait list. Meanwhile, Ellie has spread the word by offering training workshops or sharing curriculum with dozens of other schools, including Hotchkiss, Suffield, Pomfret, Thayer, Gunnery, Groton, Buckingham Browne & Nichols School, Exeter and Andover. ****** You’re a 15-year-old at your first Human Sexuality & Relationships (HS&R) seminar. You’ve heard it’s a fun class—a different way to connect with other members of the Milton community, and one of your housemates liked it enough to sign up for the Advanced HS&R course.

The first week of class breaks the ice— your group of 12 students, two adult facilitators and two seniors (Students Educating the Community About Sex, known on campus as “SECS”) plays games that expose myths about sexuality, generates a list of slang that will be considered unacceptable for the purposes of your group and talks about ground rules, identifying a framework to allow members to speak openly without criticizing others’ viewpoints. Okay, not too bad.

“This course is one place,” explains Ellie, “where adolescents can talk about the things that are most important in their lives right now: identity and relationships.

They talk, as they will not, or cannot, with their parents.”

The course goes beyond the “birds and the bees” and aims to deliver accurate information and help teens consider safety, responsibility and mutual consent, subjects on which misinformation abounds.

These topics can also make students, and the adults in their lives, squirm.

Facilitator André Heard ’93, dorm parent and assistant dean of students for residential life, is a three-year veteran. “We work hard not to put students on the spot. We try to stay away from ‘I’ and ‘we’ in our discussions,” André says.

Having a safe discussion is paramount.

Each group sets parameters, but all groups abide by the ground rules of respect; listening; avoidance of inappropriate slang; and confidentiality.

“We work to get a good conversation going and to infuse it with facts. It’s not an anatomy or psychology class, though we do touch on those topics; it’s a discussion group. A lot of questions don’t have answers.

“Students come away with a heightened sense of the possible consequences of the choices they’re making. Taking the class is an action against the ‘Oh, it can’t happen to me,’ syndrome,” André says.

Course facilitators do not necessarily memorize the effectiveness of various kinds of birth control—although they do take a two-hour seminar on contraception and STIs (sexually transmitted infections).

Instead, they take the course’s detailed curriculum and act as a reliable resource.

Each pair of adult facilitators train for two full days, with three additional workshops, and follow a detailed curriculum.

Seminars throughout the semester bolster on-the-job training. Student facilitators (SECS), Class I students who have taken beginning and advanced HS&R, as well as supplemental training, function in the groups as informal consultants and coleaders. The student facilitators meet weekly with Ellie Griffin and Rod Skinner, director of college counseling, for supervision and training in educating their peers.

While teens’ needs have not changed over the course’s history, Ellie stresses that the introduction of AIDS profoundly changed the way that we must talk about sexuality. “That is, sexuality must now be discussed within a life-and-death context.

One result is that for this generation of young adults, what used to be the most intimate of sexual acts, oral sex, has become more common, because of the mistaken belief that oral sex will not pass AIDS along,” Ellie says. The course thus stresses the importance of being accurately informed about sexual behavior.

mature fashion when they see somebody close to their own age who is comfortable, at ease and educated,” Deirdre says.

The HS&R course underscores the belief that accurate information always works better than ignorance. Teachers and students in the course address the value of communication, of mutual respect, of mutual responsibility for the consequences of actions, and of the need for equality in relationships.

“The most interesting and informative part of the course for students is the opportunity to talk with others about love and relationships,” Ellie says. “The factual

information is important, and we do a good job of communicating it. However, the conversation about how to relate to others, how to maintain a relationship, how to know when you’re in love, how to survive the breakup of a relationship, how to talk about issues in a relationship, how to deal with anger, are all topics that are crucial to an individual’s well-being.”

SECS leader Scott Chaloff ’04 wanted to help lead a group because the course had been important to him. “And,” he says, “everyone knows that winters can be long and stressful. Being part of a group like this—where you can just talk—is actually stress relief for me.”

“This aspect of the course makes up the bulk of the sessions, and this is what graduates remember many years later, when they return for reunions and contact their HS&R leaders. It makes a difference in a person’s life,” Ellie says.

“We can’t let the fact that talking about sex can be uncomfortable get in the way of acknowledging how important the issues are,” says SECS leader Deirdre Byrne ’04. “I’m worried that sexuality and relationships and the topics surrounding them get ‘swept under the rug’ too often.

“Having students as leaders is a crucial part of the teaching process. Younger students can take sexuality more seriously and can handle the issues in a more Elinor Griffin, Director of Counseling

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Caught

in wry adolescence

Holden Caulfield is still a friend

N

o single book has helped me navigate the cocktail party conversation that succeeds the exclamation “Oh, you’re an English teacher!” as well as The Catcher in the Rye. Shoving the literary canon aside, people of all ages are prepared to drop the finger sandwiches and talk about Holden Caulfield, as if he were an old, mutual friend. This communal rallying around Catcher, a book we read in adolescence, makes perfect sense because Holden was a friend to us at a time when personal loyalties were everything, yet everything, including loyalty, was uncertain. Taking a cue from Holden’s own unpretentious style, we want to talk about this novel because it was that rare thing in adolescence that Holden himself is never able to find: a companion and guide into a much more complex and lonely “real world.”

But what do we think of our beloved companion now? How do we read Catcher as adults? Today, I like to think that Salinger, like his unpretentious protagonist, did not write to please critical tastes. But his stylistic blinders force me to accept most of the critical barbs hurled at the book. The critic Harold Bloom, for instance, considers Catcher little more than a junior varsity character study and points out that “Holden [can] hardly sustain comparisons with figures in Shakespeare and Dickens.” He also bristles at any analogy to Huck Finn, the far

22 Milton Magazine

greater young American hero. I can accept this criticism, and I will even nod when the more philologically inclined accuse Salinger of Holden’s own faults: juvenile romanticizing and a penchant for selfdestructive behavior. It now seems easy to see the book’s contrivances (the parade of conveniently placed characters in Holden’s odyssey, most of them inhabiting clubs and bars), hollow romanticizing (even in the book’s title itself ), and melodramatically pitiful images (the famous, sappy chat with the cabbie about where “the ducks go in the winter”). However, when pushed to pooh-pooh the whole novel, I must rise to the defense of an old friend

who—with Ackley-like acne and all— walked the gauntlet of adolescence’s absurdities with me. Salinger’s novel is itself a dreaded “phony”: genuine yet contrived, loving yet narcissistic. But now we see ourselves in the book’s own contrivances and paradoxes. In loving its immaturity, we strain less to love our young selves. What better cause to raise a highball to Holden! Befriending this book allowed us to slide up a barstool between our conflicted selves, adolescent and adult, and finally have a conversation.

Tarim Chung English

Do parents

control for success?

‘Managing’ the college admissions process

O

ne of the most difficult challenges we face as parents is shepherding our students through the college admissions process. We want so much to let our children find their own way, to let them grow through experience, and yet our urge to protect, to make things right, grips us so fiercely that being a good parent in these circumstances amounts to dancing on the head of a pin.

And, being more human than angelic most days, we tend to fall off more often than we would like.

At a recent conference at one of the most selective universities in the country, administrators made special mention of the startling increase in micromanaging parents in the past two years. Where before students fended for themselves, parents now call to complain about parts of the application, the most common refrain being, “My child can’t do that.” The administrators worried that “the need for control had gone out of control” and that, as a result, children have become passive creatures “to whom things happen.”

Most telling to the admissions office was the number of students who struggled with a section of the application called “The Box,” a blank square where students are invited to put anything they want. All too often applicants leave the space blank or fill it with secondary activities that could not fit on the activities page. The admissions office concluded that there must be too much anxiety if the students can’t be playful.

Many colleges, particularly the most selective ones, would echo that conclusion. They talk about the flatness of essays from even the brightest students. They puzzle over the fact

that highly accomplished students fail to sparkle in interviews. They note that students’ thinking narrows at precisely the time it needs to expand, that it tightens just when it needs to be loose. They see driven, pleasant students who are oddly, sadly, lifeless.

Liveliness, playfulness, individuality, what former Dean of Admission Lee Coffin called “texture,” have long been Milton students’ stock-in-trade. We proclaim proudly that we do not produce cookie-cutter kids, and that is true. We have the confidence to give our students the latitude to define themselves, and that latitude, in turn, gives the students confidence; they grow strong in part because of the faith we have in them to grow strong. Micromanagement, of course, bespeaks a lack of faith. It does not enable; it disables. Not surprisingly, Milton parents tend to be as lively and original as their students. To help the parents inoculate themselves against the micromanagement bug, to retain their best selves, the college counseling office does all it can to bring humor and realism to the process. We do a skit depicting over-the-top parenting for Class II parents on Parents’ Weekend. (We also do a parallel over-the-top student skit for Class I.) We give them feedback from Milton students who have been through the process during the Class II College Weekend. This fall we also offered an open forum discussion for Class I parents on Parents’ Weekend.

Most importantly, in group meetings and individual meetings, we try to give parents the words and the approaches they need to be helpful to their children, without intruding. The mantra is “How can I help you?”

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Rod Skinner ’72

Above all else, we see the college admission process as part of a much larger developmental process. As the director of admissions at Duke says, “It is not about the bumper sticker on the car; it is about growing up.” We do not want to deny our students any of the valuable life lessons the process provides. We know that the devil or the genius is in the details; if we do not give our students the opportunity to struggle with these details, the devil may well prevail in later life. With most of our students applying to schools where fewer than 30 percent of applicants are admitted, we know that there is no sure thing. But, then, life isn’t sure.

The ability to cope with uncertainty, to thrive despite, maybe even because of, uncertainty is an essential life skill.

In our Class II parent meeting this fall, a parent remarked that there needed to be a process for parents as well. And, in many ways that is true, for the college process is a developmental one for us as well. We learn a lot about ourselves as we dance on that pin. We learn to master emotions that surge from the depths of our parental beings, emotions that, if left unchecked, can turn the best of us into unreasonable terrors. Just as many of our children learn to cope

24 Milton Magazine

with the first non-negotiable “No” in their lives, so do many of us learn to cope with the first decision involving our child that we cannot really control. We learn to let our children take the reins in a way they never have before. We learn how to surrender our children to a larger world.

These are not easy lessons. The extent to which we learn them determines, to a large extent, the confidence and happiness our children carry with them when they leave Milton. The fact that Milton students have a history of taking their later worlds by storm says a great deal about them and a great deal about their parents. We are a lucky community, indeed.

Rod Skinner ’72 Director of College Counseling

Chris Henrikson ’85

Poetry:

Chris Henrikson, center, with friends

Agent of transformation for ‘extreme’ teens Teaching artistic expression to incarcerated youth

F

or the past eight years, I’ve led a poetry-writing workshop for incarcerated boys (age 14–18) in a Los Angeles County juvenile detention camp. My students are what one might call “extreme teenagers.” Their typical teenage rebelliousness is amplified to levels well beyond those of the average high school student.

Most come from severely broken homes and impoverished neighborhoods and have defaulted to gang membership for some sense of belonging and control over their own lives. They are the children of refugees who fled the killing fields of Southeast Asia and Central America. They are the children of black and Latino inner-city communities and white highdesert communities devastated by drugs and economic job loss. They are the children of fathers dead, imprisoned or otherwise missing in action. They are victims and perpetrators, addicts and dealers, schemers and dreamers, and, once you get past the surface, they are desperate to find a way out of the self-destructive lifestyles they’ve chosen for themselves.

The best metaphor I’ve found for the work we do—and for the creative process generally—revolves around the image of a powerful river, wide and flowing. To write poetry is to swim out into that river and surrender to the flow. The poem then becomes a journey into the unknown, into ourselves. If you can envision 10

bald-headed teenage boys who have never set foot in moving water before and don’t think they can swim, wading cautiously together out into a river, you’ve got a pretty good idea what our juvenile detention camp workshop is all about. There is a lot of joking and laughter at first and then the group becomes increasingly serious and fearful the farther out we go. Tears are frequently shed. When a youth summons the courage to release himself into the flow for the first time, the experience is incredibly exhilarating, for the writer as well as the group. Often the river takes the poet places inside himself he never

would have gone on his own. Poems born from these journeys become like streetlights leading the poets out of the darkness of their own minds. For many, the experience is their first real taste of freedom, and they immediately get hungry for more. Others, quite often the more academically advanced, prefer to hone their strokes in the shallows along the river’s edge. In poetry as in life, the greater the risk, the greater the reward. Over the years, I’ve been privileged to witness many dramatic personal transformations as a direct result of this creative process. Some of these young men have returned with

At “camps” such as this one, Chris Henrikson ’85 moves L.A. incarcerated teens to build new courage through poetry. Photographs by Jonathan Hexner ’86.

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Soldier Poet Last week I strip-searched the streets For a soldier poet Struggling to make life rhyme With a bullet-splintered shin And one long 25-to-life knife to the forehead He’s still alive blind in one eye Rushed from pimp-walk to gimp-walk By a symphony of sirens Heartbeat who-bangin’ on his ribcage Only 18-years-of-age

me to the camps in which they were once incarcerated to shoot the rapids, role modeling through their poetry the kind of courage real change requires.

As workshop facilitator, my primary role has always been to listen deeply, maintain a supportive, affirming atmosphere, and when appropriate, share my own stories and poems (and those of other writers) with the group. Over time, I’ve evolved into a more knowledgeable, proactive “river guide.” While the memories and images that come up along the river are different for everyone, there are certain emotional realities that the vast majority of our youth share. Because most were neglected or abused in childhood, I encourage them to go back and reconnect with “the kid” in themselves, the early elementary schooler who felt abandoned and powerless in the face of traumatic family circumstances. I ask them to describe what life was like for that kid, to represent him in their poems. I ask them to reflect on the kid’s greatest gifts and interests. In some cases, I’ll encourage the poets to feel what the child inside them needs and then write a letter or poem in response to that feeling. This reunion process can be terrifying at first for the poet because of all the pain that kid carries, so faith and patience are essential. As facilitator, I just remind them of the kid’s presence there in the river, pinned to a rock in the rapids downstream. It’s always up to the poet to decide when they’re ready to attempt a rescue.

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The biggest obstacle to this transformational reunion is what we’ve come to call the “Little Homie,” the middle schoolaged version of the poet who got tired of being victimized as a child and decided to join a gang, pick up a weapon and start fighting back. Metaphorically speaking, the Little Homie is posted on the riverbank making sure nobody gets anywhere near that child downriver ever again. In most of my students, the Little Homie tends to be highly aggressive and impulsive. He responds to any sign of a threat with violence or manipulation, and he can be a formidable obstacle to healing and growth if not handled appropriately. (Our prisons are full of grown men still stuck in this early adolescent state of development.) The thing to remember about the Little Homie is that he is constantly being judged unfavorably by family, school teachers, police, probation officers, judges and, most significantly, by the poets themselves. Unfortunately, this kind of abuse only increases his energy and makes him dig his heels in deeper. Instead, I encourage my students to honor their Little Homie in their poetry, to thank him for all of his hard work defending the kid from a hostile world. I ask them to acknowledge to their Little Homie that they themselves abandoned the kid just like everyone else and, if it wasn’t for his strength and determination, they wouldn’t have made it. Usually, with that, the Poet

I found his homeboy Dying from the same disease Dry eyes screaming please Release me from this two-bedroom tomb This dope smoke-filled emergency room This prison skin Rice paper-thin Tattoos like open sores Toe-tagging in the AIDS ward Still trying to be hardcore Don’t call me doctor I’m not one I don’t laugh at jokes But I got one About a kid with no father I taught one His enemigos rolled up He shot one They fired back He caught one Now he’s looking for answers I brought one An empty notebook with lines I bought one For $1.99 Less than a gun Last week I strip-searched the streets For a soldier poet Struggling to make life rhyme with hard time I found him on page three Right next to me Scratching his way back to the beginning With nothing but a pencil for protection In this mad house of correction We all call body —Chris Henrikson

is able to alter the Little Homie’s resistance enough to access the river’s flow and begin the creative process of rebuilding himself. A “regime change” within the Poet is the ultimate goal here, but it cannot be achieved by force.

From the very beginning of the workshop I speak to the Poet, the emerging Higher Self in the youth, as though he was already fully formed. On the rare occasions when a Little Homie surfaces in class, I do my best to send love and understanding toward him while reminding the Poet of our higher purpose together. I like to think of our poetry workshop as a sacred space within the military boot camp-like confines of the juvenile detention facility, a playground on which the kids in these troubled, suffering youth can emerge, cry, smile, laugh and breathe. In eight years working with rival gang members, we’ve never had an altercation in one of our workshops. In fact, one of the secondary benefits of this creative process is that it brings former “enemies” together across race and neighborhood lines.

Another secondary benefit—primary for me—is that it has transformed my own life in ways I couldn’t have imagined when I first started volunteering back in 1995.

Because I never ask my students to do exercises I haven’t done myself, I feel constantly challenged to keep swimming, writing, and, on good days, shooting my own rapids with all of the faith that this work requires.

Editor’s Note: Chris Henrikson ’85 is the founding director of DreamYard/L.A., an arts-based intervention program for high-risk youth in the juvenile detention camps, continuation schools and streets of Los Angeles County. DreamYard/L.A. is an affiliate of the New York City-based nonprofit organization DreamYard Drama Project. For more information, visit www.dreamyardla.org. Jonathan Hexner ’86, photographer, developed a DVD portraying the DreamYard/L.A. process through the voices of its street poets.

27 Milton Magazine

Poetry by a street poet whose voice evolved in a DreamYard/L.A. program.

Inner Child Using my pen & paper as paddles On this river of madness I struggle to resuscitate my battered soul Make my mind whole Picture me a piñata Fallen down My insides emptied by children of the dark My blood runs cold every time I think of getting stripped naked and lashed with a switch Then being forced to tell the doctor I fell and busted my own lip It seems as if the kid in me Got gone with the wind Left me broke-down Straight living in sin Getting all my self-worth From rocking my Tims I’m tired and fed up Of these constant visions of being wet up This bitter paranoia got me walking around jumpy I think I’m being set up It’s hard to keep my head up But I just can’t let up Simon says “Get Up!” Try to love another Hard as it may be, boy Try to trust somebody You ain’t seen in awhile Your inner child Now that boy got tears That could fill up the Nile Let him cry away those lies That clogged up his eyes Then you and He and I Will see the sun rise.

—Daniel Cacho DreamYard/L.A.

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Rob Lake ’87 His work is as trite and as profound as helping students

“I

couldn’t be more biased in terms of the importance of our work with adolescents,” says Rob Lake ’87, dean of students at Millbrook School in Millbrook, New York. “It’s comparable to what folks do in medicine or how clergymen can help young people.

“The idea that adults should help students grow has become trite, but that’s why I do what I do.

“Part of the challenge of a place like Milton or Millbrook,” he says, “is that people outside of education don’t always see that we don’t just work with students—we work with parents and their expectations, with the media, which have a profound effect on students’ lives and with external market expectations— namely, colleges.

“First, we’re trying to teach and instill values that can be contradictory to what a parent might think. Or we might want to create a new curriculum, which we know is the best—but we might choose not to do that if it would affect students’ AP scores or somehow result in fewer students getting into Harvard.

“Outside expectations can get in the way of what we’re trying to do,” Rob says. “I don’t want to sound nostalgic about the way it used to be, but I certainly get the sense that there is an expectation on the part of the student and parent that when things don’t go right, the school has a massive responsibility in that. Part of our mission is to help people grow. We don’t guarantee this—but we are experts at it.

“One of the things I love about teenagers is their contradictions—that they can be intellectually mature but socially unpredictable, for example. Any teenager who is so stable that he never makes a mistake is worrisome,” Rob says. “Students respond well to high expectations and structure, but we need to understand and respect that they’re going to make mistakes and help them learn from them.

“I have yet to meet a student who I think is inherently evil or bad—there are students who drive us crazy and occasionally there are those who have a whole host of issues that we refuse to handle [and are expelled], but ultimately it will be good for those students and good for others to see what happens when you lose the trust of a community.

“And when they do make mistakes, we continue to do all those things—love them, have high expectations and teach them to move on.”

At Millbrook, Rob helps students move beyond their mistakes, in part, through developing a core group of student leaders, with whom he meets weekly. “It’s a rigorous selection process,” he says. “I fill them in on important and sometimes confidential school information, so that they feel informed. They do the same with me by giving me insight and access to student subcultures.

“What Milton did for me, was teach me that I can achieve anything despite whatever roadblocks people put up before me,” Rob explains. “It is as much the ethos of the place as what you learn in the classroom, in hallways or in the dining hall.

Everyday life is when students often learn invaluable lessons.

“We also can’t shy away from the fact that we’re teaching the privileged.

“If I’d gone to a public school where 50 percent of the students didn’t go to college, there were fewer resources and lower expectations, it’s certainly a question mark where I would be now.”

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Instead, Rob grew up at Milton Academy, where his father, Neville, was a faculty member for 19 years; prior to that, his father taught at St. George’s for 12 years.

Rob’s grandparents were teachers in Jamaica.

“I knew when I got out of Williams that I was going to get into education eventually, too,” Rob says. “Had I gone straight into this work, though, I wouldn’t have any concept of the corporate world. My time playing [professional] soccer, working at an advertising agency and traveling in Europe solidified my belief that I belonged in education.”

Rob Lake ’87, dean of students at the Millbrook School, with his wife, Heather, and children, Casey, 4 and Tucker, 2.

Rob’s professional career led him from Middlesex in Concord, Massachusetts, to St. Paul’s to Millbrook. “Ultimately, I plan to lead a school,” Rob says. “I’m getting a master’s from Dartmouth in the summers—it’s hectic but worthwhile.”

Rob recounts an early learning experience at Millbrook. “My first year, if a student came in and was obnoxious and called me unfair, my response was to become defensive and the rest of the conversation was useless.

While Rob begins work on a master’s thesis next academic year, much of his career development is on the job. “Every day, I learn something from the students, watching them, or from something they say.

“But what could be better than a young person who wants to engage in a conversation about something—say, the dress code. I take it as a compliment that they think I’m an adult who will listen to what they have to say. In those situations, I also think how I would want someone to respond to my sons [ages 2 and 4] when they become adolescents. If I’m trying to get students to see the other point of view, these moments are an opportunity—even if I don’t change my mind on an issue.”

“I don’t know any adult in a leadership position who hasn’t said. ‘I learned the most from my mistakes.’ Early on at Millbrook, I responded with too much emotion. When I show that I’m upset and frustrated, I may say something that’s fair—but if you’re upset, students will pay attention to your being upset rather than your meaning.”

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Rob says that he also realizes how important every interaction can be. What he remembers as a two-minute conversation, he understands can become a pivotal moment in a student’s world. “Sometimes a parent will make an offhand comment about her child really looking up to you, or that he respects the way you handled a situation.” Rob says that it’s powerful to realize your work matters and that students truly do emulate what they see.

“Working with young people keeps me and my wife, Heather, very young,” Rob says. “Because I think it’s important work, it’s very fulfilling to me. Our work can make the difference between an adolescent succeeding or struggling mightily.”

Matt Trieschman ’82 at the gateway of the Kennedy Krieger Institute

Success for Developmentally Challenged Teenagers Y

oung people’s developmental challenges have been a career focus for Matt Trieschman, Class of 1982. For Matt’s young people, growing up involves living with considerably more adversity than most children. As specialist for admission at the high-school level for programs at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, Matt works with students who have a range of significant disabilities and their families. For some of these adolescents, the learning and health disabilities are paired with family and economic stresses. “If the students we see aren’t in the right setting, their situation gets progressively worse,” Matt says.

“They simply don’t develop critical skills.”

Matt admits and enrolls students to the Kennedy Krieger Institute’s day-school programs that provide services to teenagers—teenagers with learning, emotional, physical, neurological and developmental disabilities. Roughly 175 students are enrolled in the Institute’s high school, which is five years old and developed from established lower- and middle-school programs. Matt’s candidates are referrals from public schools in 10 Baltimore-area jurisdictions. Public school systems fund the students’ tuitions, which amount to approximately $52,000 annually. To be enrolled in the Kennedy Krieger Institute’s program, students need a mix of services, from among mental health counselors, psychiatrists, general counselors, speech and language specialists, as well as occupational and physical therapists.

Matt’s relationship with a student and a family begins with the referral. His reading of a student’s medical and educational history leads him to assemble a particular team to interview the student and his or her family. Matt’s extensive experience in this field helps, because balancing resources begins here. On the one hand, including the right specialist or physician in the interview may be important in correctly assessing the student’s situation. On the other hand, each interview hour is an hour that a specialist could have devoted to a student’s needs.

Many issues are at stake in the admission decision. “We’re comprehensive; we have a wide variety of students, and public school systems need the correct programs for these students who will not succeed in their settings. We are not obligated to accept anyone, though, and I do protect the school milieu,” Matt says. “Others in the school won’t be able to learn if we include a threatening or inappropriate student in the mix. Other schools are specialized for serving those students.”

Enrolling the student often also involves other mutually agreed upon approaches to the student’s program, and Matt shapes those agreements with the sending school districts.

During the admission process and once programs are under way, Matt and his colleagues provide “disability awareness” for students and their families (in addition to the numerous educational services a student requires). “We’re obligated to help each student understand his or her disability for a number of reasons,” Matt says. A student, and the student’s family, needs to understand why he is at Kennedy Krieger, and how he or she fits into the

Matt Trieschman ’82, Specialist for Admission

world of the school, where he sees students both more and less able than himself. “Every disability in the world is not like your disability,” Matt communicates to a student. Without disability awareness, a student who has “aged out” (earned a diploma or reached 21 years and the end of the state’s blanket responsibility to provide appropriate education) may not be able to help with his own advocacy—find other programs and situations that will help him.

Matt’s connection with students who have emotional and learning disabilities began right after college, when he began supervising students on weekends in a residential setting, the Walker School in Needham, Massachusetts. He then moved onto the staff as a member of the behavioral resource team, and then finally moved into the teaching domain. He taught for seven years, most recently at a non-public school in the Baltimore area.

He’s at home in a demanding field that works hard to use public resources most effectively to structure rewarding lives for children with complex needs.

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Liza Ketchum ’64, prizewinning author for adolescent readers

“I

did a lot of eavesdropping when my sons were teenagers and I was driving them around,” says author Liza Ketchum ’64, explaining how she honed dialogue for her young-adult novels.

“Writing for adolescents is harder than writing for other audiences,” Liza says.

“They are much harder to please—you have to draw them into a story on the first page.”

“One of the most important factors for me is that young people often inspire me.

I find that both children and teens can be incredibly courageous, and I hope to honor that courage and resourcefulness when I write for them.

“Writing about Alex in Blue Coyote, for example, I wanted to pay respect to kids who are brave enough to stand up and tell the truth about themselves in high school,” she says, “even when they know the consequences may be difficult.

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Photo: John Guare

With reader requests spurring her writing of Blue Coyote (Simon & Schuster), Liza’s success at engaging readers is clear.

Teenagers wrote to her in care of her publisher asking about Alex, from Twelve Days in August. “‘What about Alex? When will you tell his story?’ they said.” In Twelve Days, talented soccer player Alex was hounded off his high school soccer team because schoolmates thought he was gay. “Instead of writing books ‘about’ being gay, a lot of writers are incorporating gay and lesbian characters as part of the fictional landscape,” Liza says.

“My most recent novel for younger children, Orphan Journey Home [Avon Books], is based on a true story of orphaned children who find their way to their grandmother’s in Kentucky, traveling hundreds of miles along wilderness roads in 1828. The women I wrote about in Into a New Country [Little, Brown and Co.] also inspired me with their courage and determination, often by actions taken when they were very young,” Liza explains.

Her work also includes a not-yet-released collection of autobiographical short stories, one of which is set at Milton Academy on the day President Kennedy was shot—“I started to wake up and understand that there is a world out there, something like what 9/11 did for today’s teens,” Liza recalls; The Gold Rush, a non-

fiction companion novel to Ken Burns’s “The West” documentary, which aired on public television; and historical novels— one under contract is about a mixed-race (white and Pequot) child in central Vermont in the late 18th century. Liza says that one of the challenges with historical fiction is getting the dialogue right.

“There were no audio records, so it’s really hard to figure out exactly how people spoke.”

Liza’s love of a good story started early.

“On Sunday nights, my family enjoyed a ‘make your own’ supper. We ate sandwiches in the living room while my father read from his favorite collection of James Thurber stories,” she says. “Sometimes, when he came to the funniest part, he laughed so hard he couldn’t go on. Tears ran down his cheeks and he passed the book over to my mother so she could finish the chapter. I was amazed that books and words could have so much power.”

Liza’s great-grandfather wrote serialized fiction for newspapers, her grandfather wrote advertising copy and her 82-yearold father publishes nonfiction on the American Revolution. Liza considers her grown sons—a geologist and an artist—as important critics of her early drafts, roles they took on as teenagers in the 80s.

“I probably wouldn’t be a writer if I hadn’t had Katherine Herzog at Milton Academy for three years. I could always be creative, but you also have to be clear. She taught me that,” Liza says.

Keeping in touch with youth is key to writing novels that they read, Liza says.

“In the airport the other day, there were two young women. One of them said, ‘I don’t usually read, but I really like The Perks of Being a Wallflower,’ which is a kind of modern Catcher in the Rye. It tells what life is really like for someone in high school.

“In junior high, a lot of guys stop reading,” Liza says. “There’s a lot in the news about teenagers not reading—boys hate reading. When I speak at schools, I ask them why. ‘Well, you’re not writing about what we care about,’ they say. Junior high is a watershed for a lot of young people.”

When Liza spoke at a school in Lexington, Massachusetts, a boy told her, “I want more graphic novels.’” These are comic-book novels, Liza explains, an emerging genre that fuses images and words to tell a story. “It makes sense [given how image-laden society has become] that they might like this.”

Liza’s list of awards is long. Twelve Days in August alone was designated on the American Library Association’s “Books for the Reluctant Reader” list; a “Project 21” book; New York Public Library’s “Books for the Teenage” list; Oklahoma Sequoyah Award master list; and was recommended by the National Conference of Christians and Jews for its “Human Family, Learning to Live Together” list. She also teaches at the Vermont College in its MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program and has also taught at Emerson College and Simmons College.

“What really moves me is when I get a message [from a reader]: ‘I didn’t know there was anyone out there who understood.’” I write to answer questions I don’t know the answer to,” Liza says. “Books that set out to teach something usually fail. I really want to tell a good story. The connection with young readers is what keeps me going.”

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Faculty Perspective Nurturing Values I

n concert, in introducing one of his songs, David Wilcox discusses aspects of life which “bug” him “for metaphorical reasons”: Shopping bugs me…for metaphorical reasons, I’m sure. In shopping, as in life, you go in for one thing, there’s one thing you really need. But there are “blue light specials,” and you get confused, you get distracted—it’s human—and you wind up with an armload of shiny junk.

Then you’re checkin’ out—I mean, you’re checkin’ out—and suddenly you remember, “There was that one thing I came in for—Oh no, I forgot!—I just have this junk!”

“Too late! You’re in the express line!”

I don’t want that to happen, so I try to pay attention when things bug me for metaphorical reasons.

I see what David Wilcox is saying. I also find his image apt as I think of the thousands of high school students with whom I have worked to discern what is truly necessary and valuable—and to reduce the chance of their ending up with an “armload of shiny junk” instead of what they really need to find, and be, and do, in life.

Walker Percy raised this point in a different way, in describing a character in one of his novels: “He got all As but flunked ordinary living.” The desire that students, concerned as they are to get As—especially at Milton—not suffer such a fate has led to

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some great challenges and deep satisfactions. What follows are notes, from my work as chaplain and ethics teacher, on aspects of the process by which students begin to develop a life philosophy—a way of seeing and being in the world that enables them to decide what truly matters and how to live accordingly.

    Exposure to tangible expressions of moral conviction is integral to discerning what matters. Sometimes, the exposure involves encounters with persons deeply committed to significant causes, who have earned the moral credibility that such involvement brings. I invited Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, to speak to a high school audience, after which she led a thoughtful, passionate conversation. The experience changed many students, whatever their views on the death penalty. When the head and the heart are engaged responsibly through direct encounter with those who, without an air of superiority, have acted on their convictions in a heartfelt and conscientious manner, students are affected in ways that otherwise do not occur easily.

Transforming exposure to tangible expressions of moral conviction also comes through actions by students that arise from their own principles. I recall scores of former students who began in high school to put the “shiny junk” back, as they lived out their deepest convictions in service to children, the elderly, and the marginalized, and who have since spent (with many of them still spending) sub-

stantial parts of their lives in service through the Peace Corps and various domestic agencies, religious and non-religious.

    Every student I know has been affected by the growing recognition of, and respect for, pluralism. On one level, this has provided support for a sophomoric form of moral relativism, though closer inspection suggests considerable agreement among cultures on major moral principles. The most frequently made comment in my ethics classes has asserted that no action can be called “wrong” if the person believed it was “right.” This has led to the defense of egregious acts, historical and hypothetical, on the ground that “no one can say what’s right or wrong for someone else”—and often citing pluralism as support.

On another level, the affirmation of pluralism has introduced a new—and, frankly, welcome—tone of humility to student development. The awareness of “other” voices and views, and the acknowledgment that they are worth hearing and may give valuable insights, have often lessened the self-righteousness which hovers around those who want to be right.

Humility can foster a tentativeness that, at times, borders on paralysis, but it need not do so. As I illustrate below, students can act on their convictions confidently but not arrogantly, after having incorporated whatever help they have found in voices and views that are “other” than theirs.

never done this much hard thinking in my life.” (I took that as a compliment.)

My students have agreed that not only the thought process, but also the “real life” impact of wrestling with fundamental questions and encountering challenging thinking was unsettling but necessary, as a means of producing profoundly positive results in their lives.

Ed Snow, Interfaith Chaplain

    A state of “disequilibrium”—the tension created when one principle comes into conflict with another within an individual—provides a catalyst for sorting out what matters most. When this occurs, students are changed, either by adapting to conform to their new experience or knowledge or by finding a sounder basis for holding what they already saw as true or good.

Many former students have chosen more difficult lives than their credentials and connections warrant—in endeavors such as sustainable agriculture, teaching in abysmally resourced schools, and social service work which receives no recognition and at times feels futile. Today, these friends often speak of the process they began years ago, when they first experienced disequilibrium, which was essential to their resisting the “shiny junk” and, instead, choosing to spend their resources on what truly matters.

This process is difficult. In the ethics course I taught with seniors prior to coming to Milton, I used readings that speak to the experience of disequilibrium involved in engaging in a serious intellectual and existential quest for foundational principles by which to live: Plato’s allegory of the cave from the Republic; an excerpt from Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled, dealing with transference and the lifelong task of “map-making” that is both difficult (because we continually need to revise our map to conform to new information) and unavoidable (because we must devise a map that can help us see where we are in life and where our destination is, and can thus help us see how to get where we want to go); and a section of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, challenging students to autonomy, but in the context of a continual consideration of ideas that may call into question, and change, their thinking and, thus, the way they live. These, and other, readings speak to a process that my students have understood all too well. As one said, “My head hurts from this class. I’ve

I began to see those results in the work students produced, especially in two of the most important exercises I have ever given. The first involved reading a biography or autobiography of a person the student respected and analyzing the moral basis of the person’s life. The second was a statement of the student’s own “life philosophy” and its practical implications for the student’s life. Students have repeatedly said the latter assignment has been the most difficult, but most rewarding, work they have done in their formal education; they still mention its impact on them.

The work my students produced, the process that led to their work, and the lives they have lived at least partly as a result of engaging in that hard process, have changed my life at least as much as their lives. My experience has confirmed to me the truth spoken by that great medieval thinker, Maimonides: “The sages said, ‘Much wisdom I learned from my teachers, more from my colleagues, from my pupils most of all.’”

Ed Snow Chaplain

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The Milton Classroom As deliberately as Nature “Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails.”

—Henry David Thoreau, Walden

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an and the Natural World pushes students to read and observe intensely both the craft of nature writers and the natural world itself; to develop voices as essayists; and to grapple with the ways in which memory and imagination help define our sense of “place.”

As Henry Beston writes in The Outermost House, “A year indoors is a journey along a paper calendar; a year in outer nature is the accomplishment of a tremendous ritual. To share in it, one must have a knowledge of the pilgrimages of the sun.”

Her integrity as a writer lies in her refusal to separate out any portion of her spirit; she experiences the world with the entirety of her being. And that’s the way she writes. Whether it is the dynamic physics of wave production or a description of the texture of the fog off the coast of Labrador, her style is deceptively transparent. Exploring the text, finding her “fingerprints,” challenges students to grow and rewards them with understanding her subtlety.

Henry Beston, on the other hand, has little scientific knowledge when he begins his yearlong sojourn on the “great beach” near Nauset. He stays mostly for the adventure of it all and because a small house had been built for him in the dunes. The house was affectionately called the “Fo’c’sle” and it wasn’t much bigger than Thoreau’s more famous cabin at Walden Pond. After a year of observing shipwrecks, storms, kestrels and auks, he returned home to Quincy with a stack of

The school year is a 10-month linear experience, a foreshortened “paper calendar.” I developed this course, trying to make parts of it mirror the 12-month cycle of the seasons. Our “year,” then, begins in the summer before the course begins, when students read Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us and Henry Beston’s The Outermost House.

Carson’s professional, scientific sensibility combines with the soul of an artist. She explains mysterious processes of the oceans in imaginative, wonderfully visual ways that are also scientifically accurate.

She is provocative and enjoyable precisely because she is so intellectually coherent.

Nan Lee, English Department, teaches Man in the Natural World.

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journals. When he proposed marriage, his fiancée, Elizabeth Coatsworth, replied, “The book first, Henry!” and that’s how Beston’s wonderful book came to be.

A reader is pulled in to Beston’s intense, young-man’s experience of the natural world, sharing with him a sense of awe and ecstasy at the beauty and power of the ocean and the beach itself.

After trying on the worlds of Carson and Beston, students keep nature journals: They select a spot on the Milton campus that they pass by frequently and which they think is beautiful or interesting.

About twice a month they “visit” their spot and describe everything they can about it. Their goal is to be as invisible as possible as writers and to record all of the sights, sounds and textures of which they become aware. During the year, patterns and changes begin to emerge. Students visit their spots at all times of the year, early in the morning and sometimes by moonlight. They stand in the drizzle or stomp through hip-deep snow to write from first hand experience. Instead of just reading what other nature writers have to say, they become nature essayists themselves. Having first recorded the realities of the natural world, they then record their own “weather” and “climate” patterns. They change as the year changes; sometimes in parallel to the natural world, at other times at right angles to it. In the process, I hope that they develop a sense of place, a greater self-conscious awareness and a more refined perceptual response to the natural world. As the year progresses, students record not only their own thoughts and sensations, but also bring other authors into the “story”: How might Emerson respond to this bleak day? How might Annie Dillard or Leslie Marmon Silko feel about Lake O’Hare? Would Shackleton be daunted by these snowdrifts? Weaving between her own sensibilities and those of well-known nature writers, each student grows—as a thinker, as a stylist, as an observer of a specific place that is much loved.

Finally, it is that “sense of place” that is perhaps the common thread that unites all of the writers we study during the year.

Julie Dash’s film Daughters of the Dust is a magnificent evocation of the AfricanAmerican inhabitants of the Georgia Sea Islands in 1902. The film depicts the Peazant family deciding to move to the mainland to give their children the opportunities that they have been denied in their isolated island home. The deep, historical pain of slavery and the pride and love of family and the land is evoked by Dash in a film that clearly loves the beauty of black women’s faces. The camera lingers on each member of the Peazant family, from Nana Peazant, born in slavery, to the mysterious narrator, “a child yet unborn but on her way from the ancestors.” The film is difficult for most students because the Gullah dialect is used throughout, but the honesty of the film is worth the work. Later, we will also read Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Ceremony and accompany its hero Tayo on a journey to recovery from the brutalities of war.

Tayo’s healing has power for all of his people and for all of us as he comes to reject violence and the enticements of alcohol and materialism and to value his “mixed” heritage as a paradigm of hope for the future of humanity.

This all seems very abstract, but we also join Ernest Shackleton on his Antarctic trek and marvel at the tenacity of his courage and honor in the face of unimaginable difficulties. And the course would not be complete without Wickerby, a contemporary memoir by a Brooklyn Heights writer who feels he has no choice but to do “the Thoreau thing” when his girlfriend takes off to film sunrises in Africa, and he is left with a Dalmatian named “Lucy,” a canary named “Rasteedy” and car alarms that go off in the night.

Along the way, we write analytic papers and try to achieve mastery of the technicalities of writing. We complete the year with a field trip in May, traveling to Crane’s Beach in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and coming full circle to the beach and the ocean. I can only hope that some student will write, as a girl did last year, “Today I am Rachel Carson.”

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Nature Journals: A Portfolio Nan Lee introduced the course, Man and the Natural World, in 2000. In addition to substantial reading, writing and class discussion, students are required to keep a nature journal, which many of them illustrate with drawings or photographs. Samples of students’ entries follow:

John Choi ’04

Nick Lazarus ’04

Allie Clark ’03

Spring—Ewww! Along with the beautiful blossoms, there are now worms hanging by thin silky strings, floating purposelessly, waiting to land on and crawl over oblivious pedestrians. Most of my fellow human friends are absolutely disgusted by these harassing worms. Nonetheless, upon closer examination, these eerily moving, plump little insects can be beautiful. Yes, even when one of them is dispensing lovely green excrement on my notebook, there is beauty in the pattern of its skin, in the way it crawls inch by inch, dragging its end, pushing its body, and in the fact that it is alive, playing its part in this grand, intricate, fragile web of nature.

Winter—The sun had dipped low enough behind the horizon that it did not cast any light directly on the ground. The sky was set ablaze, burning orange along the tree line then fading to a deep violet before becoming midnight blue. The few wispy clouds still suspended in the evening sky were painted a praetorian purple, a violet so deep and true it would be impossible to duplicate.

A light sprinkle of fall rain drops from the gray sky. The tree in front of me has been shedding its hard blue berries. It looks like a cedar because of its stringy bark, but I’m not sure. Spotting the tree’s branches are dying clusters of dried twigs. Below the branches are plants that look like this:

I could not help but think of the light bending to form those colors. I long for the innocence of ignorance, gazing at a bright sky and believing, even if just a little, that the sky really was on fire. Our forefathers…felt the fear of the unknown on the same ground we stand on today.

Like Charles Siebert says in Wickerby, we are always trying to create the fearless forest, a tame and explainable atmosphere where we are in control, or we can at least justify our inability to dominate.

The leaves on some plants have turned reddish brown and have curved inward.

Small birds gather in the tree, perhaps seeking the berries for food. They quickly fly away when I step closer for a better look. As they fly off, their wings hit the branches and droplets of cold water fall down on my head. The birds fly from the tree to the top of the boys’ old gym, eat, and return and repeat the process. The flag on the flagpole nearby fights the wind and produces a hammering sound. My damp sweater smells musty.

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Milton’s mission alive in new spaces New spaces at Milton—beloved, already. Renovations to Warren Hall and Wigg Hall and the opening of the student center have changed Milton’s landscape, inside and out.

In Warren and Wigg, renovations have restored the period highlights and hallmarks of each building at the same time that modern materials and conveniences enhance their usability. The accomplishments thus far have moved significantly toward achieving the overall goal of increased number and higher quality classrooms for faculty and students.

The Student Center is busy day and night, as anticipated. Meeting, studying, watching, listening, eating, singing, planning and laughing, students locate at this center of campus that has changed student life in dramatic ways.

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1 At the top of the Student Center, a new classroom overlooks Boston 2 From the quad entry level of the Student Center, looking up 3 Mailboxes, now in lower Wigg Hall 4 Centre Street view of the Student Center 5 Two classrooms on the south side of the Student Center provide stunning views of campus

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1 Casts of the Parthenon friezes have been restored and hung in Warren Hall hallway 2 Renovated Wigg classrooms still feature the Harkness table, maps and sunlight 3 From the Centre Street level to the quad and on to Forbes Dining Hall 4 Interior tower in Bill Rawn’s Student Center design houses meeting areas for students 5 Exterior north roofline of the Student Center

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Sports Winning Squash Teams Mr. Millet’s 39th Season Coaching the Boys’ Team Girls’ Team Welcomes New Coach, Poised to Dominate League

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ast fall, Forbes magazine published “Ten Healthiest Sports,” which featured activities that give the most impressive and well-balanced physiological benefits with the lowest risk of injury.

Squash topped that list. Milton boys’ squash coach Frank Millet—who has played the game since 1931 and coached it at Milton since he started the program in 1965—could have told us decades ago about the benefits of squash.

“Squash is a life sport. It’s fun,” Mr. Millet says. Fun and success have marked the boys’ team for decades. The boys, for whom Mr. Millet stresses courtesy and sportsmanship, have captured the

Independent School League (ISL) title for the last three years and are hopeful of another victory at press time. The strong tradition and camaraderie among the boys’ team attracts 30 or 40 alumni to return to campus for the Annual Graduates’ Invitational Squash Tournament each March. The tournament may be gentlemanly, but it showcases top-notch squash. Two competitors Jonathan Foster ’75 and Kip Gould ’73 are number one and two nationally in their age group (mens’ 45+).

The girls’ team is putting its own stamp of excellence on the program, making “the kill” consistently and decisively this sea-

son. Already respectable with 11 straight winning seasons and steadily improving records of wins to losses, the girls’ team is undefeated at press time and led by co-captains Cristina Ros ’04 and Liz Berylson ’04 (pictured at right), as well as an energetic and demanding new head coach.

“This is my first year coaching,” says Jack Wyant, their coach. While it’s true that Jack is new to this role, he’s no novice: He led Princeton’s men’s team as captain for three years and played professionally before working in marketing at Procter & Gamble in his native Cincinnati.

“I try to be tough and fun and fill the girls with confidence,” Jack says. “I teach them how to practice and play like professionals—that means that they demand excellence of themselves every minute of every day. During their two hours of practicing and conditioning, they pay attention to details.”

Jack says that the team’s success is not magical; in fact, he credits the leadership of co-captains Cristina and Liz, who lead warm-ups, consult on regimen and handle many logistical issues.

“Jack’s intensity has been positive. It’s really pumped us up,” says Liz. Liz, Cristina and senior Julia Rosenthal also point to the moral support of longtime assistant coach Bob Gilpin and Bob’s wife, Weezie Gilpin, whom they call their “greatest fan,” and the closeness of their team as factors in their growing skill and dominance.

The 1964–65 squash team. Coaches Phil Perry and Frank Millet on the left and right corners, respectively, of row two.

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“The younger girls look up to us,” says Julia, the team’s top of the ladder, who will play at Trinity College next year. “We all have a strong bond, and we want to win for each other.”

The 2003–2004 varsity roster includes cocaptains Liz and Cristina, Julia Rosenthal (I), Kim Gordon (I), Jenny Miller (I), Ilana Sclar (I), Samantha Bendetson (I), Britanny Delaney (II), Meg Weisman (II), Krissy Rubin (III), Cece Cortes (IV), Allison Rubin (V) and Sarah Loucks (V).

The team won the Choate Invitational Tournament this season—often an indicator of a team destined for an ISL championship—and boasts three individual state champions in Julia Rosenthal ’04, Krissy Rubin ’06, and Alli Rubin ’09, who won their age groups at the Massachusetts Squash Rackets Association Open Tournament.

Another standout player, Cece Cortes ’07, returned in January from playing in the Scottish Junior Open in Edinburgh, Scotland, and the British Junior Open, in Sheffield, England—the biggest junior tournament in the world. Ranked fifth nationally in the girls under-15 division, and eighth in the European world rankings, Cece placed sixth in the Scottish open, which included 237 of the topranked players from 33 countries around the world, including Malaysia, Hong Kong, Egypt, South Africa and Kuwait.

Midway through the season, co-captains Cristina Ros and Liz Berylson are undefeated. “At the end of this year, we’ll lose an incredible class of athletes,” says coach Jack Wyant. “The challenge will be for those who return next year to continue the positive trend.”

Boys’ coach Mr. Millet says that squash is a sport that clearly rewards merit over less salient factors—placement on the ladder is tied directly to whom a player has bested on the court. With members of the girls’ team poised for unprecedented and hardearned success internationally and at home, and the boys hoping for another strong showing, the players, the parents and the School are enjoying the momentum that comes from merit.

The program also benefits from outstanding facilities. Milton Academy’s first three squash courts were funded by the Williams family in 1964, in memory of Ralph B. Williams III ’51 and Albert C. Williams ’60 by their parents, Ralph B.

Williams ’26 and Peggy C. Williams, and by other family members and friends.

Now, the Academy enjoys seven international courts, with alumni funding much of the cost of converting the original courts to international courts.

Mr. Millet is also excited about the program’s future as well as its past: “The girls’ team, you know, has a new coach, and I think he’s just fabulous. He’s going to be wonderful for this program.”

For updated team results, including details on strong showing from junior varsity teams, visit our Web site at www.milton.edu.

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Post Script Post Script is a department that opens windows into the lives and experiences of your fellow Milton alumni. Graduates may author the pieces, or they may react to our interview questions. Opinions, memories, explorations, reactions to political or educational issues are all fair game. We believe you will find your Milton peers informative, provocative and entertaining. Please email us with your reactions and your ideas—cathy_everett@milton.edu.

     

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s I look out with shades blocking the hot sun here in Georgia, I ask that we imagine ourselves in a mega grocery store, walking the aisles and picking out what we want. No doubt we have grasped items that were already at home in the cupboard. Sometimes the sad part about this scenario is that some things we tossed in the cart are not eaten with the same appetite that we had when first carting them. Is the scene familiar? I would expect so; we’ve all been there.

I suspect that we’re not sure what we really desire in this culture called “America.”

Our country and the world are changing.

Having lived in Europe, I can say that “America” is as much a culture as it is most certainly a nation. I’m thankful for the creed, but there are issues that need to be dealt with beyond fanatical terrorism.

We are privileged to live in a country that

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by definition allows every individual to pursue profession, purpose and passion.

This pursuit is meant to benefit everyone.

Life experience has shown me that we must think about each other toward the benefit of all.

“Privilege is meant to empower us, not entitle us” was my keynote exhortation in October 2003 when I spoke to the Milton Academy community. I cannot begin to write about all I experienced revisiting the School. However, working with the students in the jazz program, under the tutelage of Bob Sinicrope, was a revitalizing experience. I enjoyed my visit and hope to return soon. Our students are precious and fallow fields for sowing the best. I believe that Milton Academy provides the right environment for sowing, academic nurturing and harvesting.

These days “Dare to be true” must be based upon the biblical expression in James 4:2,3 in keeping with Galatians 5:15 (The Holy Bible of Hebrew and Christian Greek Scriptures). Truth is principled and dependent upon each individual keeping his or her integrity despite the circumstances. Reaching this ideal will take more than the effort of a lifetime, but

it is attainable if we listen to each other with proper respect. Often our peers encourage a different route: questionable media (movies, music and entertainment); a preponderance of sex that contradicts a more wholesome lifestyle; and satisfying the expectations of others.

Another aspect of our society is competition—a good thing, but good competition can be compromised without mutual respect. Compassion should be the pivotal factor in a competitive world.

In the music industry, as a drummer, producer and record-label executive (two Grammy nominations, two Dove nominations and two Stellar nominations as a player and producer for gospel artists, and many Gold and Platinum records), I experienced exploitive competition.

Exploitation is in every industry. The good news is that there are staples (in the grocery store sense) that transcend this exploitation.

John Sussewell ’67

Our “staples” transcend this American culture of consumption, consumption that goes beyond housing, bread, or entertainment; beyond even picking out items from a shelf; beyond knee-jerk reactions to ads, or to broadcast infomercials. Today bottled water costs more per gallon than a gallon of gasoline to fuel our cars. Then realize that billions of human beings do not own a car to drive, let alone dollars to to fuel them.

This is the state of our world and have we really thought, “Where is humanity going? Are we powerless?” I think not.

Power is in the decisions we make—either to support our beliefs with the community in mind, or to neglect. “Out of sight, out of mind” is not legitimate; to neglect is a cognitive decision and we are responsible for the results.

Unfortunately, the real staples of life are often overlooked, whether to satisfy our palate, or to disregard what happens among our neighbors. Then, in the grocery store, others are just trying to get out of the frenzy of things, and others in the rush to the checkout counter with a credit or debit card. Have you been there? I have, but less so these days.

As an alumnus of Milton and Harvard, I suggest that we reconsider the world scene and our relation to each other, and be more considerate and compassionate while we recover after traumatic events such as September 11, 2001 or the earthquake in Bam, Iran (December, 2003).

Now I bring it home. Bread is not for personal consumption (as if it were a staple) without any consideration of what living persons were involved in furrowing the soil, seeding it, nurturing it, and then harvesting it for us. If it were bread only, we would all be predators.

Parents, truly unconditionally love your children and let the teachers educate.

Teachers, stay in touch with each of your students to know them personally and help them with written goals. Alumni, let your presence be known, because it encourages the dedicated members of an institution that is still among the best.

John M. Sussewell ’67 Reach John at jsussewell@comcast.net.

After all, doesn’t the sowing, parenting, nurturing and supporting of the seed benefit all who are among the land of the living? If only we could get in touch with the farmers and the precious youths (seed) that are within our grasp, we would fare much better than this present world scene seems to predict.

Nevertheless, such is our state of affairs.

So it is up to parents and teachers to teach life skills and academics, and the students to assimilate the tutelage of parents first and then teachers at Milton Academy.

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OnCentre Class of 1952 Endowment for Religious Understanding Rabbi Rolando Matalon: “Where is the Love? Can Religions Learn to File Share?”

Rabbi Rolando Matalon, who has inspired a steadily growing group of worshippers on New York’s Upper West Side, urged Milton students to think of religion and their own beliefs as part of a new paradigm. Along with Rabbi Marshall Meyer, Rabbi Matalon transformed the declining Congregation B’nai Jeshurun on Manhattan’s Upper West Side into a revitalized congregation of 1,800 families committed to an inclusive approach to liturgy and community, and dedicated to the work of education, social justice and interfaith cooperation. On November 19, 2003, students, faculty and several members of the Class of 1952 gathered in King Theatre to hear Rabbi Matalon, who gave the second annual Endowment for Religious Understanding lecture, established by the Class of 1952.

“Post-triumphalism” was the concept the Rabbi promoted: the idea of many individual practitioners coming together to shape a religious message that can face the most daunting challenges of the world, “challenges that are beyond the scope of any one religion,” as he said.

All the religions of the world hinge on dogma and practices that identify the “brother” as separate from the “other.”

Religions necessarily foster a sense of inclusion and tribalism: one story, one set of beliefs, one truth, the Rabbi explained.

Religions practice “triumphalism”: looking at the world with

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an us-them view, speaking as those who are “right.” When you’re right, you speak from higher moral ground, thereby denigrating others. Religion promotes jealousy, rivalry, impatience.

“Religion,” says Rabbi Matalon, “is not all bad.” Religion is a source of meaning; it insistently asks the great questions: “Why am I here? What is my place?

What are the expectations for me? Who is around me?”

Religion is a source of values and a source of vision—not of the world as it is, but as it ought to be. Religion affords the celebrations of life: birth, growth, love, mourning. Religion is about stability in the face of change. Religion asks you to evaluate and to think. Religion warns about excess—of materialism or of competition, for example.

Actually, Rabbi Matalon asserted, “we all have pieces of a complicated truth. Who can deny someone else’s connection to God? God is not a follower of any of the religions created by his followers.” We are all human beings, from whom issues all this diversity. Perhaps it is God’s will to create such diversity.

The genetic code is an apt metaphor for understanding both our individual separateness and our profound connection with one another. All life shares the same genetic code; then we diversify. Eye cells and liver cells and brain cells establish their identities; they are indispensable

both as particular cells and as part of an integrated whole—the human being.

We can understand ecology, cultures and religions in the same relationship; we cannot live without the “other.” Particularism is necessary as part of a larger organism. If you are not you—in all your you-ness, and I am not me, in all my me-ness, then there can be no “we.”

“Learn about your own traditions and then disagree passionately, and peacefully. Learn, exchange. Don’t hold on to simplicities. You don’t need absolute certainties for dialogues. File share. Upgrade your ideas.”

After Rabbi Matalon’s talk, dozens of students and faculty members gathered with the speaker for a spirited, informal discussion in Straus Library.

Winter 2003–2004 Speakers In addition to Rabbi Matalon’s talk on November 19, 2003, made possible through the Endowment for Religious Understanding established by the Class of 1952 (see story, this page), the Academy community has enjoyed the wit and wisdom of these speakers this winter: Broadcasting executive Pat Mitchell On December 3, Pat Mitchell, president and chief executive officer of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) addressed students as part of the Margo Johnson Lecture Series.

Novelist Zadie Smith On December 10, Zadie Smith, talented and prize-winning young British novelist, lectured and read from her novel White Teeth as part of the Bingham Lecture Series.

Novelist Anchee Min On January 7, best-selling memoirist and novelist Anchee Min read from Red Azalea and talked with students about her experiences during China’s Cultural Revolution as part of the Hong Kong Speaker Series.

Educators Dr. Bruce D. Walker and John Badalament Dr. Walker is director of the Partners AIDS Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and one of the world’s leading immunologists in the field of HIV research. John Badalament, Ed.M., lectures worldwide on relational psychology and the critical role fathers play in children’s lives. They talked with students about HIV and gender issues, respectively, as speakers in the Talbot Lecture Series.

Retiring from the Board of Trustees Deborah Weil ’70 Deborah Weil was a member of the board for 10 active years in Milton’s history, during which the board’s strategic initiatives enhanced the strength and the stature of the Academy. Debbie joined the board in 1993, as the trustees began formal planning for The Challenge to Lead, Milton’s capital campaign that concluded successfully in 2000.

With her daughter Eliza (Class of 1995) already at Milton, and her son Tim (Class of 1998) soon to enroll, Debbie was close to the student experience at Milton and was interested in contributing to every aspect of the board’s work. She participated on the Budget and External Relations committees during her tenure, and as a member of the Student Life Committee and the Enrollment Committee, and

was particularly focused on the quality of boarding life as well as effective recruiting of boarding students.

An early proponent of the concept of a student center, Debbie was enthusiastic about how a common space for boarding and day students to gather outside of class, at night and on weekends would enhance the student experience at Milton. Her third child, Amanda (Class of 2001), graduated as plans for the student center that opened last fall were developing. On the enrollment front, Debbie hosted numerous successful gatherings for prospective Washington, D.C. area students in her home, and as a writer and communicator by profession, used every opportunity to promote Milton Academy.

Resourceful, and always ready with ideas and energy, Debbie honored a deep family connection to Milton in her service to the board. She is married to Sam Harrington ’70, and Sam’s mother, Deborah Harrington, graduated from Milton in 1942.

In addition to her three children who are recent graduates, Debbie’s sister Amanda Weil is a member of the Class of 1978.

We are grateful for Debbie’s service on the board; we will depend on her loyalty and support long into Milton’s future.

Second Grade Presents 19th Annual Shadow Plays On January 28, 2004, in Kellner Performing Arts Center, Grade 2 students presented four stories, each acted out in silhouette and accompanied by music performed by classmates.

Under the direction of secondgrade teachers Luisa Botero and Nancy Fenstemacher and with assistance from a cadre of parents and faculty members, the children acted out Bawshaw Rescues the Sun, Stone Soup, Toad Is the Uncle of Heaven and

The Terrible Nun Gwama. “We are so proud of this year’s shadow players,” Luisa said. “They were filled with wonder at the special effects their shadows created. They set goals for their rehearsals and more than lived up to our expectations.”

“When it’s time to celebrate Chinese New Year and do shadow plays another year,” said Charlotte Goddu, one of the students featured in The Terrible Nun Gwama, “will you come and get us so we can be second graders again?”

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Seniors Win National Recognition for Creative Writing Carnival captures poetry prize Matt Humphreys was among 125 young artists selected from a national pool of 6,500 applicants to attend ARTS Week 2003, an all-expense-paid week of workshops, master classes and showcase performances in Miami, Florida. Matt was chosen for excellence in poetry.

Student claims Seventeen magazine prize ARTS alumni include Grammynominated singer/actress Vanessa Williams, renowned jazz musician Terence Blanchard and National Book Award nominee Allegra Goodman.

ARTS Week, January 6–11, marked the national finals of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts’ (NFAA) Arts Recognition and Talent Search®(ARTS) program.

During ARTS Week, panels of judges—experts in their art form—evaluate the young artists for cash awards and the chance to be named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts and honored with a medallion in a ceremony sponsored by the White House.

Carnival for A. Colbert

By Matt Humphreys As a chica bonita you danced in the carnival at Pamplona, a glittering dervish of hair blacker than the night sky above you.

I would see your bracelets’ silver crackle, hear the thunder of your soles as they pound cobblestones. Did you shy away as his great figure engulfed your eyes, did you walk away as he cooed, chica bonita, pretty girl, pretty, oh, pretty girl, these things I could tell you.

And you have not forgotten the dance’s rhythm.

When you talk, your black hair spins in ringlets and sways, just so. Chica bonita, these things I could tell you: I am not Papa, I am no soldier.

But there are things beneath all men, passions that hide in our blood, flickering understandings of night and dark, wanton windows, shutters thrown back as though to seduce the very stars.

And no lumbering Bacchus could capture spirals as precise as yours, as you danced into the constellations, and forgot these things, these things, chica bonita, these things I could tell you.

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Emma Clippinger ’04 says that her mom made her do it.

“We were standing in line at the supermarket, and my mom saw that Seventeen magazine was having its writing contest. She knew that a Milton student had won it before, so she told me to send in one of my stories,” Emma says.

From the contest’s more than 2,000 submissions, Emma’s story “Finding Ocean” won one of only five honorable mentions—one of eight total prizes.

(Mothers do know best, apparently.)

That Emma had a story at the ready was no mistake. In fact, she’s been writing and illustrating her own stories since she was 7, and “published” her first story, “The Perfect Gift,” in a bound volume of stories by third-grade students.

Emma says that she always had the creative energy necessary to good storytelling, but it was Mr. Connolly’s writing workshops in her first year at Milton that honed her grammar and proper usage. “I usually followed the rules, but I didn’t understand exactly what the rules were,” she says. Emma says that Milton teachers Ms. Gerrity, Ms. Baker, Mr. Silbaugh and (former faculty) Ms. Detmar have helped her build upon that new confidence and competence.

An admirer of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories— especially his use of terse dialogue—Emma says she is always reading new work and feeling its influence on her writing.

“I definitely want to write,” she says. “My dream is to write for the New Yorker.”

Finding the Ocean

By Emma Clippinger Paul Simon’s voice creeps into my dreams, and turns them to thoughts— thoughts informing me I am awake enough to be thinking.

People say I’m crazy I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes Well that’s one way to lose These walking blues Diamonds on the soles of your shoes I fumble for the dashboard.

“Can you turn this off,” I howl.

“Mags,” Mom looks to me.

“You love this music.”

I don’t respond.

She persists, “When you were a little girl, you made us listen to this song all the time. You would sing along in this tiny little voice: ‘I got di di on the sole of my shoe…’”

To read all of Emma’s story, visit our news pages at www.milton.edu.

All That Jazz Milton’s jazz program turns 30 While not considered a formal part of the Milton curriculum until the mid-70s, jazz has always been alive on the Milton Academy campus. As far back as 1934 Milton students were joining forces to bring the toe-tapping sounds of jazz to campus.

Graduates of the 1940s may remember dancing in Goodwin on Saturday evenings to the sound of the Stompers, with Brad Richardson ’48 on bass.

While graduates in the mid1960s listened to the Capstone Players, who not only played for their classmates but tooted their horns at other area schools. A continued enthusiasm for jazz led the School, in 1974, to add Improvisational Music (now known as Jazz Improvisation) to its curriculum.

Today, 30 years later, the jazz program consists of four fullcredit jazz courses, seven jazz combos and includes more than 40 students. For three decades the program has garnered local, national and international recognition.

1934–1974 Jazz was a popular extracurricular activity. Jazz groups such as the Stompers (1948) and The Capstone Players (1967) entertained students on weekends and during School events.

1967 Jazz great Benny Goodman visits Milton as part of the Gratwick Artist Series.

1974 The first class in jazz, Improvisational Music, is offered.

1975 The first official performance of the Academy’s jazz program.

1987 The Milton Academy jazz combo performs at the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE) in Atlanta and MusicFest USA Winner.

1992 Jazz combo makes its first tour of South Africa. The Milton Academy Jazz combos have toured South Africa four times.

Named Best High School Jazz Combo by Down Beat Magazine.

1994 Jazz combo wins Berklee Annual High School Jazz Festival.

1997 Jazz combo is named a MusicFest USA Winner.

Pancho Sanchez visits as Melissa Dilworth Gold Visiting Artist.

1998 International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE) performance in Anaheim, California.

Berklee Festival Winner.

Named Down Beat magazine’s Best High School Jazz Combo.

1999 Milton Academy jazz combo invited to play at the White House Christmas Party.

Babatunde Olatungi visits as part of the Melissa Dilworth Gold Visiting Artist Fund.

2000 Milton Academy jazz combo invited to play at the White House Christmas Party.

2003 Jazz combo plays sold-out show at Cambridge’s Regattabar.

Milton Academy celebrates the 30th anniversary of Milton jazz.

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Middle School Outdoor Club Initiated “I had never really thought of myself as an outdoor kind of guy, or ever thought that I would go rock climbing every week,” says Tyler Hayes, an eighth-grade participant in the new Middle School Outdoor Club. Tyler and 10 other Middle School students were the first group to join the club.

“Whether we went rock climbing in the gym or hiking in the Blue Hills, I enjoyed every minute.”

For an hour and a half every Monday since September, a high-energy group of Middle School students and mentors from the Upper School have met to share their knowledge and enthusiasm for the outdoors and outdoor activities. The Middle School Outdoor program is one of many new activities available to students.

Middle School Principal Mark Stanek, a believer in outdoor education, supported the creation of the club. With the assistance of Matt Bingham, director of the H. Adams Carter Outdoor Program at Milton,

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English teacher and Outdoor Program staff member Kim Walker recruited five Upper School mentors to coach the inaugural group.

These five leaders are the key to the program’s success. Dermott McHugh (II), Tom Myers (I), Beatriz Mogollon (I), Hunter Stone (I), and Abby Wright (I) share their time, expertise and passion for the outdoors with the younger students. Whether they were instructing kids on how to tie figure-eight knots for rock climbing, or helping them learn the basics of tree identification on the Skyline Trail in the nearby Blue Hills Reservation, these mentors demonstrated sharp instincts and emerging teaching skills. Peer education can be an effective way to learn, and the Middle School students eagerly listened.

Tiz Mogollon, a senior from Bogota, Columbia, was one volunteer mentor who found working with the younger charges empowering. “I was amazed at the amount of energy they have.

The Class V and VI students were incredibly motivated and

ready to go, they followed directions well, and they were a good group of kids,” Tiz says. “For me, it was a fun activity and a nice break in the day to hang out with energetic people. It is great to teach other students how to do things they have not yet mastered.”

Abby Wright, another senior and co-head of the Upper School Outdoor Club, also enjoyed “seeing how rapidly the students improved.” As a fouryear veteran of rock climbing, Abby was particularly pleased to teach the next generation of climbers. “I hope that they will continue Milton’s legacy of good sportsmanship and good fun in the outdoors.”

From September to January, the curriculum covered myriad topics in outdoor safety and technical skills. Students learned to read a Blue Hills map, dress and pack appropriately for a day hike, travel as an inclusive group, and identify five different kinds of trees. In the rock climbing gym, they learned basic climbing techniques, the structure and purpose of gear, how to tie three types of knots, how to boulder, how to rappel, and practiced a routine safety check for both the climber and the belayer. Additionally, students learned to belay a climber, though only Upper School students and Kim actually belayed the younger students. Most of the participants were new to both climbing and hiking, but their novice status did not hold them back. Class VI student, Mary Caroline Palmer, remembers her anxiety about the new skills she would learn in the Outdoor Club. “When I first joined the Outdoor Club, I had never rock climbed before, and

was nervous. All of the leaders were really nice, and helped me become more comfortable rock climbing. After climbing a few times, I think I got better, and by the end I could climb on the harder rock wall.”

Upper School mentors took turns instructing the club members, and worked with different groups of kids every week.

Lessons often catered to their area of expertise; Hunter Stone and Dermott McHugh led a lesson on tree identification that was age appropriate, fun and informative. For Dermott, a graduate of the Middle School, working with the Middle School students was a chance for him to give back. “I loved working with the students on climbing safety and technique. They always proved to be good learners and persevering climbers. I was constantly envious of the Upper School Outdoor Program when I was in the Middle School.

Now the middle school students can get a taste of the Outdoor Program early.”

Class V participant David Samuelson enjoyed learning the technical skills, like belaying, while getting the chance to exercise and play in the outdoors. “I was thankful for the enthusiastic support and highly trained leaders and mentors.”

The bonding between Upper and Middle School students was one of the highlights of the first session. In January, a new group of students began the curriculum with the same team of mentors.

Portable Planetarium Enriches Lower School Curriculum A gift of Phil and Jane Sadler P’06 and their company, Learning Technologies, Inc., Milton Academy’s new portable planetarium STARLAB is helping students to see stars.

In fact, Jim Kernohan, Upper School faculty member and director of the Ayer Observatory, recently invited third graders into the planetarium— which takes only 20 minutes to set up—and explained how to locate Mars and celestial sights such as the Big Dipper, Orion’s Belt and the North Star. Members of the third-grade class also talked with Jim about why fewer stars are visible near cities (“Because so many people put their lamps on!” said one student.)

The Academy’s Lower School focuses on hands-on learning and an integrated curriculum, centering on a theme and connecting it throughout the year to geography and culture, the arts, math and other academic subjects. Third graders consider lifestyles—humans’ origins and relationships with the natural world, including exploration and the building of settlements, cities and farms.

Their visit with Jim connected with a current unit on the Lewis and Clark expedition; he explained how the stars helped Lewis and Clark chart their way across the country in the early 1800s. “Mr. Kernohan pointed out the characteristics of the night sky that Lewis and Clark would have used to navigate

their way from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean,” says Hannah Wood, third-grade teacher.

The STARLAB will similarly enhance curriculum of fourthgrade students who are studying ancient Egypt and fifth-grade students who are studying Greek mythology.

STARLAB is an inflatable dome capable of accommodating up to 35 students or 25 adults.

Inside the dome, a cylinder projector shows the night sky devoid of any light pollution; it can take visitors on a journey from the North Pole to the equator, showing the sky as it looks right now in Boston or Miami. The STARLAB can also help students explore different cultures.

“Students can see how different cultures grouped different parts of the sky and how they related to the stars to their religions,” Jim says. “Students can learn how the planets move across the field of stars and where to look for them at different times.”

Jim hopes to have every grade visit the planetarium at some point every year. “I want students to become familiar with it and with the night sky. The more they see it, the more they can learn. Besides the ‘gee whiz’ factor, I want them to learn more about the heavens. This will encourage them to visit the observatory during the monthly open houses.”

Jim Kernohan with STARLAB fans

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Alumni Authors Recently published works Liner Notes Emily Franklin ’90 Emily Franklin’s touching debut novel, Liner Notes, tells the tale of a young woman’s struggle to deal with her uneasy relationship with her mother.

After finishing graduate studies on the West Coast, Laney plans a solo road trip back to the East.

With her old mixed tapes in the front seat, she plans to use the trip to reflect upon and say goodbye to her youth. But, when Laney’s mother, Annie, arrives and insists they make the cross-country journey together, Laney’s enthusiasm for the trip wanes. Laney’s mother, who has been battling a life-threatening illness for 12 years and is now in remission from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, knows little about her daughter’s adult life and recent experiences.

As they drive, Laney gradually opens up to her mother, at first grudgingly and eventually enthusiastically. Songs by ’80s musicians Steely Dan, the English Beat and Voice of the Beehive help Laney to recount stories of relationships and friendships and share with her mother.

After graduating from Milton in 1990, Emily studied at Oxford University, and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College. Before earning a graduate degree from Dartmouth College, Emily worked as a chef on historic and luxury yachts, as an English teacher, and as a freelance writer. Currently, she lives in Newton, Massachusetts, where she works for National Public Radio’s “Car Talk.”

Post-Soviet Decline of Central Asia Offers Comprehensive Look at Geopolitical Hotspot Eric Sievers ’88 In Post-Soviet Decline of Central Asia: Sustainable Development and Comprehensive Capital, Eric Sievers ’88, an associate of Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and an expert on legal and environmental issues in the former Soviet Union, takes on the task of explaining the remarkable economic declines of the postSoviet Central Asian States (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) in the past decade, and the turn of these states toward despotism. In 1990– 1992, optimistic hopes for achieving transition to free markets, democracy and sustainable development were voiced.

Instead, there has been a continued worsening of the serious environmental problems of the Soviet Union in its last decades.

The book is not a legal treatise.

Instead, it is a broad account of the region’s great expectations and decided failures. Eric’s narrative takes into account points requisite to understanding the region. These factors include the region’s immense gas reserves; geographical enormity (half the size of the continental United States); that it is industrialized and its people are well-educated; that it is the site of two of the worst Soviet environmental disasters; that it is perhaps the most secular, westernized part of the Islamic world; and that its geographical location between Russia, China, Afghanistan and Iran makes it geopolitically important.

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Dismissing explanations of the decline as the result of “Asian” or “nomadic” values as simplistic and opportunistic, Eric uses extensive fieldwork to explain this decline as the result of the region’s unbalanced stocks of natural, physical, human, financial, organizational and social capital, exacerbated by the influences of development agencies, environmental Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs), scientists, corrupt local politicians, and the inequitable downside of globalization symbolized by the World Trade Organization (WTO). Drawing on recent development in economics, law and political science, as well as a wealth of local sources, the book presents a compelling and unorthodox challenge to development agencies, scholars and human rights organizations to realize the implications of globalization and the challenges of sustainable development.

Eric has also worked for U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded development projects in Central Asia and founded and directed the Law and Environment Eurasia Partnership. He is an attorney with LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene, and MacRae.

In•Sight

The Student Center is a beacon at night (view looking east from the quad behind Wigg).

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Contact your classmates and make plans to return for

Graduates’ Weekend 2004 May 7–8, 2004 Friday, M ay 7, 20 12:00–1 04 :30 p.m

.

True Lu ncheon Featurin g: Hugh D. S. G reenway David G ’54 reenway is a care worked er journ for Tim alis eL London , Washin ife and the Wa t who has shington gton, Sa and Ho igo Pos ng editor, n Kong. Mr. Gre n, the United N t in enway s ational e ations er ditor an The Bost d editor ved as foreign on Glob ial e. been a f oreign a Most recently, page editor at G ffair re perspect ive on in s columnist. H enway has ternatio e will sh nal affair are his s.

Dare To Be

• Charge your intellectual batteries in special classes • Explore the old places, the new places and the renewed places on campus • Discover someone you never knew well enough, back then • On the quad, at the side of an athletic field, over a glass of wine, or pushing a stroller—catch up with old friends • Roll-your-own-sushi, sing your heart out, play ball, or visit an art exhibit • Ask trustees where Milton is going, and let them know what you think • Say “cheese” and smile: Be photographed with your classmates for posterity Watch for a full schedule of events and a registration form.

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www.m ilton.edu Gradua tes’ Wee ken

d Inform • Regist ation C er onlin enter e • Find o ut who’s coming • Locate ar • Help lo ea hotels and r est c • Show ate lost classma aurants tes off your School s gear onli pirit: bu n e y Milto • Look n up old f r ie nds usin director g the alu y mni

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Class Notes  Warren Arnold and his wife, Margie, are “bumbling along happily and in health good enough to mow the lawn and plant in the garden.” This February, they planned to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary in New Zealand.

 Henry Moulton says goodbye to Charles E. Shain, one-time Milton faculty member and former president of Connecticut College. Mr. Shain died in April 2003 at age 87. “Charlie joined the Milton faculty right out of Princeton and left for the Armed Forces in 1942,” Henry writes.

“In a sense he was a member of the Class of 1942, starting and finishing at the same time we did.

He was a charismatic teacher with a personality to match and was very popular with my class, partly, I suppose, because he was so young.”

 The Honorable Russell Murray writes, “Another year gone by and another reunion missed—not by a deliberate decision, but because of all those iron-clad commitments that allegedly clutter my calendar.

But now that so many reunions (all of them, if the truth be told) have prospered without my presence, I’m beginning to feel like Ebenezer Scrooge. I therefore pledge that if even one of my 1943 classmates is willing to admit that he remembers me, we shall—arm in arm—attend the next available reunion. And I can just imagine the resulting joy unrestrained.”

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Anne Saxton is doing better after a stroke she had in May 2002. Her husband is suffering with Parkinson’s, but the two are getting by. They live at home and their granddaughter lives with them. Anne’s daughter is Melinda White-Bronson ’69, and Melinda’s son is Henry White ’06. Henry’s dad is Christopher White ’69.

 Elizabeth Hall enjoys being a grandmother as her granddaughter, Matilda, approaches the 11⁄2 mark. Matilda and her parents live in Mount Desert, Maine, where Elizabeth’s daughter, Lisa, is a jeweler. Her son, Tony, lives in Los Angeles, where he is a film editor, photographic artist and working on his own documentary.

Elizabeth has become more interested in volunteer work and travel. She volunteers for the Boston Public Library and her local neighborhood association, and travels to Italy for her villa, rental and travel-planning business.

 Philip Rand has been teaching History of English and Technical Terminology part time at an Italian professional school for university-age language students. He is a translator of many texts, in particular: political, legal from Italian, French, German, Danish, Norwegian to English. His other activities include travel, piano, yoga and gymnastics. According to present law, he will retire in a year and a half.

 Barbara Kent Lawrence moved to Hamilton, Massachusetts, to be near her daughter and son-in-law, who are expecting a baby in

March. Barbara is working on the second phase of a report called “Dollars and Sense: The CostEffectiveness of Small Schools.”

The first phase of the report is available at www.kwfdn.org. The second report is supported with funding from the Knowledge Works and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and it lets her visit small schools around the country, which she has found fascinating.

 Arthur Nash is semi-retired, living on his farm in Warrenton, Virginia. His leisure time is spent playing tennis, western skiing and bird hunting in the fall with his Brittany spaniel. He serves on a county board. He has two sons in college and, when they graduate, he plans on doing more of the above.

 William Gamble’s latest article, “Going Bust: Overcoming a Dysfunctional Credit System,” was published in the Harvard International Review China symposium issue Summer 2003, Vol. 25, No. 2. Last spring, he spoke to the Foreign Correspondent’s Club in Hong Kong. He has also appeared on CNBC Asia, CNBC, CNNfn, Fox and Bloomberg.

 Ethan Russo reports that he has just retired from the practice of neurology after 20 years to take a full-time natural products research position as senior medical advisor for GW Pharmaceuticals of Porton Down, UK. Ethan will continue to reside in Montana, but work online and make periodic trips to England.

His latest book is Women and Cannabis: Medicine, Science and Sociology, and forthcoming from Haworth Press is Cannabis: From Pariah to Prescription.

 Jean Farnham French moved to Rochester, New York, after living in South Africa for five years. She is racking up the miles on her car at an alarming rate, driving sons Ben (15) and Nathan (13) to crew and swimming, respectively, and other than that, driving for her work as a real estate agent. She loves the pace and the fact that nothing is more than 20 minutes away. Gioconda Cinelli McMillan pops her head in every now and then on her way from Michigan to New England.

 Jessie Hill is living on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. She is studying Hawaiian language, Polynesian voyaging, slack key guitar and swimming in the ocean every day.

Margot Clasquin is taking an extended sabbatical from busy surgical practice to move to the mountains of western Maryland and build her log home. She writes, “No electricity or running water for six months was a good experience…now when the grid fails, I don’t care.”

 Karan Sheldon and her husband, David Weiss, received the Constance H. Carlson Public Humanities Prize in September for exemplary contributions to the public humanities. The award was given by the Maine Humanities Council to the founders of Northeast Historic

Film for contributions to the preservation and interpretation of New England’s moving image history. Karan and David founded Northeast Historic Film in 1986 to preserve and make accessible the film and videotape of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts. See more at www.oldfilm.org.

 Henry Heyburn and his wife, Alicia, welcomed the newest member of their family, Henry Nathaniel Powell Heyburn, on October 17, 2003. Baby Henry joins his older sister, Caroline.

 After 30 years in education, from her volunteer work through the community service program at Milton to her most recent job as a pediatric audiologist, Macy Ratliff has decided to pursue her other passion: books and children’s literature. She worked in a small local independent bookstore and is currently searching for a new job due to layoffs resulting from the economic climate. She is active as the open program coordinator and volunteers in both of her children’s schools.

 Elizabeth Burns’s book Tilt will be reissued in paperback from Berkley Books in May 2004. Last summer, her husband, Jeff, and daughter, Molly, spent time at a Spanish immersion camp in Cuernevava. Molly already attends a Spanish immersion school and is fluent in second grade. Elizabeth thanks Milton for her fluency!

 Nathaniel Abeles is the proud father of two babies, Winthrop Sargent Hyguson and Everett Scott Key Abeles, both born within the last 18 months. Nathaniel writes, “Now I understand what

aged our parents—lack of sleep.”

Still in Washington, he is bemused by the national and local governments every day and more bemused by the foibles of the Internet trade of which he has been a part of for the last nine years.

Rosemarie “Ro” Dooley Webster married Mark Webster on June 15, 2002, at Holy Redeemer Church in Chatham, Massachusetts, with a reception at Eastward Ho! Country Club. Ro and Mark met at Boston College in the fall of 1981 (not long after she graduated from Milton and he from Tabor Academy), and the couple has been together ever since. Felicia Taylor ’82 was invited to the wedding, but “she simply couldn’t get away from her anchor/reporter duties at NBC News in New York,” according to Ro. Ro is the director of press and public relations at 7NBC (WHDH-TV, Channel 7) in Boston, and Mark is the president and owner of MW Plastics in Marion, Massachusetts.

 Wrenn Flemer Compere is hunkered down for the Vermont winter. She continues to enjoy her job as a children’s librarian. Her kids are growing up fast: Anna is nearly 11, Pierre is 8. She stays in good touch with Julia Shepard Stenzel as well as Judi Ohlson Schultze ’84, and their wonderful families. She has also stayed in close touch with the Wendell family, especially Liddy ’94, who is in Spain. She occasionally bumps into Fred Bisbee ’82 in Waitsfield, Vermont.

 Randall and Liz Dunn had a gathering of Milton alums and their children from the D.C. area.

They had a cookout at their home for Cindy Powell who joined the Peace Corps and now works in Niger. In attendance were:

Mark Webster and Ro Dooley Webster ’81 at their June 2002 wedding on Cape Cod.

Randall and Liz Dunn, Julie White, Cindy Powell, Margaret Johnson, and Cliff Levin.

Stephen Cervieri and his wife welcomed a son, John Anthony Cervieri, on July 12, 2003.



Christopher Wyett and his wife, Lisa, welcomed their family’s newest arrival, Abraham Max David Wyett, born July 15, 2003.

M. David Schore has been married for five years and has two daughters, Hunter (3) and Tyler (1). He lives in New York City.

On July 26, 2003, Alison Churchill married James Alan Flaggert. They live in Seattle and enjoy the Pacific Northwest.

 Jennifer O’Shea and her husband, Cary Samulka, announce the birth of their son, Max O’Shea Samulka, on October 17, 2003.

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 Sarah Wolman welcomed daughter, Hannah Grace, on June 29, 2003. Sarah lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn. In September, she returned to work at Legal Outreach, a community-based organization that uses legal education to motivate junior high and high school students. She loves spending time with Hannah and her son, Sam. Catharine MacLaren works for the New York Times, counseling employees and running workshops on goal-setting. She continues to work on her dissertation and has started a book with a colleague at New York University, focused on how to serve seniors in the community. She has the good fortune to see Melissa Coleman and Anne Bridges ’86 often.

 Kevin Epstein and spouse Amy Jervis are proud to announce the August 13 birth of their daughter, Natasha Joan Jervis Epstein.

Matthew Katz has moved back to the Boston area with his wife, Dana, and their son, Benjamin Aaron, born June 4, 2001. He completed a residency in radiation oncology at Memorial SloanKettering Cancer Center in June and started a new job at Massachusetts General Hospital.

He is excited to be back near friends and family and looks forward to running into other Milton alums around the Boston area.

Diana Sax Corzine and her husband, Darik, are happily living in Montana with their four horses, one mule, two dogs and a cat. She enjoys work at a Montana V.A. urgent care/emergency room.

Darik enjoys his work sailing on National Science Foundation boats to Antarctica.

Kristin Barry sold her restaurant in Joshua Tree, California, and has moved back east, where she has

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started her next business, Appalachian Naturals, a line of natural and organic foods.

 In June, Zachary Meisel and his wife, Courtney, completed their terms as chief residents at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in emergency medicine and obstetrics/gynecology, respectively. Along with their 2-year-old son, Lex, they have moved to Pittsburgh to continue their adventures in academic medicine. Zachary joins the junior faculty at Drexel University and has also begun attending in the Emergency Department at Allegheny General Hospital; Courtney is a fellow at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Ken Goldberg ‘81 and his wife, Jeanne, are the proud parents of twins. Born December 24, 2003, at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Sophie weighed 5 lbs 3 oz and Julia 5 lbs 5 oz.

 Colin Rowan and his wife, Katherine, along with their cat Oona, made a long-awaited move to Portland, Oregon, in July.

Colin is working for the Portland Development Commission doing business development consulting while Katherine pursues a master’s in elementary education at Lewis and Clark.

James Lin is living in California.

He is married with a son and is actively training and competing as an amateur Full Contact Muay Thai (Thai kickboxing) fighter.

“Ever see Fight Club, where the guy comes to work all banged up and bruised? That’s my life….and I LOVE it.”

George “Putt” Smith and his wife, Selena, returned to New York City, where Selena is pursuing a master’s of fine art in sculpture at Hunter College, and Putt has turned to the theater. After acting professionally in Bangor, Maine, Putt received recognition as a playwright with a production of his first play, Greta and Arrow, at the Theatre-Studio in New York. He won the Sciotoville

Tamsen Caruso Brown ’91 and her husband Mark welcomed a baby boy, Conrad Herbert Brown, on November 17, 2003. He joins his big sister, Dillon.

Theater Project’s Plays for the New Millennium festival with his absurdist play: Bacon, My Little Flower? Putt and Selena hope to return to the simple life in Maine, either farming or homesteading, once they put their obligatory time down in the big city.

 Emily Ash Lungstrum welcomed son, Jack William, into the world on March 31, 2003. Jack is well taken care of by his older sister, Emma, who is 2.

Tamsen Caruso Brown and her husband, Michael, welcomed a baby boy, Conrad Herbert Brown, on November 17, 2003.

Abdol-Ali Soltani and his wife, Grace, announce the birth of their son, Cyrus. He was born August 10, 2003, and dad reports that “he’s a great little guy and everyone’s doing well.”

 Milton Arnold married Walker Allen on August 9, 2003, in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts.

Raymond Chan is in Philadelphia for the year at Wharton, along with Bob Seltzer, Liz Hanify and Christian Selchau-Hansen.

Raymond spent the summer at UBS Investment Bank, along with Andy Clayton ’89 and Scott Tremaine ’95.

Spencer Dickinson, David Weld ’94, Peter Garran ’94, Katherine Rochlin ’95 and Edward Fenster ’95 had a minireunion in London, England.

Spencer Dickinson is living in Charlottesville, Virginia and pursuing an MBA at the University of Virginia’s Darden School.

David Weld ’94 continues to work diligently on a doctorate in physics at Stanford. Peter Garran ’94 is an associate at JP Morgan in San Francisco. Katherine Rochlin ’95 lives in Cambridge,

Massachusetts, where she is a real estate developer. Edward Fenster ’95 moved to San Francisco in May to work for Asurion, a wireless services company.

 Hannah Bekker Diller and her husband, Tim, are delighted to welcome their daughter, Eliza Louise. She was born June 9, 2003, and joins her big brother, Ian, who is 3.

 Robert Nat Kreamer graduated from Basic Combat Training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in preparation for U.S. Army Officer Candidate School, which he begins in May after completing a master’s of business administration at Rice University. Nat will be an officer in the Texas National Guard, serving in the 49th “Lone Star” Armored Division.

A number of Milton alumni gathered for the wedding of Andre Heard ’93.

Pictured from left to right are Rahsaan McGlashan-Powell ’94, Chris Coyne ’93, Darren Ross ’93, groom Andre Heard ’93, bride Danielle Boyd Heard, Josh Winslow ’93, Colby Hunter-Thompson Previte ’95, John Cope ’93, Greg Hampton ’93 and Christian Selchau ’93.

Addison Rachel Hadlock was born on January 29, 2003, in snowy Burlington, Vermont to Adam and Ann Cross Hadlock.

She is truly a stellar baby!

 Sasha Fredie and her husband, David Madzunovic, proudly welcomed their son, Julius Tristan, on February 12, 2004.



Classmates from the Class of 1994 gather in Montreal to celebrate the marriage of Andrew Topkins. Seated, from left: Peter Scott, Andrew Topkins, Jesse Baer. Standing, from left: Daniel Sarles, Christopher Osgood, Andrew Katzman, Evan Hughes.

Sarah Case lives in Manhattan and works in development at American Ballet Theatre. She teaches dance in the city and recently choreographed an offBroadway production at the Broadway Theatre Institute. She also performs in various musical theatre and dance productions in New York City and New Jersey.

She loves spending time with Milton friends in New York and Boston. Hi to everyone in the Class of 1997!

David Weld ’94, Peter Garran ’94, Katherine Rochlin ’95, Spencer Dickinson ’93, and Edward Fenster ’95 having a mini-reunion in London, England.

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Deaths

Hannah Diller ’94 and her husband, Tim, welcomed their second child, Eliza Louise, on June 9, 2003.

 Katherine Sims is majoring in art history at Yale University and writing her senior thesis on “green” architecture. She has helped to create an organic garden at Yale.

1922 1927 1928 1930 1933 1934 1935 1935 1936 1937 1939 1941 1945 1948 1948

Ruth Driver Lowry Glen Draper Burnham Howland Shaw Warren Dr. John Underhill White Peter Cable Frances Hovey Howe John Davis Roger Pierce, Jr. Hunt Hamill George Haydock Dr. Bradley Bigelow James A. Fowler Dr. Christopher Longcope Charles Cabot, Jr. Theodore Herbert Nye Wales 1948 William Webb 1949 Stephen Sanderson 1950 Richard T. Perkin 1953 Alan Geoffrey Carr 1960 Adelaide Lutz Ladd 1969 William S. Bradford, Jr. Former faculty Priscilla Bailey Former faculty Harry Stubbs

Digital Photos We love pictures, and we like you to look good. Toward that end, we offer tips for sending us digital photos that will look sharp in print.

• Set the size of the photo to 4 x 6 inches or greater and 300 dpi • Set your digital camera to the best photo setting • Save files as TIFF or JPEG • Email photos as attachments (not embedded in the message or placed in a Word file) • Identify everyone in the photo and provide a caption • Send photos to MiltonMagazine@milton.edu

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In lieu of a digital image, you can still send a traditional print.

Note that glossy prints reproduce far better than matte prints; we cannot reproduce photos from photocopies, magazines or newsprint.

Again, please help us by clearly identifying everyone pictured in the photo.

Mail prints to: Milton Magazine Communications Office Milton Academy 170 Centre St. Milton, MA 02186

Harry Stubbs 1922–2003

H

arry arrived at Milton as a young bachelor in the fall of 1949 and retired after a distinguished career as a teacher of science in 1987. He died unexpectedly in his sleep in October of 2003. John Godfrey Saxe wrote a poem that doubtless Harry could recite called The Blind Men and the Elephant. It describes how several blind men put their hands on various parts of the beast and concluded that it was “very like a spear” or “nothing but a wall” or “very like a tree.” So it is in describing Harry Stubbs.

Those who knew him as Hal Clement, the distinguished writer of science fiction, knew a man utterly devoted to the details of science, a writer with great imagination who was meticulous in getting the science in control of the fiction rather than vice versa. Nearly every weekend he was off to one science fiction convention or another, always as a popular speaker.

and exciting. On Saturday morning and during the summers, he was always to be found with a new idea to stretch young minds.

His colleagues in the science department knew him as one of the most knowledgeable, imaginative and dependable teachers.

He always thought things through carefully. When nuclear power seemed to be the answer to the world’s decreasing supply of fossil fuels, he was always ready to point to the nuclear dangers as well as the danger of mining coal and of black lung disease. He carefully thought through both sides of an issue.

And he nearly always wore a button on his lapel proclaiming an opinion such as “The Moral Majority Is Neither.” He never drank or smoked and he was gently patient with those of us who did. He thought deeply about right and wrong and was never backward in expressing his opinion.

Those who knew him as an artist were amazed by his ability to put on paper his understandings of planets and things astronomical. Milton students who misbehaved in the early days were set to work rolling hundreds of spitballs of papiermâché, spitballs of different sizes so that Harry could paint them and put them together to make models of atoms and molecules, models that made ideas come alive.

Those who knew him as a longtime teacher in the Saturday Course or the APPLE Program knew him as a devoted admirer of children, with an imagination and a strong determination to make science understandable

Mission of Gravity published by Doubleday, ©1954, cover design by Joe Mugnaini

informed on many subjects and languages, and he was more than willing to share his insights with people of all ages. On our last trip together last summer, when he was age 81, he was willing to stand in line for a chance to climb a narrow ladder to the lantern of Pemaquid Point Lighthouse, where we could inspect the 150-year-old Fresnel lens.

Although, like those blind men, few people knew the full impact of his life, we all felt his determination to leave the world a better place and the people in it more fully informed.

He never complained. He will be missed.

Donald Duncan December 2003

He developed the astronomy course and taught it for many years. He ran the old Stearnes Observatory, now long since gone, and helped design the new observatory that continues to serve the School. Harry was able to give the famous science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov, his first view of Saturn at this observatory, and it pleased Harry no end. When the comet Shoemaker-Levy hit Jupiter in 1995, Jim Kernohan relates that he and Harry saw the impact and rejoiced like children at the sight. Harry never lost his sense of joy and wonder at the heavens.

Those who were aware of his interest in athletics knew that on weekends in the fall he could be found standing in the cold on top of his old station wagon, on which he had built a platform, taking movies of Milton football games. One viciously

cold day at Nobles, I recall that his feet were so numb that he had to look carefully every time he moved them lest he put one down into the thin air. Or he might be remembered as a coach of Warren League Baseball in the 50s and 60s. Harry knew the game and even pitched for the coaches in games we played against the boys when none of the rest of us were willing to try.

He was a great collector of books and when his house on Thompson Lane overflowed, he built, largely with his own hands, a small building in the back yard to serve as an office.

This, too, soon overflowed, but still stands as a memorial to a creative and practical man.

He had served in World War II as a bomber pilot and when the Korean War broke out in June of 1950, he was called back and

sent to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he met Mary, his devoted wife of over 50 years.

They returned to Milton, bought a house and raised three children, George, Rick and Christine. He continued to serve in the Army Reserve and retired as a full colonel. In his capacity as an Information Officer, he wrote articles and attended the launch of at least one space probe from Cape Canaveral.

He served the Town of Milton on the Warrant Committee and the Boy Scouts of America as a merit badge counselor and as a member of the Milton Board of Review.

Harry Stubbs was a true Renaissance man. He knew much of Gilbert and Sullivan by heart. I don’t think he could “write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform,” but I would never bet against it. He was vastly 63 Milton Magazine

Priscilla Bailey December 3, 2003

M

iss Bailey, known to many of you as Priscilla or “Cap,” to Milton students was “Miss Bailey.” During my time at the Academy I spoke the words out of respect for my teacher and my coach. In later years I always addressed my friend as Miss Bailey. While the words may have struck others as formal or distant, they encompassed not only continuing respect, but also affection, and alluded to an earlier time we had shared.

When I entered Milton in 1960, Miss Bailey was already an institution. She first came to the Girls’ School in 1939—only briefly, as she ventured to California to teach in Pasadena.

But in 1945 she returned and soon became head of the girls’ physical education department.

Miss Bailey and her great friend and fellow coach, Miss Sullivan, dominated Milton lore for a span of five decades until they retired in the 1980s. “SulliBail”—what a great team! Their skills complemented each other and they shared two passions: Milton Academy, where they spent the school year shaping generations of Milton girls, and the game of golf, to which they devoted their summers.

Miss Bailey was respected not only by the Milton students, but she was an important stabilizing factor for the Girls’ School faculty. Evident to us as students

was that her fellow faculty appreciated her insight and relied on her for advice and guidance.

Miss Bailey played a key role in the design and oversight of the 1956 construction of the Caroline Saltonstall Building, home of the girls’ gym. You could see her attention to detail in the layout of the space; it was perfect. Entering the gym office you were immediately struck by its orderliness. Orderliness was a hallmark of Miss Bailey—and the gym office was yet another vestige of her organization and precision. On entering you were struck by the meticulousness of her desk, including the everpresent clipboard on the corner for girls to check off “regulars.”

Also evident was the cork board behind her chair with all the pertinent school schedules neatly arranged. Finally, the chair next to her desk was never available for students, but covered with a quilt and reserved for her poodle, Bon-Bon. Miss Bailey arrived at Milton every day impeccably dressed.

Her matching John Douglas skirt and sweater looked brand new. The creases were perfect and you never saw a wrinkle.

There was even an orange and blue outfit for the days of Winsor games.

How ironic it is that while I value my interactions with Miss Bailey while I was at Milton, she was also the one who taught a class that caused me angst—the required physical education class each Wednesday in the winter— “Danish,” a combination of calisthenics, marching and coordination exercises. For someone who would have preferred playing basketball, I perhaps did not give Danish my

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full attention. Although Miss Bailey taught much of the class with her back to us, demonstrating the moves, it was amazing that she always knew when I was out of step. Did she have eyes in the back of her head, we wondered. The truth was she knew each of us—very well.

Miss Bailey’s niece, Debby, was a year ahead of me at Milton.

Yesterday we spoke about having her aunt as a teacher and how Miss Bailey was able to balance being a gym teacher and an aunt—but not at the same time.

Miss Bailey had many other roles at Milton. Besides heading the physical education department, she was the School’s event planner before we even knew the title existed. She arranged and ran Graduation, Parents’ Day, Alumnae Day and anything else that required organization and attention to detail.

Who can forget the multitude of nametags, lists and posters, all printed in the distinctive Bailey print—capital letters. If we passed around a sample today, we all would recognize it.

Indeed, [every holiday season] I would receive a perfectly printed envelope and know immediately that it contained Miss Bailey’s Christmas card. Only her signature was written in script; everything else was printed in capital letters, so typical of her attention to every detail.

Many students passed through Milton during her tenure in the gym. She had an impact on each of us—the athletic and the less athletic. She believed in us as young women. She allowed us to develop our personal strengths and helped us to understand our weaknesses. We learned much more than athletic skills—she taught us life skills. I know that I felt her influence as

I developed my own style. I wanted to be like Miss Bailey— steady and dependable. Her example stood me in good stead not only on the golf course, but later in business. We had a role model who set high standards for herself and demonstrated a professional demeanor coupled with humility and a tremendous interest in others.

Miss Bailey taught at Milton for 40 years. Very appropriately, the Priscilla Bailey Award is given to a senior girl who has been a “most valuable asset” to Milton Academy athletics and to the Milton Academy community. In 1994 Miss Bailey received the Milton Medal—well-deserved recognition of a Most Valuable Asset.

In 1983, Miss Bailey retired and was able to devote yearround attention to her golf game. She was an accomplished golfer, sporting a single-digit handicap.

But as in so many facets of her life, she was not the person in the headlines. Instead, she took pleasure in lending great support to others. She was exceedingly proud of her sister Nancy’s golfing accomplishments and enjoyed partnering with her in many events.

Particularly noteworthy were their years at the Bermuda Ladies Four Ball Championship.

Miss Bailey and Nancy joined other Massachusetts golfing friends in the annual journey to Bermuda for nine years. Those were great trips—the golf at Port Royal brought out everyone’s competitiveness. Miss Bailey enjoyed some very good rounds including the day she made pars on all of the threes. Equally competitive were the spirited nightly games of Pictionary.

Miss Bailey was a brilliant player, able to draw minute stick fig-

Priscilla Bailey (right) and Dorothy Sullivan in the basement of Ware Hall in 1956 after fire destroyed the girls’ gym.

ures, sometimes barely visible to others; and her team was undefeated for nine years. She was so proud of that.

Miss Bailey was a great golf partner. For several years in the late 80s Miss Bailey asked me to play in the Women’s Golf Association of Massachusetts Fall Four Ball event. I was truly taken aback that she asked me, as I knew she had a wealth of friends and a multitude of candidates for golf partners. While we all know that our games won’t last forever, some of us accept that better than others.

Miss Bailey was very demanding of herself on the golf course and very frustrated by the decline in her game. Walking off a green she could be heard to mutter “another G__D___ 6”. Unable

to hit it as far as she wanted, she would ask, “What am I doing?” and when offered advice, she would just shake her head and say, “I know, I know.” And then she would complain that she didn’t want to play “like a little old lady from Duxbury.”

I recall many rounds at Halifax guest days, on Saturday afternoons and in South Shore competitions—Miss Bailey was a stalwart on the Marshfield and Halifax South Shore League teams. Many of the Saturday rounds were followed by dinner at her home, Paradise Lane.

There was always a crowd and we would enjoy a lobster or steak dinner and follow it up with a game of bridge or gin.

Paradise Lane was first home to her cockapoo, Putter, and then

to Muffin, whose need for outdoor exercise was a motivator for Miss Bailey in her later years.

In her quiet unassuming way, Miss Bailey touched many people—whether calling daily to inquire about the health of a friend who had surgery, passing on her professional work ethic to student teachers or making her partner feel good on the golf course. Her understated manner belied her strong conviction and tenacious commitment. As her friend, you knew you could count on her. She was always there to support her family, her friends, her fellow faculty and her golf partners.

We will all miss her.

I was thinking about what Miss Bailey would say to us today.

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Charles C. Cabot Jr. ’48 June 11, 1930 – September 9, 2003

My thoughts about our dear friend Priscilla When I first arrived at Milton in 1960, having been a member of the Great Britain Lacrosse team, Priscilla and Dolly were among the first members of the faculty to become my friends. That friendship never stopped growing and really has continued until now. One of my earliest memories of Priscilla was the time she thought I ought to become more American, so she made me a pair of Bermuda shorts, tailored to perfection.

Whilst we were working together as members of the Girls’ School faculty, which was a very close group of ladies who held each other in great respect, I was lucky to know Priscilla as part of the phys ed department and as an organizer of major school events. I never ceased to be amazed at her organizing power and her attention to the smallest details, such as umbrellas.

Nothing was forgotten and, in consequence, everything went flawlessly.

I know she is looking down on us—probably having a cigarette after finishing 18 with Miss Sullivan and preparing for a marathon cribbage game with Phyllis Bourne. I feel she might repeat the words she wrote in Debby Black Drain’s Milton yearbook in 1966:

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When Priscilla, Dolly and Alice Gregg retired and built their home on Randolph Avenue, they shared it with many. Dolly died six months after they moved in and, since then, many of the old faculty have stayed there. My 50th birthday and retirement party were there. Perhaps Priscilla’s bravest and kindest and most loving gesture was to allow Sue and me to live with her for eight months while I underwent chemotherapy. I think all three of us were amazed at how well we managed and how much fun we had.Her kindness is one I shall never forget, and it cemented our 43-year friendship forever.

Priscilla was a great and loving person who had always another friend to her dog—Muffin being a great favorite. Priscilla was fun, competitive and loving and she will be sorely missed.

Barbara Isherwood Girls’ School Faculty Emerita Milton Academy Master Teacher

“Remember to keep everything balanced.”

Godspeed, Miss Bailey.

Jeanne-Marie Boylan ‘67

C

harles C. Cabot was a trustee at Milton Academy from 1977 to 1989, while Jerry Pieh led the Academy as headmaster, and during a period of growth both for the faculty and the student body. During this time, as well, the Girls’ School and the Boys’ School were steadily integrated to form a coeducational school. “Charlie Cabot brought to his service as a trustee the unusual combination of a highly organized, lawyerly mind and a highly developed sense of mission,” Jerry Pieh remembers. “He was committed to social justice and the welfare of all kinds of people. Charlie was comfortable with people— talking with them, listening to them.” Having survived a terrible accident and multiple surgeries, Charlie was grounded as a person; he was broad-minded, and acted with an awareness that he had a responsibility

beyond his own well-being.

Charlie engaged with problems and with organizations and their related missions. He was a member of the Conservation Law Foundation 1970 to 2003, and the chair of its board of trustees from 1991 to 2003.

Charlie was also a trustee at the Neighborhood House School in Dorchester, Massachusetts, from 1995 to 2003, and the president of its board from 1997 to 2003.

Aware of the multicultural face of the state and the nation, Charlie believed in diversifying the Academy while retaining the traditional values of school, including the combination of intellect and character. “Charlie was a wise and steady force on the board,” says Jerry. “He was caring, bright and committed— perhaps not the most visible trustee—but one on whom you could always count, someone who delivered.”

Charles Cabot, 73, A Lawyer Passionate About Charity Work

By Tom Long, Globe Staff And this is good old Boston The home of the bean and the cod Where the Lowells talk only to the Cabots, And the Cabots talk only to God. —Dr. John Collins Bossidy, 1910 Charles C. Cabot Jr. didn’t speak only to God, but a lot of people think he did God’s work.

He quietly spent countless hours working with the less privileged at the Neighborhood House Charter School in Dorchester and was chairman of the board of directors of the Conservation Law Foundation, which filed the first lawsuit that led to the cleanup of Boston Harbor.

Mr. Cabot, 73, a down-to-earth lawyer who took a hands-on approach to his volunteer work, died Tuesday in his home in Dover.

“He was the classic Yankee, personally reticent and self-effacing, gentle, and at the same time totally stubborn about things he cared about,” Stephanie Pollack, acting president of the Conservation Law Foundation, said yesterday.

“You would figure with a name like Cabot he would be very aloof, but if you said two good words about him, he said 20 good words about you. He always made you feel taller than he was, and he was 6-foot-3,” said Kevin T. Andrews, headmaster of the Neighborhood House Charter School, which is operated by Federated Dorchester Neighborhood Houses Inc., a social service organization.

“The name of Cabot is legendary in Boston,” said Andrews, “but he never mentioned it.”

Members of the Cabot family have been plagued by the anonymous toast for generations. Within the family, they refer to it as “the poem.” In a story published in the Globe in 1979, Mr. Cabot said he was often asked if he was one of the Cabots. His standard reply: “I’m a Cabot, and I come from Boston.”

Mr. Cabot was born in Brookline and graduated from Harvard College, where he was a member of the baseball team.

In the last game of his senior year, in his first at-bat of the season, he hit a home run. “Yale Conquers Harvard 8–7 Despite Pinch Homer by Cabot” read the headline in the Boston Herald.

After serving in the Navy for several years, he graduated from Harvard Law School in 1957.

Mr. Cabot was a lawyer in the counsel’s office of the U.S. Information Agency before becoming a managing partner of the Boston firm of Sullivan and Worcester, where he specialized in estate planning for more than 30 years.

A bushy-browed outdoorsman who canoed white water throughout the world, he joined the Conservation Law Foundation in 1970, had served on its board of directors since 1981, and since 1991 had been chairman of its board of trustees.

The foundation has led legal fights to clean up Boston Harbor, to halt the Seabrook nuclear power plant, and to place restrictions on ground

fishing in the Gulf of Maine.

“He was an incredibly committed and thoughtful person, who did more on the charitable front than practically anyone in Boston,” said Douglas Foy, former president of the foundation, who is now chief of Commonwealth development in the Romney administration. “He was also the most understated person I ever met,” Foy said.

“He could be incredibly stubborn, but without being confrontational. He dealt with a collection of very dynamic, high-powered board members with a mild-mannered, Clark Kent approach. He never said a lot and never raised his voice, but somehow the board always came out on an issue exactly where Charlie wanted it to go.”

Mr. Cabot once led a tour of Beacon Hill gardens for prospective donors to the foundation. In keeping with the organization’s mission, the group was transported on an electric bus. The last stop on the tour was for lunch at the Hampshire House, but the bus never made it. It broke down.

“Even the doors didn’t operate,” said Foy, “so Charlie crawled out a window in his suit, pried the doors open, and let them out.”

Nobody said no to Charlie.”

Mr. Cabot often attended concerts at the school. A couple of years ago, he and his wife accompanied a class on a field trip to Philadelphia to learn about the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

“You want to take a six-hour bus trip with 13-year-olds?”

Andrews asked him. Mr. Cabot said yes. Andrews said he seemed to enjoy the ride, though he took an airplane back.

Mr. Cabot leaves his wife, Dale (Pirie); two daughters, Elisa C. Dooley of Wyomissing, Pa., and Emily Chamblin of Rosemont, Pa.; a son, Charles C. III of Wayland; a brother, Walter M. of Dover; and eight grandchildren.

Copyright 2003, Globe Newspaper Company The Boston Globe Reprinted with permission

Mr. Cabot joined the board of trustees of the Neighborhood House School in 1995 and served as its president since 1997. He often dropped by with visitors he was encouraging to donate funds or equipment to the school.

“Once we get you to the school we gotcha,” he often said, according to Andrews. “He was a great fund-raiser,” said Andrews, “but he always thought he was the worst.

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Making a bequest to Milton • Thinking ahead • Providing for the future • Guaranteeing excellence

Judy Rice Millon ’52 (pictured here with her husband, Henry, and their grandson) began her Milton connection as one of nine Rice cousins who attended the Academy in the years around World War II.

Recalling post-war Milton, I image a landscape that [was] as much country as suburb. It was a time when the great elm trees of New England still lined the streets—and we were warned not to play in the woods close by. Rolling over my memory of the campus, I conjure up the figures of Miss Bailey and Miss Sullivan striding the sidelines of the hockey field, bellowing instructions while knitting feverishly on argyle socks.

I was really a Milton “lifer.” I was born and raised a faculty child until 1939, when Dad closed the English teacher/ track coach chapter of his life. At age 12, I would return three-quarters of a mile west of my Centre Street beginnings for classes VI and V, sharing the Stokinger house on Randolph Avenue with Mary

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Jane Caldwell ’52 and the Stokingers’ son, Ricky. Then I moved to Hathaway House, where I was a boarder for my last four years. The sight of an orange and blue hat in a crowd still tingles my blood.

My decision to leave a bequest to Milton Academy came not from a desire to make a statement of thanks for my own longgone experiences, but in a small way help assure that Milton Academy will continue its momentum as an exceptional educational institution for many, many fortunate students in the future.

For more information about gift planning, please contact the development office at 617-898-2374 or ben_phinney@milton.edu.