Milton Magazine, Spring 2014

Who Needs Talent?

fe atures WHO NEEDS TALEN T?

17

10 Leading a Frontline Media Agency, Lisa Donohue ’83 Lives “Life in Beta.”

7 7

As CEO of Starcom USA, one of the largest and most cutting-edge media agencies in the business, Lisa Donohue ’83 keeps her finger on advertising’s racing pulse by surrounding herself with talent on all levels, and staying on top of an ever-changing technological and media-savvy world.

24 We Call Them Specials: Chances to Try, “Fail,” Learn

by Liz Matson

Joe Ellis ’76 Is President of the Denver Broncos—Not Just a Team, But a Brand.

13

Joe Ellis ’76 talks about what it takes to lead an enterprise that is intensely talent-dependent: talent in executing game-winning football, and talent in growing a brand experience that millions consider part of their lives.

Jonathan Kohler ’94 has woven two seemingly unrelated talents into a single career. He is a pediatric orthopedic surgeon who integrates story and medicine.

His formula has traction and plenty of growth potential.

by Cathleen D. Everett

When Doctors Tell Stories

by Cathleen D. Everett

17 Tze Chun ’02 Wants to Introduce You to Your New Favorite Work of Art

10

Tze Chun ’02 is an uncommon combination of radiant warmth and fierce focus. Her passion is art, and these days Tze concentrates her entrepreneurial vision on her newest venture, Uprise Art.

by Erin E. Berg

13

21

Each day, projects in music, woodworking, visual and performing arts, and physical education add context to what children are studying in mathematics, social studies, science and language arts. In the Lower School, both grown-ups and children refer to these courses as “specials,” and in these classrooms, creativity reigns. Listen to what the students have to say.

The Act of Teaching Is Changing as We Speak.

Indu Chugani is Milton’s dean of teaching and learning. In her first year here, she has focused on cultivating talent within Milton’s faculty through new professional development programming. We ask Indu to consider questions about teaching that intrigue and challenge every community, and resonate at Milton.

24

depar tment s

46

44 In•Sight

46 Sports Fortitude and Finesse: Girls’ Hockey Demands Both

by Liz Matson

50 Class Notes

2

56

Across the Quad

Post Script

30 Head of School

A Complementary View

by Vcevy Strekalovsky ’56

Attracting Teaching Stars

by Todd B. Bland

31 Classroom Strutting Classroom Stuff

36

31

Faculty Perspective A Victim, A Soldier, An Activist: Memories of Protest

by Salomón-G. Díaz-Valencia, modern languages faculty

39 On Centre News and notes from the campus and beyond

36

Editor Cathleen Everett Associate Editors Erin Berg Liz Matson Photography Eric Lars Bakke, Erin Berg, Maggie Bland ’14, Michael Dwyer, John Gillooly, Morgan Hung ’14, Kate Ignatowski, Max Levine, Liz Matson, Greg White Design Moore & Associates Front cover by Stoltze Design Milton Magazine is published twice a year by Milton Academy. Editorial and business offices are located at Milton Academy, where change-ofaddress notifications should be sent.

As an institution committed to diversity, Milton Academy welcomes the oppor­t unity to admit academically qualified students of any gender, race, color, handicapped status, sexual orientation, religion, national or ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally available to its students. It does not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, color, handicapped status, sexual orientation, religion, national or ethnic origin in the administration of its educational policies, admission policies, scholarship programs, and athletic or other school-administered activities.

Printed on Recycled Paper

2

across the quad

5

Treasured Traditions Class IV Talks

A rite of passage. A distinct memory for most alumni. Fiveto seven-minutes on a subject you choose. At Milton today, classmates vote on which talks they want to hear again at an annual “Best of” event in May. Topics range from being the oldest of eight children to China’s one-child policy, from hiking Mount Washington to breaking a Breaking Bad addiction. “Class

IV Talks are one of the most valuable things we do here,” says English faculty member Caroline Sabin ’86. “Putting students in front of their peers and asking them to talk about what is important to them creates breathtaking moments. We are sharing with each other, not just around academics, or abstractions, but around the ways in which we see our world.”

Beatnik Café Happy 20th anniversary, Beatnik! Live entertainment, for and by students, Beatnik Café is Milton’s own open-mic night.

Magus/Mabus hosts the popular event several times each year.

Launched by Colin Cheney ’96, Beatnik fills Straus Library. On couches and beanbag chairs, or

dangling feet between the rails of the second-floor balcony, students watch classmates perform.

Music of all kinds—classic guitar, rap, rock, hip-hop, acoustic— along with original poetry and improv comedy—round out the night’s performances.

3

Milton–Nobles Weekend

1

2 Milton Magazine

Each athletic season culminates in the beloved Milton–Nobles Weekend. In the fall, the weekend kicks off with a massive pep rally. The jazz band plays, the step team performs, the

dance team and the Mustang dance, and Class I emcees rally students, decked out in blue and orange. The rivalry with Noble and Greenough School dates back to an 1886 football game, and it’s alive and well today.

4

ov e r • t i m e

Sock of Quarters at Graduation Commencement is full of tradition: the white dresses, the blue jackets, the bagpiper, and speakers chosen by the class are followed, finally, by diplomas, in random order. In 1986, then dean of students John Mackenzie decided that the last student called should receive a “prize” for waiting until the very end to

receive his or her diploma. That prize was a Milton athletic sock, filled with dimes—one from each senior. Over the years (call it inflation), the dimes became quarters, and to this day, the final student leaves Milton not only with a diploma, but also with enough laundry money for the first few months of college.

Sunset. Snacks. Bikes. Friends. Spring is in the air.

(As it was in 2007.)

What’s on your Milton Bucket List?

How many of these “Milton musts” have you experienced?

Veterans’ Day

5

Milton has honored Armistice Day silently since 1926. At 11 on 11–11, faculty, staff and students silently walk across campus and gather around Milton’s flagpole.

Honoring those who have served the United States, a student trumpeter plays “Taps” from atop Apthorp Chapel as the flag is lowered to half-mast and raised again.

❏❏ Observing the night sky from the Ayer Observatory ❏❏ Applauding budding thespians at the Class IV Play ❏❏ Getting your laughs at Improv Night ❏❏ Finding your rhythm in the Dance Concert, or at Beatnik Café ❏❏ Entertaining classmates during morning assembly ❏❏ Cheering on the Mustangs at an away game ❏❏ Running for an elected position ❏❏ Calling alumni during a development office phone-a-thon ❏❏ Spending a night in a dorm, if you’re a day student ❏❏ Spending a night at a day student’s home, if you’re a boarder ❏❏ Flexing the golden pipes auditioning for a singing group ❏❏ Taking advantage of the weekend fun on campus

❏❏ Compiling a wild costume for the Swap-It dance ❏❏ Treating your advisee group to doughnuts or cookies ❏❏ Reflecting inside Apthorp Chapel ❏❏ Tutoring—or learning—at the Academic Skills Center ❏❏ Volunteering at a Community Service site ❏❏ Reading to Milton’s youngest in K–8 ❏❏ Walking barefoot on the Quad ❏❏ Completing a Senior Project that makes you proud ❏❏ Loving the dorm decorations just before winter break ❏❏ Touring a prospective family around campus ❏❏ Absorbing some afternoon art in Kellner ❏❏ Lunching with the head of school or the principal ❏❏ Trying out for a sport you’ve never played ❏❏ Hiking in the Blue Hills ❏❏ Kayaking with the Outdoor Club

❏❏ Taking the T to Harvard Square ❏❏ Enjoying one of Boston’s museums ❏❏ Wearing the Mustang costume ❏❏ Painting your face for the Milton-Nobles spirit rally ❏❏ Eating something you’ve never had before at Forbes ❏❏ Taking in a show, play or concert in Boston ❏❏ Talking with an assembly speaker in Straus ❏❏ Appearing on the homepage of the Web site ❏❏ Attending a Nesto Gallery opening ❏❏ Expanding your world in a culture club ❏❏ Graduating Inspired by a list compiled by Jim Kernohan, science faculty member, who has been teaching at Milton since 1988.

Spring 2014 3

Who needs »» »» »» »»

talent?

When growth depends on innovation, When excellence relies on particular skills and attitudes, When engaging your public, whoever that is, defines your business, Talent is crucial.

Milton Magazine asks alumni who lead organizations that are intensely talent-dependent how they recruit, develop and manage talented people.

What are the keys to their distinctly different models of business success?

We also take a close look at two graduates who have combined talent and confidence to create exceptional, cutting-edge endeavors.

At Milton, where faculty have always unlocked student growth and success, recruiting and developing top-notch teachers is a salient responsibility, as many revered faculty move toward retirement. Who will tomorrow’s Milton teachers be? How will Milton make sure that they connect powerfully with students now and in the years to come?

4 Milton Magazine

Photo: Morgan Hung ’14

Spring 2014 5

6 Milton Magazine

Joe Ellis ’76 is president of the Denver Broncos—

not just a team, but a brand.

H

e’s a master of relaxed, congenial banter. Just ahead of him was a game that would end in a three-point overtime loss by the Broncos to New England—after midnight on a wind-whipped field. Trim and dapper in his orange Broncos’ warm-up jacket, Joe Ellis ’76 casually answered a stream of questions about what it takes to lead an enterprise that is intensely talent-dependent: talent in executing game-winning football, and talent in growing a brand experience that millions consider part of their lives.

Joe describes the Denver Broncos as “the most highly visible business in the Rocky Mountain region.” Few organizations, for better or worse, are as vitally connected to their stakeholders as sports franchises. During his nearly 20 years with the Broncos organization—and its president since 2011—Joe has helped build the team’s thriving enterprise, publicly acknowledged as one of the most “fan-friendly” in the country. He has weathered the troughs of despair and the pinnacles of success.

Joe has, for instance, stood solo at a mic, answering for the decision to hire and fire Josh McDaniels, who came to the Broncos in 2009 from the Patriots’ staff to become the youngest coach in the NFL. In 2011 he helped team owner, Pat Bowlen, position John Elway, Hall of Famer and former Broncos quarterback, to restore the team’s stature and the fans’ faith. In 2013, Joe was seared by the pain of 75,000 freezing cold, devastated fans as the Broncos lost the AFC championship to the Ravens in Mile High Stadium.

Legions of people are entitled to judge the Broncos and, in many ways, define the club’s future: season ticket holders, players, coaches, media activists of all kinds, more than 200 fulltime (and another 200 part-time) Broncos staff, Denver civic leaders, regional business leaders, Rocky Mountain football fans and foes. “Our supporters invest so much of themselves in the Broncos,” says Joe. “Time, money and emotion. And I mean lots of emotion.”

The season—the 20 games including playoffs—is predictably frenzied. “Things come up that you don’t expect. They happen quickly, and news travels fast,” Joe says. “You need to deal immediately and very sensitively, and decisions are always public.”

During his years with the team, Joe has been involved with nearly every aspect of the business. His hands-on experience in marketing, operations, capital improvement, legal and personnel issues, community development and team management has served the Broncos well. Optimizing digital media, so fans can “touch their team” and share their football experience in any and all moments, is the obvious growth area for the business, and that is frontier territory for everyone.

Apart from the football team, the Broncos organization includes divisions for overall business development (marketing, tickets, premium suites, sponsorships, special events and anything connected with the ability to drive revenue) and stadium management. Staying absolutely up-to-date on every front, dayby-day, is critical, and Joe spends most days “updating” himself.

Spring 2014 7

nonstop conversation across all media by anyone and everyone.

Generally, we have very small windows to address problems and crises that arise.

“Listening—all the time, and to people who know more than I do,” Joe says, is his main tool in moving the whole enterprise forward, whether that’s solving imminent problems or setting business strategy. “That means you need to hire people who know a ton—much more about their area of responsibility than you do,” he says. “Frankly, in our world, that often means younger people. They’re driven, ambitious, and have the energy and attention span to navigate the faster pace of today’s business world.

“Also, managing our business, which is all about people, demands constant communication: written, oral, and in every possible format. Getting everyone on the same page—whether that’s the football operation, or the business staff, or our supporters—means that we are constantly in touch. We can never let anything lie. We have to stay on top of things until they’re resolved to the point where all parties understand what has happened, and what has to happen next.”

Eric Lars Bakke / Denver Broncos

He gets out of his office and relies on one-on-one conversations “all over the building” more than on the routine meetings. That helps him stay on top of “the pulse of our business,” he says, “which includes the team itself, the public perception of the team, and the business world—what people are willing to do with us now and down the road.”

John Elway, who came onboard as vice president of football operations, has “stand alone executive authority for hiring and firing coaches, drafting players, signing free agents, and shaping the roster,” according to Joe. Then, coach John Fox takes over.

Joe says that he stays out of John Elway’s realm, except if he perceives that a decision might have a negative impact on the team’s brand or identity.

For Joe, two issues focus and drive every decision: “Does it help us win games?” and “Are we going about this the right way?” That is, will it help people maintain their faith and trust in the Denver Broncos? How do they know what “the right way” is? “Our own experience and past history teach us a lot,” Joe says.

“We know the history of other highly visible companies, and then we have this ‘free market research’: the instant response and

8 Milton Magazine

For Joe, two issues focus and drive every decision: “Does it help us win games?” and “Are we going about this the right way?” That is, will it help people maintain their faith and trust in the Denver Broncos?

People who join the Broncos organization find the company culture appealing, and they tend to stay, Joe says. What’s important to him is not only particular skills but also a certain attitude.

People have to take what they do seriously, but not take themselves too seriously.

“This is such a high-profile, high-ego business that you could get caught up in thinking you’re more important than you are,” says Joe. “You have to show respect, for each other and for the company. You need to understand that what you do is very important to a lot of people. Our supporters invest so much of themselves in us. We have to be on our toes, and provide them the best possible football experience and the best game experience.”

In fact, one of the most significant on-the-job challenges for Joe has been learning to communicate firmly but fairly with high-profile individuals: season ticket owners, star players, executives, or up-and-comers. “Being clear, direct, fair and honest” at all times means everything. “So much of people’s willingness to come together as a team depends on trust and honesty,” he says.

“And football is a game where everybody means so much to each other, on and off the field.”

Teams have plenty of down cycles, and plenty of critics.

When criticism from inside and outside swirls, leadership has to work at keeping morale and focus strong. “You have to balance things,” Joe says. “Football people—coaches and players—tend to know where their team is, and if it needs improvement, they’re generally honest about that. You have to weather some difficult times. You have to communicate, stay in touch, even more during bad times than in good.”

As pervasive as Twitter and texting have become, using them can spin a communication, building animosity and misunderstanding, creating a far more lasting and damaging situation.

Sometimes face-to-face communication is the only right way.

“That’s why I spend so much time walking around, talking with people,” Joe says.

Mistakes are inevitable, but letting them linger makes them worse. Still, situations are often complex and delicate. “Taking

steps as soon we can, and in a public manner, is important,” Joe says, “but sometimes you have to let things play out a bit.”

Fans learn that the leadership isn’t infallible, Joe explains, but that we’re trying to do the right thing. That perception is just as important for employees as it is for the public. “You can’t hide,” he points out. “Everyone sees and hears everything.”

In terms of finding the right mix of talented players, Joe explained that coaches tend to blend their players for the kind of team they’re building. That might be a tough-minded defensive team with lots of grinding players on offense, for example, or a fast, flashy offense that isn’t physically big but has lots of skill.

Players want to be led; they want to win, and good coaching is critical. They want to be treated fairly and honestly. “If you can accomplish those things,” Joe says, “you should be successful with the right mix of guys.” Other things are key, too, he points out, like good leadership from a core group of players, and outstanding role models. The quarterback is a team’s cornerstone player, and Peyton Manning is an exceptional person, in terms of abilities and leadership. “His conscientiousness and attention to detail rubs off on everyone, everywhere,” Joe says.

Football games themselves, Joe admits, are the best and worst of times. Watching football live, on the field, is one of the greatest things to do, in his mind. The 75,000 people that gather in Mile High Stadium are so excited to be there. “I marvel at how much they share the feeling of anticipation and fun,” Joe says.

The game itself, however, is “three and a half hours of unfiltered misery. I wish every game were perfect. That is the aspiration, but it’s unrealistic. We’ve never had a perfect game. Some people deal with that better than others, and I struggle with it. Last year, at the end of the playoff game against the Ravens, I was devastated. I looked up at the stands as I was leaving the field. It was after midnight, minus six degrees, and everyone had stayed right there, in their seats. No one had left. They were so disappointed.

They may have gotten over it before I did, and here they are again this season, loving the experience of touching their team.”

Cathleen D. Everett Photos courtesy of Denver Broncos Spring 2014 9

Leading a frontline media agency, Lisa Donohue ’83 lives “life in beta.”

A

s CEO of Starcom USA, one of the largest and most cutting-edge media agencies in the business, Lisa Donohue ’83 keeps her finger on advertising’s racing pulse by surrounding herself with talent on all levels, and staying on top of an ever-changing technological and media-savvy world. From her Twitter presence (@ldonohue), to walking the floor at the annual CES conference, to meeting with start-ups, Lisa brings an entrepreneurial spirit to an industry that is changing rapidly, driven by technology that is constantly shifting consumer behavior.

“On a regular basis, I need to learn,” says Lisa, who was named the 2011 Executive Media All-Star by Ad Week. “Some people think, ‘You’re a CEO because you know everything.’ But this is one of the heaviest times of learning in this industry, and you have to keep your eye on things. I have to be comfortable saying, ‘I don’t know that. Come sit down and talk to me about it.’ All of the entry-level people I hire are digital natives. They don’t have preconceived notions about technology. I’m a digital immigrant. Learning from them is reverse mentoring, which is a powerful tool in the arsenal.”

“All of the entry-level people I hire are digital natives. They don’t have preconceived notions about technology. I’m a digital immigrant.

Learning from them is reverse mentoring, which is a powerful tool in the arsenal.”

10 Milton Magazine

What began as a young girl’s fascination with ads turned into a senior project at Milton, where Lisa completed a six-week internship at a local ad agency. After graduating from Brown University, she entered the training program at Leo Burnett, a Chicago-based agency. She started off in the media-buying department and loved it. At the time, ad agencies were “full service,” offering both creative and media services. In the late ’90s, however, media departments began breaking away from the creative and forming independent companies. Lisa’s media department became Starcom USA, now part of Publicis Groupe.

Lisa’s career progressed through the ranks before she took over the helm in 2009.

A typical day demands the ability to change gears quickly.

Lisa might start off in a conversation with Samsung, and then attend a meeting with Allstate Insurance, before meeting with Bank of America. And that is just the client side of the job; there are tremendous financial responsibilities at a firm with $11 billion in annual billings.

“On a daily basis, I deal with a lot of information. I need to be able to listen to it, synthesize it, summarize it, and then figure out the two or three things we need to do to move forward,” she says. “When I pitch a piece of business to take on a new client, it’s almost like getting a doctorate if it’s a new category for us.

You have to go from 0 to 60 and learn that category right away.

I give a ton of credit to Milton for giving me the skills to handle what I do every day. It was a big part of what I took away from my education there, from the range of classes to learning how to think, how to assess situations, how to look at all the information and come to your own conclusions. I learned these core skills at Milton.”

Lisa also spends plenty of time on the talent in her organization of 1,300 people spread across four cities—Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and New York.

“We sell what our people create, so I have to make sure we have the best talent in the business,” says Lisa. “Starting with

Spring 2014 11

“When I pitch a piece of business to take on a new client, it’s almost like getting a doctorate if it’s a new category for us. You have to go from 0 to 60 and learn that category right away.” the entry level: How do we find the best students graduating and bring them in? I also need to have and incredibly strong executive team. My executive team has to be good at driving client relationships and helping innovate for the future, as well as developing the people underneath us. I monitor attrition very closely, at all levels, and look at how we are trending. When we lose people, to whom are we losing them? When we pull new people in at mid- or upper levels, where are we successfully recruiting them from and how successfully are we integrating them into the business?”

Lisa, who is based in Chicago, is very attuned to the fact that many of her entry-level hires are “millennials” and think outside of the traditional corporate box.

“New hires don’t come in with a notion of a hierarchical progression of a career,” she says. “They come wanting a great experience, and then another great experience that might be different. They are not focused on the endgame such as, ‘Did I go up a level in hierarchy?’ but rather, ‘Did I learn something cool, was it fun, and did I make a difference in what I did?’ It’s a very different mindset—one we are still adapting for. I call it making our organization ‘millennial ready.’”

Starcom recently partnered with University of Iowa, where students are helping them understand the definition of “millennial ready.” Lisa looks forward to seeing their results early this spring. Seeking different perspectives from external partners is what makes Lisa’s leadership innovative and sharp in a business that at one time was very black-and-white.

“The media services industry traditionally attracted linear thinkers because it was all about numbers,” Lisa says. “Today it’s not linear, and things are gray. You don’t know what is coming next, but you can’t wait to figure it out, because something is going to change. You must be comfortable making the best possible decision with the existing data and then adjusting as you learn more. We call that ‘life in beta,’ and it’s a cultural and mindset shift for the organization. Part of that means hiring more conceptual thinkers, and part of that means instilling different types of training programs like lateral thinking. Again,

this goes back to the heritage of Milton’s curriculum, where it was, ‘Go wide. We’re going to teach you to think and then you can think about anything.’”

Professional development is important to Lisa—from entry level to executive level. From a 20-day training program for entry-level talent, covering the basics of the media/communications industry, to individual classes focused on management skills, to a weeklong leadership development program called “Top Gun,” focused on building a future talent pipeline, Lisa makes sure all employees have a range of opportunities to continue learning and growing.

“When you’re in a business where talent is so important, finding them and hiring them is critical,” she says. “But that, at best, is 35 or 40 percent of the battle. How you foster and develop the talent is critical. For progression in anyone’s career, you need training, not only in the specific work you are doing, but also management and leadership training. It’s an investment on the company’s end, but having strong training, mentoring and coaching programs pays dividends.”

Lisa says clients will ask how she and her staff motivate employees. “I always tell them that the people who work for you want to know they made a difference,” she says. “They work long hours and work very hard. Sometimes they give up a weekend or part of a holiday, so at the end of the day, they want to know they made a difference. Giving that feedback is crucial.”

In addition to formal recognition programs, she makes sure managers have the freedom and time to take their teams and go have fun. And what does this busy CEO do in her rare moment of downtime? Her Twitter bio says it all: “Sports fanatic. Lover of all things Boston. At home on the first tee. Excited about marketing in a connected world!”

Lisa’s connection to Milton stays strong by serving on the School’s board of trustees. She is also on the Advertising Women of New York (AWNY) board of directors, the 4A’s board of directors and Media Leadership Council, and is a member of the Chicago Network.

Liz Matson

12 Milton Magazine

When Doctors Tell Stories Jonathan Emerson Kohler ’94, M.D., uses more than one theater.

M

any of us know and envy people who can balance work lives with serious avocations. The engineer who’s also a chef, or the investment manager who writes spy novels—somehow these people have cultivated different talents simultaneously. A few people pursue two separate careers at once.

Jonathan Kohler ’94, on the other hand, has woven two seemingly unrelated talents into a single career. He is a pediatric orthopedic surgeon who integrates story and medicine. His formula has traction and plenty of growth potential.

The power of narrative has always fascinated Jonathan.

“Good, gripping stories, told through theater, movies or television, hold our interest, emotionally connect, teach us—even leave us with a skill set we didn’t have at the beginning,” he says.

“I’m interested in how that happens. It’s clear that the public draws a critical perspective about medicine, among many other things, from getting involved with stories.”

Jonathan hatched his plan as a four-year-old. “My idea then was that I would be a doctor and a television actor who occasionally drove an ambulance. If you consider that I did drive an ambulance while I was at Brown, I’m still on Plan A.”

Milton experiences tripped the sense that he might actually be able to realize a plan like this.

“Sitting in Linde Eyster’s Advanced Biology class, I knew that she would have seen me the night before acting in the play,” says Jonathan. “For one of her assignments, I made my first attempt at using a story to illustrate science. I wrote a play. Peter Garran (’94) and I did a kind of gangster farce about two bacteria; it described the life cycle of bacteria.”

Spending every spare minute in Kellner Performing Arts Center and working with faculty there set him up for success in medicine. “What I learned as a writer, actor, designer and stage manager at Milton informs everything I do as a doctor. Surgery is really about setting up a room, coordinating a group of people to execute in a highly specialized way, making sure that people with different skill sets work together to reach a result that is bigger than the sum of the parts. Calling where I work an ‘operating theater’ is no mistake.”

Building on his Milton momentum during college, medical school, postgrad work and training, Jonathan kept integrating his key interests. Today, he is a fellow in pediatric and thoracic surgery at the University of Chicago’s Comer Children’s Spring 2014 13

Hospital, with a typically rigorous research and clinical schedule.

He is also a junior faculty scholar with Chicago’s Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence, a center devoted to finding ways to enrich the patient-doctor relationship through improved communication.

In school, out of school, between schools, Jonathan composed a potpourri of a résumé. At Brown he was a teaching assistant in several biology classes, and the general manager of the Brown Daily Herald. He worked in the theater and on many weekends he’d be at the wheel of the college ambulance. After college, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, he was healthcare reporter for a regional newspaper. He came back to Milton twice (“Kellner was as much a home to me as anywhere I’ve lived,” he said.), once as technical theater director during Dar Anastas’s sabbatical; another semester he taught a playwriting class along with technical theater. “During all of that, I tended to sleep in four or five 30- to 40-minute increments a day,” he confessed.

Jonathan’s unique CV drew one of two reactions from medical schools where he applied. One group found it a complete conundrum. Jonathan remembers others, notably at the University of Chicago, saying, “This could really be interesting.

We’re not sure exactly what you’re trying to do, but we are willing to look at how using new narrative techniques might make medicine more effective. Tell us how we can help you.” Doctors at Pritzker School of Medicine were open and enthusiastic.

During his second year of medical school, Jonathan formed a theater group called “Operating Theater.” His roommate at the time was Peter Schell ’96, a comedian doing improvisation full time, and the two were taking classes together at Improv Olympic, Chicago’s well-known improv comedy training program. “Operating Theater did some improv,” Jonathan says, “in class, or in the hospital in patient rooms.” Then the group decided to do a play, Shadow Box, which had won a Tony and a Pulitzer in 1977. “We did it for an elective about death and dying.

It’s based on Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s work on the stages of dying, and it’s about families dealing with the process. The three main characters are living in a hospice facility. I first learned about this play when I did the design for Peter Parisi’s 1212 staging of it,” Jonathan says.

Sitting in the audience for Shadow Box was John Lantos, a U. Chicago pediatrician and president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. Dr. Lantos asked Operating Theater to perform as a keynote element for the Society’s annual convention in Nashville. “When we did, other requests came in,” says Jonathan. “We performed at UMass and then at Milton, where we invited the Boston medical schools to see it in Kellner.”

The play’s impact on healthcare providers—as it shows real people dealing with the complexity of dying—is “proof of principle,” Jonathan says. “All of us are programmed to learn by stories. We’re standing on a pyramid—millennia of oral tradition, informed by certain moral and ethical structures, based on parables from a number of old books. Add to that, the average American spends 40 hours every week watching television or

14 Milton Magazine

“Surgery is really about setting up a room, coordinating a group of people to execute in a highly specialized way, making sure that people with different skill sets work together to reach a result that is bigger than the sum of the parts. Calling where I work an ‘operating theater’ is no mistake.”

Spring 2014 15

Photo: Max Levine

video. We’re simply primed to learn from these media, from stories. There’s no evolutionary basis for our learning from Power Point bullets.” Jonathan argues that Shadow Box works because it attaches concepts with people, and allows us to spend time with those people.

Jonathan’s work as a surgeon has come to include the consulting he does through a company he formed while doing postdoc research. His firm, RxCreative, operates in the “crosstalk,” as he calls it, between medical or science professionals and storytelling professionals (writers, directors, producers). “We help health and science professionals create compelling, creative narrative media; and we help storytelling professionals portray science and medicine on screen.”

Through RxCreative, Jonathan and his team, including his Milton roommate, physicist David Weld ’94, have had a hand in stories developed for television and movies. “I can help writers and producers because I understand ‘the story imperative,’” Jonathan says. “The story has to drive the production. It’s not hard to suggest medical or scientific outcomes that are not only accurate, but also strengthen the story.”

Jonathan is interested in the effect of popular media on people’s expectations about medicine—whether that’s managing disease or undergoing surgery or various emergency procedures (CPR, for instance). Even moderately successful shows are

typically seen by six million people per week; messaging in programs has profound effects.

“People often come into the hospital with preconceived notions; their ideas and reality are often discordant,” says Jonathan. “The failure to meet their expectations causes problems, some of which you can measure and relate to outcomes,” he says. Persistent ideas like “miracles happen,” or “never give up,” or “someone must have screwed up” aren’t uniformly helpful.

Jonathan plans to stay in academic pediatric surgery after his fellowship. His track record shows the impact of stories and it has piqued interest in Chicago and other cities. Researchers contact him; his own ideas never slow down, either. For instance, the epidemic of gun violence we’re experiencing now is an apt subject. As a trauma center surgeon, Jonathan frequently operates on gunshot victims, almost every day in the summer, typically of kids caught in the crossfire. “Their families talk about living in ‘Chiraq’ (shy-raq),” he says. “We doctors need to remind ourselves about what’s happening in our patients’ lives. They might as well live in another country in the middle of a war. What if a team of actors and scriptwriters spent some time with these families? It would allow medical people an invaluable way to get in touch with their patients’ day-to-day lives.”

CDE

“We’re standing on a pyramid—millennia of oral tradition, informed by certain moral and ethical structures, based on parables from a number of old books. Add to that, the average American spends 40 hours every week watching television or video. We’re simply primed to learn from these media, from stories.”

16 Milton Magazine

Tze Chun ’02 Wants to Introduce You to Your New Favorite Work of Art

T

ze Chun ’02 is five-feet-three-inches tall and as lithe as you would expect a dancer to be. She’s an uncommon combination of radiant warmth and fierce focus. That focus has helped her complete a self-crafted double major at Columbia, run a bartending agency of more than 200 employees at age 19, and found the thriving Tze Chun Dance Company. Her passion is art, and these days Tze concentrates her entrepreneurial vision on her newest venture, Uprise Art. An online gallery of contemporary art, Uprise welcomes new collectors as well as the more experienced. The gallery offers those collectors with, perhaps, more vision than liquidity the option of investment over time.

“I knew all these talented, emerging visual artists who were struggling to get the attention of wealthy, established collectors.

It was a very unnatural dynamic,” says Tze. Friends of hers from Columbia—many of whom were successful professionals—had beautiful apartments and were craving culture, but they didn’t have time to visit galleries.

At the same time, online art platforms were emerging. Sites like 20x200 and Saatchi Online were attracting attention. Tze saw an opportunity, but she wanted to do it her own way.

“New collectors often don’t know which galleries to go to, what questions to ask or how to evaluate the price of a piece,” she

says. “I went down the list of potential roadblocks and tried to figure out how to make them all go away.”

The option to buy in installments was Tze’s hook, and what she felt would fuel the company’s growth. As with any start-up, however, results can migrate in unexpected ways. Now, more than half of Uprise’s collectors purchase art outright. Servicing a host of seasoned collectors means Uprise must be on the ground at art fairs around the world.

Tze’s goal with Uprise isn’t limited to selling art, though.

The gallery has created a community that celebrates everyone involved—not only the rising stars in contemporary art, but also the next generation of art collectors who are supporting their work and investing in culture.

With only one end-user for each product, Tze and company consider themselves matchmakers. Marketing is multifaceted: the gallery team has to feature the artists, the general curation, the brand and the vision. They’re also marketing a lifestyle.

“Instead of focusing on selling a certain number of pieces each month, we try to educate our collectors and curate a personal selection based on their tastes,” says Tze. “Art collecting is an emotional experience, so no matter how much we do as gallerists, at the end of the day we just hope our clients will fall in love.”

Spring 2014 17

Success for the company includes acquisitions, mergers, revenue. For Tze, however, success means making a difference in the way people support and get involved in the arts.

“Success is introducing collectors to original and inspired art that they can enjoy and engage with,” she says. “Success is receiving notes from clients telling us how the art has changed their lives, their living spaces, how they feel about themselves. Success is also when our artists feel they are part of something special.”

Most of the artists Tze knew in the city were also waitresses or set designers, bartenders or Hebrew teachers. They did these jobs to fund their real calling.

“You know a system is broken when people aren’t making money doing what they consider their career,” says Tze. Uprise’s 50 artists are now sending more pieces out the door. They’re compensated monthly in smaller but reliable amounts, versus the possibility of one big sale a year. “Many of our artists have been able to ‘turn in their apron,’” Tze says. “We nurture and advise our artists, giving them enough space and resources (financially and emotionally) to create great work. We curate works that we can put our weight behind.”

The options for individuals who buy online can be overwhelming, and consumer culture is shifting toward curation, or “tastemaking.” Companies are partnering with personalities— like restaurants featuring a celebrity chef, or a fashion designer creating a line for Target. Access to so much information means that having someone help you navigate is important, and valuable.

“People don’t want to search through thousands of options on Amazon,” says Tze. “They want to relate on a personal level to what they’re purchasing. They want to turn to tastemakers they trust for their opinion on which boots, which camera, which cookware is right for them. People want fewer, more refined choices, and they want someone to save them time by finding the best of what’s out there.”

Uprise is a four-person team that acts like a team of 30. They have no marketing budget; instead, they rely on social media, word of mouth and events. They are also a data-driven gallery.

While art dealing is intuitive—focused on taste and personality—Uprise aggregates and analyzes the data that technology affords. They figure out how their clients find them and what their conversion rates are. They selectively and strategically use different social media platforms, and they A/B test every email blast. They work to balance unlimited online exposure with nurturing essential personal relationships.

A start-up needs both big-picture and small-picture thinkers, people talented at developing innovative ideas and prioritizing 18 Milton Magazine

“Many of our artists have been able to ‘turn in their apron.’ We nurture and advise our artists, giving them enough space and resources (financially and emotionally) to create great work. We curate works that we can put our weight behind.”

Spring 2014 19

dozens of daily tasks. From brainstorming about long-term strategy to executing a shipment of 24 canvases, Tze’s staff is invested.

“My teammates get excited the same way I do,” she says.

“They care about what I care about, and they want to see Uprise grow. They have great, new ideas, and they are willing to do the work to make them real.”

Tze often turns to the words of Pearl Buck: “All things are possible until they are proved impossible.”

“At Milton, when I had an outrageous idea for a piece in the dance concert, my teachers helped me make it happen,” she says.

“By senior year at Columbia, I was producing the university’s largest dance concert, and when a choreographer had an idea, I wanted to make it happen for them, to pass along the support I received at Milton. No one is going to think bigger or shoot higher when they think their idea in the moment is impossible.”

“People don’t want to search through thousands of options on Amazon. People want fewer, more refined choices, and they want someone to save them time by finding the best of what’s out there.”

In 2012, Uprise Art won DailyCandy’s “Start Small, Go Big” competition. That led to mentors like Birchbox and DwellStudio.

Uprise has art in consignment at places like Haus Interior and Babesta. Partnering with “discovery retail” brands that they respect is key. Tze and her team have recently begun consulting for corporate clients, from Madison Avenue to Menlo Park, with wall space to fill.

“I tell my clients that they need to follow their own taste,” says Tze. “If you don’t like a piece of art, you shouldn’t buy it.

The art market is unregulated and volatile. You might purchase something for investment value that will be worth nothing in the end. One thing that probably won’t change is whether you enjoy the piece.

“Some people only collect art that scares them, or makes them feel alive, or intrigues them. Viewers’ needs are as varied as the artwork. Art is completely subjective. It has multiple values, and it tells many stories: why the artist made the work, what a collector sees in it, how the art made its way to that person.

There’s also the historical value of the piece, and its future—how it originated, and what follows.”

Uprise is not a brick-and-mortar gallery, so the team spends much of their time hosting events and showing at art fairs.

Recently exhibiting at SCOPE in Miami, alongside the iconic Art

Basel, they talked with artists, met aspiring collectors, explained their work, and sold art to seasoned collectors with checkbooks in hand.

“Some of these collectors are on the acquisition boards of museums, and they want to learn about significant emerging artists,” says Tze. “Like some of our corporate clients, these collectors have Warhols and Alex Katzes on their walls. Our value added is that we give them access to the next Warhol or the next Alex Katz.”

Being an art consultant means knowing your client—discovering what triggers excitement or enjoyment. Tze and her team learn about clients’ careers, hobbies, where they vacation, how they met their spouses.

“Our job is matchmaking—finding the perfect piece, the perfect companion,” Tze says. “You wouldn’t let a stranger into your house, and you wouldn’t want to live with a piece of art that makes you uncomfortable.”

Erin E. Berg Photos by Kate Ignatowski for TheEverygirl

20 Milton Magazine

At Milton

The act of teaching is changing as we speak.

I

ndu Chugani is Milton’s dean of teaching and learning. In her first year here, she has focused on cultivating talent within Milton’s faculty through new professional development programming. Growth as an educator, Indu says is “constantly reviewing and defining the act of teaching, and how it is changing as we speak.” We asked Indu to consider questions about teaching that intrigue and challenge every community, and resonate at Milton.

What set of skills should I bring to the table if I want to teach at Milton today?

In a different decade, perhaps expertise in a discipline may have been enough. We need that now, but it’s no longer sufficient.

You may be a brilliant biochemist or mathematician, but your mastery, and even your enthusiasm, has limited impact, unless you are aware of how a brain works to create learning. Understanding the science of learning, of cognition, is equally important as content knowledge.

Every choice that a teacher makes matters, and there are hundreds of choices in a 40-minute class. If you want to teach at Milton today, you can’t rely on intuition— even if it’s very good intuition—to navigate those decisions. Why? Because intuition Spring 2014 21

“Every choice that a teacher makes matters, and there are hundreds of choices in a 40-minute class. If you want to teach at Milton today, you can’t rely on intuition—even if it’s very good intuition—to navigate those decisions.” alone can’t reach every learner, and reaching every learner is what talented educators do. Think about teaching 60 students every day, who have 60 different learning outcomes, and 60 sets of individual needs.

Clearly, teaching responsively requires flexibility and fluidity, and connecting with multiple learning styles simultaneously.

There is nothing static or formulaic about what talented teachers do: our work is dynamic.

A teacher needs to have real empathy for young people. He or she must be attuned, as in literally “tuned in,” to them. It’s like having antennae that continually pick up what teenagers are saying, how they’re behaving. Can you use what you see and hear to inform yourself about where they are and what they need? Today’s teacher is also inherently a researcher, mining the data that is readily available from students for what it can tell us, and making changes in practice based on those findings.

Digital competence is a baseline skill, too, along with a wide and deep awareness of the world. A teacher must create structures—design opportunities—that scaffold the content and create experiences that engage students, all kinds of students, and allow them to craft their own understandings of material.

Why is it so important to tap into research about cognitive development?

Is the latest research “secure,” or do you anticipate that it will change?

The research about how children learn has roots in theories that are not new; they were advanced by Piaget and Dewey and others before them. These theories assert that students who engage with material and construct their own understandings 22 Milton Magazine

significantly intensify their learning. The change is in the quality of the data. Over the last 15 years, use of the MRI—watching the patterns in how children’s brains light up—has strengthened the research.

It’s fair to say that we now have even more affirmative, concrete data on how what we do either activates or deactivates certain parts of the brain. We can’t ignore the imperative to focus this data on the craft of teaching.

What will keep teachers teaching over time, rather than leaving the field?

Every semester, every week, every day is different because we not only teach our disciplines, but also our students.

Although teaching is cyclical, in the sense that you may be managing roughly the same material year after year, ultimately you never do things the same way because the people “in the room” are different.

Each new learner causes a healthy disruption in the cycle, a need to check in and potentially revise. Teaching is restrategizing, reimagining and reconstructing continually, to make sure that you provide the right opportunities for students to connect with the material. For me, that is the joy of teaching. That is what keeps people

engaged over the long term: it’s working with all your capacities at their fullest, continually. You can’t plateau as a teacher.

You’ve said that professional development, the chance for growth over time, is a key factor in recruiting talented teachers and winning their long-term commitment. You’re not talking about evening meetings with guest speakers.

What does serious professional development look like?

Most importantly, effective professional development directly improves student learning in measurable ways. It is rooted in faculty becoming students of their disciplines and their craft. It relies on gaining the skills to use feedback, and not simply student surveys. Plenty of data for fruitful analysis are easily available to teachers: a few minutes of video taken on a smartphone; ten minutes of in-class dialogue, recorded on the same smartphone; a careful review of what a series of tests or assignments show.

Professional development happens both within and outside the School. The most compelling professional development happens collaboratively, in teams, and publicly.

Research continues to show the potency of teacher-based teams, and working this way requires particular skills that I hope I can help the faculty develop and use. I’m excited about vetting tools and protocols that will help them work with others to assess their particular, individual effectiveness, class by class. Together, we need to address issues like, What are core practices that should characterize all teaching? How do you conduct a study of your own practice?

How do you figure out what your impact really is? How do you isolate practices or

“We now have even more affirmative, concrete data on how what we do either activates or deactivates certain parts of the brain. We can’t ignore the imperative to focus this data on the craft of teaching.”

behaviors that cultivate student learning, and those that impede it?

Ultimately, teachers become researchers themselves, and build analysis and reinvention into their professional personae.

I’m excited about working with teachers at every experience level to develop habits of mind that allow them to see what they’re doing in ways they haven’t seen before.

How will most schools need to change if they want to attract and retain the most successful teachers?

Becoming known, far and wide, as an organization that cultivates talent is important, and it is going to become more important.

Today, people with talent can find or create so many ways to use those talents. They can launch start-ups, establish charter schools, set up nonprofits. If schools don’t tap into that talent, by making growth and engagement part of the core experience, we’ll make ourselves extinct.

What do you mean when you say that every course must be relevant to students’ lives?

Teaching a course is really designing an experience that allows students to apply concepts in the course to the world around them. It’s learning about the Civil War by practicing what an historian does to

think about the Civil War, for instance. It’s a structure that allows them to practice what it means to be a mathematician, or a scientist, or a musician. For example, in my American Lit class we read Huck Finn and used the text to identify the rhetorical techniques Twain uses, such as exaggeration, verbal irony, dramatic irony, a child narrator. When we finished reading the book, I asked my students to write a satire in Twain’s style about a societal flaw or problem that each of them thought needed exposure. Kids wrote about the college admission process, parental attitudes toward college, gender issues, bullying, and many other issues, but the larger point is that they did so using Twain’s techniques. Every society needs good satirists.

Why would someone choose to teach at Milton? And how would you like to answer that question in five years?

Talented teachers choose Milton because we so clearly take the craft of teaching seriously here. Teachers know that they’ll grow professionally at Milton; they will cultivate their talents among peers who care intensely about teaching. They will work with some of the most exciting, engaged, diverse students anywhere—students who will help them fully realize their potential as educators.

My vision is that we at Milton cultivate a dynamic, organic learning organization where we are responding to living forces within every single class period. I’m confident that we can be our own think tank, and learning lab, where all that assessing and recreating not only goes on continually, but also has a dynamism of its own. It’s a place where teaching means reengaging, and that process not only cultivates talent but brings joy.

We need to do that with and for one another. We need to model the behavior we most want our students to adopt.

Indu’s role at Milton is rooted in the Strategic Plan, which prioritizes student experience in and out of the classroom. The Strategic Plan names professional development—“providing both the tools and the support for teachers to excel at their profession”—as an essential component of our commitment to students and to the quality of our work with them.

Indu joined the Milton faculty last July, from the Winsor School in Boston, where she taught English, created innovative courses, and with English and history teachers, developed an interdisciplinary global studies program. She was named the Virginia Wing Outstanding Teacher in 2007. Indu chaired Winsor’s Teaching and Learning Committee, which led professional development on teaching practices and technology integration; she also managed new faculty orientation. As a co-chair for the Skills and Instruction arm of Winsor’s strategic plan, Indu generated, prioritized and implemented goals for the plan, “Learning in the 21st Century.” Prior to Winsor, Indu was an English teacher and dorm parent at Exeter. She began her teaching career in Roswell, Georgia, at Centennial High School.

Indu has long studied the art of teaching.

Her involvement in programs, projects, presentations and conferences about teaching parallels her time in the classroom. From her first encounter with education courses in college, particularly her student teaching, Indu knew that her career needed to couple work with students and work with teachers.

She has been immersed in the scholarship and dialogue among educators about student learning and teacher practices; at the same time, she has taught, mentored, and led the development of innovative curricula.

CDE Spring 2014 23

At Milton

Specials:

We Call Them Chances to Try, “Fail,” Learn

E

ach day, projects in music, woodworking, visual and performing arts, and physical education add context to what children are studying in mathematics, social studies, science and language arts. In the Lower School, both grown-ups and children refer to these courses as “specials,” and in these classrooms, creativity reigns.

K–5 specials are strong curricular components, fully integrated with the academic curriculum. In these fun and challenging classrooms, students ignite and develop

particular interests and talents. Specialists may be among the first adults to recognize children differentiating themselves—as cellists, sculptors, runners, actors or artisans.

Because the specialists teach the same students over a number of years, they guide those children to new levels of skill and competence. These educators—talented in their own crafts—each provide a unique venue, and a rich experience. As they gain skill, children gain lots of confidence.

Listen to what the students have to say.

Visual Art

I

D

—Thea C., Grade 5

—Baz D., Grade 4

prefer making three-dimensional projects to creating art on paper. For instance, when we were studying China, we sculpted dragons out of clay. We molded them from our imaginations, and they looked like they could come alive and walk away! We used lots of tools to get the features and details right, and then Ms. Butler dried them in her kiln. Art is one of my very favorite subjects, because we get to express our feelings and use all of our creativity. We also learn about different art all over the world. After reading One Hen, about a boy in Africa, we all designed our own kente cloths in class.

24 Milton Magazine

oing our self-portraits, I learned that shading is really important (you can rub a tissue on a pencil drawing to shade), and I learned that you can determine where your eyes and mouth go on the page using the width of your hand. Getting the nostrils right is really hard, because they’re such an odd shape.

I’ve always loved art, but I wouldn’t always try something that was new or that I wasn’t good at. Ms. Butler helps me open up to things I wouldn’t have tried. I have a canvas at home, and I like to paint nature scenes—I’ve painted frogs, and a giant apple. I might not like art as much as I do without Ms. Butler.

I

want to be an artist who paints portraits when I grow up. I like to draw people and houses best. At home I sketch, but in Ms. Butler’s class I always use lots of color. She has so many different art supplies, and you can use anything you want! I like using paint or crayons best. We did a project on Pablo Picasso, like his cubist paintings, where we painted our own heads, one part from straight on and one from the side. The hardest part for me is painting the lips; sometimes they go too far to one side or the other.

—Jordyn D., Grade 2

“I rely on interdisciplinary teaching, where students learn a subject from several different perspectives. Collaborating with my colleagues, and teaching art through the subjects students are learning in other classrooms, is a great opportunity. I take what the students know and use art to further their knowledge about a topic, or to help them express a personal idea about that subject.”

Sandy Butler sees all her students as inherently creative. In her class, students paint, draw, sculpt, sketch, cut and craft; they feel supported and comfortable expressing ideas. Sandy expresses her own artistic voice in her Somerville studio; she has exhibited locally and nationally. Affiliated with the Eclipse Mill Artists Association, Sandy is a self-proclaimed “artistic explorer,” working in a variety of media, from weaving to pottery, monotypes to watercolors.

—Sandy Butler Spring 2014 25

Performing Art

M

s. Moyer teaches us to dance and act, and we learn about turning stories into music or plays. In almost every class we have to invert something, which means we take a known story and turn it into something else. For instance, we had to use the plot of “The Three Little Pigs” and come up with another version that included different characters and a different setting—a new way of presenting the idea. Sometimes we’ll sit in a circle and come up with a story together, everyone adding a new part. Sometimes the stories get a little wacky, but we try to stay on topic, and they’re always funny!

—James M., Grade 4 Eleza Moyer has taught performing art at Milton for ten years. She helps her students find their voices and feel comfortable onstage. Students learn to dance in Grade 3, grow as speakers in Grade 4, and put it all together in the Grade 5 Play.

Outside of Milton, Eleza has acted, directed and produced theater at the Footlight Club in Jamaica Plain, where she is the artistic planning director.

“Without risk, there is no reward. I tell my students I’d rather them be strong and wrong, meaning if you hold back for fear of making a mistake you will never grow, never learn. Go big! If something doesn’t work, we’ll fix it together.”

—Eleza Moyer

M

s. Moyer taught us that it’s OK to be “strong and wrong,” which means she wants us to use our voices and speak up. She would rather have us be wrong than be too shy or nervous to say what we think. In Oral Interpretation we learn about projecting our voices. We’ve also learned how to pair movements with our words—to express ourselves in more ways than one. You become comfortable onstage, and it helps knowing that all your classmates support you and want you to do well. I’ve learned that failure is part of succeeding, and it’s part of trying new things. It’s not always about being right.

—Isabel A., Grade 5

26 Milton Magazine

Phys Ed

Scott Green wants his students to be active and have fun. Over a five-year span, he sees his students grow physically and mentally, and he appreciates how their gross motor skills improve. The reward, he says, is hearing his students say, “Look, Mr. Green, I can do it!” Scott plays basketball in several leagues and enjoys pickup games, as well. He coaches basketball in both the Middle and the Upper School.

M

r. Green has helped me try new things that I wouldn’t have known I liked. This fall we played football for the first time, and I really liked it. He encourages the boys and the girls to play in every activity that we do, and we’re very active in that class all the time. We play in the gym when it’s cold out, but in the spring and fall we get to have class outside on the fields. In track last year, Mr. Green taught us that if you run with your toes, and not flat-footed, you can run faster.

—James M., Grade 4

“I know a class was successful when my students are smiling, laughing, out of breath and sweating. While I want P.E. class to be different from playing on an athletic team, I want to spark an interest.

I get excited when students who are not particularly athletic or interested in sports have fun participating in a game, and then choose to try that activity outside of school.”

—Scott Green

M

y favorite part of P.E. is in January when we skate on the ice rink. Even though some people already know how to skate, we all start with the same drills—stopping drills, skating backward or in a circle. We also have free skate, or we play tag. Mr. Green sometimes pairs someone who skates faster with someone who skates slower, so you can skate together and teach each other. In P.E. you build on skills and get better every year. Like in Kindergarten you might learn about kicking a soccer ball, but by third grade you actually play soccer games against each other.

—Henry S., Grade 3 Spring 2014 27

Woodworking

I

like getting to choose what to make, like a puzzle, or a boat. I also like the sense of history in woodworking—learning how people used to make things out of wood, how they cut down logs and polished the wood until it was smooth. In class I’ve learned how to make things smooth, cut curved lines, make sounds with scraps of wood, like making a drum or a guitar with rubber bands. I like Ms. Ryles’s perky spirit. She lets us use paint, dowels, fabrics—she lets us go crazy! She teaches us the right drills and tools to use, so we can make our projects really successful.

—Eric P., Grade 2

I

n woodworking we’ve made a box that opened at the top, and I’m making a dump truck right now. Both of them use hinges.

I think the hardest part about woodworking is cutting straight lines, which is important. Ms. Ryles helps us figure things out, though. She knows so much about woodworking, but she doesn’t just solve the problems for us—she asks us how we think we might fix something, and we come up with ideas. In her class I’ve learned how to use a ruler to measure fractions, too—like marking 5/8 of an inch. She has a gigantic ruler painted on her wall that we use for our projects.

—Abe L., Grade 3

Phoebe Ryles, a carpenter with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters for six years, joined the Milton faculty this fall.

Her students, in Kindergarten through Grade 3, master simple tools, improve dexterity, refine motor skills, and gain confidence. They learn to apply math skills to complete the creative, complex projects that they imagine, design, plan and build.

“One of the beautiful things about woodworking is that there are no tricks and no shortcuts—only experience and patiently acquired skill. Young children don’t know what is difficult and what is easy in my class, and I try not to tell them.

Since they don’t know what they ‘can’t do,’ they are willing to tackle anything.”

—Phoebe Ryles 28 Milton Magazine

Music

M

usic gives me a chance to sing and be loud. (Being that loud at home isn’t always a good idea.) I play the drums, which I like because the rhythm of the drums powers the whole song—it sets the foundation.

My dad played in the drum corps, so I like sharing that with him.

It’s interesting to me how people use music in different ways, too.

For instance, when soldiers were going to battle in the Civil War, they played the snare drum and the bugle.

And people tend to play the same traditional songs at weddings. The way people use and enjoy music is interesting to me, and in class we learn about so many different types of music, around the world.

—Ben S., Grade 5

In Sadie Mayes’s music room, you might find kindergarteners keeping the rhythm on xylophones, or third graders practicing pitch matching and breath control, or fifth graders composing and performing original songs. Sadie’s students learn plenty of new facts while they develop skills and explore how creative they can be. An accomplished singer and pianist, Sadie sings in the Dedham Choral Society and has been teaching at Milton since 2006.

“Students learn best when we give them a dilemma around which they can develop questions—questions they have to explore to solve the problem. Once they have the questions, they’re on a quest to discover the answers, develop a plan, and tackle the problem. They have to try things, and fail at times. It’s my job to help guide them through the process—not to feed them answers.”

E

ach year in music, we build on what we’ve learned. You start learning about rhythms and patterns using xylophones and recorders, and then you learn about more sophisticated parts of music, like the history of classical composers—Bach, Mozart—and the role of music in civil rights and social change.

Ms. Mayes has taught us about how people used music during slavery and segregation. When we learned the recorder, I thought it would be hard to play, but Ms. Mayes makes it fun.

We played “Recorder Karate,” where we would earn a new belt with each challenging song we performed, from white belt to black belt!

—Sadie P., Grade 5

—Sadie Mayes Spring 2014 29

he ad of school Attracting Teaching Stars

A

s educators, Nancy and I were treated like rock stars by Milton families and friends in Korea, China and Hong Kong last spring. Every educator deserves to feel like a rock star. Every teacher deserves to be celebrated for having chosen to teach. How do educators in the United States feel about their careers?

In America, baby boomers answered the call to educate at rates ahead of any generation since. Today, 40 talented faculty members who have each been dedicated to Milton for more than 25 years are a source of our strength. How will we fill their shoes when they retire? It’s impossible to underestimate this challenge. Assuring the quality and vitality of teaching at Milton is a priority for action in our Strategic Plan and our fund raising for the next five years.

What urgency do we feel about recruiting and developing these outstanding educators, for Milton and for our country?

The challenges to winning top talent in the teaching profession are social, cultural, political and economic. The scene was not much different when I made my own career decision. I was 22, and when I told people that I had chosen to teach, most of my parents’ friends said, “Oh, that’s wonderful.

Being a teacher is quite noble. And then what are you going to do?” The message I got was that, perhaps, my career choice was not ambitious enough. Why not law, or medicine, or banking—a true “profession?”

Aspiring teachers make their way through a gauntlet to enter the profession, and they endure an even more rigorous analysis to stay there. My decision points at 22 years old were the same as those that potential teachers confront today: What am I willing to sacrifice to be a teacher? What am I willing to sacrifice for my family, my wife, my children? Teaching well, and continually changing and improving your pedagogy, is rigorous. Teaching requires intellectual and emotional investment beyond what many people are willing or able to consider. Today, after retirees, the 30 Milton Magazine

greatest number of people leaving the profession are those with three to five years of experience. Does the prospect of what that statistic means to our country frighten you, as it does me?

We must do everything in our power to invest in teachers, and in students. It is that simple. Milton’s priority over the next decade is to be known, first and foremost, as a vibrant community of educators with an unparalleled commitment to students and to the quality of our work with them.

We are intent upon building the highest quality and strongest faculty. We are planning to do everything in our power to be the school where every teacher wants to teach— known for the ingenuity and dedication of colleagues in the field, who can count on the support and the tools to excel.

We already have the environment that would attract potential teaching stars. We have serious work to do on building our endowment, however, to provide teachers with the highest levels of compensation and professional development. Similarly, we must invest in financial aid to continue

drawing the talented students that teachers find so compelling and rewarding.

As the visiting reaccreditation team from NEASC noted in 2012: “Milton has fought above its weight class and won for years,” but this dynamic is unsustainable.

The schools that pay their teachers the best salaries are those with larger endowments. We must become one of those schools. We must invest in our future; there is no urgency more pressing for our School, and no cause more worthy of our best effort. Milton’s history, Milton’s values speak directly to this goal. What school is better positioned than Milton to choose this goal and succeed?

I love my job. I feel fortunate to have made the choice I did and to feel valued, as a teacher, an administrator, an educator.

Join Milton in making this choice possible for potential educators, today and tomorrow, so they can enter a field that so desperately needs them without asking themselves what they are willing to sacrifice to do so.

Todd B. Bland

cl a ssroom Strutting Classroom Stuff

S

tyle. Personality. Maybe a little mystery, too. Make your guess: Whose Harkness table is this? What subject do students learn in here? And what the heck is a Red-Eared Slider?

Spring 2014 31

32 Milton Magazine

Spring 2014 33

34 Milton Magazine

Spring 2014 35

facult y perspec tive A Victim, A Soldier, An Activist:

Memorias de protesta Memories of Protest

By Salomón-G. Díaz-Valencia Translated by Mark Connolly

B

ien decía Rousseau: “Ofrecemos nuestros sentimientos cuando hablamos y nuestras ideas cuando escribimos” 1. Las ideas se transforman cuando adquirimos la capacidad de analizar diferentes perspectivas. Quizás por causas del destino nací en un país en el que la guerra civil subyugaba y aun hoy no encuentra su fin.

He vivido ahí la mayor parte de mi vida. La memoria más fuerte y clara que guardo de mi niñez se remonta a cuando yo tenía 4 años. Mi padre tenía un taller de electrónica en un local que era parte de la casa. Un día cualquiera estaba en casa con mis padres y mis 9 hermanos, ésta quedaba en el centro de una ciudad llamada Popayán.

De pronto se escucharon explosiones en la calle, gritos de mucha gente, gran alboroto que se aproximaba a mi casa; yo estaba jugando en el piso y quise salir a mirar lo que pasaba pero alguien no me permitió llegar hasta la puerta…yo logaba ver muy poco desde la sala, donde esperaba impaciente con mis hermanos para saber lo

R

ousseau said it well: “We offer our feelings when we speak and our ideas when we write.”1 Ideas are transformed when we acquire the capacity to analyze different perspectives. Perhaps for reasons of destiny, I was born in a country entangled in a civil war that carries on even today.

I have lived there for most of my life. The strongest and clearest memory I have of my childhood dates back to when I was four years old. It was a day like so many others. I was at home with my parents and my nine brothers and sisters.

Our house was in the center of a city called Popayán. My father had an electronics workshop in part of the house. All of a sudden we heard explosions, shouts from the street, a great uproar approaching my house.

I was playing on the floor, and I wanted to go see what was happening, but someone would not let me past the door. I managed to see a little from the living room, where I waited impatiently with my brothers and sisters.

Seconds later, a stampede of

1. R ousseau, Jean J. dans, Essai sur l’origine des langues,…«L’on rend ses sentiments quand on parle et ses idées quand on écrit»

36 Milton Magazine

que pasaba, segundos después una estampida de personas corría desesperadamente por las calles en medio de cortinas de humo, (años después supe que se trataba de estudiantes universitarios en una protesta), un grupo de ellos se entró a mi casa, todos muy agitados buscando refugio, algunos con piedras en las manos, ellos, con la ayuda de mi padre, cerraron todas las puertas y ventanas de la casa. Se escuchaba las botas de soldados que marchaban al mismo compas. Dentro de mi casa apagaron las luces mientras se escuchaban susurros, lamentos y llanto de algunos estudiantes que habían sido golpeados y el de mis hermanos asustados; recuerdo secuencias de imágenes, como si se tratara de una película, las voces en la oscuridad mandaban a callar… “shhhhh cállense” y una voz desde un rincón del cuarto preguntaba “¿Por qué?”, “cállense” susurraba alguien y mi voz preguntaba de nuevo “¿Por qué?”.

“No puedo respirar” empezó a decir alguien en el cuarto semi-oscuro, poco después, en medio del terror, me di

people ran desperately through the streets through curtains of smoke. (Years later I learned that they were university students involved in a protest.)

A group of them entered my house, all of them agitated, worked up, looking for refuge.

Some had rocks in their hands, and with my father they closed all the doors and windows of the house. We heard the sound of soldiers’ boots marching on the pavement. Inside they turned off all the lights. The students had been beaten.

Their whispers, shouts and cries combined with the same sounds from my frightened brothers and sisters. I recall sequences of images, as if it were a movie—voices in the darkness telling us to be quiet.

My voice from a corner of the room asked “Why?” “Be quiet,” whispered someone, and my voice whispered, “Why?” “I can’t breathe,” someone started to say in the semi-dark room. A bit later, in the middle of the terror, I realized that my throat and eyes burned and that I couldn’t breathe, either.

My brothers and sisters were

cuenta que la garganta y los ojos me picaban, yo tampoco podía respirar…mis hermanos lloraban, nubes de “humo” se habían filtrado por los intersticios de las puertas y ventanas, era gas lacrimógeno, mi mama corría desesperada con toallas mojadas tratando de ponerlas en las narices de su preciada colección de hijos, de los diez pequeños yo era el menor, pese a la poca luz, descubrí por primera vez que mi madre y mi padre también “sabían llorar”, nunca lo hubiese imaginado… a mi mamá las lágrimas le brotaban de manera desbordante por los ojos, como arroyos

crying; clouds of “smoke” had filtered in through the gaps in the doors and windows. It was tear gas. My mother ran frantically through the house with wet towels trying to cover the faces and noses of her precious children. Of the ten little ones, I was the youngest.

Despite the darkness, I saw my mother and father cry for the first time. I never would have imagined it. My mother cried huge tears that flowed from her eyes. I needed air, and I did not understand why my mother was covering my face with the wet towel. I thought she was trying to kill me, but I did not

desatados que desembocaban en su pecho; yo necesitaba aire, y no entendía por qué mi mamá me ponía esa toalla mojada en el rostro… hasta creí por un instante que trataba de matarme, pero no entendía por qué, nada tenía sentido, años después supe que se usan toallas húmedas con el fin de filtrar el aire y el gas lacrimógeno.

Podríamos decir que este tipo de protestas se repetían de vez en cuando, cada dos o tres años, pero en particular, 15 años más tarde en agosto de 1989, cuando los estudiantes de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, en Bogotá, se

understand why. (Years later I understood it was to filter the tear gas.)

We could say that this type of protest repeated from time to time, every two or three years. But it was 15 years later, in August of 1989, when the students from the National University of Colombia, in Bogotá, overtook the central tower of the department of medicine, protesting the privatization of the institution. I was doing my obligatory military service, and I surprised myself by advancing on the students with a rifle in hand, marching in line with about

Salomón Díaz-Valencia, modern languages faculty

Spring 2014 37

tomaron la torre central de la facultad de medicina, en protestaban por la privatización de la institución, yo prestaba servicio militar obligatorio. Ese día me sorprendí a mí mismo avanzando con fusil en mano, marchando al mismo compas con otros 500 soldados, disparando gases lacrimógenos y decididos a derrumbar las barricadas de pupitres que los estudiantes habían levantado para que no los sacáramos del edificio. Esta vez yo tenía una máscara antigases que apenas me permitía respirar. Yo creía que los estudiantes eran delincuentes que se oponían a un gobierno justo.

Sólo un par de años más tarde, en 1991, siendo estudiante de ingeniería Civil en la Universidad del Cauca, aprendí sobre la construcción de represas, carreteras y puentes, pero también, aprendí a construir barricadas con los cientos de pupitres que sacábamos de los salones de clase. Erguíamos represas contra el ejército que trataba de desalojarnos del claustro de Santo Domingo… “ellos”, cumplían órdenes; “nosotros” actuábamos en protesta contra las nuevas políticas gubernamentales, y en defensa de la educación pública les arrojábamos de vuelta sus propias bombas lacrimógenas, seguidas de unas cuantas piedras. Defendíamos el ideal del derecho a Universidad Pública.

Yo creía que los soldados eran unos salvajes ignorantes que obedecían órdenes sin pensar en las reales consecuencias.

38 Milton Magazine

500 other soldiers, firing tear gas and prepared to overthrow the barricades of desks that the students had set up so that we could not remove them from the building. This time I had a gas mask, but it barely let me breathe. I believed that they were delinquent students who were opposed to a just government.

A couple of years later, in 1991, as a civil engineering student at the University of Cauca, I learned about the construction of dams and bridges, but I also learned how to build barricades with hundreds of desks that we took out of classrooms. We set up dams against the soldiers who were trying to remove us from the cloister of Santo Domingo. “They” were following orders. “We” were protesting against the new government policies. In defense of public education, we threw their own tear gas grenades back, and then we threw rocks, as we defended the ideal of rights to the public university.

I believed the soldiers were ignorant savages who obeyed orders without thinking about the consequences.

At this point in my life, my heart still suffers for the injustices and pains that devastate my home country. But if I am thankful for anything of my destiny, it is that today I am not the one who signs papers

En este momento de mi vida, mi corazón sigue sufriendo por las injusticias, y penas que azotan mi país de origen, sin embargo, si alguna cosa agradezco al destino es que, hoy no soy yo quien firma papeles para despojar al pueblo de sus derechos fundamentales, ni soy yo el que ordena enfrentamientos entre soldados que sólo cumplen ordenes, en algunos casos contra estudiantes que luchan por causas dignas; ni soy yo el que coordina operativos inhumanos que atentan contra integridad de ciudadanos viejos, jóvenes y hasta niños, que bien podría ser uno de nosotros.

Tristemente ahí todavía hay gases en el aire, susurros, lamentos, la sangre corre, la guerra no ha terminado.

La vida me ha llevado a ocupar diversas posiciones en este gran juego. He sido el niño agredido, el soldado que defiende su patria agrediendo a su pueblo y el estudiante que lucha por el derecho a una educación. Ahora en Milton Academy, vivo una nueva experiencia, aquí los gases lacrimógenos son desconocidos y los estudiantes no necesitan defender sus derechos arrojando piedras o sujetando fusiles.

Creo que las prioridades en esta comunidad son muy diferentes; hay nuevas perspectivas de conciencia donde aprender a usar la pluma, en armonía con la justicia, puede traer grandes soluciones a los problemas sociales.

to dispossess citizens of their fundamental rights; nor am I the one who commands soldiers who just follow orders, in some cases against students who fight for dignified causes; nor am I the one who directs inhumane operations against those who fight for the integrity of citizens, youngsters and children—any of us, really. Sadly, today in Colombia there are still gases in the air, whispers, cries; blood still spills, and the war is not over.

This great game of life has led me to take diverse positions. I have been the assaulted youngster, the soldier who defends his country against aggressors, and the student who fights for the right to an education. Now, at Milton Academy, I am living a new experience. Here tear gases are unknown and students do not need to defend their rights by throwing rocks or holding rifles. The priorities in this community are very different.

There are new perspectives and consciousness where learning to use the pen, in harmony with justice, can bring great solutions to social problems.

Salomón-G. Díaz-Valencia, modern languages faculty Translated by Mark Connolly, modern languages department chair

on centre Who made it happen?

Reunion Classes Holding the Bowl

E

very school depends on committed volunteers.

At Milton, volunteers not only have a great time working with equally energetic people on a shared goal. They also make sure that faculty and students this year—as in past years—will thrive, learn and grow in that particular Milton environment.

Last year, reunion classes broke records and won the Bowl.

For 40 years, the Jackson Bowl, named for Henry B. Jackson ’23, celebrates a “select few” who have done the most to promote annual giving at Milton. The classes of 1978 and 1993 both reached unprecedented participation numbers. Overall alumni participation last year was 25 percent, and these classes each reached an outstanding 50 percent.

The 2013 Jackson Bowl awards went to Matt Hoffman, Class of 1978, and the full 20th Reunion Committee, Class of 1993.

Matt Hoffman ’78 Matt has been one of Milton’s most dedicated and hardworking Annual Fund volunteers.

In fact, he earned the Jackson Bowl award once before. As a Class Agent and volunteer for the 1798 Circle, Matt has helped the School increase leadership gifts to the Annual Fund year after year. This year, we especially recognize Matt’s work leading the 35th Reunion Committee. Matt was undaunted in his efforts to grow class participation in the Annual Fund and increase

attendance at Reunion Weekend.

He was more than successful.

The class gift included contributions from 51 percent of the class. Reliably enthusiastic in his various roles, Matt is truly committed to Milton’s mission and success, and we once again celebrate him with the Jackson Bowl award for 2013.

The Class of 1993 20th Reunion Committee The Class of ’93 also reached 50 percent participation in the Annual Fund, marking their 20th reunion. Along with that record participation rate, they surpassed their fundraising goal by nearly $19,000. Achieving this participation rate was a worthy outcome, but the reunion committee’s real gift was their leadership and energy—the love and appreciation they expressed for their classmates and for Milton. They made it clear that connecting with each other and with Milton was a top priority, in appreciation for what Milton has given them. One committee member hopes the class’s legacy will inspire younger classes with the idea that “alumhood gets better with age.” The 80 classmates on campus last June for Reunion Weekend made that clear as they celebrated each other and the School with moving affection.

Congratulations to this year’s recipients of the Jackson Bowl.

You’ve set a new bar for the great volunteers on the horizon.

Students Vow to “TextLess” in Merritt’s Honor

F

ebruary 3 was the third “TextLess Live More” day on campus, when the majority of students shut off their cellphones for the day. Students wear blue bracelets to show their commitment to the campaign.

Three students—Emmie Atwood ’14, Kaitlin Gately ’14 and Abby Lebovitz ’14—founded the TextLess Live More nonprofit to honor Merritt Levitan ’13, who was killed when struck by a car during a group cross-country bike trip last summer.

“Often, we live not in the real world but in the virtual one, checking our Facebook pages, our email, our Twitter accounts,” says Emmie. “Merritt, however, lived in the most real way possible. She was always completely attached to what was happening right in front of her. She embodied life in its truest form.

Although the TextLess campaign is designed to prevent texting and driving, we want our movement to be bigger than that: Our goal is to decrease excessive phone use and encourage people to focus on the interactions taking place right in front of them. In this

way, we want to honor Merritt’s authentic and present way of living.”

One of the group’s goals was to spread the campaign to other schools. “TextLess Live More” is now active throughout high schools in half a dozen other states, as well as in colleges including Hamilton, Colgate, Harvard, Brandeis, Stonehill and Lesley.

In morning assemblies at Milton, students have held a moment of reflection to remember Merritt; watched the film From One Second to the Next, a documentary by Werner Herzog showing the dangers of texting and driving; and listened to Merritt’s father, Richard Levitan, talk about his daughter and the importance of the campaign. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2011, 3,331 people were killed in crashes involving a distracted driver. Of drivers 15 to 19 years old involved in fatal crashes, 21 percent of the distracted drivers were distracted by the use of cellphones.

Spring 2014 39

High Energy Math Makes Tracks

T

he math department has taken the lead in a renewal process that every department at Milton will conduct, in sequence and at regular intervals.

“Ongoing, rigorous, curriculum renewal” is a key tenet of the Strategic Plan adopted by the trustees in January 2013. Heather Sugrue, math department chair, and her colleagues have pioneered the first major example of the process the plan intends.

The energy surge sparked by this process has resulted in many outcomes; Heather established a new speaker series—Pi Talks, pairing math discussion and dessert—and developed Milton’s first math educators conference, which took place February 7, drawing 55 math educators from around New England. Both events brought new perspectives and energetic approaches to math at Milton.

Math and Dessert?

Neil Katuna ’05 Kicks Off Pi Talks “You can’t fudge math,” Neil Katuna ’05 said to students and faculty on November 18, and he thinks that is part of its appeal.

Neil shared his experiences of a career in math as part of a new speaker series, Pi Talks: Mathematical Conversations With Dessert, organized by the math department.

40 Milton Magazine

Neil believes that “there is beauty in math,” and to illustrate he began with prime numbers, presenting different theorems and proofs. He spent time on the Gauss circle problem, asking students how to estimate the number of integer lattice points there are in a circle centered at the origin and with radius r.

“Mathematics is about asking simple questions and coming up with elegant arguments,” said Neil. “It is great stuff.”

Heather Sugrue, math department chair, hopes the speaker series is a way “for students and adults to gain insights about math that go beyond academia; for example, to see what you can do with math in a job or career.”

Neil discussed an internship with Symantec Research Labs, where he worked on technology that uses algorithms to find malicious or unwanted content on a Web page. He also worked for the National Security Agency on classified problems involving Markov chains—a mathematical system that undergoes transitions from one state to another, where the next state depends on the current state, not the ones preceding it.

Neil cited Google’s search engine and text auto correction as examples of technology using Markov chains.

“Mathematics is unique among the disciplines, because you have to have a comprehensive understanding of every theorem,” said Neil.

Today, Neil is an associate for the quantitative research risk analysis group at Loomis, Sayles & Company in Boston. His work today mainly involves linear algebra. Neil majored in pure mathematics at Princeton University and earned his master’s in mathematics at UCLA.

Math Pros Swap Their Best Ideas at Milton Dr. Sanjoy Mahajan gave math educators a taste of his “street-fighting mathematics,” a teaching approach that involves the “art of guessing results and solving problems without doing a proof or an exact calculation.” Dr. Mahajan was the keynote speaker at the Math Teachers Conference

hosted by Milton’s math department. Fifty-five educators from independent, public, par0chial and charter schools around New England attended the daylong event.

Dr. Mahajan argued that rote learning in math leads to students solving problems that they don’t understand. In one study example, students in Grades 4 through 6 were asked to solve 6x3. Students easily knew the answer. But when asked to explain the answer in the form of a story, a typical answer was, “There were six ducks swimming in a pond. Three more ducks arrived and now there were 18 ducks.”

“This is math without meaning. Some students think math is numbers you push around, mix up, and some kind of answer will pop out,” said Dr. Mahajan.

Dr. Mahajan cited studies that show the use of calculators harms student performance.

“Students need to turn on their

minds, not their calculators.

When students rely on calculators, they begin thinking like computers, which is a big problem. Rote learning combines the worst of human and computer thinking. By relying on their minds instead, students will develop intuition and good judgment.”

The rest of the day included 36 short sessions presented by Milton faculty and other conference attendees. Topics included “Using Fathom in Stats,” “Building a Rollercoaster,” and “Integrating Coding into Algebra II.” “We wanted to create a conference where the main goal was collecting as many good ideas as possible,” said Heather Sugrue, math department chair. “We don’t reflect every day on all the good things that happen in our classrooms, but each of us has at least one idea we like, use often, or want to try out. Sharing these thoughts was an important part of the day.”

Dr. Mahajan is an associate professor of applied science and engineering at Olin College.

He is on leave while teaching “Street-Fighting Mathematics” as an edX online course at MIT. He obtained his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1998, and has undergraduate degrees in mathematics from Oxford University and in physics from Stanford University. In 2006 he became an associate director of MIT’s Teaching and Learning Laboratory. His book, Street-Fighting Mathematics: The Art of Educated Guessing and Opportunistic Problem Solving, is available under a Creative Commons Noncommercial ShareAlike license.

messages Chris Herren This year’s Talbot Speaker, former basketball star Chris Herren, spoke with students about his very public 14-year struggle with drug and alcohol addiction. In his powerful talk, Mr. Herren urged students to think about the “whys” as well as the consequences of drug and alcohol use during their teenage years. Mr. Herren runs the Herren Project, a nonprofit that assists individuals and families struggling with addiction. One of the nonprofit’s initiatives, Project Purple, aims to create a sober culture within schools.

“An excellent Marine might be described as a force multiplier: someone who makes both themself and the people around them better. Your teachers work to make you a force multiplier— whether as a student, an athlete, an artist or a citizen.

Use your strengths to help make others stronger.”

Brendan Caine ’03

“Studies show that 90 percent of addictions begin during the teenage years. Most people have a stereotyped image of what an addict looks like— homeless and strung-out. No one has the image of what an addict can look like— young, athletic and full of promise.”

Brendan Caine ’03 served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Marine Corps with deployments to Iraq in 2009 and Afghanistan in 2011. This year’s Veterans’ Day speaker, Brendan asserted that several military acronyms, such as PFC and GPS, relate powerfully to Milton students’ lives at School, opportunities here, and choices ahead. Before joining the Marines, Brendan attended the University of Southern California, where he earned degrees in biology, psychology and neuroscience. Since fulfilling his active-duty commitment, Brendan is pursuing concentrations in econometrics and entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Kevin Young Kevin Young’s lyrical poems draw on themes of birth, death, food, heritage, New England and the South. The award-winning poet, this fall’s Bingham Visiting Writer, read a selection of new and old work to students. He read poems from his collections about the death of his father, the birth of his son, and his student/teacher relationship with poet Seamus Heaney. Mr. Young earned his A.B. in English and American literature from Harvard University and an MFA in creative writing from Brown University. He is the Atticus Haygood Professor of Creative Writing and English at Emory University in Atlanta.

“It’s pretty hard not to write about the death of one’s father, or the birth of one’s son. Making the poems good is the challenge. The toughest part is finding a form, a way to make it not a diary, but a kind of daybook, a charting of those instances—some of which are tentative and harrowing, but also a little funny.”

Spring 2014 41

Chris Messinger Where do stereotypes come from? Chris Messinger discussed some of the answers with students. Mr. Messinger is the executive director of Boston Mobilization, a youthserving nonprofit that works with hundreds of teens each year. Mr. Messinger spent three years after college as a community organizer and then three years as a classroom teacher in Boston. He is the co-author of Speak Up!, an anthology of personal stories being used by independent and public schools around the country.

“We all hold conscious and unconscious stereotypes.

However, there are ways to break stereotypes. It is important for schools to provide positive role models, instill high standards, and convey that diversity is valued. All of this helps support students’ sense of belonging.”

42 Milton Magazine

“Listen actively, and give people—teachers, little sisters, supermarket clerks—a chance to have their say. Ask them questions. Then ask yourself: Are their dreams or circumstances much different than mine? The answer may not be obvious, but the payoff will be that, now or later, some memory of those answers will buck you up, or give you hope.

That is what history is: it’s the hope business.”

Jim Cullen This year’s Henry R. Heyburn ’39 Speaker, Jim Cullen told students their “inheritance” is today’s America of prosperity and political stability, true since the end of World War II. Mr. Cullen, chair of the history department at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York City, yet warned that this “overstretched empire is starting to contract.” Mr. Cullen earned his B.A. in English from Tufts University, and his A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in American civilization from Brown University.

He is the author of many books, including The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation, which was on Milton’s summer reading list this year.

Tectonic Theater Project Students performed The Laramie Project this winter, a play in which actors portray various members of the Laramie community, the Wyoming town where college student Matthew Shepard was beaten and killed by two local men in 1998. This year’s Melissa Gold Visiting Artists, two members of the Tectonic Theater Project, the show’s creators, visited campus. Actor Andy Paris and director Leigh Fondakowski spoke with students about Matthew Shepard, the creative theater process, and the role performance can play in national conversation.

“In the media, Laramie was portrayed as a redneck, ‘Wild West’ kind of town.

We thought there had to be a bigger conversation about what happened and the culture of the community.

We wanted to convey who these people were. The Laramie Project became a collective experience that told the story about Matthew and the whole town.”

“We may speak up about certain oppressions, but not others. That silence makes us willing or unwilling participants in prejudice.

This is the hierarchy of oppression. If we only concentrate on race, then we ignore other issues, like gender or sexual identity.

You can’t heal the world of its ‘isms’ if you can’t heal the ‘isms’ in yourself.”

Irene Monroe Reverend Irene Monroe talked with students about the rewards and challenges of developing a diverse community as the 2014 Martin Luther King speaker. Rev. Monroe is a pastor and syndicated religion columnist. Her writing focuses on how religious intolerance and fundamentalism perpetuate other forms of oppression, like racism, sexism, classism and anti-Semitism. A Brooklyn native, Rev. Monroe graduated from Wellesley College and Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University. She served as a pastor at an African-American church before attending Harvard Divinity School as a Ford Fellow for her doctorate.

Alumni Authors: Recently Published Works

Magic Marks the Spot The Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates: Book One

by Caroline Carlson ’02 HarperCollins Children’s Books, September 2013 Hilary Westfield has always dreamed of being a pirate. She can tread water for 37 minutes.

She can tie a knot faster than a fleet of sailors.

She particularly enjoys defying authority, and she already owns a rather pointy sword.

There’s only one problem: The Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates refuses to let any girl join their ranks of scourges and scallywags.

But Hilary is not the kind of girl to take no for an answer. To escape a life of petticoats and politeness at her stuffy finishing school, Hilary sets out in search of her own seaworthy adventure, where she gets swept up in a

madcap quest involving a map without an X, a magical treasure that likely doesn’t exist, a talking gargoyle, a crew of misfit scallywags, and the most treacherous—and unexpected— villain on the High Seas.

Caroline Carlson’s rollicking first novel is interspersed with letters, newspaper clippings, and excerpts from the official Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates handbook.

Written for young readers—ages 8 through 12—Magic Marks the Spot is the first installment in the Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates trilogy. Books 2 and 3 are forthcoming in 2014 and 2015.

Spring 2014 43

44 Milton Magazine

in • sight

Photo: John Gillooly

“Nicky” and “Rod,” brought to life

by Shaheen Bharwani ’15, Mack Makishima ’16 and Charlie Barrett ’15.

Milton actors became puppeteers for the first time in this fall’s production of Avenue Q: School Edition, which meant puppet boot camp for all.

Spring 2014 45

sp or t s Fortitude and Finesse: Girls’ Hockey Demands Both

P

onytails flying behind them, these young women will skate circles around you. Girls’ ice hockey players don’t hesitate to tell you that being a hockey player takes toughness and commitment.

“It’s a challenging sport, both mentally and physically,” says Katherine Flaherty ’15 who has played competitively since she was 5. “It’s a huge commitment. You play

through the 5 a.m. practices when you are 10 years old. You make yourself shoot 500 pucks a day to get to this level because it’s so competitive.”

Kaitlin Gately ’14, team captain, is also nonplussed by the demands of the game.

“I gave up a lot of my weekends for hockey,” she says. “It’s not that you don’t ever have time to hang out with your friends, but you do miss out on some

things because you have a night game or you have to get up early the next morning.

It’s a sacrifice, but you are always willing to make it.” Kaitlin also competes on one of the top club teams in the country.

The girls’ hockey program at Milton is growing rapidly, reflecting a nationwide trend showing the sport’s booming popularity. In 1990, 2,700 girls and women participated in USA Hockey; today that

“I try to keep pushing the players forward and remind them that if we keep progressing, the wins and losses will take care of themselves. Game results should be a byproduct of our philosophy, of what we are trying to do every day,” says Coach Ryan Stone.

46 Milton Magazine

number exceeds 65,000. Milton’s program began in the mid-1980s, but overall participation in the sport took off during the ’90s, with the first women’s world championship in 1990 and then the Olympics in 1998, where Team USA won the first gold medal.

Last year, Milton’s varsity team competed with only nine skaters. This year, there are 20 girls on the bench. The junior varsity team also doubled in size, after 27 girls tried out for the program. The players’ hockey backgrounds are varied. Some were in skates as toddlers, others started at age 8 or 9, and one just began playing last year after 11 years of figure skating.

“One of the first steps we made was to get more players and then increase the level of competition of our players,” says Head Coach Ryan Stone, who is in his second year of coaching at Milton. “This season, we are really in a period of change,” he says. “Our team goals are to get better every day, to have fun, and to prepare our

players for college. That’s how we base everything we do and how we judge our success.”

Coach Stone came to Milton with 18 years of college coaching experience at some of the top women’s college hockey programs in the country. He started the women’s program at RPI before moving on to Brown and then Colgate. He is also an assistant coach for the Boston Blades, a women’s semi-pro team. He works with two assistant coaches with stellar hockey credentials. Hillary McNamara ’09 returned to Milton after an excellent twosport career in hockey and lacrosse at Trinity College. Casey Pickett plays for the Blades and finished her college career as a captain at Northeastern University, where she was the 11th all-time leading scorer at one of the oldest women’s college hockey programs in the country.

In a recent practice, the team is running through drills while Demi Lavato blasts from the speakers in the Roberts

Rink. A few dance to the music on their skates and laugh, but when it’s their turn with the puck, they are all business. Coach Stone usually doesn’t play music, but he wants to lighten things up a bit after coming off a few tough losses. This season’s record (6–19–2) doesn’t reflect that eight of those losses were by one goal and four were in overtime. Last year, they lost to some of those teams by four or five goals.

“It’s sometimes tough for players and the outside world to see, but we are making progress,” says Coach Stone. “After a tough loss, I try to point out the positive things we did and the progress we made.

For example, I will say, ‘Last time we played that team we lost 2–0; now it took them a goal in the late seconds of the game to beat us.’ I try to keep pushing the players forward and remind them that if we keep progressing, the wins and losses will take care of themselves. Game results should be a byproduct of our philosophy, of what we are trying to do every day.”

Spring 2014 47

The players don’t wallow in the losses.

“The season is so long with so many games,” says Anne Malloy ’16. “When you play nine games in 14 days, you don’t have time to get down about a game. You have to practice the next day. You have to focus on the next game.”

48 Milton Magazine

“The record does matter, but at the same time, I see a lot of improvement since last year,” says Kaitlin. “We are a good team, but we haven’t been able to put as many pucks in the net as our opponents. It is OK to be frustrated or mad about a game, but you have to bounce back pretty quickly.”

During a game, this resilience and determination unfolds. The players and coaches on the bench are constantly shouting out encouragement to the players on the ice. “Go Blue!” A goal scored by the opposing team brings a brief silence on the Milton bench, but then someone yells out “Keep the energy up!” and everyone’s head is back in the game. When Milton scores five minutes later, their sticks and skates slam up and down in applause.

“Here we go girls! We’re in this.”

Games are fast and high energy. Unlike in boys’ hockey, checking is not allowed in the girls’ game. Many of these girls played on boys’ teams until middle school, and they miss checking, but they also appreciate the nuances of their game.

“Because you can’t use your body, you have to be faster and quicker. You have to rely on your skills,” says Gianna Beniers ’15.

The absence of checking does not mean lack of injuries. The play is still aggressive, which they enjoy, and all of these players have suffered minor and major injuries, from concussions to broken ankles. Injuries are part of a game that has become increasingly competitive. So many girls are vying for spots on a limited number of college teams. Last year, all four seniors went on to play NESCAC hockey at Colby, Williams and Wesleyan. Kaitlin will play for Yale next year, and a few other girls are still deciding.

In the end, the enjoyment the girls get from playing the game and the camaraderie they have with one another are the major takeaways.

“I come from a huge hockey family,” says Katherine. “My dad has this saying: ‘All great things come from hockey.’ That’s true for me, because throughout my life my best and deepest friendships have all come from hockey.”

“I don’t know of another sport in which you become as close to your teammates,” says Kaitlin. “This is my 11th season as a varsity athlete at Milton, and this is my favorite team. Everyone meshes really well, we support each other, we play hard and have fun.”

Liz Matson

H. Bradlee Perry ’45

Personal, Tangible, Rewarding

S

ome people find giving to an endowment fund uninteresting. After all, you—as a donor—don’t get to see or touch something physical that your gift helped to create.

Gifts to endowment are rewarding, though, because they make sure that Milton has two essential ingredients of a truly great school: a capable, motivated student body and—especially—an excellent faculty. We all remember the outstanding teachers we had: the ones who stimulated and challenged us, the ones who helped us think and learn, the ones who made Milton exceptional for us.

We honor those teachers by building the endowment that supports faculty salaries. We can name our gift in honor of a person who was especially influential in our lives.

I have named my campaign gift to Milton’s endowment in honor of a person who did wonderful things for me. A special fund now carries that teacher’s name. And the income from “my’’ fund will support all the good teachers at Milton now and into the future.

All this makes my gift feel very personal. It’s a special “thank you” from me to that teacher, which will benefit all faculty members, including him, as long as he’s at Milton. To me, it is as tangible as a brick building that shines in the sun. Maybe other alumni will also give to the fund I’ve named for that outstanding person.

I’ve urged a few of my friends to do that, and they probably will since they admire the teacher as much as I do.

Looking ahead, I can think of my gift and that teacher every time the word “endowment” is mentioned, and I can feel pleased that I’ve helped Milton. So giving in this way is a rewarding act—for me and for the Milton faculty who are the essence of our fine School.

For information on gift planning, contact: Suzie Hurd Greenup ’75 suzie_greenup@milton.edu 617-898-2376

Spring 2014 49

cl a ss notes

1943

1970

Caroline Haussermann was sorry to miss her 70th Reunion. She was in Williamsburg, Virginia, for her annual retreat with friends from her teaching days at College of William and Mary. She writes, “I have many happy memories [of Milton] and hope all of ’43 are well. Joan Clarke was so great at keeping us together, and I miss the annual letter from her.

I’m busy and happy!”

Ted Hays was one of the veteran team members of the 33rd annual Milton-Nobles alumni soccer game held at Nobles this fall.

1972 Alida Jay Boye was knighted “Chevalier de l’ordre national du Mali” by the Malian government on July 2, 2013.

1975 Robert. O. Blake Jr. will be moving to Indonesia to become the United States ambassador to the country. He would be pleased to hear from any Milton graduates living there.

In Memory of John Wylde, Class of 1954 Together with his family and friends, the members of the Class of 1954 deeply mourn the loss of our popular and modest head prefect, John Wylde. He was an outstanding member of our senior year unbeaten football team, with his treasured friends and Harvard roommates, Captain Ash Hallett and Ted Raymond. A skilled skier and hockey player, John was also a lifelong “blue water” sailor, and a dedicated environmentalist, devoting unselfish amounts of time to the Dartmouth Natural Resources Trust.

In the immortal words of Virgil: “forsan et haec olim meminisse jubavit”—perhaps someday, even this distress will be a joy to recall.

Alida Jay Boye ’72 was knighted by the Malian government on July 2, 2013.

Paul Levinson has taken his show on the road and is living in Surprise, Arizona. (“No, really, that’s the name of the city!” he says.) The recession threw “Lev” a curveball, which he was never good at hitting, so it became time for him to make a change.

1982 After 18 years living in Maine, Eric Howard is back in Boston, working at Northeastern University and enrolled in their doctoral program on organizational leadership.

1985

Steve Heard ’54 James V. Masella III ’85 welcomed his son, James, on October 9, 2013.

50 Milton Magazine

1976

James V. Masella III welcomed his son, James, on October 9, 2013. “Big sisters Alex and Cate could not be more excited, and Jessica is doing great.”

1988 Framingham State University’s director of grants and sponsored programs, Jonathan Lee, recently helped FSU receive a substantial public grant from the Commonwealth’s Department of Higher Education for a “MetroWest College Planning Center.”

1990 In August, John Sweeney became director of corporate and foundation relations at BirminghamSouthern College. He enjoys being back on campus, and he loves interacting with donors, alumni, and corporate and civic partners.

1995 Douglas L. Helm, MD, has joined Brigham and Women’s Hospital Department of Surgery in the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

Douglas’s primary clinical focus is reconstructive surgery—particularly hand surgery, and cancer and trauma reconstruction.

For his work in renewable energy, Nat Kreamer was recognized as a “Champion of Change” by President Obama in November 2013 and was named a “Best Bay Area CEO” in 2013 by the San Francisco Business Times.

1996 Jon Alshuler was one of three Milton alumni (and one faculty member) to participate in a master’s degree program in independent school educational leadership at the Klingenstein Center, a branch of Teachers College at Columbia. “It is pretty remarkable that four current cohort members have Milton ties, given the exclusivity of the program,” he says. (Check out the photo on the next page to see the whole gang.)

1999 Caroline Kinsolving adopted a rescue puppy, Petruchio, and walked 43 miles for breast cancer.

She recorded several audio books and starred in three plays.

She was nominated for a best actress award for her work in “Venus in Fur.” Caroline spent the holidays teaching Tanzanian

Milton friends enjoyed the America’s Cup AC72 race on a sunny day in San Francisco. (L to R): Kristian Hanelt, Nat Kreamer ’95, Nick Lazares P’04,’05,’12, Ben Gifford, Monica Gras, Nick Lazares ’04

orphans yoga and meditation, and is grateful to Milton friends for sponsoring her, especially her Robbins House family. www.CarolineKinsolving.com.

Scott Brayton graduated from culinary school with highest honors. In October, he was promoted to wine and spirits manager of the Upper West Side’s Ocean Grill.

Greg Schwanbeck married Keba Foster on July 27, 2013, at

the New England Aquarium. Mac Dougherty was his best man.

Greg Rubin, Dan Schlozman and Chris Palmer ’96 were also there to help celebrate.

Charlie Simpson lives in Buffalo, New York, with his wife, Crystal, and their daughter, Molly (1). Charlie is a dentist practicing in Niagara Falls, New York, and teaching at SUNY Buffalo School of Dental Medicine.

Dr. Douglas L. Helm ’95 joined Brigham and Women’s Hospital Department of Surgery in the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

Milton fielded a strong team (and took home the win!) at the 33rd annual Milton-Nobles alumni soccer game: front row (L to R): Ken Lin ’06, Doug Sibor ’05, Seth Reynolds ’90, Max Hoffman ’05, Ben Lin ’09, John Chang ’08. Back Row (L to R): Ted Hays ’70, Andy Stachiw ’05, Jake Levkowicz ’08, Zac Trudeau ’05, David Walker P’20,’21, Kem Poston ’93.

Spring 2014 51

Kelly Sullivan married Ryan Menice on October 5, 2013, in York Harbor, Maine. Brittany Beale Hampton ’02 and Sarah White were in the wedding party.

Kara Sweeney, Joanna Ostrem, Kristin Ostrem Donelan, Leanne McManama, Beth Pierson, Caroline Churchill Page, Brooke Harris and Caroline Curtis Hayes ’02 were also there to celebrate.

Abigail Drachman-Jones married Nathaniel Garnick in June in Mamaroneck, New York. They live in New York City, where she works as a senior editor and writer at Newsweek and Nathaniel is a principal at Sard Verbinnen & Company, a financial communications firm.

2002 Julian Madden married Emily Greene on July 15, 2013, on Elihu Island in Stonington,

Three alumni and one faculty member participated in a master’s program in independent school leadership at the Klingenstein Center of Columbia’s Teachers College: Jon Alschuler ’96 (St. Andrew’s School, Barrington, Rhode Island), Hernan Ortiz ’01 (Calhoun School, New York City), Klingenstein Center Director Pearl Kane, Linnea Engstrom (science department), Jared Baird ’96 (Marin Academy, San Rafael, California).

Greg Schwanbeck ’99 married Keba Foster on July 27, 2013, at the New England Aquarium.

52 Milton Magazine

Alexa Gilpin Janssen ’96 and her husband, Michael, welcomed Elizabeth into their lives on March 19, 2013.

They live in northern Virginia and are enjoying their little family.

Anne Duggan ’02 married David Ranieri on July 27, 2013, in Providence, Rhode Island. Jenny Cohen ’02 and Hillary Frankel ’02 were bridesmaids.

Connecticut. Morgan Blum, Steve Bowler, Sam Burke, Michael Carthas, Sarah Ceglarski, Peter Cohen ’01, Molly McGuinness Gistis, Nick Morton, and Caitlin Walsh helped them celebrate.

Anne Duggan ’02 married David Ranieri on July 27, 2013, in Providence, Rhode Island. Jenny Cohen and Hillary Frankel were bridesmaids. The bride’s brother, Laurence Duggan ’05, was a groomsman.

2005 Leslie Amado Taylor welcomed daughter Kaylani on Christmas Day.

2010 Lily Halpern’s album, “Nothing But Trouble,” reached #120 on the pop charts and is available on iTunes.

Kelly Sullivan ’99 married Ryan Menice on October 5, 2013, in York Harbor, Maine.

Deceased

Julian Madden ’02 married Emily Greene on July 15, 2013, on Elihu Island in Stonington, Connecticut. Morgan Blum ’02, Steve Bowler ’02, Sam Burke ’02, Michael Carthas ’02, Sarah Ceglarski ’02, Peter Cohen ’01, Molly McGuinness Gistis ’02, Nick Morton ’02 and Caitlin Walsh ’02 helped them celebrate.

Class of 1933 Albion C. Drinkwater

Class of 1950 Judith Van der Gracht Platt

Class of 1938 The Honorable George N. Hurd, Jr.

Class of 1953 David C. Belash Harold E. Fitzgibbons

Class of 1939 Caleb Loring, Jr. Shelby H. Page Faith T. Sulloway John W. Weeks

Class of 1954 Richard Fremont-Smith John Wylde

Class of 1941 Mary Cornelia Aldis Porter Edward Robinson Squibb III Alexander Wheeler, Jr.

Class of 1962 Frederick A. Archibald

Class of 1942 Joris M. Brinkerhoff Theodore R. Madden Class of 1946 Charles H. Taylor Class of 1947 Elizabeth B. Dawson Martin G. Lobkowicz Class of 1948 Paul Cabot Lansing Lamont Hewitt “Cub” Morgan, Jr. Benjamin M. Rice, Jr.

Class of 1959 Dr. Harry S. Holcomb III

Class of 1966 Marina E. Winquist Class of 1969 Thaddeus Merrick Class of 1976 Martha Logan Class of 1977 Elizabeth F. Cronan Class of 1980 Kimberly Keller-Blake

Spring 2014 53

54 Milton Magazine

Milton Academy Board of Trustees, 2013–2014 George Alex Cohasset, Massachusetts

Stephen D. Lebovitz Weston, Massachusetts

Robert Azeke ’87 New York, New York

Yunli Lou ’87 Shanghai, China

Bradley Bloom President Wellesley, Massachusetts

Stuart Mathews Waban, Massachusetts

Bob Cunha ’83 Milton, Massachusetts

F. Warren McFarlan ’55 Vice President Belmont, Massachusetts

Mark Denneen ’84 Boston, Massachusetts

Chris McKown Milton, Massachusetts

Elisabeth Donohue ’83 Chicago, Illinois

Erika Mobley ’86 Brisbane, California

James M. Fitzgibbons ’52 Emeritus Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

Wendy Nicholson ’86 New York, New York

John B. Fitzgibbons ’87 Bronxville, New York

Caterina Papoulias-Sakellaris Milton, Massachusetts

Catherine Gordan New York, New York

H. Marshall Schwarz ’54 Emeritus New York, New York

Margaret Jewett Greer ’47 Emerita Chevy Chase, Maryland

Frederick G. Sykes ’65 Secretary Rye, New York

Franklin W. Hobbs IV ’65 Emeritus New York, New York

Dune Thorne ’94 Lincoln, Massachusetts

Ogden M. Hunnewell ’70 Vice President Brookline, Massachusetts Harold W. Janeway ’54 Emeritus Webster, New Hampshire Claire Hughes Johnson ’90 Menlo Park, California Peter Kagan ’86 New York, New York

Erick Tseng ’97 San Francisco, California Kimberly Steimle Vaughn ’92 Boston, Massachusetts Dorothy Altman Weber ’60 Boston, Massachusetts Ronnell Wilson ’93 Jersey City, New Jersey V-Nee Yeh ’77 Hong Kong

Photo: Maggie Bland ’14 Spring 2014 55

p os t scrip t A Complementary View

by Vcevy Strekalovsky ’56

O

ur culture values the practical over the artistic. Arts education is often considered a luxury, outside the base curriculum, yet Harvard’s Howard Gardner shows in his “multiple intelligences” theory that visual and performing arts awaken and engage students, leading to self-esteem and follow-through—transferable effects. Our global competitors seem to understand this dynamic. Business leaders who are liberally educated understand that they are managing much more than the bottom line. Creativity, teamwork, flexibility and problem solving are required in science and technology, where change is continual.

Many of us ’50s alumni still savor the memory of Howard Abell’s and Dick Bassett’s passionate introductions to music and art. At Middlebury I majored in the arts, but a biology course so intrigued me that I thought a medical career might fit. Perhaps with a nudge from Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead, I gravitated toward architecture, as it embodied art, science, and working with people toward tangible solutions. My Russian father (with whom I had grown up painting) demonstrated that an artist can bring much to the technical community: his management of a radar component design team at MIT’s Research Construction Corporation with “outside the box” thinking led to a fasttrack process, essential to the war effort. At the University of Pennsylvania, I studied architecture in a program focused on the context of a city in need of renewal, and a school of thought influenced by the Beaux Arts-trained Louis Kahn. To him the “existence will” determined what buildings “wanted to be.” He and his colleagues reinvigorated contemporary design, which, until the 1960s, had been inspired primarily by the Bauhaus, itself a reaction to and reinvention of previous movements. Penn professor Aldo

56 Milton Magazine

Giurgola once described a continuous cultural spiral alternating between the romantic and the classical.

For Frank Lloyd Wright, the magic of architecture was in the plan, which generated the outcome. Wright suggested that another architect, truly following his thought process, would arrive at a different solution. The irony is that Wright’s colleagues replicated his style, and even graphics. Any initial inspiration, it seems, ultimately gives way to comfortable stylization.

Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts architect, Sir Norman Foster, said his most satisfying creative accomplishment was managing his worldwide offices and controlling the quality of his work—yet always with pen and sketchbook in hand. Much of architectural practice relies on things we never studied in school: managing personnel, sales and marketing, preparing budgets, understanding public bidding regulations, generating coordinated electronic documents, and taking on liabilities. A few architects have the opportunity to design signature buildings, but the emphasis is often on a fashionable statement. The design integrity and timelessness of Aalto’s Baker House at MIT and Kahn’s Kimball Museum in Fort Worth are few and far between. Large development projects usually don’t allow time and fee for thoughtful design, so repetitive solutions and computergenerated details dominate our landscape.

Most important 20th-century painters avoided predictability, or a comfort zone.

Picasso reinvented himself periodically, ignoring the critics. John Graham and Wassily Kandinsky were proponents of the archaic, of the primitive spirit embodied in unadorned expression. Graham (a Ukrainian aristocrat who also reinvented himself) gave voice to the abstract expressionists and cultivated appreciation of African sculpture.

Kandinsky traced his development from infatuation with color and natural forms to

nonobjective painting, always struggling to retain the “meaning,” or spirit, in the expression. The shapes, lines, values, color temperature and edges retained the spirit of nature for Kandinsky, though not the representation. Cezanne transcended mere representation in his still lifes, and conveyed intense sensuality and abstraction.

As it is in painting, the satisfaction of architecture for me is the process of problem solving. A project has to work on many levels.

Pressure from galleries and the public to paint what sells will always be there; it can lead to stagnation and repetition. Plein air painting excites me because I never know where I will end up; starting with a sketch of the basic idea and trying to maintain that idea as the painting develops is the challenge.

Painting from life can have immediacy if the spirit of the subject is retained, its abstract qualities developed, and detail minimized to what the eye (not the camera) sees. I like brushstrokes to show, so that the process and the character of paint are visible. The relationship between lines and shapes in a painting is not unlike that of forms and spaces in a building—the goal should be an interesting visual journey. Though, ultimately, I’d rather that my buildings be painterly than my paintings be architectural.

View Vcevy’s work—both painterly and architectural—at strekalovskyarchitecture.com and strekalovskyart.com.

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 at cathy_everett@milton.edu.

Reunion Weekend 2014 June 13–14

Come back to laugh, think, share, eat, reconnect, reminisce, listen, learn, cry, question, smile and sing.

Welcome back, members of the 4s and 9s.

We miss you. milton.edu/alumni/reunion_weekend.cfm

Milton Magazine Milton Academy Communications Office Milton, MA 02186 Change Service Requested

Non-Profit Organization U.S. Postage PAID Boston, MA Permit No. 58423