STRATEGIC VISION
GOALS 2,3
PROGRAM • TEACHING
R A N DY G R A N G E R :
HOLDING SPACE FOR CREATIVITY by Rebecca Luzi
“To see a hillside white with dogwood bloom is to know a particular ecstasy of beauty, but to walk the gray Winter woods and find the buds which will resurrect that beauty in another May is to partake of continuity.” – Hal Borland For as long as anyone can remember, Randy Granger Hon. 1689 has begun each class with a reading from Twelve Moons of the Year, a collection of 365 meditations on nature by journalist and naturalist Hal Borland. In
47 years of teaching art and design at Penn Charter, Granger has found beauty and continuity in this ritual. “I read Hal Borland each day,” Granger said, “because I want to give my students a
chance to transition from the social chaos of changing classes so they can be more present and available for deeper learning in my class. Another reason is that we are so disconnected from nature in our lives today. Borland writes primarily about nature, so it gives the students an exposure to things in the natural world that they can recognize and experience in their own lives.”
Beginnings At the age of 10, Granger was apprenticed as a signwriter, a nearly-lost art of handpainting signs. “Every little town had a good signwriter,” Granger said, and in the maritime community in which he grew up on the tip of Barnegat Bay, N.J., carving boat transoms and gold-leafing the names of the vessels offered him continual creative opportunities. Aware from the age of 14 that he wanted to be an art teacher, Granger enrolled in art school on full scholarship, studying art education, and secured his first teaching position at the Philadelphia Parkway Program, an innovative and nationally recognized educational experiment that used the city as the school. There, Granger taught 16mm film production, which he would later teach at Penn Charter for 35 years.
Randy Granger Hon. 1689 became the first-ever National Board-Certified Teacher in 2000 and, in 2005, the first non-public school teacher inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame.
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SPRING 2022
His teaching career was interrupted in 1970, at the height of the Cold War, when Granger, a Navy submarine reservist, was activated to serve as a navigation and education officer on nuclear-missile submarines. Granger cites his experience being submerged for three months
