Solving for X

from Thacher Magazine Fall/Winter 2021

Academics Unbounded

Solving for X

Building the courage, space, and skills to meet the challenges of an increasingly variable world

If there is a silver lining to this era of accelerating change, rigorous self-examination, mutating variants, disruptions of all manner, and their urgent imperative that we adapt, it is the permission that this imperative brings to try new things. It’s a spirit of openness to experimentation reflected in the attitude of our founder, and one that has come to the forefront of our work as we not only prepare our students to identify and solve the problems facing our world, but also seek to retool the School itself as an educational platform capable of anticipating and keeping pace with an ever-changing set of operational and educational demands. It is in this spirit of creative adaptability that we share the following stories. You’ll read about a new building on campus that is as adaptable and flexible as the investigations it encourages, and a new multicultural space predicated on the understanding that our world is best understood through multiple perspectives. You’ll learn about the work of adults on campus helping our students develop the courage and tools to see and solve important problems, and about alums in the workforce reflecting on the challenges they see in their workplaces and communities and what they see as essential attributes in the effort to meet those challenges. What connects all of these stories is a commitment to shaping Thacher—reshaping Thacher, where needed—so that it can in turn give shape to the kind of graduates who can meet the problems we know about as well as the ones that will surely follow. Running through it all are the precious attributes of curiosity and ingenuity, commitment and humility, patience and imperfectionism that have always been at the center of a Thacher experience, but are finding new and essential expression here every day.

16 Out of the GATES

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“We who try to prepare our [students] for college in a certain way are in danger of thinking no other way will produce good results. I try, however, to stop occasionally and consider whether some radically different way may not produce better results, and I think this often proves to be true.”

Sherman Day Thacher, Founder

22 Making Space 24 What the World Needs Now 28 Academics Unbounded

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Out of the GATE

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13 Ways That the Thacher Curriculum Has Been Reshaped

Thacher’s new academic hub

is at the center of academic changes that have been underway for years and are now becoming more visible. Our move away from the AP Program was an early and important step forward, but what’s more interesting than what we left behind is where we are today and where we’re heading. As much as these changes represent a move away from established patterns, they also afforded the School an opportunity to better align the curriculum with longstanding approaches to learning, the kind that don’t necessarily need a classroom but are just as likely to take hold in a barn, on a trail, on the stage, on a court, or in a dormitory common room. GATES is the most visible element of a transformed and transforming curriculum that is allowing our students to encounter new ways of discovering their interests; direct their own learning paths; and acquire the skills, knowledge, and mindsets they will need for the lives that await them after Thacher. Much of this is the result of work our faculty and administration have been doing behind the scenes—to imagine the possibilities of this new facility, to reimagine courses and teaching methods, to go back to school themselves in order to advance their craft.

What follows are some snapshots of this transformation, 13 snapshots to be exact. Why 13? We could have listed 250 ways, which is the number of Thacher students fortunate enough to make use of GATES on a daily basis, but we opted for 13, which is the number of garage doors (nine exterior and four interior), because they embody so much of what is new and essential about this building. More than simply design elements, these doors are central to the goals of creating connections among the disciplines, sparking curiosity, connecting the indoors with the outdoors, and rewarding attention by opening up lines of sight and sound.

1Bringing the outside in

(and the inside out).

More than just ways in and out of the building, the GATES building’s 13 garage doors and the flexibility they allow create connections, free up new activities, invite curiosity, and remind everyone that class need not be confined to the classroom.

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2Showing your work.

Shape-shifting.

GATES is a Swiss army knife of a building that is endlessly adaptable to the purpose at hand. A stairway that’s also a classroom. A fabrication space that is also an arena. A lecture hall that is also a movie theater. Move that wall, reconfigure those collaboration spaces, wheel that whiteboard! “You’ll have one building in the morning, another in the afternoon, and yet another in the evening. It is as dynamic and adaptable as the learning activities it supports,” notes Dr. Kamala Qualandar, director of programming for the facility. Dr. Spinney’s class, for example, pulls a rolly board into their space each morning, collaborates on making a current events list, and then shares that by rolling it out into the hall for all to see. “The best part,” says Doc Qalandar, “is that students are showing us how they want the building to be used, which is what we hoped for in the first place.”

A little showing off is okay when it teaches, entertains, inspires, and piques interest. From the whiteboard retaining the hieroglyphics from yesterday's multivariable calculus class to a display case of masks made in language class as part of a writing assignment, and from student photography scrolling across the overhead digital display screens to a cluster of mysterious 3D-printed objects, the artifacts of a dynamic curriculum function as aspirational decor, inviting cross-curricular thinking, provoking conversation and curiosity. Displayed work is not only by students; a community art show is planned for later in the year.

The call of the wild.

Ms. Pidduck has often described Thacher’s curriculum as tailored to ”adventurous minds” and nowhere on campus is that more evident than GATES. When inviting the student body to the building’s opening, Director of Studies Dr. Tracy Miller said, “Come and see all of the dangerous stuff inside.” It wasn’t the normal classroom hazards like staplers and three-hole punches she had in mind. Behind those garage doors are lasers, chop saws, arc welders, and more.

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Curriculum as experiment.

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Distracting attention.

Before GATES, there was the unadorned and mostly windowless Humanities Building, which confined student attention to the teacher at the front of the classroom by blocking all other distractions. GATES takes the opposite approach with an open design made to invite the gaze and transmit sound. This disposition toward distraction is, as they say in the Comp Sci class, a feature, not a bug. When the teacher is the center of learning, you need to minimize competition for attention, but when you put students at the center of their own learning, distractions lead to inspirations, aspirations, and motivations toward new ways of thinking, cross-disciplinary connections, and serendipitous juxtapositions.

Iterative design is not just something students learn to do in class, it’s something the faculty is constantly doing with the curriculum itself. And though it’s not limited to the GATES building, the flexibility of that space is emblematic of a curriculum that is constantly giving rise to innovations in an effort to improve itself. Some of our new and evolving offerings include a popular field biology course taught in partnership with our neighboring Turtle Conservancy; a veterinary medicine course that makes a learning lab of our equine herd; and an applied chemistry program that crosses over into art history by synthesizing ancient pigments. And new ideas arrive every term, incubated in our xBlock program that builds in opportunities for faculty to test new topics and teaching approaches and for students to suggest courses and activities they would like to see represented in the curriculum. In fact, the whole curriculum is set up to create academic pathways that allow students to foster and follow their own curiosity, to experiment with and ultimately take charge of their own learning.

Plain old-fashioned fun.

Virtual reality games, a student-made miniature golf course, movie night in Hearst Lecture Hall on the weekend, or an invitation to try a new artistic medium— such are the routine opportunities for simple fun that GATES supports. And beyond play as an end in itself, the building also helps our faculty incorporate many kinds of emotional engagement into their teaching approaches. Challenge Success, an offshoot of Stanford’s Graduate School of Education devoted to helping schools develop models of success that better serve their students, conducted a survey of Thacher academics in which students reported high levels of affective engagement, meaning that they find meaning, purpose, and joy in their schoolwork. This was the case before GATES, and the new facility has only expanded options for blending rigor, purpose, and joy within and beyond academics.

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Contagious innovation.

Visiting artists.

GATES broadens views and connections across the curriculum and also beyond Thacher’s gates by bringing inspiring thinkers, doers, artists, and teachers to campus. An important resource in that effort is the Class of 1971 Visiting Artists Program (read more about it on page 45). As GATES opened its doors last spring, its first visiting artist, Jonathan Capone, presided over a series of workshops, activities, and events. He instigated a problem solvers club for nascent inventors, mentored a team project to construct (and then play!) a miniature golf course, helped students mount a virtual reality escape room, and offered all manner of trainings on the tools and equipment in the building’s fabrication garage. As campus reopens to visitors, the School is looking forward to welcoming its next visiting artists to share their projects, work with students, and collaborate with the faculty. On the docket are digital collage artist Cassandra C. Jones, musician Mikael Jorgensen (who plays keyboards for the band Wilco), illustrator Walker Cahall CdeP 2003 (whose work appeared in the last issue of Thacher magazine), and Christopher Cantwell (a writer, director, and producer best known for his work in comic books and film).

Now the call is out to all alums to who may know (or even be!) somebody who might be our visiting artist, designer, and educator. Interested candidates should send a proposal, resume, and letter of interest to Kamala Qalandar, director of programs for technology and innovation, at kqalandar@thacher.org.

GATES was built not only to accommodate curricular ideas that didn’t fit within existing campus spaces, it was also designed to inspire and incubate continued curricular innovation, to serve as a lab for new approaches to teaching and learning at Thacher. “We said, ‘let’s make a space for experimentation,’” explained Director of Studies Tracy Miller, “find whatever cool things emerge, say ‘yes’ to them, and see what blooms.” And what grows within this pedagogical petri dish is not limited to science or art classes. Dr. Boyd, for example has redesigned the ninth grade English program to include publication of a new literary magazine called Just Write. “Let’s get these kids confident in their own voices and the power of their own ideas and how to share them,” said Dr. Boyd, “before we begin exposing them to Greek epics, or Shakespeare.” Read about similar innovations in the history department on page 32.

Inclusion and connection.

Envisioned as a venue where everybody would feel at home, GATES has proven itself to be a place where classrooms and studios invite lively work (and play) before, during, and after classes. But it goes beyond that. Just as camping trips, theatrical casts, and athletic teams serve as social connectors by throwing people together regardless of grade level, background, or academic interest, the same kinds of connection occur when small groups of students work together to explore new academic territory, harness the power of diverse perspectives, and take artistic risks.

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Nightlife.

Once you set the learning free from the classroom there’s no telling where—or when—it will take place. “One of our hopes in designing this building,” says Tracy Miller, “was to create a place the kids could not stay out of.” Visit GATES after dark and you’ll see how well the design has succeeded: a small group of students here clustered around a whiteboard, a pair over there hunched over laptops polishing a multimedia presentation for tomorrow’s class, or Ms. Hooker emptying the kiln outside of the ceramics studio with the help of a few students eager to see how their glazing turned out. But it doesn’t stop there, a starlit stroll might take you past some vet med students walking back from the barns after visiting a “patient” there, or a couple of fledgling astronomers ascending Observatory Hill to capture some images of the night sky. The point is, whether the students stay in or out of GATES, learning is taking place at all hours.

Lounging around.

Historically, faculty offices have been organized by department, but the Fung Faculty Center, including a cross-disciplinary lounge and meeting room, offers our teachers an adult space in close proximity to everything else that takes place in GATES. Teachers are close at hand to answer questions, provide a little extra help, see what colleagues are up to, and, most importantly, to join in the fun!

Making a mess of things.

Nothing kills creativity like cleanup time. The ability to make a mess, and to leave it a mess over time as you gradually shape it into something, is critical to the creative process, whether you are designing, painting, engineering, sculpting, or whatever. And this building was designed with that in mind, with multiple specialized spaces for inspired tinkering and dynamic disorder: a fabrication garage, a physics and robotics labs, ceramics and painting studios. And most of these spaces have been designed with enough flexibility to accommodate varieties of messes we haven’t even thought of yet.

To keep up with GATES activities, follow Thacher on Instagram, where we’ll be sharing updates from time to time.