Table Talk

HARKNESS TO GO!

As comfortable in hiking shoes as in his own skin, history teacher Michael Hanewald ’90 P’22 savors the idea of putting a Harkness table anywhere on the globe, and as the assistant director of Lawrenceville’s Harkness Travel program, he gets to do just that. Hanewald told The Lawrentian how a study-abroad trip as a student planted the seeds of his passion for experiential education, which has allowed him to share once-in-a-lifetime discoveries with students.

You are the middle of three generations of Lawrentians. How did you wind up here as a student?

I came to Lawrenceville after what would’ve been my junior year in high school, but I did two years in a public high school, and then I was a Rotary Youth Exchange student in Austria for a year.

And then you eventually found your way back to campus in 2008. What was behind that?

I always knew I wanted to come back here. That was always a goal, to be able to teach at Lawrenceville, where it meant something for me.

You’re a big outdoors enthusiast who might be known as much for the teaching you do outside as around the Harkness table.

I was selected as a Ropes Course instructor my junior year in the spring. I only had the opportunity to do that one year on campus, but I got a job immediately with the company that built our ropes course, and I managed it with the School. Right away, from my two summers working for that company, building and facilitating, people said, “You should teach. You’ve got something going on in your interactions.”

Sounds like there was already a teacher inside, trying to find its way out.

I’m the third child of four, the middle compromiser, listener, empath, so experiential education started to kick in in terms of me thinking, This is a path for me. Without knowing it, the year abroad in Austria had primed my engine for further experiential education.

Lawrenceville had long done summer abroad, but it was you who really developed this idea of international Harkness travel, correct?

I had the opportunity to create an international travel program, and so that just tacked onto who I was, what I was building, and how I had been learning.

How do you explain to people what the true educational value is in a Harkness Travel experience?

Harkness Travel puts the idea of people gathering in a circle to get into deeper conversations, wherever you travel. You have curriculum, you have preparation, and you’re going to spend the time to engage something meaningful. That’s how we design our lessons in our class, so we transfer that model into a location and ask the same questions.

That’s no mere sightseeing tour.

Are we doing the Chevy Chase European Vacation? No. What we’re trying to do is find the opportunity to engage the people and the place, and meaningfully honor subjects with purpose. We might not go to the biggest attraction in the city, because our focus is something different.

So you’re placing the emphasis on exploring concepts as much as on the location itself.

Yes, and this is a wonderful way to steward leadership. What John Hughes [director of experiential education] and I have designed is a program that has the educational purpose with kids meeting beforehand, but they are also going to be a teacher, leading a discussion.

How far does that student-as-leader model extend?

When possible, the program leaders are going to hang back, and students lead. You’re going to lead the discussions, you’re going to, for example, get us on the trains and organize us.

Wow. That’s a lot of responsibility.

We have a rotation of leadership-role scheduling and leaders of the day – an assistant leader, the record-keeper journalist, and the documentary person – and we rotate these positions. We start with daily meetings, led by students, and at the end of the day, shift leaders meet with the next leader and co-leader of the day and say, “Hey, what are we talking about? How should you prepare your group for tomorrow? What’s the weather going to be?”

And it comes off all right?

Our School is always doing that on different levels. John and I are practitioners in that, and we’ll say, “Let them make mistakes, because that’s the experiential learning.”

What classes do you teach as part of the history faculty?

I’m part of the Forces that Shape the Modern World – that’s our world history, Third Form year. I teach a two-term elective on African history, Africa Then and Now, and I have taught an interdisciplinary class on Mayan archeology called History Through the Lens.

“History Through the Lens” has the sound of an interdisciplinary class.

How do you portray and convey history through film? As a filmmaker, how do you convey history as a historian in a paper? We’re studying the subject through an interdisciplinary lens. They’ll learn about the ancient Maya, but then we start watching these documentary films, and Gil Domb [P’17, Visual Arts teacher and School videographer] talks about technique.

Is there a travel component to this?

Yes. Before we go on our program, students focus on a topic – warfare, kingship, and what does this mean? They have the itinerary in front of them, so now they know they’re going to Palenque, Bonampak, Yaxchilan, Tikal, Kopán, and Quiriguá, and some of the people who have appeared in the PBS Nova documentaries have been our tour guides.

That’s got to be an advantage – their local expertise.

In Palenque, the park closes at 5 o’clock. Our guide, José, says, “Well, we’re not leaving, we get ’til 7 or whenever we want.” Everyone exits, we have the conversation with a guard and then get to hear the howler monkeys enter the ruins because the people were gone. They wouldn’t normally come until the people had cleared out.

So right away, José’s connections are paying off.

Later that evening, we go down for dinner and he says, “Would you like to go to my office? I think you may be interested in something.” In the office, he opens up a transcript book, an art book with just … I mean, this makes me shake, how special it was.

Do tell...

Linda Schele was the key artist from one of the Texas universities who cracked the Mayan code in the ’70s – well, they did it at Palenque, at the Palenque Round Table of 1970. These meetings, with the historians and everyone coming together and cracking the code – this was the book!

Amazing. How did José come to possess this vital document?

Linda Schele had given it to his father, who was the only Mexican archeologist on the group, and his father gave it to him – the evolution of symbols and shields for Pacal the Great, the first king, and what that looked like. Our students left saying, “We’re not worthy!”

It’s incredible to have that kind of access. That’s like a Rosetta Stone, really.

It’s the Dead Sea Scrolls, it’s the Rosetta Stone, it’s everything. You’re right, as far as a primary source, they’re likely never to come across something as unique or significant as that.

The Grand Canyon is just one Harkness Travel destination led by Michael Hanewald '90 P'22.