Perspectives: Harkness Learning 2016-17 | The Lawrenceville School

Perspectives 2016/2017

Harkness Education

“Harkness education prepares students to learn with, learn from, and learn about one another. In a more diverse America and interconnected global society, the dispositions learned around our Harkness tables are as critical as ever.�

Table of Contents

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Revolutions

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The Harkness Teacher

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Foreign Languages, Familiar Methods

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Exhilarating Currents

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Harkness Beyond Lawrenceville

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A Gossamer Thread

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Concerted Effort

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Cultural Competence

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Passing the Light

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Rising Together

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Hardwood Harkness

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21st-Century Harkness Education

Revolutions

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was pivotal for Lawrenceville. Eighty years ago the school launched its Harkness revolution, replacing rows of little desks with conference tables.

This shift transformed Lawrentians from pupils memorizing their masters’ lectures into true students—young scholars taking initial direction from teachers but then conferring with one another to subject problems, issues, and questions to a collective process of critical study.

Eight decades on, the promise of the Harkness revolution has been realized ever more fully through a steady commitment to educational evolution. Our classrooms are more diverse than they were in 1936. When today’s Lawrentians study a thorny problem, they get to do so with classmates who hail from around the globe. They get to consider the input of colleagues who come from many

walks of life and a wide array of faith traditions. The result is a quality of understanding that derives from the deliberate assembling and examining of complexity.

Big advances in cognitive neuroscience have advanced Harkness education as we practice it today. Research findings guide us, first of all, in designing the best curricula for helping our teenagers to form effective habits of mind and, then, in determining the best moments at which to turn them loose to study and form conclusions on their own.

Sometimes, of course, it is counterproductive, even dangerous, to form conclusions in isolation (especially if one has not yet spent ample time studying how others think and expanding one’s own cognitive capacities by practicing these other thinkers’ various systems of inquiry). Key events in a more violent revolution make that clear.

If we venture back into the past beyond 1936—three times deeper, to 1776—we can witness George Washington in action at two crucial moments that demonstrate the urgent need to use a consultative, critical process in making important decisions. I mention these moments in part because the latter of the two

involved rebellious Continentals and militia, as well as the British government’s scarlet-clad troops, streaming past the land that is now our campus.

As students of the American uprising know, 1776 was a tumultuous year. The excitement of early July, when the Continental Congress declared independence, quickly gave way to a string of disasters in which the world’s mightiest armed forces routed the rebels. One of the grimmest fights occurred in November, in northern Manhattan. I won’t recite all of the details. The bottom line: The king’s troops assaulted Fort Washington, named in honor of the rebels’ commander, and overran it, killing many of its defenders, consigning even more to years of agony in the prison ships anchored in New York harbor.

General Washington, having recognized problems with the fort, wanted to abandon it.

General Nathanael Greene insisted it could be held. Washington acceded. The result was a debacle. Washington had pursued an important impulse, considering (and then deferring to) the input of a conscientious colleague. But the commander had erred P E R S P E C TIVES

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in failing to subject Greene’s position to a wider-ranging critical review.

Seven weeks later, informed by the gruesome rout in northern Manhattan, Washington operated differently. Now British forces had his little army hemmed in near Trenton, on the south side of Assunpink Creek. The rebel commander quickly solicited reports from local civilians. He wanted to gather whatever information he could from the people who knew this area best. He also asked each of his generals to weigh in about what to do. Together, they hatched the plan to stoke their campfires in order to create the appearance that they were digging in while, in fact, they were sneaking off to Princeton to fight on better ground.

How, when he had the rebels trapped, did the British commander, Lord Cornwallis, manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? In brief, whereas Washington & Co. formed their strategy through critical consultation with one another, Cornwallis operated according to his habits as an earl, arrogating all powers of observation and decision-making to himself, ignoring field reports and tactical suggestions from savvy 4

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subordinates and, in so doing, dooming his brilliantly trained troops to exercise admirable professionalism…in pursuit of a flawed plan of battle.

To a striking degree, the American war for independence succeeded, like the upstarts’ strategy for outfoxing Cornwallis, because the rebellion was grounded in a revolution—because the rebels undertook not just a throwing-off of faraway authority but a redistribution of authority, one ensuring that more participants would be critically engaged in designing, managing, assessing and, when

“We believe in revolutions–in going around and around a classroom...gathering information from as many points of vantage as possible.”

necessary, redirecting a collective enterprise.

We do our best at Lawrenceville to join “The Spirit of ‘76”—the inclination to see and do things in one’s own way, for one’s own purposes—to the wisdom of the great project that began here in 1936. We believe in revolutions—most importantly, in going around and around a classroom or a house, gathering input from as many points of vantage, informed by as many different traditions of analysis, as possible. That way, when our students operate independently—when they learn, think and speak for themselves—they have a far better chance of doing so propelled by the sort of carefully assembled understanding produced in a community whose members are committed to being mutually supportive and reciprocally informed.

We hope that this year’s edition of Perspectives will provide you with a variety of new angles from which to consider some of the ways in which we operate as a community nourished by Harkness education.

– Pier Kooistra P ‘19 The Robert S. and Christina Seix Dow Distinguished Master-Teaching Chair in Harkness Learning

The Harkness Teacher Chris Cunningham P’14 ’18 Dean of Faculty

Late in the fall term each year I get to teach one of my favorite scenes in all of literature—the dinner party in Virginia Woolf’s slim masterpiece, To the Lighthouse. The climax of the first half of the novel, the scene takes place in the summer house of the Ramsays, an upper-class English family.

Mrs. Ramsay, the matriarch and the novel’s protagonist, has gathered at her table a disparate, discordant group: There’s Mr. Bankes, the confirmed bachelor, who would rather dine alone; Mr. Tansley, the socially awkward student of working-class origin; Mr. Carmichael, the eccentric poet, one of the rare few resistant to Mrs. Ramsay’s charms; Lily Briscoe, the proto-feminist painter; and Mr. Ramsay, her husband, a crusty but charming philosophy professor; and so on. It’s a ragtag assemblage, and the dinner party threatens at first to fly apart under the centrifugal force of their different interests and sensibilities, leaving each diner an island, isolated in his or her own interior world, unable or unwilling to reach across the gulfs between them to understand another human being. But Mrs. Ramsay is an artist of human relation: Her special genius is bringing people together to

accomplish that rare and most precious of things—human connection. Like a conductor of a symphony, Mrs. Ramsay draws out this person, gives a nod to another, directs a stern warning to another, bringing them together for this moment, at least, to share each other’s company, to connect, and communicate, and be understood. I love the scene for many reasons, but in recent years Mrs. Ramsay’s artistry has also come to symbolize for me part of what it means to be a great teacher— or rather, a great Harkness teacher. π One of the most interesting—and perhaps most important—parts of my job is hiring new teachers. To be sure, there are certain specific skills or kinds of expertise I may be looking for in any given year—we may need a new head soccer coach or someone to advise The Lawrence or an expert in World History—but just as important, maybe even more important, I’m looking for teachers with a certain set of dispositions. On the one hand, I want people who are passionate about their discipline. When I sit and listen to a prospective teacher talk about what she does, I imagine that I’m a student in her classroom: P E R S P E C TIVES

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What’s it going to be like to be in her room day after day, week after week? Even if I know nothing about the chemical reaction she’s describing or the subject of her dissertation, does she engage me—does she make me want to know more? As most of us have discovered, there’s nothing in the world that is inherently interesting—or boring: There are writers or teachers or people we know who can take a subject that might seem, on its face, utterly tedious and bring it to life (and we’ve all experienced the opposite as well). Enthusiasm is infectious. A teacher’s passion matters.

At the same time—and perhaps paradoxically—I’m looking for teachers whose desire to share their passion and their expertise is tempered by a deep curiosity about what and how students think. As a practical matter, a teacher can’t correct a misconception or know where to start an explanation if he doesn’t have a real sense of what his students already understand—or misunderstand. But even more than this, Harkness teaching is founded on the belief that—and Harkness teaching works because—students learn better when they are actively involved in 6

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creating their own understandings. Not only is active learning more engaging, more motivating than sitting passively as the teacher talks; Harkness learning is ultimately more effective because the things we work to learn—questioning, explaining, defending, revising, evaluating—are more meaningful and stickier than the things someone else simply tells us. When students are the ones who do the intellectual heavy-lifting in class, they find learning more interesting and exciting—and the resulting understandings are deeper and more enduring.

So, while I’m eager to find experts who are passionate about their discipline and want to share their knowledge with students, I’m equally eager to find teachers who want their students to share what they think, to explain their ideas—and then defend them and revise and refine them or, if necessary, come to

question or reject them. I want curious teachers because Harkness teaching is more about listening than talking. Likewise, Harkness requires teachers to cool their passion with patience: One of the hardest things to do as a teacher is letting students struggle, be confused, even get frustrated as they struggle toward understanding. And Harkness teaching requires humility, a willingness to cede the stage to those who, in other classrooms, would be the audience to the teacher’s own intellectual experience. π The educational researcher Angela Duckworth, who taught for many years in the Harvard School of Education, has a great little essay called “The Having of Wonderful Ideas.” Her argument is simple: She claims that one of the most motivating and exciting experiences we have as human beings is having a new idea, that epiphanic moment of insight when we see or understand something new in the world. It doesn’t matter for Duckworth if other people have had the same idea—if it’s new for you, then it’s as if it didn’t exist until that moment. Whether it’s a small child discovering for the first time how

letters make words “or a musician who invents a harmonic sequence, or an astronomer who develops a new theory of the creation of the universe,” for Duckworth, these are equivalent experiences, the excitement of the child no less valid or real.

In the end, Duckworth’s argument is that the teacher’s role isn’t to deliver wonderful ideas to his or her students but rather to design and create opportunities for students to have their own wonderful ideas.

Like Mrs. Ramsay sometimes wordlessly connecting people across her dinner table, the Harkness teacher knows that the challenge and thrill of great teaching is not telling students what he or she knows, but rather—through a nod here, an uplifted eyebrow there—creating a space where the students at the table can discover their own voices, their own ideas, where they feel free and safe enough to reach across the sometimes daunting abyss of difference and silence and misunderstanding to connect with others and share themselves. Good teachers inspire their students with their words and insights; great teachers—Harkness teachers—inspire their students to put their own insights into words.

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Foreign Languages, Familiar Methods Yangyang Daniell Foreign-Language Department Chair

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f I Google “What is the Harkness method?” the words that first jump to the screen are these: “The Harkness table, Harkness method, or Harkness discussion is a teaching and learning method involving students seated in a large oval shape to discuss ideas in an encouraging, open-minded environment with only occasional or minimal teacher intervention” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harkness_table). To me, as to many others, this classic image of Harkness teaching and learning calls to mind a well-taught history or English class in action. It does not, however, seem at first glance to fit most modern foreign-language classes, especially when the students are still acquiring basic vocabulary or forming the simplest of sentences. Do those challenges mean that the Harkness method has no value to a modern foreign-language class? The answer is a resounding “No.” Harkness not only plays a role in a modern language class; its spirit guides everything we do. I note just three ways here.

First, one visible and critical difference between a traditional classroom and a Harkness-guided one is simply who speaks more

during the class—the teacher or the students.

Can you imagine a teacher speaking fluently to (some may feel “at”) students for the majority of class time without engaging them in various ways? This has been shown an ineffective way to teach the target language. Without ample student-to-student engagement, a foreign-language class will not succeed; for many students who study a foreign language in a classroom environment, class periods may offer the only chance for them to speak the language themselves. Failing to maximize these opportunities through pair or group activities shortchanges the students’ learning.

Second, as in all disciplines, Harkness learning requires sufficient preparation from all participants. All students must take responsibility for getting themselves ready to engage. My colleague Pier Kooistra puts it succinctly: “If you do your prep work well, and I do mine, we optimize the conditions for productive dialogue.” Indeed, in a foreign-language class, students must do their parts outside class in order to be able to contribute to pair work and small-group activities. Without taking their preparatory homework seriously, students will not have

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the tools in hand to communicate effectively with their peers when working together to complete a specific task. In order to become effective independent learners, first they must prepare themselves conscientiously to learn in ways that are largely interdependent.

Third, during a Harkness class, students must engage one another in an open-minded and supportive fashion. This is exactly how a successful foreign-language class looks: an environment where everyone feels sufficiently supported to open their mouths and speak the target language—missteps and all—to experiment with new vocabulary words and sentence structures, to negotiate meanings through asking each other questions.

Students have to be good listeners while participating actively. They must be patient and encouraging with one another because

learning to function in a foreign language and culture will unavoidably involve frustrations, struggles, and mistakes.

In a good foreign-language classroom, students learn the target language collaboratively, similar to all Harkness learning. As Pier says in his overview of “Twenty-First-Century Harkness Education,” Harkness is collaborative in these specific ways: “Consultative”, “Constructive” and “Critical.” In a foreign-language class, students consult each other, construct meaning together, and make progress through thinking and reflecting critically no matter whether they are playing Quizlet team-competition games, doing info-gap activities, engaging in role plays, or pairing up in the lab to create conversations based on provided pictures.

Throughout the history of foreign-lan-

guage teaching, many methods and approaches have caught people’s attention and guided their thinking: Grammar-Translation Approach, Direct Approach, Audiolingual Approach, The Communicative Approach, Total Physical Response Approach, to name a few. If foreign-language teaching research in the modern era has proved anything, it is that there is no magic wand. No single approach will meet all challenges perfectly. Whatever we do, however, a productive foreign-language class must catch the nuance, the spirit, and the heart of Harkness teaching and learning. Our classes may not look like the traditional Harkness discussion classes. We do not gather around those classic oval tables. But we consider ourselves qualified to serve as “poster children” for Harkness learning.

“An environment where everyone feels sufficiently supported to open their mouths and speak the target language—missteps and all—to experiment with new vocabulary words and sentence structures, to negotiate meanings through asking each other questions.”

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“Good teachers inspire their students with their words and insights; great teachers– Harkness teachers–inspire their students to put their own insights into words.”

Exhilarating Currents David Figueroa-Ortiz P’18, HISTORY Master Asst. Dir. of Multicultural Affairs

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istorical thinking demands that we encounter the lives of those who lived before us in their own terms. Otherwise, we risk projecting our own lives upon theirs, confirming preconceived ideas about our ancestors’ world rather than discovering their story. The task is complicated by the fact that there can be as many versions of a story as witnesses who lived it. Therefore, the challenge of engaging in historical inquiry is twofold: to see through the eyes of others, and to piece together from the subjective memories of many a story that belongs to all.

Seeing exactly what others see or have seen is impossible. Our seeing of events, or understanding of the past, is “our seeing” because we filter experiences through the mental lenses we have acquired throughout life. Our experience is unique and so were the experiences of those who came before us.

The problem is not necessarily that we tend to see what we want to see, but that we can see only that which we are able to recognize, and our ability to recognize, to decode what we see, is limited or enhanced by our

experiences and education. The past itself is, therefore, beyond our reach. But historical imagination, our attempt to ponder the dreads and dreams, ambitions and inhibitions that shaped our ancestors–and that are part of the human experience today–may allow us to access a shared human inheritance, and in turn bring forth stories common to all.

We can claim our shared inheritance by seeking exposure to values, experiences, and outlooks that are different from our own.

The more diversity in our exposure, the more lenses we will look through, and thus discover more angles to a story. The more voices we add to a conversation, the more threads we will weave in the tapestry that will become common ground, and from which stories that belong to all may emerge. By actively, broadly, and systematically engaging, refuting, embracing, or rebutting historical claims we will examine our own values, which is one way to reveal the lenses through which we view the world.

Telling a single story–using a single lens, set of values, or perspective–may yield a neat, clear, manageable summary of the human experience; but it would be a lie, as

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all oversimplifications are lies. Such a story would yield an understanding of history based on ignoring, silencing, or excluding a multitude of witness accounts. As such, a single story relies on the facile unanimity that emerges when we fail to engage the tensions inherent in making sense of the human experience.

A Harkness classroom is a forum where 14

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democratic dialogue brings together a multitude of voices on equal footing. The tension arising from broad inclusion of experiences, and the cacophony of ideas generated by the welcoming of all views, is the crucible from which overlapping understandings sometimes emerge. The diversity of voices and collaborative spirit at times allow us all to imagine what others see, and to craft stories

that belong to all. And that is the point of Harkness, not necessarily to always succeed at producing an answer we all accept, or a story we all tell, but to plant the seeds of dialogue that may later germinate–depending on how we tend to the seeds we each get–into deep understanding of one another.

Let us tell many stories, and in doing so, we will imagine many worlds to uncover experiences that have yet to become our own. Our historical imagination can place us nearer to our neighbor, and thus we might glimpse the world from where they stand, and the world that our ancestors experienced.

Let us include many voices and interrogate as many witnesses as we encounter, and in doing so we will gather stories that belong to all. In doing this, we will not only craft a story, a history, to tell and share with others, but will also preserve and pass on our shared humanistic inheritance to those who will come after us. This is the task of history, and it is done best when we leave the safe moorings of the single story, and dive into the depths and exhilarating currents that await us in the vast ocean of the Harkness classroom.

Harkness Beyond Lawrenceville Raj Bagaria ’ 17

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ne of the questions that I hear most frequently as a tour guide is, “So what exactly is the Harkness System?”

Usually, the most that an applicant might know is that Harkness often involves a large, oval-shaped table. In such instances, I will, admittedly, take advantage of visitors’ curiosity by somewhat glamorizing this educational system: “Good question!

Harkness, which came to Lawrenceville in 1936, is a collaborative learning method in which the entire class engages in active discussions to tackle complex ideas and concepts.” Usually, prospective students offer a quick “Wow!” or they will just silently nod in admiration.

Much as I enjoy portraying various elements of the Harkness system, throughout my years at Lawrenceville, I have come to realize that this esteemed learning philosophy boils down to just one concept: discussion.

When an entire class reflects on one assignment together, its members obtain a wider and stronger perspective. Sure, the table is nice. But all one really needs is a group of students willing to put their opinions on the

line. This is exactly what I discovered when I went to help teach at a poor rural school outside of Bangalore, India.

For the past three summers, I have been serving as a voluntary teacher at the VVMVP School. This charity school, because of its limited resources and large student population, often cannot do much to improve its teaching standards. What I found in my first summer of teaching there was that, like so many free schools in India, for a long time VVMVP has employed a great deal of rote learning, an outdated teaching technique that relies on repetition and memorization. This technique often inhibits students from truly understanding course material and does not enable them to utilize the knowledge they develop in school in creative ways outside of the classroom. I noticed almost right away that VVMVP’s students, although they had immaculate handwriting, had immense difficulty in articulating basic sentences and reading poems. Additionally, many students were not able to muster enough confidence to talk in front of their classmates because they had simply never spoken to an audience before.

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Based on the Harkness training I had experienced at Lawrenceville, I decided, with permission from the senior leadership of the school, to experiment with a different approach that would, in theory, break the pattern of rote learning and enable students to succeed both in and beyond the classroom.

Thankfully, it worked!

Some people carry the impression that only the wealthiest of schools can afford Harkness education, but that is not true and was certainly not what I saw in my classes at VVMVP. During my various summer stints there, I have adopted certain Harkness learning strategies. My classes have engaged in various discussions, poetry recitations, debate activities, and competitions. These activities have brought students out of their comfort zones and helped them to tackle their nervousness and provided a platform for interaction. Overall, these exercises have helped to boost students’ confidence and their ability to express their thoughts clearly. The VVMVP teachers with whom I have worked have confirmed that, after we had introduced Harkness methods there, their students 16

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were more eager to attend classes and were definitely speaking English more fluently and effortlessly. The teachers have also said that these activities created a platform that helped these students enjoy learning.

Harkness methods constitute a wonderful solution to the problem of rote learning in India that does not entail any additional costs.

Harkness education can have an amazing impact on rural students by helping them to develop important life skills that will enable success both in and beyond the classroom.

Since collaborative learning fosters agency, students who have grown in response to Harkness methods are better equipped to face the challenges of the modern world.

This system, if more broadly applied, could redefine India’s social structure by allowing rural students to break the cycle of impoverishment and make a more active, meaningful impact on society.

“Overall, these exercises have helped to boost students’ confidence and their ability to express their thoughts clearly.”

“Since collaborative learning fosters agency, students who have grown in response to Harkness methods are better equipped to face the challenges of the modern world.�

A Gossamer Thread Bernadette Teeley, Director of Academics, Lawrenceville Summer Scholars

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eaching with the Harkness method seems so reasonable.

The concept is clear: student-centered learning, around a table, discussion-based. The training is demonstrative: faculty see a class discussion, by students, of course, then receive a number of handouts to help facilitate their class discussions.

With this logical and systematic approach, why then were some of my most long-practicing Harkness educators struggling to create a classroom environment that was optimally collaborative and supportive of individual learning?

I began to notice that teaching in the Harkness method requires empathetic coaching more than, or as much as, the intellectual

leadership that the faculty were so willing to share.

In the whirlwind of teacher observations for the Lawrenceville Summer Scholars program, I began to see the nuances in the skilled practitioners’ application of classic Harkness techniques. Some were more successful in convening student-centered classes than others even though each classroom seemed to be “doing Harkness” with the suggested activities and formulated feedback structures.

In some classrooms, ideas were flying and students were talking, but something was amiss. There was a facade of activity and a series of content-related comments, but very little connection among the ideas of the students. It was not evident that the students

“I began to notice that teaching in the Harkness method requires empathetic coaching more than, or as much as, the intellectual leadership that the faculty were so willing to share.”

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changed or developed their thinking during the class. Oftentimes it was the teacher who challenged the students or who provided compelling evidence.

As I noted these behaviors, I began to observe classes and class time differently. Rather than watching the teacher and then waiting for the students to react, I began to focus on the students and to think of the teachers’ actions as responsive. Whom was the teacher watching? How did the teacher convey confidence and care? Did teacher-student interactions occur before and after class?

During discussions? Did the students behave as if they had the confidence of the faculty?

Was the teacher responding to the moment or diligently following a lesson plan?

After several of these student-centered observations, I began to note some patterns.

Though the teacher’s actions, the academic content, and student body seemed similar in each classroom, the key difference was in the teacher-student relationship. All of the caring, skilled teachers I worked with were looking to connect with the students and experienced various degrees of success: Some were wildly unsuccessful, some creat20

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ed classroom relationships which were tepid at best, and some seemed to have created a self-propelled, student-centered think tank.

The teachers who seemed to launch discussions with little effort, and who could inspire even the most immature and reluctant student to engage, were the ones who had connected the class with a gossamer thread of empathy.

This connection allowed the students to come together as a team and to treat comments and classmates with respect and optimism. The primary focus of these faculty was supporting the confidence and intellectual curiosity of the students. The students were not quite sure what the teacher thought about Macbeth,

but they knew that the teacher valued comments that raised questions and connected to those of their peers.

Having entered this school year richer for my opportunity to observe my skilled colleagues, I am reflecting on and reshaping my own practice. Here are some of my thoughts given my new perspective: • As a teacher, I have had classes that “clicked” better than others. Did I encourage these classes differently than the others?

• I have had some top-notch intellectuals around my table. Can one student change a class? Absolutely! As the teacher, how can I leverage the energy of my students so that it benefits their classmates? Is it my support and approval (or disapproval) of a student’s leadership that subconsciously set the tone for reception?

• How am I conveying my support to individual students and to the work of the group as a whole?

• Am I modeling empathy and fostering connection among my students in a way that transitions to and supports their intellectual exercises during class discussions?

“The teachers who seemed to launch discussions with little effort, and who could inspire even the most immature and reluctant student to engage, were...supporting the confidence and intellectual curiosity of the students.�

Concerted Effort Robert Palmer, Director of Music, and Keith Roeckle, Director of Instrumental Studies

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usic is a fundamentally collaborative art form.

Whether it is the act of performing with others or simply the shared experience of appreciating a great work, music is a group experience. It is music’s collaborative nature that allows the students and teachers at the Lawrenceville School to fully embrace Harkness teaching and learning within the study of music.

At Lawrenceville, we believe in stressing three major components of music—performance, composition, and analysis. Each of these components is vital to a thorough music education. Each offers unique ways for students to achieve. Each is also collaborative, and therefore allows for deep, meaningful, student-centered input and participation—a

fundamental tenet of Harkness teaching and learning.

If you happen to visit the Clark Music Center at a time when one or more of our six large ensembles are rehearsing, you would see vibrant examples of student-centered input and instruction. While each of these ensembles is headed by one of our teachers, a second look reveals much in the way of student leadership and depth of participation.

Our students are well-versed in guiding their peers in sectional rehearsals, demonstrating good musical technique, making decisions about performance, and, most importantly, helping one another reach their highest potential.

Elective courses in the program focus on other aspects of music. In our Foundations of Music course, it is not uncommon to see

“Our students are well versed in making decisions about performance and, most importantly, helping one another reach their highest potential.”

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many different instances of Harkness teaching and learning within a single class period.

Class may begin with a discussion of an assigned reading. Often such a discussion is related to the history of music, and students are expected to bring their own thoughts, experiences, and analysis to the literal Harkness table.

Musicianship-building activities, such as sight-singing and ear-training are common— group and solo singing, peer-to-peer performance, and, most importantly, peer feedback.

This is an area we have stressed in recent years, and it has proven to be one of the most fruitful aspects of our teaching. Composition is a solo endeavor, but revising and refining one’s own composition becomes a more vibrant and meaningful process with the help of peer critiques. We believe that much can be learned from the success and struggles of those with us around the table.

It is also common for the teacher to divide the class and send small groups throughout the Clark Music Center to collaborate on special topics and skill-building drills, such as rhythm compositions, recording projects, or the analysis of a structural aspect of music

(melody, harmony, etc.). Any of these tasks benefits from collaboration, and is thoroughly enriched by learning from the experience and knowledge of one’s peers.

We have a thriving musical culture at Lawrenceville, a student-centered experience that fosters a true Harkness environment. Yet another manifestation of this is found in the work of our Allegro Council. This student service group supports all aspects of the Music program. Comprised of upper-form

students representing every facet of musical Lawrenceville, the council is a wonderful example of student leadership and collaborative service at its best. At Lawrenceville, our students bring the Harkness learning developed all across campus to engage, perform, and achieve with each other, reaching a musical level that is only possible in such a collaborative and supportive setting.

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Cultural Competence Sam Washington ’81 P’14 ’17 Director of Multicultural Affairs

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ultural competence is having awareness of one’s own cultural identity while understanding differences that make each classroom, and even each student, unique. Harkness teaching and learning foster an environment that gives students the knowledge and the skills needed to discover their own beliefs, and their own identity.

Self-awareness becomes the first step in the journey towards cultural competence. As our own identity is often most clearly seen and measured when contrasted against that of others, the next step towards cultural competence includes an awareness of those around us. Harkness teaching and learning provide both the window and the mirror through which students can see the world around them while simultaneously seeing themselves reflected in that world.

One of the beauties of Harkness learning lies in its math. In a classroom of twelve, on a typical day, a student should speak roughly one twelfth of the time. This means that for eleven twelfths of the time, listening and learning is happening. Mathematically speaking, for 91.6% of the time spent around

a Harkness table, students may find their beliefs challenged. They may also have their beliefs supported. These beliefs may be cultural, they may be religious, or they may be political. In an environment like Lawrenceville’s, which is blessed to have students from all quarters, it is critical that they are allowed and actively encouraged to discuss, to discover, and to explore their multiple identities as well as those of others. When students move from being aware of other cultures to truly knowledgeable about other cultures, and, in turn, into being more sensitive to other cultures, they become culturally competent.

As the demographics of our country continue to change and we become a more diverse nation, the challenges of learning to co-exist productively and harmoniously can be best met by a generation of students who are culturally competent. For generations, Harkness teaching at Lawrenceville has prepared students to learn with, learn from, and learn about one another. In a more diverse America and interconnected global society, the dispositions learned around our Harkness tables are as critical as ever. Diversity is the new norm.

“The intimacy and the levels of trust that are fostered around Harkness tables help students address what are sometimes thorny issues.”

Having students exposed to multiple perspectives also contributes to their achievement in the classroom. There is increasing evidence that diversity makes us smarter. Amy Stuart Wells, Lauren Fox, and Diana Cordova-Cobo of Teachers College Columbia, report: “Researchers have documented that students’ exposure to other students who are different from themselves and the novel ideas and challenges that such exposure brings leads to improved cognitive skills, including critical thinking and problem solving.” A diverse collection of students who bring a diversity of thoughts and beliefs is a critical component of a good Harkness classroom.

A diverse curriculum is also essential to the achievement of a diverse group of students. Students are better and more engaged learners when they can see themselves in the picture. “Students of color become more engaged in texts that are being read when they see reflections of themselves in the characters of the story” (Freeman & Freeman, 2004).

They are also more effective learners when their voices are heard and their opinions are validated. These are key components of Harkness learning.

Another critical component of Harkness learning related to diversity is that students accept, value and respect differences. Conversations around issues of diversity in many environments can be difficult. The intimacy and the levels of trust that are fostered around Harkness tables help students address what are sometimes thorny issues. Providing students with the tools and the language to have these discussions is critical.

Harkness education and learning at its best, when done in an environment that consists of a diverse group of learners, raises the levels of achievement, increases self-awareness and heightens knowledge, awareness and empathy for others. These are traits that develop cultural competence. Achieving this ultimately helps students answer these three fundamental questions: Who Am I? Who Are They? Who Are We? Culturally competent students leave Lawrenceville equipped to answer these questions. Harkness education provides the forum to create culturally competent students.

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Passing the Light Orelia Jonathan Teaching Fellow in History

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did not always believe in the power of Harkness. At the prep school I attended in Massachusetts, our learning was transmitted through a sole beacon of light: our teacher. We would write furiously in our notebooks as words rolled off of our teachers’ tongues, our hands shooting up in the air the moment they paused for a breath of air. My hand was one of the many frantically dancing in the air, I was so eager to share my point, my knowledge, desperate to be passed the torch for a brief twenty or thirty seconds. Disappointment would cast its shadow over the students who were not called on, shame over those who had come to class ill-prepared, but for the very few who had contributed, smiles appeared on their faces as they exited the classroom. I lived for this style of learning throughout high school; I pressed my nose to books during study hall, searching hungrily for the perfect passages

which I could share in class, my beacon of light to shine across the classroom.

When I arrived at Wesleyan for my first year of college, I realized that this method of learning was unsustainable. I remember arriving to my freshman seminar, American Constitutional Order, prepared to show my professor and classmates a glimpse of my intelligence. As I sat, poised on the edge of my seat, another girl’s hand shot up on the other side of the table in response to the professor’s question. I found myself glowering as she took my idea, my words, my carefully picked passage and eloquently posed a question to the class. Her question was followed by another thoughtful remark, then another, and another, until suddenly I had missed the opportunity to present my nugget from the reading. I was unfamiliar with other students asking questions. Unfamiliar with the uncharted unknown, the unscripted class

“Harkness means the light does not come from one beacon, but from the beacon we build together.”

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plan with which this class regularly ran. Not knowing how to improvise, I was forced to listen, to take a back seat in the car I was so familiar with driving. Yet as I listened, during that class, and the next, I slowly felt myself begin to relax backward in my chair.

Instead of needing to be the first to speak, I found myself needing the words of my classmates. We became our own beacons, passing light among us, back and forth, unpacking, deconstructing, and questioning our class texts together. Instead of studying alone in the library for exams, I would sit for hours discussing course concepts and ideas with a couple of classmates. We built our beacon of light together; our knowledge, the light, was ours. These exchanges allowed me to participate, but they also opened my world to listening to and learning from other perspectives, other world views, and vantage points. Harkness was not natural for me, but it became the way I learned, what I craved in classrooms.

As a teacher of history, Harkness is central to my belief in the importance of multiperspectivity. In a space at Lawrenceville where we are blessed by the diverse nature of our 30

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student body and faculty, we have a special opportunity to discuss and delve into subjects in a way that one would not find at every school. This is particularly true in a history classroom. As a teacher who was new to the subject I was teaching last year, Harkness – the idea of discovery together – was one that frightened me. How could I engage effectively in Harkness if I did not have all the answers? Recalling that moment from my American Constitutional Order class has helped me grapple with this question, and once again I find myself relaxing backwards in my chair, listening. When I think back to my experience in college, I realize, it is not about having one answer, one correct answer, but instead having a multiplicity of views, a spectrum of perspectives. If we all think of Harkness in this respect, we begin to realize that Harkness means together. Harkness means the light does not come from one beacon, but from the beacon we build together.

“It is not about having one answer, one correct answer, but instead having a multiplicity of views, a spectrum of perspectives.”

Rising Together Sophie Garrett ’16 Valedictorian 2016

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figure that every big speech starts with some wise quotation that will make no sense initially and then tie everything together perfectly by the end and allude to the meaning of life.

I don’t have a quotation, and I can’t promise the meaning of life, but I have a poem: We are the faces on both sides of the table Brought nearer by the candlelight.

We give to each that solace which two different notes, One high, one low, struck together, Seem to give each other as they combine.

One thing alone is clear: It is not knowledge But unity that we desire, Intimacy itself, which is knowledge.

So if you’re thinking, “That is far too poetic for Sophie to have written it,” you’d be correct. I did not write any of the lines in the poem. I only strung together the words of Woolf, Nietzsche, Marx and Beckett to mimic creativity for Dr. Cunningham’s English final. I used lines that I found in books

written by thinkers far greater than myself and threw the lines together on the page, and yet, somehow, their words became mine. Nor did any one of us in the Class of 2016 write the poem of our Lawrenceville lives; we’ve thrown together lines written by our peers, and still, each of our experiences is unique.

We’ve risen together. We’ve drawn strength from belonging to this community. We’ve shared joy and struggle.

None of us could have reached this diploma alone. As individuals, we are not responsible for our success here, and I say this not to undermine today’s accomplishment, but to remind us that we do not succeed (or fail) alone. As the poem ends, “It is not knowledge but unity that we desire, intimacy itself, which is knowledge.” We came here for knowledge, but we leave with something infinitely more valuable: companionship, the type that reaches for our hands and tells us that we don’t have to write our poems alone.

As a class, we quite literally raised each other; we made this place our home, these people our family; and, parents, don’t be upset, but I think we did a pretty great job.

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Lawrenceville to help me grow up. I thought that there was a fixed amount of success and happiness in the world, and if I wanted it, I had to make sure that others couldn’t get it. Since coming here only two years ago, I realized that the opposite is true: If we want success and happiness, we have to put other people up instead of pushing them down.

When I describe Lawrenceville to my friends from my old school, I tell them that here it’s cool to compliment other people, to celebrate their strengths, to lift them up. Perhaps to those of you who have only ever known this place, that attitude seems natural, but I assure you, it is both unique and powerful.

Robert Ingersoll, a Civil War veteran, put it better than I can: “We rise by lifting others.” At Lawrenceville, we have all risen in this way. The senior boys physically lifted each other (and a few chairs) off the ground at the Spring Dance Concert, but I see us lift each other up in small ways every day.

Here, it’s cool to be that quiet kid who can also shred electric guitar, or the hockey bro who loves magic tricks; because if you don’t fit some social story, we don’t scorn you.

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you a true Renaissance man, we say at dinner tables that we wish we knew you better, or that we should dig up our hidden talents. And when we put others up like that, our friends like us more, too, because however cool magic tricks are, the ability to speak well about others is even cooler.

I used to struggle with this—speaking well about others. I resisted admiring my peers because I didn’t want to ask myself the question: Are they better than I am? Lawrencev-

ille has made me less afraid of this question; I have found that I can only grow by finding role models among my peers and leaning into the discomfort that they might be better than I am in many ways.

In the days leading up to this speech, when I felt unable to give words to our impending loss, to process my memories and apprehensions, let alone those of our whole class, I looked to role models: I used Stephens sisters as a think tank by covering our common room in post-its. I went to my faculty mentors when I felt like I had nothing to say. I edited and re-edited with friends I see as more qualified to be standing here than I am. It turns out that it’s not nearly as scary to wonder if I’m not the best than to write a speech (or a poem) alone.

And in this moment, as I look out at my housemates, teammates, classmates, teachers, family— the people who have made me someone I can be proud to be—I feel grateful to have found a community where we rise by lifting others.

“As I look out at my housemates, teammates, classmates, teachers, family–the people who have made me someone I can be proud to be–I feel grateful to have found a community where we rise by lifting others.”

Hardwood Harkness Ron Kane ’83 P’20, English Master Head Coach, Boys’ Varsity Basketball

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he legendary John Wooden once said, “Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who will argue with you.” Here, Coach Wooden reveals the importance of maintaining an open mind and open heart. Sounds like some fuel for the Harkness model.

Harkness learning is based on collaboration. Basketball is a sport that teaches similar lessons about achieving success through sharing. Here at Lawrenceville, boys’ varsity basketball players practice Harkness principles each and every winter day in the Lavino Field House. The Harkness model is alive and breathing (hard at times!) on the Varsity Court.

Our team truly takes not only a passionate but also a deliberate approach to reaching a

collective goal. We have a classroom without walls, and center-court is the epicenter for learning important life lessons about grit and resilience. Teammates play for each other and learn from each other.

Basketball is a sport that demands that individuals work within a team concept. The sharing of the basketball is the cornerstone of any successful team. Within an offense, players must understand spacing and timing, and players must read and react to situations which call for swift decisions. The best teams seize the serendipitous moments in a contest.

Adept players make quick decisions that ultimately help lead teammates to scores. Not unlike a timely contribution during a discussion at an oval table!

Basketball is played in a confined area

“Our program encourages player empowerment and interaction. Quite similar to what happens when students work on explicating a poem with a dozen peers!”

where five players are charged to stop five opposing players from taking a high-percentage shot. The modern game often breaks down to 2 v 2 or 3 v 3 situations. Players must recognize opportunities in transition, evaluate advantages of space, and read screens. Plus, players must create opportunities for others to shine and succeed. Sounds like Harkness to me!

Now in my twenty-fifth year coaching basketball, I view myself as a guide or facilitator. Simply put, I try to put Lawrentians in a position to be effectively creative on the basketball court. In the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s, coaches, and admittedly I as a young coach, would refer to “plays” as strategies for scoring. Today, I reference our offenses as “patterns” which rely on continuity and give space for creativity and ad-lib adjustments.

Our program encourages player empowerment and interaction. Quite similar to what happens when students work on explicating a poem with a dozen peers!

One just needs to observe one of our practices to see that we attempt to break the game down into 2 v 2 and 3 v 3 situations.

These scenarios require players to communi-

cate actively and effectively, both on offense and on defense. This is fertile ground for a team’s collective improvement. Moving from that mode into scrimmaging in 5 v 3 and 5 v 4 set-ups allows stoppages or wait time for constructive criticism. This is Harkness Hoops!

In addition, during “breakdown” work, players can observe and learn from each other. They can clearly see the correct use of a screen, and they can see the on-court dynamics most likely to help them set up a teammate for a shot. We, the coaching staff, will pause and then praise these important instances. We encourage risk-taking. Of course, mistakes are great learning opportunities on the floor. We applaud both prudent plays and plays that show insight and possibility.

There’s not always a correct answer in Mem, Pop, or Noyes. Same on the hardwood!

One of the essentials of basketball is that there must be a synchronicity among offensive players on the floor. Players must know every position and must anticipate the next opportunistic situation. When a player thanks or acknowledges a teammate for making an excellent pass that leads to a score, that is

one of the sacred and precious moments in a practice or game. Mastery in basketball requires not only repetition but explaining and clarifying. So the same kind of discussion that helps students to recognize and reflect on key breakthroughs in the classroom helps to make a team succeed—and to make the lessons of the court stick!

I have adopted the expression “Body language doesn’t whisper; it screams.” Our players and coaches pay close attention to this.

Just as a Harkness discussion can be dampered by negative or untimely body language, poor body language, if allowed on the court, can be a derisive force on a team. We emphasize making the “next play” (or comment) and always showing an openness to and respect for oneself and one’s teammates. When things haven’t worked out as intended, we stay positive and focus on the one word that I use most throughout a season: “opportunity.”

When the referee’s whistle blows, we want our players to take ownership of their performances, accomplishments, and shortcomings.

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and responsibility to “figure out” ways to be successful. After all, the ultimate goal is for players to use Harkness communication to set expectations high and to discover things about themselves that can blossom through sport.

One does not have to look too deep to see some symbolism in the cylinder that we call a hoop! The circle at which players aim their shots has no right angles, no empty corners, such as in soccer goals or football endzones—just that perfect circle that stands ten feet high. In some ways, that circle carries visual echoes of an oval wooden table. Circles and ovals, ovals and circles. Olmsted used these shapes to define our great campus. The historic Circle facing Woods-Memorial Hall and the Bowl, with its distinct oval shape, remind me that shapes matter. At Lawrenceville, our tables without corners are designed to encourage all students in a class to see one another eye to eye and, when doing so, to join forces in order to meet academic challenges.

The same sort of teamwork, with every player supporting every other, is the only way to get the ball through an opponent’s defense— and, then, through that tiny circle.

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pier kooistra P’19 english master, harkness chair

21st-Century Harkness Education Since 1936 Lawrenceville has featured a collaborative “Harkness” approach to learning.

The classic image of Harkness in action is a group of students working at a conference table.

What are they doing? Consulting one another to form a fuller understanding of a topic or problem.

It’s a great image. And an enormously useful practice.

But, of course, we know from practical experience that we shouldn’t limit ourselves to the classics.

On one hand, pursuing excellence requires a commitment to maintaining enriching traditions.

On the other hand, it requires a willingness, in fact a determination, to benefit from useful innovation.

This outline of Harkness fundamentals highlights both key traditions and crucial new points of emphasis.

Working Together to Change Our Minds Vigorous independent scholarship sets the stage for effective interdependent study.

If each student prepares conscientiously, we optimize the conditions for productive classroom dialogue.

Each student should arrive for class ready to share preliminary observations, questions and conclusions.

If colleagues arrive properly prepared, then we can subject one another’s initial thoughts to peer review.

Note: Peer review. That means that we must arrive for class prepared in a variety of ways: Prepared to share our preliminary findings and ready—in fact, eager—to receive critical feedback.

Prepared to weigh in—respectfully, responsibly—on other people’s first takes and rough drafts.

Prepared—in fact, determined—to use our colleagues’ constructive critical input to change our minds.

A Quick Review of Fundamentals So, Harkness education is a collaborative enterprise.

It demands each community member’s commitment to thorough, conscientious preparation.

It requires active participation in a shared process of constructing understanding.

It depends upon students’ determination to look critically at their thinking, then to revise it properly.

Harkness learning, then, is collaborative specifically in these ways: It is consultative. This is why Mr. Harkness (and Mr. Perry of Exeter) called it The Conference Method.

It is constructive, based not just on remembering others’ understandings but on assembling our own.

It is critical. We mustn’t believe our first impressions. We must test these, then amend and refine them.

(…or, when necessary, reject and replace them.)

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It’s Not As Much About What The Teacher Knows As About How In increasing numbers of sports, an athlete’s early years of development feature small-sided games.

Why? So that young players can get as much experience as possible handling the ball or puck, etc.

Do these young players learn key lessons when a coach stops the action to give a “chalk talk”? Yes. Sometimes they need to be told how to see the field, rink or court differently, to try something new.

But they don’t spend most of their time sitting still, just following a coach’s X’s and O’s on a board.

As soon as they have received an explanation of how to play better, they put the lesson into action.

We teachers have huge amounts of information that can help our students.

But if kids just listen as we organize that information, they won’t know it. They have to work with it.

It’s Not About The Harkness Table Students can do a lot of growth-inducing work conferring, constructing and critiquing at a big oval table.

But operating exclusively in that format is not educationally optimal. Harkness demands variety.

So we set up collaborative study in shifting configurations and modes—for example: Pairs for reciprocal feedback on attempts at a new conjugation, trios for safer voicing of new thoughts.

Whether in 3’s or 14’s, Harkness is about setting students up to learn, think and speak for themselves.

About getting to better understanding by considering the viewpoints and trying the moves of others.

Learning and thinking better by integrating input from beyond oneself requires practice.

For each student to get adequate practice, breaking away from a teacher-convened table is essential.

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Interdependent Entrepreneurship— Assessing One Another’s Work,Then One’s Own Lawrenceville theater students work in teams to design sets, then to feed back on others’ designs.

In music they produce their own compositions, then deepen their learning by exchanging critiques.

Math students develop their own solutions to problems, then present their solutions for peer review.

The same processes guide how Lawrentians study sciences, languages, religions and philosophies.

Young historians might start their study of the past by reading textbook narratives for basic background.

But then they must scan primary documents to form new arguments about forces that shaped events.

In English classes, students team up to connect the dots in dizzying texts by Shakespeare and Morrison.

Then they pore over one another’s papers to learn how to evaluate their own arguments as teachers do.

Why All This Emphasis on What Students Do? What Do Harkness Teachers Do? What does more to stimulate expertise—viewing or doing? Obviously, doing. And then reflecting.

We educators all grew more powerful in our disciplines when we had—and got—to practice more.

Of course, we found it hugely helpful at key moments to have experts explain crucial details.

But we were truly transformed by having to figure out how to pull such details together ourselves.

So we’re not professors. When we present information, we don’t tell students what to think about it.

We engineer learning experiences. We watch closely as students tackle problems. We feed back.

We work hard to get students to pay attention not just to what we know but to how to think.

We get them to learn, think and speak for themselves, through critical input from—and for—others.

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