By Maureen Sullivan Keleher, LL’16, Teacher & Advisor, Thayer Academy (MA)
Sitting in the hotel lobby in Rome waiting for students to check in, I outlined the rest of the year for my English class, trying to fit in a poetry project and the final novel. I explained my predicament to the Director. His response was simple: “Go for the Poetry. Don’t worry about the book. The project gives the kids choice and voice.”
This past year I taught English at School Year Abroad (SYA) in Viterbo, Italy. The school focuses on building independence in young people. Students come from the United States, learn Italian, live with Italian host families, and attend classes. In addition, as the students navigate living with a host family and communicating in a new language, they are also pushed out of the school building to explore Viterbo and Italy.
Getting Uncomfortable
The first three weeks of school were orientation: mini-excursions in Viterbo led them to learn hands-on as they would in future Wednesday classes. They visited museums to learn the burial practices of Etruscans and Egyptians, asked locals about the significance of street names and piazzas, and researched the story behind the festival of Santa Rosa. They oriented themselves to the meandering cobblestoned streets in this walled, medieval city.
One afternoon, three students came to me. They were uncomfortable with the orientation, and they wanted more traditional classes. They wanted to learn what their classmates in the U.S. were, information they needed for college. They didn’t like that the school part of things was about learning by exploring and not by sitting down, being taught information and being tested.
Orienting can be hard work. I remember learning at the gcLi Leadership Lab in 2016 that it is necessary to become comfortable with the uncomfortable. At the time, this sounded drastic; I usually cringe and smooth over or extract myself from what is uncomfortable. So I understood the students’ discomfort. But I had also read the students’ application essays about their excitement for change and challenge and growth.
Even once the more traditional classes began, students had to work through field classes on Wednesdays. In groups, they visited neighboring towns, interviewed Italians, discovered layers of history and art from Ancient Rome to Medieval times to World War II. They took trains and buses and got lost. One Wednesday in October, a group called the program director, fretting because they had gotten on the wrong bus. He laughed and said, “Great. Let me know when you’re back.”
When asked about the most challenging part of such excursions, the answer was the same: working with a group. Collaboration was necessary, and these kids struggled as they debated whether to take a bus or train, where to wait, which way to go. They struggled independently and together, learning about each other and themselves. These were not the survival simulations or marshmallow challenges that I’d done for leadership training with my peer advisors at home; these were real life situations where the students needed to travel together, complete an assignment, and return home by curfew.
When the school moved to Sicily for a week, choice and voice were even more intense. Students made hourly schedules for each day. They chose museums, churches, neighborhoods, markets to visit; free time activities; work time. This scheduling was not perfect: it was an evolving practice. We teachers pored over the students’ individual schedules pre-trip, ensuring safety and academic rigor. And each morning in Sicily, we chaperones insisted on revisions before the students left the hotel, causing stress and even a few tears. But the students were learning.
The Classroom
In the fall here at SYA, my own learning curve was steep. We used Harkness discussions twice per week. Sometimes how much the students could accomplish in a discussion amazed me; other times, I felt that I failed the students in not intervening more to steer the conversation or balance the air time. They brought in questions and topics (choice); we discussed (voice). Harkness discussions worked best when the students were prepared and patient enough to give each other voice, too.
During the week in Sicily, students kept blogs. Some days I gave them prompts; most days they wrote about whatever they wanted. As with Harkness, this yielded both solid entries and not-so-solid entries. For some, the freedom to write whatever they wanted yielded astute, poignant reflections; for others, the open-endedness was too much choice, so when I provided prompts, their entries were stronger. Later, they reworked blog entries into stories about their lives here in Italy and their lives at home. Delving into their own experiences and interests, they found their voices, writing pieces to share in class.
Finally, I carved out time for the poetry project. Students chose a poem, created a homework assignment and a lesson plan, taught the poem, wrote an analysis, and created an imitation. The students, including the ones who had been despondent and homesick, came alive. They completed the homework assigned by their peers every night, and arrived to class the next day excited, eager, all-in. Many assignments were fun, engaging, and creative. One student had us write blackout poetry; another had us reflect on an autonomous sensory meridian response recording [ASMR]; another had us write a six line poem using only E. E. Cummings’ lines. One assigned a video on the term African American and the video “I’m Not a Racist.” (After some classes I thought, when I write a book, I should title it, What I’ve Learned from Teenagers.)
These student-led discussions had a palpable energy as the students used poems to talk about friendship, love, racism, life, death. They took pride in the poem they chose and their teaching. I was a student, keeping up with their assignments, drawing, writing, reading, discussing. It was a privilege to be a student in some of these classes – from standing on desks Robin Williams’ style for “O Captain, My Captain,” to sketching a childhood scene as Frost’s speaker does in “Birches.”
Leadership
This year, I watched the SYA students grow in competence, confidence, and independence. They wrote about procrastination and time management; being the outsider; and finding the strength and self-discipline to make it through the struggles of culture shock, homesickness, and the return home.
The majority of students were conflicted about returning home: they had been counting the days, but then, with six weeks remaining, saw all that they are leaving and didn’t know how they’d fit in at home and at their home schools again. Some learned that they loved travel; others, that they are homebodies. Some discovered that they want to study abroad during college; others, that they want a less stressful academic environment than they have at their home school – that they can learn with more enjoyment and less stress.
These kids returned home changed whether they know it now or realize it later. With the choices they have made and the voices they have given to these choices, they learned independence in their academic and personal worlds, and especially, in the real world. And I am so grateful for all that I learned from them. This experience taught me that sometimes, the best way to teach leadership is for the teachers to get out of the way and let the students lead the way.
Maureen Sullivan Keleher is a class dean and teacher of English and Latin at Thayer Academy in Massachusetts. As advisor to service groups, Maureen strives to empower student leaders to create programs that excite them. In her absence this past year, these student leaders continued to make and serve meals at Fr. Bill’s Homeless Shelter and to run Special Olympics Young Athletes program — she is so proud of them! They are leaders in action.