Duke - May - Jun 2002 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/issue/may-jun-2002 en Teachers on Teaching https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/teachers-teaching <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="width:98%"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <p>For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a teacher. I guess my desire grew out of the fact that I had great experiences with outstanding teachers in the public schools of Charlotte, North Carolina. I loved learning about history in junior high and high school and I decided that I was going to become a high-school history teacher. I even wrote one of my essays for admission to Duke about my desire to become a teacher.</p> <p>Fortunately for me, Duke re-started the M.A.T. program during my junior year. The program allowed me to build on my knowledge base in history and, more importantly, gave me the opportunity to work closely with two master teachers for an entire school year. This experience has proved invaluable to my effectiveness in and enjoyment of teaching.</p> <p>In the ten years since I left Duke, my career in teaching has surpassed my hopes and expectations. In this job, there is truly never a dull moment. The everyday challenges of teaching make it both frustrating and fascinating. How many people in their thirties still get to go to pep rallies, break up fights, and read secret notes passed during class? Teaching high school keeps me in touch with young people at a very interesting time in their lives. Though I really never know what influence I have on my students, the possibility that I might help point a kid in the right direction motivates me. I find teaching fascinating because of the relationships I develop with my students and because of my hope that I will be able to make a difference in the lives of some of these young people.</p> <p>Teaching has allowed me to work with every type of student you can imagine, from the over-sugared, undersized ninth-grade bundle of hormones to the too-cool-for-school twelfth-grade senior slider. I have taught students who are incredibly motivated and students who see little or no value in school. Each type of student--each student--requires different strategies from me and returns different kinds of rewards.</p> <p>When I taught advanced placement (AP) classes or classes with students who really enjoyed school, I immediately felt the rewards from teaching. The effort and interest of these students matched my own, and that was extremely exciting. I now work with students who have had little success in school and who, for the most part, do not enjoy it. My students struggle to bring themselves, a pencil, and a piece of paper into the classroom. Once they arrive, we engage in epic struggles between the forces of energy and engagement and the forces of lethargy and apathy. On many days I lose this battle, but I survive to fight another day. None of my current students loves learning the way the AP kids did--but I believe the work I am doing with these students is the most important thing I can do as a teacher.</p> <p>I see success when a student who claims to "hate" school begins to ask questions in class. I see success when a student who says he does not read picks up a book. I see success when a student who lacks self-confidence begins to trust herself and her ability to answer a question. My challenge as a teacher is to engage the student who sits</p> <p>in class and dares me to teach him. My challenge is to cajole, to convince, to coerce these students to believe that success in school is important and that they can experience it. I do not always meet these challenges, but I try to meet my students where they are and encourage them to become interested in learning. I think that if I can help them engage in the process of learning, they will achieve success on their own.</p> <p>My first ten years of teaching have been a blast. Despite the frustrations that come from working with students who are not really motivated to learn, I feel that I am making a difference for some students. I enjoy the task of trying to bring history alive for students raised on professional wrestling and video games. Few days go by when I am not forced to think hard and grapple with difficult social, cultural, and educational challenges. I feel great when I plan and implement a lesson that works because the students really "get it." I can see the satisfaction and interest in their faces and I am certain they can see it in mine.</p> <p>Hunter Hogewood '90, M.A.T. '91<br /> Chevy Chase, Maryland</p> <p>I chose to become a teacher because I really enjoy young people, and I became an English teacher because the subject matter excites me; literature is beautiful, moving, enduring. My mother, who taught enthusiastically for thirty-seven years, was my major role model and inspiration. The interesting and challenging teachers I had in high school and in college affirmed my decision.</p> <p>In the past forty years (with time out for raising a family), I have taught tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades at all ability levels: basic, standard, enriched or college preparatory, academically gifted or honors, and advanced placement.</p> <p>I stay committed because of the students. The students I teach today are as enthusiastic, as well-behaved, as committed to their studies as the students I taught in my first year of teaching. I hope that my contribution as a teacher is to touch the students' lives, to turn them on to learning, to give them a lifelong love of literature. I feel I have been successful if I see understanding of the literature in their essays, if I see improvement in their writing through the year, if I see the light bulb going on in their brain in class discussion, if they come back to see me when they are in college and share experiences or tell me they are doing well. Some of my former students have become English teachers themselves; I see them at workshops and like to think I had a hand in their decision.</p> <p>Teaching necessitates a major commitment of time and effort for the teacher, and it requires a great deal of understanding and help on the part of family members. I was really amazed and touched when my daughter became an English teacher. I had thought the sight of my bringing home countless essays and essay tests over the years would have discouraged her.</p> <p>The English curriculum in high school has remained consistent for eleventh and twelfth grades, with the eleventh grade focused on American literature and the twelfth grade focused on British literature. At the tenth-grade level, however, there has been a major change from genres (poetry, short stories, plays, novels) to World Literature. Before this, most of the literature studied in all grades was either British or American. Today students study Chinese, Sumerian, Russian, South American, Canadian, French, Spanish, and other authors, reflecting our country's growing diversity and the emphasis on multiculturalism.</p> <p>A major change for me has been the age levels of my peers. Most of my fellow teachers in the English department this year are the age of my daughter. It is a joy to work with them. For the most part, the young people coming into the profession are extremely dedicated, well-prepared, and idealistic.</p> <p>I do not think any other career would have been nearly as enjoyable for me. After all these years, I still look forward to going to work each day to meet my students and want to teach that unit again next year in hopes I can "do it better."</p> <p>Linda Lunsford Moore '62, M.A.T. '63<br /> Durham, North Carolina</p> <table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="6" style="width:23%"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <div class="caption caption-center"> <div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 304px;"> <div class="caption-inner"><img alt="Linda Moore: daughter Jennifer also picked up the chalk" src="/issues/050602/images/teachersb.jpg" style="height:483px; width:304px" /> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Linda Moore: daughter Jennifer also picked up the chalk.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> </div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p>One of the main reasons I got into teaching is that I grew up as Linda Moore's daughter. I think my mother is the star of the show when it comes to the two of us. I have always admired her teaching style and her enthusiasm for teaching; I think the main reason she is such a good teacher is because she cares so much about her students. She goes out of her way to help them and let them know she wants them to succeed.</p> <p>One would hope that all teachers care about their students in this way, but sometimes it takes immense patience to consistently let that concern show through. I did see the bad side of it: the immense amount of time grading papers, the phone calls from parents who were worried about their child's performance, the stress level. But I also saw the good side of it: the way you are involved in such a wonderful community, the way you never end a day wondering if what you did was important, and the way you can really make a difference in students' lives.</p> <p>Teaching, for me, has been an incredible challenge--no day is boring, no year is the same, no class is the same. Sometimes--rarely--I will know that I have made a difference in someone's life. More often than not, however, it remains a mystery and a kind of hope or faith that what I am doing matters in some small way. When I started this career, I didn't understand that you had to have this sort of faith that what you were doing mattered in some way. Nor did I foresee that the one obvious effect would be the profound differences that the students made in my life.</p> <p>A good teacher, it seems, really just guides students to something they have within them already. Thus, for as much as I've tried to teach the bold ideas of Wordsworth or Keats ("Beauty is truth," I read, "Truth beauty; that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."), my students have been returning the favor by guiding me to some of my most powerful life lessons--those of inner courage, of patience, of persistence, of love.</p> <p>You cannot be in a classroom, fully alive, and not feel deeply.</p> <p>So, if you asked me what it is that keeps me in teaching, the answer would be those two things: the lessons I learn each day, each year, and the hope that the lessons I impart, the principles that I stand for, have a reach that goes past the time they walk out after the last bell rings.</p> <p>You can only grow and change in life if you stay malleable and open-minded--teaching keeps me that way. I am grateful to my students for the fact that they are living fully, and reacting fully, and following the paths they see before them rather than any that anyone else tries to dictate for them. The students pass through my life, listen to what I have to say, and all in their own way leave something--some word, some phrase, some attitude, some inspiration--that changes me for the better. That is what is beautiful to me about teaching and about life. No one is an island. Nothing removes you from the lessons you need to learn. That beauty is my truth, and I hold fast to it.</p> <p>Jennifer Moore '93, M.A.T. '95<br /> Albany, California</p> <p>I went into teaching because of the wonderful influences and experiences I've had during my education. In 1978, my third-grade teacher, Ms. Paris, had the greatest impact on initiating my love of learning new concepts. Her teaching style gave students the power to learn at their own rate in peer groups, and allowed students to lead the class in student-designed and directed experiments. Her methods were well ahead of her time, and inspired my love of science and physics. As a high-school teacher for eight years, I continue to aspire to become a motivational teacher like her.</p> <p>As a graduate student in Duke's physics department, I had the privilege of working as a teaching assistant for professors John Kolena and Moo Young Han. I had the opportunity to observe both of these master teachers and thoroughly enjoyed their exciting and entertaining lectures. From these outstanding professors, I learned that demonstrations and humor are crucial to arousing attention during lectures.</p> <p>As a student teacher in Duke's M.A.T. program, I learned the most important lessons from my amazing mentors: Ted Oakley, a physics teacher at Jordan High School, and Joan Harrison, a mathematics teacher at Northern High School. In my current classes, I use many of the ideas and approaches that Ted and Joan used in their classes to get their students to love physics and mathematics.</p> <p>Here at Highland Park High School in Chicago, where I teach today, I am surrounded by mentors in the science department who raise the bar of excellence every day. I love being at a high school where teachers have an intrinsic desire to learn and improve. My goal is to learn from teachers and students so that I will be someone who inspires others to become lifelong learners.</p> <p>Kunal Pujara A.M. '93, M.A.T. '94<br /> Evanston, Illinois</p> <p>I decided early that I wanted to be a teacher. My sister is two years younger than I, so I had the opportunity to pass on what I had learned in school when she hit the inevitable rough spots all students face. There is nothing quite so thrilling as the feeling you get when somebody learns something new as a result of your support. Teachers are familiar with these moments, but each time it is exciting as ever. When we experience these exhilarations, we are feeling success, but often success reaches beyond the easily recognizable.</p> <p>Our society today tells us that success is quantifiable. At the south-central Los Angeles high school where I teach, my students take SATs, ACTs, APs, the Golden State Exam, the High School Exit Exam, and the week-long Stanford-9 Test, to name a few. According to the latest in educational theory, if all teachers teach the same material, we can measure student success by how they score on standardized tests.</p> <p>With this approach, if a student fails to perform on the test, it tells us that there is something wrong with the student (he or she is lazy, stupid, etc.) and/or there is something wrong with the teacher (he or she is lazy, stupid, etc.). In fact, studies show that test scores, rather than necessarily showing us anything about student success, most closely correlate to students' social class. But if test scores do not always measure success, how else can teachers measure it?</p> <p>I have had this conversation many times with a close friend of mine and a superb teacher. As a first- and second-year teacher, I wondered many times if I was making a difference, if students were learning in my classroom. I was worried because they just didn't seem to be getting the material. My friend often reassured me by saying, "If you are creating an environment where these students feel safe and welcome and cared about, that can often mean more than whether they ever learn about the Articles of Confederation." Success is also measured by intangibles such as this. For adolescents, the world is often a chaotic and troubling place, even in the best of communities. Creating a place of safe harbor can be more important than we could ever imagine.</p> <p>Teaching is one of the most difficult jobs I can imagine because it involves so much more than teaching. Often, novice teachers struggle in all areas, but it is also important to realize that growing as a teacher never ends. This is the most important element of being a teacher that I learned in the Master of Arts in Teaching program at Duke. Ro Thorne, the director of the program, told me that when I received my diploma, I would be ready to learn to be a teacher. This is something else that I think public-policy officials don't understand. No matter how many classes we force teachers to take in pedagogy and in their disciplines, nothing teaches us how to teach like the experience of doing it. Teaching is such a complex job that it is impossible to learn as a student; it simply must be experienced firsthand.</p> <p>Another important mantra that I learned at Duke was to be "ALERT": A Liberally Educated Reflective Teacher. Experience is only helpful if you reflect on what worked and what didn't, on how students responded to what you thought was a wonderfully engaging lesson plan that somehow fell flat. Maybe it was the students, but most probably it was some minor piece that was missing or didn't come off right or needed to be left out. A reflective teacher must be honest and not afraid to admit when he or she is in error. If we deny our culpability we deny the possibility of ever doing it right.</p> <p>Success as a teacher is complicated. It does involve what students learn, but it has to do with so much more. While programs such as Duke's M.A.T. program can help show prospective teachers some avenues toward approaching teaching, the best way to learn how to be a better teacher is through experience and reflection.</p> <p>Daniel Ordorica M.A.T. '99<br /> Los Angeles, California.</p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2002-06-01T00:00:00-04:00">Saturday, June 1, 2002</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dm-main-images/teachersa.jpg" width="620" height="1161" alt="Hogewood: enlivening high-school history" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/writers/hunter-hogewood-90-mat-91" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Hunter Hogewood &#039;90, M.A.T. &#039;91</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/magazine/writers/linda-lunsford-moore-62-mat-63" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Linda Lunsford Moore &#039;62, M.A.T. &#039;63</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/writers/jennifer-moore-93-mat-95" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jennifer Moore &#039;93, M.A.T. &#039;95</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/magazine/writers/kunal-pujara-am-93-mat-94" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Kunal Pujara A.M. &#039;93, M.A.T. &#039;94</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/writers/daniel-ordorica-mat-99" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Daniel Ordorica M.A.T. &#039;99</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/may-jun-2002" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">May - Jun 2002</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-photo-credit field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Photo Credit:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/photographers/chris-hildreth" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Chris Hildreth</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">M.A.T. graduates share their thoughts on what they learned about teaching,and how they teach students to learn.</div></div></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Cover Story </h3> <h3 class="field-label"> Homepage </h3> Sat, 01 Jun 2002 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501867 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/teachers-teaching#comments Lessons From A Life Interrupted https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/lessons-life-interrupted <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>&nbsp;</p> <table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="width:100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td colspan="2"> <table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="width:100%"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="1" style="width:188px"> <tbody> <tr> <td><img alt="Gargoyle on campus" src="/issues/050602/images/depgar.jpg" style="float:left; height:112px; width:170px" /></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p>After creating a documentary with the Situ family about their experiences with Kevin’s illness, I have compiled a second project with them in an attempt to further explore such a complex issue.</p> <p>At the end of April, Kevin received a cord blood (stem cell) transplant that was intended to solve his immune deficiency. If all had gone well with the transplant, the Situ family would have been back home in Delaware by now. But in the aftermath of the procedure, Kevin’s immune system was far too weak to fight off a fungal infection that began to grow in his brain.</p> <p>Swelling from the infection caused a series of seizures. They admitted him, did CT scans, brain biopsies and a spinal tap, finding that he had a six spots of fungal infection—which are not easily treated. This came as a shock to the family since Kevin had appeared to be stable.</p> <p>Then the news came that Kevin had rejected his stem cell transplant. But before deciding what to do about his rejection, the fungal infection—a critically serious infection—needed to be solved. The transplant, infections, and medications, and isolation left Kevin tired, worn-out, and unwilling to play with me, so I spent most of my time getting to know his mother, Helen.</p> <p>The more time I spent with the Situs, the more I realized that Kevin’s illness and subsequent treatments were not only tiring, frustrating, emotionally draining, and unstable, but they also forced the Situs into a position where all they could do was wait. Unknowing of how long they would have to wait, or what they were waiting for, they have been waiting for months and years to cure Kevin of the mysterious disease that has brought them all to Duke. Results from one day could change drastically the next. Results that seemed positive one day turned negative the next when that day’s additional circumstances were factored in.</p> <p>It is this waiting game and its consequences, both uplifting and distressing, that I have sought to explore.</p> <p>13 December 2001</p> <p>* * * * *</p> <p>I step off the elevator on the fourth floor of the Duke Children’s Clinic. I wind slowly through the brightly colored hall, walls decorated with happy paintings of animals, cartoons, and children. It’s apparent that the two-year-old building was designed specifically to ease the fears of children, and to dispel the stereotypic feeling of “uncomfortableness” in a hospital clinic. When the color of the floor changes from white to purple, I veer left into a long, narrow room filled with chair upon chair set up in front of TVs and windows for children who come in to receive treatment, often having to sit for several hours while IVs trickle slowly, one droplet at a time into their central lines, which administer the medications directly into the blood stream. A nurse directs me to the room Kevin is using today—a single room that connects to this main room—and I see him sitting on the bed through the sliding glass doors. He gets a room to himself—isolation. He looks up from his art project and waves a tired wave. His mother rushes to the door to let me in. I haven’t seen Kevin or Helen in over four months since I left Durham for the summer.</p> <p>As to be expected, Kevin looks different after what he’s gone through in those long months. His face and tummy are swollen, though the swelling has apparently gone down from its peak when he was taken off heavy doses of steroids. He has dark circles under his eyes. His hair, which he had lost since our last visit, is starting to grow back in. But, in addition to the hair on his head, it’s grown all over his arms, and legs. I am surprised to see his face covered in fine, but thick black hair.</p> <p>While I am there, Kevin, in his florescent green polo shirt, works on an art project with stickers while an IV, containing white blood cells that had been harvested days earlier from his father, drips into his chest port from one side of the bed as another pouch, sitting on his bed-table, feeds another medication-filled tube under his shirt. As usual, he seems oblivious to his treatment as he plays with pokemon cards—a gift from the son of a lab technician—and demands that his mom bring in a computer for him to use. Helen brings him the small computer provided by the clinic and Kevin gets to work playing a trivia game, occasionally interjecting questions into the conversation: “What is a gopher?” and “What do call someone who studies plants?” I tell him the answers and he claps happily when the computer makes the “correct” sound.</p> <p>A nurse practitioner comes in to inform Helen of some new test results. I try to make conversation with Kevin as another nurse, wearing bright pink and multicolored scrubs, comes in to take his temperature and blood pressure. He doesn’t seem to mind in the least bit, and continues to extinguish any of my efforts to start a conversation. Helen says he is tired. He looks it. He should be tired. “We’ve been here so long,” Helen tell me. “We thought maybe we’d be going home soon, and then he got the infection. Uh..so long…”</p> <p>* * * * * *</p> <p>One afternoon, Helen invites me to see their new townhouse, a vast improvement over their last apartment: spacious and freshly painted with two bedrooms and newly rented furniture. Kevin is playing Wheel of Fortune on the computer and makes it quite clear that he does not want me to join him in the game, the beginning of an emerging pattern Helen and I sit down and begin to talk about Kevin’s medical history—a topic that I’ve never fully known.</p> <p>She begins by telling me the long and tangled story of how they learned that Kevin has an immune deficiency:</p> <p>“It’s different from other parents. They’re like, ‘Oh finally have a diagnosis.’ For us it’s kind of always something, and the diagnosis is not clear. So I say, ‘Oh I don’t know, maybe around when he was around four or five.’</p> <p>The first thing was when he was four months old. He’s he got an abscess on his head, and a low fever, so we go to hospital, and they keep him in the hospital. And then after a week he’s changed so dramatically that he couldn’t breathe so he went to the intensive care. And they tried to figure out what’s wrong with him because just suddenly he can’t—he doesn’t have enough oxygen and he depends on a machine to breathe for how many? I can’t remember and then come out of intensive care and then get a fever again and then back to the intensive care. Back and forth for so long. At that time, he was in the hospital for four, almost four months in the hospital. I remember we discharged on Thanksgiving .</p> <p>And at that time we just kept thinking, oh is he going to make it? And the doctor just kept saying he just has some kind of a, oh the name—I can always not remember it. But in the bone marrow they did a test and the bad cells eat the good cells. That’s the disease at that time that they say it is. They say in the whole world they only have twenty cases like this. So it’s a very rare disease at that time. But after four months we go home and we’re still scared and we keep visiting hospital, but eventually he getting better.</p> <p>And then when he was two we moved to the Chicago Children’s Hospital, you know the famous one, so we went there and they repeated the tests about the bone marrow diagnosis that they did before in New York and they couldn’t see the same things. So we thought, ‘Oh, that disease disappeared?’ So we just didn’t know. And then actually between that he got anemia, hemolytic anemia where the hemoglobin drops very low. So he got that and they diagnosed him with hemolytic anemia. So he had two diagnosis.</p> <p>In Chicago, they’re trying to find some—because he got a tumor—so they’re trying to find what’s the problem. So actually, everytime he had a different problem he got a different diagnosis. The first two diagnosis were in New York and then we moved to Chicago. So he got a tumor on the left chestal wall. And also they find that he always gets salmonella, which is a bacteria. Always. They gave very strong antibiotics. Normally two weeks for normal people it would be cleared up, but he would get it again back in his blood.</p> <p>The doctors said inside it is cancerous. But they said that it was kind of inside—isolated—so they could remove it and it was no problem. They just very strict and they say he needs a CT scan every three month at that point. So after that we move to Delaware.</p> <p>So there was no diagnosis.</p> <p>So we also see an immunologist.</p> <p>He’s maybe also famous in that field, so we saw him several times and he also did lots of testing. And we said, ‘What is the problem?’ And he said definitely some kind of immune system problem, but so far they couldn’t find what exactly the name is. They couldn’t find exactly what it was. He said if you really want a name, you can call it Situ disease, use his name. So from that point we just beginning to use immune deficiency.</p> <p>So it’s kind of like at every age he has something.</p> <p>Normally he has a most normal life, he goes to school, and I just always think maybe when he gets older his immune system will get better. But he always have salmonella in blood or lymph node—he always have a swollen lymph node, or maybe gum infection, it’s swollen and they find that also is salmonella. He got some bone pain [in leg] and some abscess [on head], they find that is also salmonella. Salmonella it seems they can never treat it. He’s on antibiotics, but he always has these things.</p> <p>All of this keeps happening like every month, or every three months, always a little this or a little that, he always having surgery, take that lymph node out, or ya know, just, and then doctor just told us he feel his immune system is getting worse each year he do tests and they are getting worse.”</p> <p>She explains the different doctors and treatment options that they had to chose from before settling on Duke’s Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg who would perform a cord blood transplant. She continues to talk about preparations for the transplant at Duke:“They only left 25% percent spleen, because they explain that will prevent rejection in engrafting. They do it to some patients, but they feel Kevin needed that. So actually, they think a lot for Kevin, but he results still reject.</p> <p>But we just don’t know, it’s so hard. They didn’t start growing. It’s very slow, and the doctors have different opinions and some of them say, oh 1%, there’s no hope for that. But Dr. Kurtzberg say, she see one patients after six months form 1% grow to 20% or something like that, so she’s trying hard to hold on to Kevin’s 1%, but actually 1% isn’t really 1%, just tiny little.</p> <p>So before he got the fungus infection, we just waited, waited. Everytime doctor Kurtzberg thought we just have to wait, maybe we can see it in the blood. So, she’s really hoping a lot, but different doctors have different feelings. She always say he have a chance, but I think it’s hard to hope that way. But she’s hoping, she put in high dose of Cyclospron to help the little donor cells grow more, but otherwise that one suppress his immune system, so it’s kind of hard to balance it.</p> <p>So when he got a fungus infection you can’t really tell if they suppressed it too hard, or if his underlying problem comes up, it’s really hard to tell. But this is his problem and it’s hard to balance. So at that point he’s really high dose of Cyclosporin. That medicine is really suppressing his immune system. So she kept him on a little bit, so she may have her own about Kevin.</p> <p>Actually, at the waiting time, I kind of worry, and are we going to go home soon? So we didn’t think about other things, you know, and feel a little bit relaxing. I go swimming everyday, and it’s just waiting and what can we do until he has these symptoms, seizures, and it’s like no…We still feel less hope before, because for a long time it was 1%. But when doctor said there’s still hope there, you just put that word in your mind, still hope there, and keep going, but actually, I feel, I don’t know. My husband just always follow Dr. Kurtzberg’s feelings, well, there’s still hope then we should…after fungal infection they did another 100 days testing and the doctor came to us and say, no more donor cells, no more. My husband just kind of, ohhh, so sad. And I think, why you feel so sad, I always feel like it just nothing! He just really stick on Dr. Kurtzberg, hope, hope, hope. But finally when the doctors see nothing, he just kind of…dropped his heart, was sad. That’s kind of before fungus his donor cells come.</p> <p>And actually waiting after the fungus, we really got tired. Last time it was different. Last time you’re kind of preparing. You’re preparing for worse, you’re kind of, bahhh, and then so scared, so emotional, and so tired.”</p> <p>* * * * *</p> <p>The next time that I call Helen, she invites me to lunch at a Chinese restaurant that she wants to try out. She insists on picking me up on campus, but when she comes she is alone; Kevin is not in the car. “He wasn’t ready when I have to leave, so he stayed home,” she tells me. “He wanted to make sure that you were coming back home with me, though. I told him I thought you would. I don’t know if he should go to a buffet restaurant anyway because of the germs.”</p> <p>Over lunch, we talk about Chinese food, and which dishes I like and dislike. Helen grows excited as she realizes that I really am enjoying the food and not just telling her so to make her happy. We talk a lot about religion, and her experiences in China under a communist regime, “You were not allowed to believe in God there,” she says. “When we moved to the United States we became Christian and it feels so good to have faith in God.” They met many of their close friends in Delaware through their church. They don’t go to church very often in Durham because they don’t feel like they are part of the community. They miss their own congregation. “We have such good friends at home. We are so lucky.”</p> <p>Helen tells me about when she was a journalist for an economic magazine back in China. “It’s not like here. You can’t write anything you want. You have to be careful,” she says. I talk about the projects I am working on as an intern at Duke Magazine. As I read Kevin’s website later, I find that Helen has written about me that day, “We can have more time being together now and we both seems have a lot in common since I was a journalist of a magazine in China 15 years ago. I enjoy feeling young again.”</p> <p>I offer to pay for the meal, but Helen insists happily: “Oh no! It’s fun for me because I don’t have anyone to hang around with down here.”</p> <p>We drive back to their townhouse to find Kevin playing a video game and David working in the back bedroom. Kevin smiles and says hello, but as usual is too enthralled in his game to talk with me.</p> <p>“I have something to show you,” Helen says as she rummages through a pile of papers on the dining room table. She pulls out a Chinese Christian Gospel magazine and sits down on the couch, motioning for me to join her. “I wrote an article in here,” she explains, and begins to translate it for me, “Random Thoughts on Thanksgiving.” It is about how thankful she is for Kevin, for God, and for all of the people who support them in these tough times. She explains a little about Kevin’s illness, and how they’ve been coping with it. Thanking God for the gift of Kevin, she writes that such a small life can bring so much joy.</p> <p>As she is reading to me, Kevin sets up a footstool at the coffee table in front of us and sits down to draw a picture. When Helen finishes the article, she looks up at Kevin, who has been stable for some time now, and sighs, “Oh, sometimes I just feel, life is so wonderful.”</p> <p>* * * * *</p> <p>I get a call from Helen a few days later, “Dr. Kurtzberg is letting us go home for 10 days!” She is over-joyed. “I’ll call you when we get back,” she says.</p> <p>* * * * *</p> <p>The day after they are scheduled to return I call their townhouse in Durham to hear about the trip home. “Ummm…it was great until the end, then very scary.” Helen is tired and tells me to check their website journal:</p> <p>“We're back from our 10 day home visit, it's an exciting and happy experience for Kevin and us, but ended with a scary incidence.</p> <p>Things started great, as you can image. Kevin was so thrilled to go back and to play with his best friends, everyone was having such a great time! Kevin was also able to catch the birthday party of one of his best friends Owen (they did move it one week early), he also went to his school to meet his second-grade teacher Mrs. Keech and old classmates. We of course also got visits from many of our friends and etc, things couldn't be better! We're so fortunate to have so many considerate friends!</p> <p>Then Kevin started to have headache Wednesday, we were certainly a little concerned, considering his fungal infection in his brain. So we paged Dr K, she said we could either go back or just give him Tylenol and keep an eye on him. Since he looked ok besides this, we decided to stay. The pain seemed to be controlled by Tylenol and he was able to do normal things, we did cut down his activities as he seemed a little easier to get tired, and also vomited occasionally. Then Saturday night the scary part happened. After he already went to bed at around 9pm, Helen noticed that he waked up and just looked around, she called him but he was not responding, Helen got very scared and called David upstairs. We all held him and called him, but he was just not responding, and just kept looking around, kind of like a retarded person (sorry for not finding a better way to describe), we thought his brain might be all messed up or something and got all panic, it was such a scary moment! We did then managed to call 911 and paged Dr K. After about 10 minutes, Kevin suddenly vomited uncontrollably and then his mind came back to him and he could response to us when we kept asking him whether he know this is mom and dad. Only by then we took a deep breath and realized that he might just had a seizure.</p> <p>Then ambulance came, we went to Emergency Room at DuPont Children's hospital, Dr K talked with them on the phone already and requested a blood test and a CT Scan. The CT Scan did show he was having more inflammation in his brain so they increased one medicine to control that. They felt he would be ok for our 6,7 hour drive back to Duke Sunday and we were able to leave ER at around 2am. We felt so lucky that things were not nearly as bad as it looked in the beginning. We especially felt fortunate to have a good doctor like Dr K who can be paged any time and worked very late to get the problem under control, even from so far away.</p> <p>We're also very thankful to our friends and also a little guilty. Just when we were in panic mode and trying to reach 911 and Dr K, our friend Shen Jian called us and also got the impression that things were very bad, she then called many others to ask for their prayers and whom in turn called many others. Shi Xian &amp; Wan Fang even came to the emergency room to bring us some food and comfort us until late night. Sorry for the disturbance we caused and thank you so much for everyone's prayer and emotional support, we're very grateful.</p> <p>Now we're back to Duke, Kevin got another CT Scan today and will see Dr K tomorrow. The fact that the infection is getting worse is certainly not good news, but we feel ease with the good doctor and the best care we are getting. It is probably going to be another round of long fight but we will be ok.</p> <p>Thank you everyone! We can't go so far without everyone's support!”</p> <p>* * * * *</p> <p>During my last visit to the Situ’s townhouse, Kevin, and Helen, and I play a board game together. I’m surprised that Kevin lets me play, since he normally likes to play alone—he’s used to being isolated. Today, his face seems a little less swollen and his energy level is high. He instructs me how to play, giggles, and tries to beat us. Helen ends up winning, but he doesn’t seem to mind.</p> <p>* * * * *</p> <p>As I am finishing this project, I am called home for the funeral of a five-year-old girl that died after battling a brain tumor for 4 _ years. Thinking back to the many days and weeks that I spent with her during her fight to survive, I am reminded of the incredible strength and love that is required of a family to support and care for an ill child.</p> <p>Having been away from the Situ family for a few weeks now, I check their website for an update to find a book that Kevin has written and illustrated about the love of his family during these years that have been so filled with illness, waiting, hope, and love:</p> <p>My Dad’s White cell</p> <p>By Kevin Situ</p> <p>To my Mom and Dad (with red heart)</p> <p>(Page 1)</p> <p>Hi! My name is Kevin. I’m going to tell you how I got white cells from my Dad. Well, first my Dad needs to get two lines. The surgeon will put the line in my Dad.</p> <p>(Page 2)</p> <p>After he got his lines, he was very tired. I bet it was the sleepy medicine. He got the two lines two times! One was when I doing my transplant and another one was when I got fungus. The first time my Dad got his lines, the lines didn’t look good. But the second time was a little better.</p> <p>(Page 3)</p> <p>To get my Dad’s white cell, it is hard work because he will need to be pheresed and my Dad always gets tired after that. My Mom worries about my Dad getting tired and weak, but I feel thankful because the white cells make me more active.</p> <p>(Page 4)</p> <p>When he is doing the pherese, the machine is so cool. It looks like a washing machine. I saw it once. The machine takes blood through Dad’s line and the blood spins inside the machine. The blood will separate to red cells and white cells in the machine. Then the nurses will keep the white cell and give the red cells back to my Dad.</p> <p>(Page 5)</p> <p>My Dad pherese twice a week and I get white cells six days a week except for Sunday.</p> <p>When I get white cell I get tired too because my nurse gives me Benadryl.</p> <p>(Page 6)</p> <p>I’m very thankful for what Dad and Mom did for me. They love me so much and making me happy and helping me get well.</p> <p>(Page 7) The End</p> <p>(Page 8) Kevin Situ, 8 years old, Gets white cell</p> <p>(Page 9) Dad, 37 years, work on his computer for MBNA</p> <p>(Page 10) Mom, 38 years, cooks yummy food</p> <p>(Page 11) Kevin Situ sleeping getting white cell</p> <p>(Back cover)</p> <p>Kevin likes to draw and play. He is kind of sick. He is in North Carolina to do his transplant.</p> <p>So many little things around here remind me of him. Each time I pass by Duke Children's Hospital, my mind flies to the hours spent with Kevin and his mother. At the clinic while they awaited a medication. Or at 5200, the Pediatric Bone Marrow/Stem Cell Transplant Unit, while they awaited his recovery from the transplant. Or at 5300, where he was re-admitted just weeks before his death. What I saw and felt over the last year's journey with the Situ family has changed me in a way that I never thought could result from an academic pursuit.</p> <p>Last spring I enrolled in the course "Children and the Experience of Illness," taught by Duke pediatrician and photographer John Moses '78. The course objective was to allow students a gateway into the experiences of terminally ill children while simultaneously honing their skills of documentary photography and writing. Each student was assigned a child to work with in creating a documentary about the child's life. A friend had recommended it to me when she learned that I was interested in both photography and pediatrics; it seemed a perfect fit.</p> <p>I was assigned to work with Kevin Situ, an eight-year-old Chinese-American boy who was at Duke to receive a cord-blood (stem-cell) transplant in hopes of curing his rare immune deficiency. Little did I know when I met Kevin that I would be sitting here writing a story about this experience almost exactly a year later. As I write, I'm surrounded by journal entries and papers that I wrote along the way, e-mail messages that his mother, Helen, and I exchanged, tons of photographs, and the letter to Kevin that his parents wrote for me to read at his funeral this Spring. It's been a long year.</p> <p>The introduction of the paper I wrote at the end of that first semester with Kevin sketches the beginning of his treatment and of my relationship with him and his parents. Our first meeting took place at the Ronald McDonald House just off campus:</p> <p>He looks up at me and flashes a fantastic smile. We sit down at the dining room table and I get out my camera. His mother beams and pulls out a smaller camera, still in the package. I tell her he can use whichever is the easiest for him. She prompts him to tell me his name, and he shakes his head shyly, eventually replying in a tiny but energetic voice, "Kevin!" She prompts him again and this time he tells me that he's eight and his birthday was "March 18!" He is small for his age. He doesn't seem too excited that I'm here, but he is thrilled about the cameras. Opening the package of the small point-and-shoot, he surprises me by grabbing the battery and the film and loading them quickly and efficiently--much more quickly than I could have done. He takes his first picture of me and giggles when he is finished.</p> <p>Kevin and I go outside for a few minutes and he takes several pictures of cars around the house. His parents let me take him out alone, but his dad tells me not to let him play in any leaves because they might have fungus growing on them, which wouldn't be good for him. They debate whether he should wear a mask outside and decide that he's fine without one for now. I take pictures of him. He runs around happily, hardly speaking to me except for short responses to my questions. You'd never know he was sick just by looking at him.</p> <p>Over the course of that semester, Kevin's doctors prepared him for his upcoming cord-blood transplant--the final hope for curing him of the disease that had plagued him since birth. I spent an afternoon or two each week observing, taking photos, playing, and talking to Helen about her concerns for Kevin, and about her life as a Chinese immigrant. She and Kevin even tried to teach me how to write some Chinese characters, which Kevin could do astoundingly well.</p> <p>It's almost ironic to look back at the paper that I completed after that semester because so much has changed since then, and fears that were once just anxiety have come to pass:</p> <p>As I sit writing this last page, Kevin is undergoing his cord-blood transplant. The procedure is simple; the blood is attached to one of the lines into his chest port. I imagine that he is sitting in his bed playing with some Beanie Babies, or better yet, writing the chapter "Stephen Takes a Nap" in his book. He's probably giggling, too. But I haven't seen him in four days. At this point, the chemo has completely wiped out his immune system, so I have no idea what his current condition is. Life in the Pediatric Bone Marrow Transplant Unit is far from predictable. Unable to concentrate, I pick up the phone and dial Kevin's room. No answer. I don't know what that means.</p> <p>I went home that summer, and by the time I got back to Duke, Kevin had developed a serious fungal infection in his brain--an infection that likely was incurable. After the experience I had had with the Situs the previous semester, I couldn't give up another opportunity to follow them, to learn as much as possible about what they were going through, and to document the experience. I signed up for an independent study with John Moses and set to work. This time, I met with Kevin's doctor and she gave me pamphlets and books about the program and treating ill children. I read up on the transplant procedure and the psychological effects of such treatments and diseases on children and their parents.</p> <p>Again I spent an afternoon or two each week with the Situs, though sometimes it was just with Helen, who needed someone with whom to talk through everything. Those months are a blur of infections, emergency-room visits, good CT scans along with hopeless ones, and a lot of waiting:</p> <p>The more time I spent with the Situs, the more I realized that Kevin's illness and subsequent treatments were not only tiring, frustrating, emotionally draining, and unstable, but they also forced the Situs into a position where all they could do was wait. Not knowing how long they would have to wait, or what they were waiting for, they have been waiting for months and years to cure Kevin of the mysterious disease that has brought them all to Duke. Results from one day could change drastically the next. Results that seemed positive one day turned negative the next when that day's additional circumstances were factored in.</p> <p>I completed my second documentary project with Kevin in December, just before he was readmitted into the hospital for the final weeks of his life. I returned to Duke in January to find that the fungal infection that had been growing in his brain was rejecting treatment and spreading rapidly. His condition declined each week that I visited until the last time, when he slipped into a coma and lay peacefully on his bed while his mother and I sat down to plan his funeral. I'd never planned someone's funeral before, let alone that of a child--a child who was still breathing deeply on the other side of the room.</p> <p>It was not until after Kevin died, or until after the stress of the funeral ebbed, or until after Helen and David headed back home to Delaware, that I understood just how much this little boy and his family had changed my perspective and inspired me, and just how much I miss their weekly company. From his incredibly detailed crayon drawings, to his creatively written stories, to his passion for learning Chinese and his love for playing computer games, even when weak and nauseated from treatment, Kevin taught me about living a full, fun, and stimulating life--no matter what circumstances come about.</p> <p>In all of the time that I spent with Kevin over the last year, I never once heard him complain--something that was surely his right after all that he had been through. When I enrolled in "Children and the Experience of Illness," I had no idea that he, along with his mother, who moved to Durham to find him treatment and who sat the long hours in the clinic and worried herself to sleep each night, would turn out to be two of my life's greatest teachers.</p> <p><em>-Connors '04 is an intern for the magazine.</em></p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <!-- #EndEditable --></div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2002-06-01T00:00:00-04:00">Saturday, June 1, 2002</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/julia-connors-04" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Julia Connors &#039;04</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/may-jun-2002" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">May - Jun 2002</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue <h3 class="field-label"> Cover Story </h3> <h3 class="field-label"> Homepage </h3> Sat, 01 Jun 2002 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501857 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/lessons-life-interrupted#comments Middle East Balancing Act https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/middle-east-balancing-act <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>&nbsp;</p> <table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="width:98%"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <table align="right" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="4" style="width:206px"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <div class="caption caption-center"> <div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 198px;"> <div class="caption-inner"><img alt="Ambassador Jordan: sensitive to Saudis" src="/issues/050602/images/depqa.jpg" style="height:307px; width:198px" /> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Ambassador Jordan: sensitive to Saudis.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> </div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p><strong>Fifteen Saudis took part in the attacks on September 11, private Saudi charities reportedly contributed to financing Osama bin Laden, and hundreds of Saudis fought with al-Qaeda against Americans in Afghanistan. Given that range of involvement, is it hard to see an alliance of interests between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia?</strong></p> <p>Oil is what we think of the most, but Saudi Arabia is strategically located in a part of the world that is pivotal to our national interests. We would need to be able, for example, to fly over Saudi airspace to reach any other part of the Middle East to project military force. The Saudis are a major voice in the moderate Arab world. They're also our largest trading partner in the Arab world.</p> <p>In trying to balance conflicting interests or trying to manage different constituencies, the Saudis are like many other governments. One thing that is quite interesting is that the Crown Prince has called in business leaders, academics, clerics, and tribal leaders, and he has said to each of them, be careful what you say--particularly to the clerics. He has said that there is no place for political discussion in the mosque, that they should weigh their words carefully because those words have a profound influence on the population.</p> <p><strong>There is widespread belief that Iraq is the real target of the president's message about the "axis of evil." How does that possibility play in Saudi Arabia?</strong></p> <p>It's a very complex equation. The Saudis were targets in Saddam Hussein's incursion into Kuwait; they are no friends of Hussein. But they certainly do not want to see a lengthy, inconclusive ground war in Iraq waged by Americans. From that standpoint, they are very, very concerned about our intentions. It is entirely possible that if we're able to demonstrate to the Saudis a plan that could be successful--a plan that showed resolve and that showed an end game--then the Saudis would be more inclined to be supportive, or at least to not interfere with that objective. They will be concerned about any military operation that will cost Muslim lives. But in Afghanistan, once we explained what we were doing, once they saw the resolve with which we were approaching it, and once they saw the successes we were having, the Saudis' concern abated substantially.</p> <p><strong>Seymour Hirsch writing in The New Yorker perceived a growing instability in the Saudi regime. How well-founded is that fear?</strong></p> <p>I would say that over the next five-plus years, the regime will remain strong. The Saudi people are not a revolutionary kind of people; over their history, they have preferred only gradual change. But the education system does not appear, at least at present, to be teaching job skills sufficient to allow young Saudis to compete for jobs. The religious overlay in the schools has come to some degree at the expense of academic courses, and there is a degree of religious intolerance that over the long term could lead to an insular, inward-looking approach to the world--one that would not allow the Saudi population to compete economically or to develop the political structures that could respond to these growing demands of their population. I should add that Saudi Arabia has one of the highest rates of population growth in the world; something like 60 percent of their population is under age eighteen.</p> <p>The Saudis historically have been a tribal and nomadic society. They represent a conservative strain of Islam and they're the protectors of Islamic holy sites. So they have both a cultural and religious uniqueness. It's important for us to realize that they've really only been in existence as a nation for about seventy years.</p> <p><strong>Scholars like Bernard Lewis point out that, from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire onward, Islam has been on the losing side of history and has often taken solace in conspiracy theories and blaming outside forces. Do you see any active process of self-reflection among the region's scholars and leaders?</strong></p> <p>There is a certain degree of churning right now in Saudi society that hopefully is going to accelerate. They haven't simply pulled up what some newspaper columnists have called another iron curtain; they haven't simply stuck their heads in the sand. The foreign minister, for example, has said that they have looked through their textbooks to see what needed to be addressed. We also see, particularly in the private sector, a tremendous effort in women's rights. There is a new university being developed that will for the first time have coeducation in the classroom. Now, this is going to be through the device of a balcony in which the women will sit so they won't be visible to the men. But given the almost glacial pace of change in the Middle East, this is revolutionary.</p> <p><strong>Human Rights Watch and other groups have accused the Saudi government of suppressing civil liberties and have noted the absence of elected legislatures or other institutions that might counter-balance central authority. What is the U.S. doing to promote democratic processes?</strong></p> <p>It's a part of my charge to express to the Saudis our concerns about civil rights and individual liberties. It isn't necessarily my charge to impose a democratic regime on Saudi Arabia, but we do address these issues. I was encouraged to hear, for example, that the Saudis have been willing to have some of these international human-rights organizations come to the kingdom and take a look at how they're treating prisoners. I'm personally concerned about the situation with regard to women's rights and religious liberty. There's a tribal culture in the kingdom that has been resistant to any kind of change at all. So you have these competing forces, and there's going to be some arm-wrestling on these issues.</p> <p><strong>Does the Saudi peace proposal point to a meaningful shift in that government's role in the Middle East, or is the proposal just reiterating a familiar formula?</strong></p> <p>The vision of peace expressed by Crown Prince Abdullah is significant in many respects. Although we have heard "land for peace" suggestions before, the fact that someone with the stature and influence of the Crown Prince has made this proposal is important. He has invested much of his prestige in gaining acceptance of the proposal by the rest of the Arab world, both in the Arab Summit in Beirut and in his diplomacy following the meeting with President Bush in Crawford [Texas]. This broad consensus among Arab states will be valuable in developing the details of the plan and in persuading the Palestinians that their interests are served by reducing violence in the region.</p> <p><strong>How has the role of ambassador changed in a complex international environment and with the technology of instant communication?</strong></p> <p>I had an interesting conversation with [former Secretary of State] Jim Baker about that. I was seeking his advice on whether I should take this job. And he said, in a way it has changed. In the old days, the ambassador was really the pivotal means of communicating with the host country. Now it's so easy for Colin Powell to pick up the phone or for the president to pick up the phone and talk to the head of state.</p> <p>But Baker also said that personal relationships, particularly with people like the Saudis, are so critically important. The president and others simply don't have the time to develop a personal bond with every head of state around the world. So they rely on ambassadors to develop those personal relationships. And particularly as the American ambassador in Saudi Arabia, I have instant access. Anytime I need to see the Crown Prince I can see him; I've woken up the foreign minister to talk to him.</p> <hr /> <p><em>Jordan was nominated as ambassador by President George W. Bush on September 12 and approved by the Senate shortly thereafter. A senior partner and one of the founder partners of the Dallas office of Baker Botts LLP, he was personal attorney to Bush. He was president of the Dallas Bar Association and a member of the board of directors of the State Bar of Texas, and he has served on the boards of numerous charitable and civic organizations.</em></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <!-- #EndEditable --></div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2002-06-01T00:00:00-04:00">Saturday, June 1, 2002</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/robert-j-bliwise" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Robert J. Bliwise</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/magazine/writers/richard-stubbing" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Richard Stubbing</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/may-jun-2002" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">May - Jun 2002</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-photo-credit field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Photo Credit:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/photographers/les-todd" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Les Todd</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">In a conversation just before the flare-up of violence between the Israelis and the Palestinians, Robert Jordan &#039;67, U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, discusses the complex relationship between the two nations.</div></div></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Cover Story </h3> <h3 class="field-label"> Homepage </h3> Sat, 01 Jun 2002 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501835 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/middle-east-balancing-act#comments Between the Lines: May-June 2002 https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/between-lines-may-june-2002 <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>&nbsp;</p> <!-- #BeginEditable "body" --> <p>&nbsp;</p> <table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="width:98%"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <p>At May's commencement ceremony, President Keohane always cites the graduates earning teacher certification. The lives of everyone, she observes, have been touched by teachers in elementary and secondary schools. It's a theme that defines a new book titled, a bit preciously, I Remember My Teacher. Teachers make a difference--usually not in knowable or predictable ways, but certainly in important ways.</p> <p>With that message in mind, this issue of the magazine explores the theme of teaching and teachers. The theme grows from a year-long celebration of 150 years of preparing teachers at Duke and its predecessor institutions. In these pages, you'll find a mix of personal and institutional stories: impressions from teachers across the country and from a novice teacher in Japan, the entrepreneur behind a charter school, a summit meeting of education secretaries, a conversation about teacher preparation, and the technologically "smart" classroom.</p> <p>The essays in I Remember My Teacher illustrate not so much the exotic or the state-of-the-art in teaching but, rather, familiar teacher types. There's the teacher who encourages exuberant experimentation. As one contributor says about his physics teacher in high school, "He let us blow stuff up." There's the habit-former, like the teacher who, finding her student "a little bored in class," told her "whenever I wanted to go to the library I could go." And, of course, there's the teacher who pushes the student to achieve his or her best. A student handed in a paper that wasn't very good; her English teacher looked directly at her and said, "Miss Walsh, this is a mediocre paper and you are not a mediocre person." A harsh public reprimand, but also an affirmation with an impact that endures.</p> <p>Prepare to be taught some lessons about teaching. And, by the way, thanks to twelfth-grade English teacher Ruth Legow, who led me to find joy in reading writers and in being a writer, and who gave me my first editorship.</p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <!-- #EndEditable --></div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2002-06-01T00:00:00-04:00">Saturday, June 1, 2002</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/robert-j-bliwise" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Robert J. Bliwise</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/may-jun-2002" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">May - Jun 2002</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue <h3 class="field-label"> Cover Story </h3> <h3 class="field-label"> Homepage </h3> Sat, 01 Jun 2002 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501848 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/between-lines-may-june-2002#comments The State of Public Education https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/state-public-education <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="width:98%"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <p>Part of a yearlong celebration of 150 years of teacher preparation at Duke, the summit brought current Secretary of Education Roderick Paige together with former secretaries Lamar Alexander, William Bennett, Lauro Cavazos, and Richard Riley. While the secretaries brought various experiences and ideologies to the table, the meeting was notable as much for its point of agreement--public education needs fixing--as for the civil disagreements about accountability and testing.</p> <p>As the sitting secretary, Paige spoke extensively about the Bush administration's education agenda, which had been largely codified by the January signing of the No Child Left Behind Act, a $26-billion federal education bill that included mandates for broader educational testing, increased local control, character education, greater tutoring for children in failing schools, and stricter accountability.</p> <p>" 'No Child Left Behind' helps us look at schools, governance, and the federal role in education the right way," Paige said. "It reminds us that the goal of schools is not diplomas, but educated citizens, and it assures us that the responsibility for student performance lies not just with educators, but also with communities.</p> <p>"In order to eliminate the achievement gap and improve student performance across the board, we must hold educators accountable to the bold proposition that every child can learn. There is no middle ground for excuses. Either educators believe that every child can learn, or they do not. When they begin to make excuses for our children based on race or socioeconomics, those who make excuses--and our children--fall prey to what [President Bush] calls 'the soft bigotry of low expectations.' "</p> <p>Paige said the new law mandates more educational testing, and defended that position. "The 'No Child Left Behind' law is all about discovering and disseminating the information about student performance that assessments will provide. Test scores will be disaggregated by poverty, race, ethnicity, disability, and limited English proficiency so that we can see where the achievement gap exists and attack it so that no group is neglected. School districts and schools that fail to make adequate progress toward statewide goals will, over time, be subject to improvement, corrective action, and restructuring measures aimed at getting them back on course to meet state standards."</p> <p>The theme of character education was reinforced by Bennett, who has spent the years since his Reagan-era service as a public moralist and think-tank director. Despite opposition to morality-based teaching, he said, children must be educated in values--values that should be inculcated by their teachers. "If you want people to learn about morality, then you put them in the presence of people who embody morality."</p> <p>Riley, secretary of education during all eight years of the Clinton administration, became the lone Democrat at the summit when Shirley Hufstedler, President Carter's appointee, was forced to cancel her appearance at the last minute. Responding to the Bush agenda, Riley called for caution and the establishment of clear, across-the-board standards by which to judge accountability. "I believe in standards," he said, "but not standardization."</p> <p>Alexander, a former Tennessee governor whose tenure as education secretary was followed by two runs for the White House, departed from the more traditional Republican local-control stance by repeating his longstanding call for broad, federal, G.I.-Bill-like legislation that would improve the quality and accessibility of primary and secondary education on a nationwide level.</p> <p>His concerns were echoed to a large degree by Cavazos, who became the first Hispanic cabinet secretary when he was tapped by Ronald Reagan in 1988. Like Alexander, Cavazos spoke with passion about the need to revitalize public education and about his perception of lack of progress in doing so. "When appointed, I believed that the future depended on what happened in the schoolhouse, and that there was no more important job than the education of our children. I still hold that belief today.</p> <p>"Perhaps my major achievement as secretary, and the principal issue that confronted me during my tenure, was my involvement, with others, in the establishment of the national education performance goals."</p> <p>Those goals were:</p> <ul> <li>That every child start school ready to learn;</li> <li>To increase the high-school graduation rate to at least 90 percent;</li> <li>To teach students to competency over challenging subject matter, including active thinking and problem-solving skills;</li> <li>To take students beyond competency to supremacy in mathematics and science;</li> <li>To ensure that every adult American be literate and prepared for lifelong learning;</li> <li>To create an environment conducive to learning by making schools free of drugs and violence and instilling discipline in the classroom.</li> </ul> <p>"Informally," Cavazos said after discussing these goals, "I added a seventh goal--that by the year 2000, every child be educated to his or her fullest potential.... My greatest disappointment has been that in spite of the work of many, we did not reach our six education goals by the year 2000. I am hopeful, however, that they may be attained in the near future."</p> <p>Cavazos drew applause from many in the audience of educators and students when he addressed the subject of testing. "The use of high-stakes testing has become fashionable in our states today," he said. "Many schools already emphasize test-taking, and some 'teach to the test.' With the federal government stepping into the testing business, there may be more schools focusing on how to take tests than what every student should learn.</p> <p>"Other factors to measure student achievement can be used. We need to examine critically whatever assessment tools we use, and work to identify measures that are reliable and recognize and reward excellence."</p> <p>Finally, Cavazos spoke of the future of education. "I sense a remarkable consensus on the kinds of changes needed to improve our schools," he said. "Schools of the future will involve parents, will enhance the empowerment of principals and teachers, will have an emphasis on early childhood education, and will strengthen curricula in mathematics, science, English, foreign language, and the social sciences.</p> <p>"Most of all, the schools of the future will have more sensitivity to the differing needs of an increasingly diverse population. I do believe that as a nation concerned with the education of our children, we have the courage and imagination to risk doing something new in education, to move beyond 'more of the same,' and to educate our children in a different and productive fashion."</p> <p>Cavazos listed several recent proposals for education reform, including academic choice in the public schools, charter schools, voucher proposals, and home schooling. "It is possible that all of these strategies are viable and can enhance the education of our children," he said. "I urge, however, that we continue to focus on improving our public elementary and secondary schools.</p> <p>"Voucher programs, charter schools, and home schooling tend to take attention, funds, and students away from the public school system. My hope for the future is that we especially focus on ways to improve our urban public schools. We must not abandon them, but continue to restructure them and grow them to academic excellence."</p> <p>"There is no need to create a new system of schools," he concluded. "We once had the finest public elementary and secondary schools in the world. We can again."</p> <p>A different decision was reached a couple of years ago by John Aldrich, a Duke political science professor. Aldrich came to Duke in 1987 from a University of Minnesota political science department that, in his view, appeared to be stagnating. Duke's department "was trying to build a national reputation, which, according to professional rankings, we now have." Since then, Aldrich has published prolifically, won various awards, held leadership roles in professional associations, and trained numerous graduate students.</p> <p>In 1996-97, he had just finished a stint as chair of political science at Duke. While spending a sabbatical leave researching and teaching in Harvard's government department, he learned that Harvard was considering him for a permanent position--right around the same time that he was awarded an endowed chair at Duke, the Pfizer-Pratt Professorship. ("To be recognized by my peers in this way was and is very important to me," he says.) The next academic year, Harvard extended an offer. Meanwhile, Aldrich's book Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America had been named "best book in U.S. national policy" by the American Political Science Association.</p> <p>It took almost a year for Aldrich to think through the offer; he ended up turning it down. During that period, one of his friends left Harvard's government department for Stanford. Another outside scholar targeted by Harvard, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, also decided to stay put. Part of what was playing out at Harvard, Aldrich says, was a tension between traditional and quantitatively oriented political scientists. The Harvard Crimson, making public the unsuccessful effort to lure Aldrich, lamented that "faculty members find it easier and easier to leave the university for other schools, or simply to turn down the offer to come to Cambridge in the first place."</p> <p>During the negotiations, Aldrich pressed Duke less for personal advantages than for program enhancements, he says. One outcome was the creation of the American Political Research Group. A joint effort between Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill, the group supports collaborative teaching, organizes seminars with outside speakers, and helps graduate students by, among other things, posting academic job listings.</p> <p>Given the cost-of-living reality in Cambridge, salary lures didn't weigh heavily in his thinking, says Aldrich. He had a different reaction to Harvard's departmental dynamics than Keyssar. "One of the things that I disliked about Harvard was that the sense of intellectual community was limited. There were groups that should have been collaborating and that just didn't talk with each other. Interdisciplinary collaborative work is more difficult there than a lot of places. It's much easier here than a lot of places: Duke seems to have an open intellectual community, and it's easy to put things together across fields within political science, across the social sciences, across the colleges."</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Putting things together across a single department has been the key concern for Maureen Quilligan. She arrived at Duke two years ago as the Florence Professor and chair of the English department. She had been the Bryson Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, and earlier had taught at Yale. A scholar of the Renaissance, with a particular interest in women and literature, Quilligan is the author of three books and has edited two volumes of essays.</p> <p>Asked why she made the choice to join Duke, Quilligan laughs--it's a conventional question to which she knows she'll give an unconventional response--and says, "I felt it was an act of professional duty. I could be of more use at Duke than I could be at the University of Pennsylvania." Quilligan talks about wanting to help in healing a "community in pain."</p> <p>Duke's English department had received unflattering attention from a variety of directions. The New York Times had published a front-page article focusing on the fracturing of a once-heralded program; an external review committee reportedly characterized the department's condition as "seriously weakened" and suggesting a "personnel emergency." The department had been plagued by intense intellectual disagreements, signaled by the moves to other places of many of the high-profile hires made under a former chair, Stanley Fish. "It was absolutely a duty to a profession that had supported me," Quilligan says of her Duke decision. (As an undergraduate student at Berkeley, she had been taught by Fish.) "This was an important English department to save. If I was the one who looked like I was in the best position to help it save itself--and I think that's exactly what it's done--then I couldn't say no. It was a very moral and political and possibly even spiritual demand."</p> <p>Quilligan sees the department as an intellectual community that collectively is figuring out its direction, even as each new hire potentially changes that direction. As she puts it, "We're going to recruit a group of people who can work together. And then we'll figure out what we are, through a shared conversation that has people speaking beyond their specific idiosyncratic specialties."</p> <p>English is searching for scholars to fill slots in medieval, nineteenth-century, and early American literary studies. After listening to the candidates in invited presentations and getting to know them in informal circumstances, the department as a whole will make those choices collectively, she says. The idea isn't so much to find a fit for a neat definition of teaching and scholarly background. Quilligan says, "We're not looking to satisfy certain preconceived notions of what an English department ought to look like." Rather, department members are aiming to select "those people who it feels will have the greatest contribution to make to the group and who will profit the most from the group." The department is "constantly being raided," but so far it has withstood the "immense number of outside offers," Quilligan says. "I think people who have stuck around are sticking around for the conversation, just as the people who are coming here are coming here for the conversation."</p> <p>In a single year, two relatively new faculty members in English, now associate professors, won book prizes from the Modern Language Association: Ian Baucom and Srinivas Aravamudan. To Quilligan, that distinction points to the intellectual energy fostered by recent recruits. Musing about her hoped-for legacy as department chair, she says her main indication of success will be "that the department can happily have any one of its members as chair after this."</p> <p>Such an observation points to the main measure of "faculty development": a community of colleagues, bound together by shared conversation--and perhaps even by pizza. In the overall university budget, the faculty category is an awfully big slice. For the current fiscal year, faculty salaries (excluding the medical center) come to $78,686,935; fringe benefits are estimated to consume an additional 22.9 percent of that figure. And each time Duke adds a faculty member (in the sciences especially), the startup cost is $500,000 to a million dollars. As Quilligan's concept of her role and her goal suggests, community is an academic ideal. But it's an expensive ideal.</p> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2002-06-01T00:00:00-04:00">Saturday, June 1, 2002</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dm-main-images/statea.jpg" width="620" height="837" alt="Secretarial pool: clockwise from top, Bennett, Alexander, Riley, Paige, and Cavazos." /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/kim-koster" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Kim Koster</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/may-jun-2002" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">May - Jun 2002</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-photo-credit field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Photo Credit:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/photographers/chris-hildreth" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Chris Hildreth</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Since the 1979 creation of the U.S. Department of Education, there have been seven secretaries of education. In February, five of the six living secretaries came to Duke for an Education Leadership Summit, a discussion of the state of public education.</div></div></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Cover Story </h3> <h3 class="field-label"> Homepage </h3> Sat, 01 Jun 2002 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501870 at https://alumni.duke.edu https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/state-public-education#comments Thinking Differently, Technology Goes to School https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/thinking-differently-technology-goes-school <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <table width="98%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td><p class="articletitle">Stan, a virtual patient currently programmed to replicate a truck driver, is in poor health. He's sixty-one years old, overweight, drinks too much, and exercises too little. And on this particular morning in a treatment area at Duke Medical Center, he's about to suffer a far more serious problem. With the click of a mouse, he's given a tension pneumothorax—a punctured lung.</p><p>Lying on an operating-room table with a blue cloth shielding his plastic privates from view, Stan begins breathing heavily and the left side of his chest stops moving. His heart rate climbs, the blood pressure and oxygen level in his blood decrease, and he becomes short of breath. Before long, Jeffrey Taekman, a Duke anesthesiologist, steps in to do something. "That's a controversy, whether you should let someone kill the mannequin," says Taekman. "I don't think anyone has killed Stan yet."</p><p>At Duke's Fuqua School of Business on a recent morning, colleagues look up at an eight-foot-wide video screen that's part of Fuqua's Global Conference System. With the push of a button, another time zone comes to life as technology links Fuqua staff to counterparts in Frankfurt. "Guten tag," they say, and their life-size images beam from the wall and their gaze meets at eye level, as if seated inches across the table, rather than halfway around the globe. The audio is so realistic you hear a car horn honking from hidden speakers—in Deutschland or in Durham?Stan's a sophisticated, computerized simulator designed to mimic a real patient in a variety of scenarios. He's a hands-on teaching tool at Duke Medical Center, where hightech touches include a $750,000 Human Simulation and Patient Safety Center that opened in April and a student auditorium incorporating a dazzling array of technological advances that are perhaps the most forward- thinking on campus.</p><p>Meanwhile, at the law school on a recent afternoon, students aren't studying contract law from oft-dry, three-inch-thick law tomes. Instead, via computer laptops, they're immersing themselves, in video and audio vignettes with discussions from nearly fifty high-profile legal scholars, practitioners, and judges as part of a groundbreaking, DVD-ROM multimedia teaching tool conceptualized at Duke.</p><p>All around the university system, the move to "smart" classrooms is changing the way students learn and professors teach. Internet access, including wireless applications, other technical features such as patient simulators, SMART Board interactive whiteboards, sophisticated Duke-produced webcasts and DVDs, "telepresence"—all are just a sampling of a technology arsenal being deployed in recent years.</p><p>Duke Medical Center's training areas are full of heads and torsos, arms and legs. In med-school lingo, the noncomputerized body parts are known as "task trainers." But none match the sophistication of Stan, a $170,000, computercontrolled, life-size mannequin and control tower that exhibits symptoms and reacts to medicines and interventions like an actual person.</p><p>The medical center bought the high-fidelity patient in February 2001 from Medical Education Technologies Inc. (METI) of Sarasota, Florida. Housed in the Human Simulation and Patient Safety Center in Duke South, Stan has three "parents": the medical school, the nursing school, and the anesthesiology department. The Simulation Center also houses a pediatric patient simulator, aptly named Baby Stan.</p><p>The adult Stan—one of about twenty-five METI simulators in existence—is powered by a Mac G4 hooked up to a Linux computer controller and is run largely by pneumatics and electronics. His output is vital signs, including body temperature, pulse, and cardiovascular and pulmonary parameters. His pupils dilate and his vocal cords can constrict to impede attempts at inserting breathing tubes. He routinely suffers cardiac arrest, drug interactions, anaphylactic shock, and more complex conditions. A fluid system allows him to urinate and to give students the opportunity to tap chest fluids. Stan's eerie sounds give a sci-fi feel to a room when his breathing and heartbeat play through hidden speakers.</p><p>Taekman, who directs the center and is also assistant dean for educational technology and an assistant professor of anesthesiology at the medical school, says the simulator is an important technological teaching advancement. Not only does it help promote real-life hospital dynamics and teamwork, but it also reduces the need for students to do laboratory work with live animals. "The simulator is good for what-if scenarios," Taekman says. "There's a set way of treating most disease states, so you can't look at what happens to a patient if you try a different therapy. For example, you can't give a patient an overdose of a medication to see what happens. You also can teach a rare event in simulation, since we can have it happen commonly."</p><p>The simulator reacts to "pretend" intravenous drugs, which are administered via barcoded syringes filled with water and scanned to determine what drug is being injected. It can model either gender as young, old, healthy, or very ill. Switch out a few plastic body parts, and Stan becomes Stella. Stan also can be programmed to portray a number of cases the manufacturer has configured. Besides "Truck Driver," there's "Mr. Outta Joint," an orthopedic case; "Una Goodeye," an ophthalmology patient; and "Dr. Iven Fast," a combative, inebriated male who was just in a car accident.</p><p>In April, Stan moved into the new Simulation Center, modeled after a similar center at the Bowman-Gray School of Medicine at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem. The center incorporates wireless capabilities, videotaping equipment, and a debriefing room complete with a SMART Board where students and faculty can share impressions following training. Video can be fed live to nearby lecture halls. "It's in the fiber-optic backbone of the hospital, so we can ship our scenarios anywhere in the world via the Internet," says Human Simulation Coordinator Gene Hobbs.</p><p>Taekman says he hopes to expand simulation to take full advantage of the technology. "We've got a group of about twenty faculty members who have committed to teaching over here," he says. He plans to use humanfactors engineering, with a combination of psychology and engineering, to study human performance in different scenarios. These studies could look into such variables as human- machine interface with the simulator and team interaction, considering such issues as what would be encountered in an emergency.</p><p>The Simulation Center is one of numerous high-tech teaching areas at Duke Medical Center. The 150-seat amphitheater classroom, where first-year medical students have most lectures, has laptop ports, power supplies, and built-in microphones for students; video cameras, CD, and DVD technology, and touchscreen displays for faculty; and a staffed control room. Like contestants on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, students can respond to an instructor's questions via a hand-held remote keypad, rather than with a show of hands. Statistics are immediately tabulated and projected at the front of the room. Faculty can poll students with mini-quizzes to get an idea of their understanding of a concept in the middle of a teaching session. The keypad also can be used by the students in the auditorium who are observing and helping call the shots—via video—of a scenario in the nearby Simulation Center.</p><p>"We'll get them to a decision point, and then you're not putting the four or five people [in the Simulation Center] on the spot," Hobbs says. "Instead, they're making a decision as a group."</p><p>Across West Campus at the Fuqua School of Business, telepresence is one of the hottest topics, and it has nothing to do with television psychic Miss Cleo. Telepresence is high-performance videoconferencing used in Fuqua's Global Conference System, a high-speed, cross-continent video connection using Internet2, the next generation Internet, which features much faster data transmission through a bigger pipeline. The system allows Fuqua staff and faculty to meet, as needed, just by walking into a conference room linked to Frankfurt. In March, a virtual "ribbon cutting" was held to celebrate Fuqua's achievement of being the first institution—academic or corporate —to use Internet2 for telepresence.</p><p>"This is exciting stuff, and the future use of this is going to be powerful," says Nevin Fouts, associate dean for information technology at Fuqua. Eventually, Fuqua hopes to expand telepresence into the classroom for presenting guest speakers and other education programs.</p><p>On a recent demo of the system, Fouts began speaking with Felix Mueller, director of marketing and operations for Fuqua Europe; and Falko Friebe, IT coordinator in Frankfurt. The benefits are apparent. Both men appear relatively life-size and at eye level. It doesn't feel much different than sitting down and speaking to someone across the table. "This is a very useful tool because it allows us to sit down face-to-face," says Tim Searles, director of multimedia services for Fuqua. "You can't do that in a telephone call."</p><p>Smiling across the table from Germany, Mueller concurs. "One challenge, when you add distance, it means you have to add tools to bridge the distance. We cannot fly to Durham every week."</p><table width="34%" border="0" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="1" align="left"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 313px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/050602/images/thinkingb.jpg" alt="Fuqua's Telepresence:a video conference with Frankfurt Germany" width="313" height="207" border="1" /><p class="caption-text"><p>Fuqua's Telepresence: a video conference with Frankfurt Germany.</p></p></div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Telepresence is just one of the many Fuqua technology firsts over the last two decades. In 1983, it was the first business school in the world to integrate the personal computer into its curriculum and, in 1994, the first to do the same with the Internet. In 1996, Fuqua was the first business school to launch a new M.B.A. program, the Global Executive M.B.A., which combines international residential experiences with Internetbased learning.</p><p>In 1998, Fuqua was the first top-tier business school to deploy a high-speed local area network (LAN). Called FuquaNet, it was the first production gigabit Ethernet LAN in North Carolina and one of the first worldwide. Five years ago, Fuqua began deploying virtual learning to support its distance-based programs, and the school is currently deploying the fourth generation of these environments, says Fouts.</p><p>More recently, Fuqua is taking part in a pilot study investigating a new generation of computing devices that Fuqua leaders hope will extend the Fuqua experience beyond anywhere a traditional desktop or laptop can be used. "We have a lot of world-class technology that we want the people who come to Fuqua to experience," Fouts says. "We believe our technology and our environment are not only world-class, but as good or better than anything our students have experienced anywhere in their global corporate environments."</p><p>In 2001, wireless capability was deployed in all student areas at Fuqua, including classrooms. The school has some of the latest technological innovations in nine classrooms, seven seminar rooms, a studio classroom, and a large auditorium. Features include a mix of touch-panel controls of projection, lighting and computer systems, digital overhead systems, and a wide range of other technologies, such as DVD and CD players and wireless remote controls. Specialized classrooms also have SMART Board technology and plasma-display systems to augment traditional projection equipment.</p><p>Fuqua also has a multimedia production facility and can do live classroom webcasts. Other innovations include Learning on Demand, which captures classes for executive education and lifelong learning for alumni and executives; and Monday Morning Message, a weekly video-on-demand that highlights recent accomplishments through Fuqua's intranets, FuquaWorld and Alumni- Link.</p><p>Much of the classroom systems' design and installation are done by Kontek Systems Inc., a Durham-based firm founded fourteen years ago by Frank Kohnhaus '80 and Wes Newman '78. The company has done more than 200 installations on the Duke campus.</p><p>In a pilot Duke Law School program that began this spring, the first-year contract law textbook is being replaced with a multimedia, DVD-ROM called The Contracts Experience. A project of law professor John Weistart J.D. '68, the DVD features case re-enactments and analysis with video commentaries and discussion from forty-three high-profile legal scholars, lawyers, and judges, including consumer activist Ralph Nader, federal appellate judges Richard Posen and Frank Easterbrook, and contracts scholars Richard Epstein, Melvin Eisenberg, and Richard Speidel.</p><p>"It's the most significant project we're doing right now and a radical change in how you teach law and how the material is presented," says law professor Thomas Metzloff, who has been involved with many of the law school's other technological innovations over the years.</p><p>The DVD offers more than eight hours of video designed to help students find meaning in full-text versions of the Uniform Commerce Code and the Restatement (2d) of Contracts. It also contains fulltext versions of those legal resources, which are consistently underutilized by first-year law students.</p><p>The project is being led by Weistart and two other law professors, Duke's H. Jefferson Powell and Georgetown University Law Center's Girardeau A. Spann, with assistance from two editor/producers, Christopher B. McLaughlin J.D. '96 and Denise</p><p>E. Thorpe J.D. '90. It involved filming more than sixty hours of interviews in six cities— Washington, D.C.; Chicago; Atlanta; Denver; San Francisco; and Durham—and twenty additional days filming "hypotheticals" and case re-enactments. More than 250 first-year law students are using the beta DVD in three classes at Duke and Georgetown.</p><p>A typical contract-law book has about 800 pages of text with, at most, a few blackand- white photos or illustrations. Students can run the DVD directly on their laptop or install it on their hard drive. It has a list of all the chapters, just like a traditional textbook, and navigational tools that guide students through text and video elements.</p><p>"I love the DVD because it appeals to more than one sense," says Patricia Festin J.D. '04. "It's visual, it's auditory, it's interactive, and it just makes the whole experience of transferring information about a certain subject more three- or even four-dimensional. It just totally comes alive."</p><p>Festin likes the dual reenactments of some cases. For example, "they'll do the exact same facts of the case in a different context, maybe a young woman versus an old woman. They'll change things that are not implied and set in stone in the case, so it totally changes your perception of what you think the outcome should be and it really teaches you to do an analysis. It's not just 'what you see is what you get.' And that's what learning law is all about, that analysis."</p><p>"I really liked the noted authorities," she adds. "It's really good to see people who are actually practicing the law and how they struggle with the same questions students have."</p><p>With the DVD, Festin says she takes many more notes than she would just reading from a casebook. "I have the text and the video on my screen, and I can just open Word and take notes as fast as they're talking as to what's relevant. I don't really take those kind of notes when I'm reading from the casebook, but with the DVD, I take notes on everything." The team plans to revise the DVD based on reactions and expand it to other law schools.</p><p>The Contracts Experience is just one of the pioneering uses of instructional technologies at Duke Law. "The law school has long been recognized within legal education as a leader in technology," says Richard A. Danner, the law school's senior associate dean for information technology. "We operate on the theory, 'If you build it, they will come.' We've always tried to put as much technology as we could in all of our classrooms. It's just a natural part of the teaching environment."</p><p>In March 2001, The National Jurist ranked Duke's the number-two "Most Wired" law school in the U.S., and Syllabus, a magazine dedicated to exploring the newest and best educational technology, has twice cited the school. All student areas of the law school have wireless access, and there are plans to make the entire building wireless. In recent years, the school gutted its upper floor to create a new courtroom and renovated classrooms and a teaching auditorium to include the latest technology. All classrooms have Internet access and power ports for student laptops; most have wireless touch pads and projection equipment for faculty and a full complement of audio and video equipment. Three of the school's seminar rooms have SMART Boards, while the futuristic Moot Court Room marries legal presentation with similar high-tech enhancements.</p><table width="34%" border="0" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="1" align="right"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 361px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/050602/images/thinkingc.jpg" alt="Stan the mannequin:a computer-controlled "task trainer"" width="361" height="239" border="1" /><p class="caption-text"><p>Stan the mannequin:a computer-controlled "task trainer".</p></p></div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p>"It's not just a modest inclusion of a few technology tricks," the school's Thomas Metzloff says, adding that technology must be integrated with room architecture, seating, and lighting. In a seminar room, he turns on a SMART Board linked to his laptop and begins a rapid-fire display of material available with the touch of his finger. (SMART Board is a product of SMART Technologies Inc., based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.) With the computer image projected onto the whiteboard, Metzloff presses the touch-sensitive surface to access PowerPoint and Web materials for case law involving the</p><p>McDonald's hot-coffee case, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and the Dalkon Shield IUD case, to name just a few. Using a SMART pen, he shows how effortlessly he can take notes or highlight important information for students.</p><p>This spring, the law school launched an International Career Videoconference Series. The program gives students in Durham the opportunity to speak "face to face" with alumni working overseas in Germany, Hong Kong, and Switzerland for advice on careers abroad. And last year, Metzloff led distance-learning efforts when he taught, from Durham, "Distinctive Aspects of U.S. Law" to students at Tsinghau University Law School in Beijing. The project used videoconferencing, the Internet, and CD-ROM, along with on-site lectures and classroom discussions.</p><p>"I don't think for a minute that I've always excited all of my students," Metzloff says, "but I'm definitely known as the anti-chalk person."</p><p>The projects at the medical and law schools and Fuqua are cutting-edge, but if Mike Pickett has his way, they'll eventually be seen as run-of-the-mill. Pickett, special assistant to the provost for academic technology and Duke's associate chief information officer, led much of the academic information technology planning for the university's $700-million, five-year, "Building on Excellence" strategic plan, which was adopted in February 2001 by Duke's trustees. A total of $25 million has been set aside for technology initiatives.</p><p>"There's an awful lot happening; some schools are way ahead and some schools are just starting to dive into it," Pickett says. "As part of the academic strategic plan, there's a goal to increase and improve the way we use technology in everything we do."</p><p>One major initiative is the Computer and Information Technology Intensive Environment program, also known as CITIE. It has a steering committee with members from each of the schools and is exploring new modes of teaching, learning, and research using technology.</p><p>"It's kind of an overarching organizational project that tries to help the whole university create an environment where teachers and students and learners have the tools at their fingertips to use technology to improve teaching and learning and research," Pickett says. "One of the important concepts for all of these tools is we don't believe technology is important for technology's sake. We think its importance comes in what it does to allow us to be better and more effective teachers, learners, and researchers."</p><p>Other early efforts include mass data storage for research, student technology train ing, and the use of Blackboard, a Web-based course management system that allows access to course material outside a traditional classroom. Depending on what an instructor chooses to include, a Blackboard site can have a syllabus, readings, and presentations; a "virtual classroom" where students can chat with the instructor and other students; links to websites related to the course; a digital drop box for assignments or other documents; and automatically graded quizzes and fast access to grades, among other options. Pickett says more than 600 courses throughout the university can now be found on Blackboard.</p><p>"Duke has made significant technology strides in the last five to seven years," says Lynne O'Brien, director of Duke's Center for Instructional Technology. "We're doing some very ambitious things across the board." In addition to fostering on-campus initiatives, technology leaders at Duke meet about three times a year with peer institutions to discuss challenges and various technology initiatives.</p><p>"We get together regularly at different levels with the Ivy League schools and a few others, and struggle with the same problems in general," Pickett says. "In general, when we meet with our peer schools, I think we find we are very often in similar boats. Some schools will have pushed ahead in some areas and others will have pushed ahead in others."</p><p>For one, Duke has joined such universities as Stanford, Michigan, North Carolina State, Dartmouth, and Pennsylvania in the Open Knowledge Initiative. The OKI is a multimillion-dollar educational technology project from M.I.T. that brings the schools together to develop the kinds of software that are useful in academic settings and to share that broadly, O'Brien says, "so that we are not pigeonholed or forced to teach based on what commercial software developers give us."</p><p>"To a great extent," says Pickett, "we have all been trying to figure out how to provide online education for our undergraduates and graduates. However, of the number of schools that are our peers, most are not trying to provide an undergraduate degree using online technology, but are using the technology to enhance the undergraduate experience. What we will continue to do, and this is where we may be behind, is to become more experienced in how we want to use these tools to accomplish our teaching, learning, and research effectively. Where some other schools may be ahead of Duke is they may have had more time to use these tools and may be a little more advanced in how they are using them."</p><p>In the final analysis, Pickett says, Duke's technology plan is not aboutplaying catch-up, or about having the hottest and newest toys. Instead, it's about putting technology to work for the educational mission of the university. "We want to make sure we're not throwing away money or just doing technology for technology's sake. That's one of the reasons why Duke has been careful," he says. "We don't want to throw our resources away and we don't want to waste people's time. This is not about image. It's about effectiveness."</p><p class="articletitle"><em>Babcock is a freelance writer living in Morrisville, North Carolina.</em></p></td></tr></tbody></table> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2002-06-01T00:00:00-04:00">Saturday, June 1, 2002</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dm-main-images/thinkinga.jpg" width="620" height="419" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/pamela-babcock" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Pamela Babcock</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/may-jun-2002" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">May - Jun 2002</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-photo-credit field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Photo Credit:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/photographers/les-todd" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Les Todd</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Education has gone electronic, from medical mannequins to global teleconferencing to law books on laptops. &quot;Smart&quot; classrooms are getting good grades across campus.</div></div></section> Sat, 01 Jun 2002 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501869 at https://alumni.duke.edu A Charter for Achievement https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/charter-achievement <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <table width="98%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td><p class="articletitle">Boston's Media and Technology Charter High School (MATCH) hardly looks like the high-tech secondary school of the future. Housed for now in the upper floors of the city's oldest synagogue, MATCH is not crammed with flat-screen LCD monitors and tangles of Ethernet cables. Its staff does not tote PDAs or digital walkie-talkies. Its TV studio consists of little more than a couple of donated laptops and some used lighting equipment. Its labs have one computer per two students, but the DSL lines in almost every classroom are not connected to computers.</p><p>MATCH students will not graduate as trained information technology experts or web designers or computer programmers. Their high-school diplomas will not qualify them to join the upper echelons of the digerati, at least not right away. The vision behind MATCH is far grander, far nobler, and far more ambitious than that. "We're not necessarily trying to prepare anyone for a career in the technology world," says founder Michael Goldstein '91. "We're trying to prepare them for college. We're trying to be a really good, rigorous, regular small school, and then figure out ways that technology can help."</p><p>MATCH's goals sound conventional enough: to create a school where students feel safe, where teachers are both effective and accountable, where parents feel they are invested in the process and, by far most importantly, where all students--no matter how disadvantaged, no matter how far behind when they begin--graduate from college. While those goals may not sound radical, they are the very ones that schools around Boston and the nation fail to meet every year. They represent the hopes of millions of American parents still imagining a dream their own parents told them was real. The dream behind MATCH is delivering the promise of a brighter future, not to a specially selected cadre of overachievers, but to students whom almost everybody else has given up on.</p><p>When George W. Bush spoke during the 2000 campaign about "the soft bigotry of low expectations," he may well have had the typical MATCH student in mind. Seventy-five percent of the school's students live in poverty. The vast majority come from Boston's most notorious neighborhoods: Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, Hyde Park. More than 93 percent are African American, Caribbean American, or Hispanic.</p><p>Unlike the droves of teenagers--most of them wealthier and whiter than the public school population as a whole--who pass entrance exams to enter Boston's prestigious magnet schools, MATCH students start out on a track to failure. The average MATCH student arrives in the ninth grade reading on the fifth-grade level; he or she was likely absent 20 percent of the time in middle school. The school has no selection criteria--there are no entrance exams, essays, or other requirements. Instead, MATCH uses a random lottery, which netted eighty students out of 240 applicants in the school's first year.</p><p>Without massive intervention, these students will fail the mandatory state achievement tests administered in the tenth grade. If they do, they cannot pass high school in Massachusetts. That this two-year-old charter high school wants to turn such students around is not revolutionary. What is revolutionary about MATCH is that it's working.</p><p>Goldstein's interest in education began when he was an undergraduate majoring in public policy at Duke. Coming from a relatively large and homogenous suburban high school in Pennsylvania, he says he was struck by what he found while tutoring Durham students: "Seeing what Durham public schools were like, just seeing how much kids were struggling, made a big impression."</p><p>But the road to MATCH didn't begin there. Instead, Goldstein moved to New York City to work for Richard Frankel Productions, the Broadway producers responsible for Stomp! and The Producers. After working as a freelance journalist for such publications as New York magazine and BusinessWeek, he returned to public policy. He enrolled at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where the charter-school concept sparked his interest.</p><p>In his study of charter schools, Goldstein saw many advantages that would later figure prominently at MATCH--small schools, with 100 to 300 students, schools where a teacher or principal could know every single kid. Choice, for both parents and students, that would allow even the most disadvantaged families to "vote with their feet." And finally, Goldstein saw a way to apply technology to the larger goal of making successful college students.</p><p>"Most inner-city kids start college and drop out," he says. "I thought it would be useful to have a mission that says we can create kids that not only enroll in college, but make it all the way through." MATCH became his master's thesis. The school opened its doors in 2000 with a ninth-grade class of eighty.</p><p>MATCH may be the product of a top-flight policy education, but many of Goldstein's ideas sound like homespun common sense. The school will remain small, aiming for approximately fifty students per class. Its current student-teacher ratio is 10 to 1. Class sizes are never more than twenty, and most are smaller. Principal Charles Sposato--a veteran principal and former Massachusetts Teacher of the Year--greets students at the door every day; he and his staff telephone each student's parents at least once a week. Students are expected to follow the school's dress code--slacks and collared shirts or MATCH T-shirts--and never be late for class.</p><p>"We don't let even the little things go by unchallenged," Goldstein says. "If you're one minute late, you're late. If you miss homework, you might have a homework detention. We focus a lot on those low-level things to try and breed some responsibility."</p><p>The same is true of the school's commitment to safety. With no metal detectors or security guards, MATCH relies on its culture--and the cooperation of teachers and students--to keep its environment safe. "I think if you ask the kids about to what degree they feel safe in the school, it's pretty high. You need that before you can move on to getting kids to learn. Feeling safe is the first rung on the ladder." The school expelled three students last year for weapons violations. "We have zero tolerance for the more serious things," says Goldstein.</p><p>MATCH also has zero tolerance for failure. The school flunked 40 percent of its first freshman class, diverting them instead into "9x" and "9y" remedial programs that address underperforming students' specific needs. Goldstein shuns "social promotion" and makes clear to parents that sending their child to the school may mean that it takes five years to graduate.</p><p>Spending even four years at MATCH takes far more of a student's time. A typical day of classes lasts from 8:30 to 4:30. After that, students spend at least eight hours per week in tutoring, most of which is directed at improving their scores on the state's Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests. A Boston public high-school student must score at least 220, or "Needs Improvement," to pass the tenth grade. MATCH is aiming higher: The school expects its students to score 240, or "Proficient," even though MATCH students' starting median math score was 204--well below failing. To bolster their skills further, a majority of students also spend five weeks at the school's Summer Academy.</p><p>Although the school is able to offer few formal after-school activities--its lease runs out at five o'clock--its size has allowed both students and staff access to different opportunities. For instance, students are taken to a local bookstore every month, with the school footing the bill for everything they buy. An elective law class taught by a local attorney serves just two students. MATCH was able to join with an organization called the Home For Little Wanderers to bring social workers and psychologists to school, and it is the first placement in the country for the Tech Foundation's "Geeks For America" program, which provides free technical support and computer advice.</p><p>Technology, Goldstein is fond of saying, is no panacea. He is proud to note that MATCH spends more money buying students books every month than it has on its video production equipment. In fact, he describes most schools' use of technology as an outright failure. But where traditional high-school technology tends to be expensive, poorly integrated with the curriculum, and constantly hampered by inadequate human knowledge to apply it, MATCH offers a different focus. The school tries to use the cheapest software it can find, opting for low-cost alternatives to heavyweight applications like Adobe PageMaker and Photoshop. The staff wired the school's DSL lines themselves, saving more than $10,000. And most importantly, Goldstein never lets technology divert the school from its mission.</p><p>"It goes back to the way we prioritize," he says. "We focus on small class sizes. We focus on excellent literacy, writing, instruction. We won't let the technology tail wag the dog in terms of where the money goes, either." Spending on technology has been especially limited by the school's temporary location; when it moves to its own building at the start of the next school year, Goldstein expects to devote more resources to a permanent technology infrastructure.</p><p>Rather than offering students devoted technology classes, Goldstein tries to integrate technology and media into the core curriculum. Where a traditional high-school class might watch a video about the Cuban Missile Crisis, MATCH students might design their own radio documentary, or create their own PowerPoint presentations. Technology has helped students deal with tragedy, too: When Geoffrey Douglas, a tenth-grade MATCH student, was murdered last December, students created a video memorial in his honor.</p><p>Starting MATCH, Goldstein says, was a lot like starting a Broadway show. "It's the same set of problems. You have to find a building. You have to hire a bunch of great teachers instead of actors and, instead of a director, you have to hire a principal. And you have to raise money from private donors, because the state money doesn't kick in until you're actually in operation."</p><p>Funding the school has been one of Goldstein's most difficult battles. Not only did he have to learn the art of asking for money (a Wall Street Journal article made light of the "self-deprecating humor" Goldstein uses with fund raisers), but he also had to find the school a permanent home. Fortunately, Boston's tech community opened their wallets, donating more than $350,000 this school year alone. Volunteers in the Greater Boston area also donated more than 3,000 hours of community service in the school's first year.</p><p>Among MATCH's most ardent supporters are Akamai Technologies president Paul Sagan and his wife, Ann Burks Sagan '80, both of whom have a longtime relationship with the media and technology world. A graduate of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, Paul had a successful broadcasting career before coming to the still-hot Internet firm Akamai in 1998. Ann has an M.B.A. and experience working for The New York Times on the business side; she also has a master's degree in education and extensive school-board experience. Goldstein saw the pair as ideal companions to carry out his vision.</p><p>"Michael Goldstein e-mailed my husband and approached him about being involved in the school," Ann Sagan says. "It was at a time when we were looking for a sort of family project. We were looking to be involved with something personally as well as philanthropically."</p><p>Along with the family's substantial donation, Ann Sagan joined the school's board of directors. At first, she mostly concerned herself with organizing the school's complex finances, tutoring, and helping Goldstein find a new school building. But as she began to volunteer more and more time with MATCH students, Sagan made an even tougher decision: Though she had never taught full-time before, she decided to start teaching tenth-grade math at MATCH. "It's absolutely the hardest thing I've ever done," she says, "but I love it. You've got to believe every day that you can do this. When you work on the front lines, you get discouraged a little bit. But you have to keep believing that you can."</p><p>As both a new teacher and a board member, Sagan deals with dual challenges. She frets about the day-to-day--did Jerome finish his math assignment?--as well as the larger question on everyone's mind: In the end, will this work? "I think we'll get 90 percent of them [into college]," she says. "And the other 10 percent, that'll be their choice. I think a lot of them can succeed. We've got a lot of stand-out kids here."</p><p>Sagan admits the difficulties ahead--finding funds in a slackened economy, creating a core curriculum with clear priorities--but she is relentlessly optimistic about her students. "Some students have over a two-hour commute to school. They grumble about it, but they still come. And my kids turn in their homework 90 percent of the time." In fact, MATCH students come to school far more often than their peers. MATCH has a 5 percent absentee rate, while Boston public schools have an absentee rate of 18 percent.</p><p>Sagan says she has seen a huge difference in her students since even the start of the year. "One kid said to me, 'I wish you had known me before I got here, Mrs. Sagan. I've really changed a lot here.' He said he used to be a real tough guy. Now you wouldn't ever suspect it."</p><p>On paper, MATCH seems to be a success. School officials can cite impressive figures, like the small absentee rate, or students' yearly increase of one-and-a-half grade levels in reading skills. They can point to a low incidence of discipline problems, or highlight hundreds of documented comments by satisfied parents. Goldstein can tout his success with donors, show you his students' multimedia presentations, or brag about the money his school saves in administrative and infrastructure costs over a bureaucratic big school. He can be proud of every single statistic in the school's annual report.</p><p>The success of a school cannot be measured on paper, though, but in the attitudes of its students. And MATCH students, it turns out, could be Goldstein's greatest source of pride.</p><p>My MATCH experience begins with a visit with Stesha Emmanuel and Rachel Jules, both in tenth grade. Stesha comes in wearing a large, colorful clown hat--the school gives it to students to wear on their birthdays. She takes it off so she'll look "more professional." Rachel says, "Coming to MATCH is totally different. We have a sort of family bonding. Everybody knows everybody really well."</p><p>Like most MATCH students, Stesha and Rachel live in single-parent homes in Dorchester, one of Boston's most impoverished neighborhoods. Every day, both girls wake up around 6:30; they need plenty of time for both the bus and the subway to get them to school by 8:30. The commute can take more than an hour, and if they are even a minute late, they get detention after school. (Rachel admits that she's had detention several times.) After school comes tutoring, or jobs, or both. Neither girl gets home before seven o'clock on a typical day. Homework, the girls say, means at least two more hours of work--far more than their friends in Boston public high schools.</p><p>"The hours are so time-consuming," Stesha says. "You do so many things, you rarely have time to act up or act crazy. In this school, you grow up sooner."</p><p>Stesha was last year's Student of the Year. She does not have the school's top grades, but she is one of its best leaders. She is captain of the school step team--one of the few after-school activities available--and she organized and ran the school's talent show. She also served as a sort of de facto student- body president, negotiating with the administration for a "dress down" day on Fridays. "This school just brought out something in me," she says. "I'm really motivated to do things."</p><p>Rachel is not only an exemplary student (between class and after-school reading, she has read more than thirty-five books this year alone), but she also has a superior attitude, for which she awarded the "Spirit of MATCH" honor last year. "I'm always trying to be positive," she says, smiling. "To make a day go great, you always have to have a smile. That's my motto."</p><p>Both girls agree that MATCH has changed them. While most high-school students shun reading, they can rattle off a list of favorite authors, including Eric Jerome Dickey and Sister Souljah. Rachel now reads at the college level.</p><p>"You know you're learning a lot," Stesha says. "You can just compare yourself to friends from other schools. My friend talks about how she hates her teachers and they argue during class. I just laugh. At MATCH, arguing will get you nowhere."</p><p class="articletitle">The girls also have new ambitions. Rachel hopes to attend Spelman College in Atlanta and become a CEO; one day, she says, she would like to be the first female president. Stesha's sights, in terms of college prospects, are set about as high as they can be. "I realize now that I have the qualities to get into Harvard," then Harvard Law School, she says. "I'm just as smart as anybody else."</p><p>The girls do have their complaints. Both say they are disappointed by a lack of media projects this year, which the school apparently cut back in response to problems with securing media specialists and keeping students' attention. "Personally, I think [the media classes] were really good," Rachel says. "They think the students didn't appreciate the teachers, but they have to look beyond that to see that we accomplished something really good."</p><p>And they have a more traditional high-school complaint: a lack of boys. The school has a relatively even male-to-female ratio (57 percent female, 43 percent male), but the girls say that having such a tight-knit group makes dating impossible. "We treat them more like brothers," Rachel says. "You can't look at them 'like that' anymore."</p><p>Goldstein pops his head in. He knows the girls are trying to talk their way through their next class.</p><p>Bob Hill's tenth-grade English class comes at a tough time of day--right after lunch, when kids tend to be rowdiest. As the students file in, it's not obvious that they are following a dress code--their clothing looks neat, but not uniform. One girl politely introduces herself to me and asks me why I'm visiting today. I tell her, and she moves on to her seat.</p><p>As the students work on a warm-up vocabulary assignment designed to prepare them for the all-important MCAS test, Hill hands me a student essay about seventeenth-century English poet Robert Herrick. There are problems with grammar and punctuation, but the work shows a lot of potential, with rich analysis and a solid grasp of the poet's work. For the rest of class, Hill's students are to critique each other's essays on Macbeth. Stesha, sitting next to me in the class, hands me her essay to look at, but not before showing me a portfolio of her work. Hill has rated each of her essays on a variety of factors, complete with extensive written comments on both technical accuracy and subject matter.</p><p>As I read over Stesha's work and listen to the class, the students' discussion becomes increasingly animated--"You keep changing tenses," says one. "Your thesis and topic sentences are the same," another rejoins. On the back wall is a sort of MCAS scoreboard Hill has put up, with a giant "MATCH: 240" on the right side. As the heated discussion of Macbeth persists, one thing becomes clear: There is no objective way to measure the value of what is being done here. Certainly not a learning standards test.</p><p>Can the success of MATCH be replicated? If nothing else, Goldstein believes that the concept of smaller schools is making headway in Boston, as evidenced by the creation of six more "pilot" schools in the district with 250 students each. "There are not a lot of economies of scale for big schools," he says. "Most of what schools spend money on is teachers. And teachers are a function of how many kids you have, how long you want your school day, and how big your classes are." Without the overhead and increased security problems of large schools, Goldstein argues, a small school can cost the same or less, and deliver better results.</p><p>MATCH receives most of its income from the state government, which pays it about $9,000 per pupil--a "political number" that Goldstein says is about $2,000 less than the actual per-pupil payment to Boston public schools. Add to that the various other payments Boston schools get--for facilities and other programs--and it becomes clear that MATCH is making do with much less money.</p><p>Despite the school's early success, Goldstein is hesitant to tout it as a prototype. "What is very popular in school reform, which I don't believe in, is these sort of cookie-cutter models.... A really good school is a lot like a really great restaurant in a way. There's a lot of love and devotion that goes in. It's very labor-intensive, the owners know their customers, they have a loyal following, and they make it work for their own place."</p><p>Two years from now, MATCH will graduate its first senior class. Nobody can predict with any certainty whether Stesha will be accepted to Harvard, or what the students' MCAS scores will be. MATCH will be in a new building it can call its own. It might have more technology on hand; it might have less. In the end, what Goldstein and his staff have attempted--and what they have accomplished so far--will be nothing short of heroic. They are trying where others have not only failed, but given up. Their school embraces the possibility of an America where the dreams of the poor can reach every bit as high as the sinecures of the privileged.</p><p>The question, as Ann Sagan puts it, is, "Can you make it work? Is it possible to take inner-city kids who are already in the ninth grade and give them a structure of support that's going to help them succeed in going to college?"</p><p>Conventional wisdom says no. Conventional wisdom says that no amount of caring and parent phone calls, no amount of fancy technology and policy training can turn ninth-graders reading at the fifth-grade level into tenth-graders having an avid discussion about Macbeth. But in this place, it happens. In this place, the naysayers' soft bigotry has finally met its MATCH.</p><p class="articletitle"><em>Blank '01, former editor of Recess, the weekly arts and entertainment supplement of The Chronicle, has completed his first year at Harvard Law School and is editor of its student newspaper, The Record.</em></p></td></tr></tbody></table> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2002-06-01T00:00:00-04:00">Saturday, June 1, 2002</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dm-main-images/chartera.jpg" width="620" height="410" alt="MATCH set: charter-school founder Goldstein, left, and Sagan, teacher and philanthropist." /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/jonas-blank" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jonas Blank</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/may-jun-2002" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">May - Jun 2002</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">The dream behind MATCH is delivering the promise of a brighter future, not to a specially selected cadre of overachievers, but to students whom almost everybody else has given up on.</div></div></section> Sat, 01 Jun 2002 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501868 at https://alumni.duke.edu American Questions, Asian Answers https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/american-questions-asian-answers <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <table width="98%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td><p class="articletitle">During my last month in Japan, I bought my first Japanese T-shirt from a store in a crooked alley in Nagoya. The shirt has a die on the front, with three faces visible: two boasting the stars and stripes of America, the other bearing the proud red dot of Japan. America covers the front and side; Japan is on top, slanted. Across the back, in forty-eight-point Times New Roman type: "I played at some game of chance." I scooped it up and walked to the cashier without even stopping to finger the fabric.</p><p>Moving to Japan had definitely been a gamble.</p><p>I spent one year teaching English in a small town in central Honshu as a participant of the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program. I knew almost nothing about the country before I arrived. In fact, the one thing I knew was a sense of mystery: Japan is different. Not merely that they eat raw fish and remove their shoes, but that their judgments, their values, are different. I craved the unfamiliar. One may think this an escape from one's self, but I saw it more as a search for it: What are my beliefs? What are my assumptions? These things go unnoticed until they are cut out and held against a new background--a lone red dot on a sea of white. I went to Japan to learn what it is to be an American.</p><p>English, too, was everywhere, but in a similarly distorted form. Vending machines encouraged us to "Refresh Up!" and promised "eminently drinkable flavor extravagance" within. A popular drink was called "Calpis," a name far too close to bovine urine to be enjoyed. My ATM card had a picture of Paddington Bear on it and proclaimed: "He will eat marmalade on its own or more usually in a marmalade sandwich. He usually keeps a marmalade sandwich handy in his suitcase or under his hat." When I pointed out to my supervisor that neither Paddington nor his peculiar eating habits had any bearing whatsoever on my financial matters, Hattori-sensei responded, "But English means good image." The meaning of the English, of course, was left to the imagination.Of course, the first thing I learned was that America was everywhere. In my town of 38,000 people, there were two McDonald's, a Big Boy, and four Circle K's. The video stores rented almost exclusively American movies. Two nights a week at eleven o'clock, I could watch Beverly Hills 90210 or ER, and either the NFL, NBA, or pro baseball was on every night. Even our alma mater was everywhere: I taught four different students wearing Duke T-shirts, and once saw a businessman riding his bike home in a Blue Devils windbreaker. I might as well have been in Hoboken, New Jersey, instead of Hozumi, Japan. Except that one child thought Duke was a rock group, 90210 was listed as Bebiri Hiisu, and Circle K served hot grilled octopus next to the cash register. This was not home.</p><p>It could be said that the essence of Japan is the ability to import outside influences and transform them into something uniquely Japanese. This is not a new phenomenon. Throughout their history, the Japanese have "borrowed" and Nipponized ideas from other cultures. From China, they acquired the foundations for their political institutions, their writing system, the Confucian code of ethics, and Buddhism, to name a few. Yet the borrowing is not quite robbery--it's more paraphrasing than plagiarism. For instance, in the ninth century, the Chinese characters were simplified into kana syllabaries to represent the Japanese language phonetically. Also, Buddhism eventually lost its otherworldly focus to recognize more religious significance in daily life. Things were imported, but then altered according to Japanese needs.</p><p>This borrowing continues in full force today, though often from the West instead of Japan's Near East neighbors. Katakana is a syllabary used entirely for imported foreign words, like erebeta (elevator) or aisukurimu (ice cream). The average Japanese knows more than a thousand such words. However, they are often so distorted or shortened that they become new entities entirely: radio-cassette player becomes rajikase, and so on. As one Japanese friend pointed out, when she writes "McDonald's"--Makudonarudusu--it's not English anymore, it's 100 percent Japanese. Is it okay then for them to call it their own?</p><p>My parents came to visit me and their tour guide in Kyoto told them, "We Japanese are best at taking ideas from others, make it better." I guess so. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, and DoCoMo made it into a six-inch mobile that sends e-mail, plays MP3s, and takes digital photos.</p><p>This constant borrowing from other cultures made me, and many of my fellow JETs, uneasy: Are we losing the real Japan? A friend of mine wrote an article for our local JET publication in which he quoted Matthew 15:26: "What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Another friend, who taught at a low-level technical high school, lamented that his students were forced to take English class every day but didn't have a single period of Japanese history. And one day while on my way to a Japanese language and culture class, I stopped dead in my tracks to read the back of a rain poncho worn by a twenty-something Japanese woman. It read, "HEDONISM: It's just that I don't agree with Japan tradition anymore. It's the way to life." It's hard to know how to accept such a statement, as it's quite possible the wearer had little idea what it meant. That night in my journal I wrote with the heavy heart of a missionary whose mission had gotten out of hand: How did this happen? Is it happening everywhere?</p><p>I sent an e-mail message to a friend of mine, a Japanese woman who lived in my hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, for four years and then returned to Tokyo. I contacted her often for cultural comparisons, since she was so good at poking holes in my generalizations. Her response this time was no exception. She wrote, "Oh yes, invisible things can be strong features of culture. The States is a new country, and visible things are from all over the world. But 'independence' and 'freedom' are really strong features of American culture. We have invisible 'spiritual' culture too, in Japan. We value it more. Even though [in America] there are many Chinese restaurants, and many kids are wearing Pokemon T-shirts, that's not intruding American culture, I think. Don't worry. Japan never die!"</p><p>The pattern of Japan's interaction with the outside world is perhaps best characterized as a series of pendulum swings: eager openness followed by conservative closed doors. In the seventh through ninth centuries, rØugakusei (overseas students) were highly respected as "bearers of enlightenment from the lands beyond the sea." In the seventeenth century, any Japanese caught trying to visit the outside world was sentenced to death. Underlying these changing attitudes is a deep sense of ambivalence and insecurity about Japan's place in the world that can be felt clearly even today. I wrote in my journal of my discomfort at being placed upon a pedestal for being foreign, while simultaneously feeling looked down upon for the same reason. It was as though the pendulum swings spanned historical centuries, and modern nanoseconds as well.</p><p>Often I am asked what it was like being an American in Japan, and I find it so difficult to box the daily contradictions into one neat little answer. It would be much easier if they would ask pointed questions: Were you treated like a celebrity? Yes. Were you discriminated against? Yes. Did they admire Americans? Yes. Did they think Americans were arrogant, or dirty? Yes, and yes again.</p><p>The dichotomy of attitudes toward America did not escape the children in my classrooms of grades 1-9. Some days I saw my students as being trapped in an "internationalization" tug-of-war, never sure which way they should be pulling. I worried: Would they just remain caught in the middle, fraught with tension, soon to snap?</p><p>One day I asked a little girl in the fourth grade to stand up during class. She was very shy, but smiling, and glanced around nervously as she pushed back her chair. From this position I could see her entire T-shirt, and therefore the entire statement printed upon it: "Americans do it better." The word "Americans" was in bold, and sat atop a boxy version of our flag. I asked her, in Japanese, if she knew what it meant. She shook her head "no," but pointed to the ribbon in her hair: red, white, and blue. It matched her bow. She grinned wider. I looked back at the Japanese homeroom teacher in the room with me, and she too smiled proudly, thinking I was pleased.</p><p>Later that same day, I taught a sixth-grade class, one that always gave me trouble. A group of boys in the class were particularly stubborn and refused to cooperate when we played our simple English games, like "'When is your birthday?' Bingo." This day was no different. While the rest of the class broke into groups, an angry-looking boy in the corner played with his pencil case. He was zipping and unzipping when I approached. "Why don't you join your group?" I asked. He only stared. "Come on, it's a fun game," I tried again, pointing to two girls laughing. He said something to a boy beside him in Japanese, and I said back to him, "No Japanese in English class, remember?" And this time he spoke to me, though still in his native tongue: "I am Japanese. I live in Japan. I speak Japanese." He turned away from me then, and I let him.</p><p>I am Japanese. I live in Japan. I speak Japanese." This would not be the last time I would hear one of these phrases as a definitive explanation for our differences. And we did have differences. Despite initial impressions of being placed in an oddly off-center photocopy of America, I was reminded daily that I was also a stranger in a strange land. Old habits took on new, often discordant, meanings. It was as though I had picked up the same book, but read it differently, back to front, right to left, as the Japanese do. The moral of the story had changed. Those lessons I had hoped for about different perspectives hit me at the most unexpected times, but often.</p><table width="22%" border="0" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="1" align="right"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 340px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/050602/images/questionsb.jpg" alt="Teamwork: junior-high students race as one " width="340" height="219" border="1" /><p class="caption-text"><p>Teamwork: junior-high students race as one.</p></p></div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p>"That's wrong," Yoko said, pointing to a word I had just written in hiragana, one of the Japanese syllabaries. I thought perhaps I had spelled it wrong, as I often leave out the small tsu or forget to add the long u to certain words. "Oh, how do you write it?" I asked, and my Japanese mother took the pen. She wrote, and then nodded approvingly. I looked at her word, and then at mine. They were the exact same. "What's different?" I asked, scrunching my nose. "Ah, easy," she said. "My right, your wrong."</p><p>After much deliberation and demonstration, I understood the error of my ways: I had defied the order. The character in question is a Japanese "ha":f. Habitually, I had done the horizontal "cross" as the final step, like crossing a "t," but I was supposed to have done it second. When writing Japanese characters, whether these simple kana or more complicated kanji, proper stroke order is imperative. I knew this, for I had watched my students copy newly-learned kanji over and over again during their calligraphy class, always following the numbered model on the board without deviation. But to me it was silly: What matters more, the process or the product? Isn't a "d" still a "d" whether it's written circle-then-line, or line-then-circle? I learned that answer quickly: not in Japan.</p><p>It's tempting to dismiss this strict adherence to order as foolish, or unimaginative. In fact, that's exactly what I did that day--I stared at Yoko and thought, "My God, this woman has been brainwashed." But as time wore on and my all-knowing assumptions wore thin, I started to like the rules. I took a Japanese calligraphy class and didn't balk when my teacher showed me the exact angle at which to hold the brush, and the precise movement of your wrist required to complete a stroke. The order gave me direction--it was soothing.</p><p>My friend Keiko explained how writing was not about mere communication. It was ritual, centering. "Letter is art," she said, and picked up a brush. She drew the character for hito, meaning "person": . She narrated her strokes: "First, one line leaning. Then, another one comes here to support." She smiled. "Like people," she said, and I saw how indeed the means could hold the meaning.</p><p>As teacher of English, I came into a lot of conflicts with language. I don't mean just language barriers--though there were plenty of those--but theoretical differences in the implications of language that made teaching English inseparable from teaching American. Language is, indisputably, a powerful reflection of culture. In America, my name is Kathy Crutcher. In Japan, on the other hand, it is the opposite: Crutcher Kathy. It may seem a minimal change, but the consequences are substantial. With a quick flip of linguistic priorities, my identity is rearranged: group before self. You see? In many ways, you are what you speak.</p><p>Japanese verbs do not conjugate the way they do in English, nor in the Romance languages I had studied in the past. They don't depend on singular or plural, or upon their subject. Instead language depends upon the relationship between a listener and a speaker. It is a way of showing respect, and also of establishing one's place within a hierarchy. Speech occurs in ladders, using one set of vocabulary to speak to the rung above, another to the one below. Instinctively, I hated it.</p><p>"Go" is "go" in English. In Japanese, it is iku, ikimasu, mairu, mairimasu, ikareru, gyokou sareru, or perhaps even others I've never heard of. The appropriate form is selected from this list depending upon the situation, and especially upon the company in which it's uttered. I don't pretend to understand the complexity of real Japanese etiquette--as a foreigner, I was largely excluded from its intricate rules. But I did have to check myself as much as possible: Use familiar language with my students, more formal with teachers and principals. Of course, in English this exists to some extent as well, but in Japan the distinction is so much more ingrained in the way of life. Even older siblings are not called by their first names, but rather by their titles: ani, big brother; ane, big sister. I tried to explain to my grade-school students that "brother" can be used for one who is older or younger, and they seemed confused: How do you know where you stand?</p><p>Japanese language is not only more regimented, but also more indirect. "You" has a similar number of possibilities as does "go": anata, kimi, omae, otaku. Some are polite but intimate, others used only by men, others informal and impersonal, used only for acquaintances. But what was most surprising to me was that generally "you" was not even used at all. I was taught to speak to people as if they weren't in the room. I asked, "Would Kumazaki-san like to go to lunch with me?" while YØuko Kumazaki stood two feet from my nose. It was offensive to address someone directly. It seemed to me the linguistic equivalent of not looking someone in the eyes. I felt unsure, and distant.</p><p>I taught a small women's class in the back of a flower shop every few weeks. The class was composed of four or five middle-aged women who wanted to practice some English, but mostly to hear about America. I, in turn, practiced my Japanese, and asked about Japan. It was a good deal. One day I brought up my discomfort with the restrictions and circuitousness of Japanese language. They asked what I meant. I tried to explain how Americans value speaking directly, and treating each other as equals. They nodded, but did not comment. I assumed they did not understand, and changed the subject, frustrated.</p><p>As I stood up to leave at the end of the lesson, one woman put her hand upon my arm. "Japan is small country," she said. "Japanese people live close, and work close. We have ways to get along together." Another woman nodded. "America is so big," she said. "Maybe you don't need to."</p><table width="22%" border="0" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="1" align="left"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 300px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/050602/images/questionsc.jpg" alt="Sayonara song: third-graders play goodbye" width="300" height="194" border="1" /><p class="caption-text"><p>Sayonara song: third-graders play goodbye.</p></p></div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Writer Kyoko Mori says that in Japan you are taught to "always speak as though everything in the world were your fault." She wrote a book, Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught Between Cultures, in which she tries to reconcile her Japanese childhood with her adulthood in the American Midwest. It is a struggle.</p><p>During my time in Japan I felt torn between worlds as well, especially over matters of apology. Every day I witnessed constant requests for forgiveness--when accepting tea, when initiating a phone call, when leaving and entering a room. In situations where I would normally say "please" or "thank you," my co-workers would substitute "I'm sorry." For me it was unsettling. Whereas I saw "thank you" as a giving to others, "excuse me" seemed more like a taking away from myself. It felt somehow weak, or even humiliating, to apologize for things like leaving a room before someone else: Osaki ni shitsurei shimasu. Literally this means "I have been rude." I felt I was constantly asked to belittle myself, and as an American, my instinct is never to do that, ever.</p><p>While I was in Japan, an American submarine accidentally sunk a small Japanese fishing vessel, the Ehime Maru. Nine Japanese, four of them high-school students, were killed. An emotional apology eventually came from the sub's captain, but not right away. In the interim, the people around me became disillusioned with America, even angry. I spent an awkward car ride with my supervisor trying to answer his question: "Are apologies not important in your country?"</p><p>This answer required careful thought. Did "apology" even mean the same thing to him and me? I tried to explain that, especially in this case, apologies imply guilt, and it would be foolish to admit responsibility and become the scapegoat. But he only stared straight ahead and said nothing. I tried to reconcile the situation in my head--how could we understand each other? I come from a culture terrified by liability, he comes from one in which people apologize for things that could never be their fault. People in Japan are taught to accept responsibility in order to maintain harmony. We often learn to shun it to protect ourselves.</p><p>I told my boss that I was sorry for the accident, and suddenly felt that I had sunk the boat myself. I stared at an older woman waiting on the corner and thought: What does she think of Americans when she reads about this in the newspapers? What does she think of me? He must have noticed my guilt, for he told me not to worry, that one day, our cultures would understand each other. We would learn to listen. "Starting here," I said, meaning the space between him and me. "Starting here," he nodded, and drove on.</p><p>Sometimes "internationalization" seemed more like the clash of civilizations. I clung to my American ideals of freedom, independence, and individualism and preached them through simple stories: explanations of English grammar ("go is go") and tales of standing up for oneself. I started out wanting to instruct, to explain that I should be able to draw a "d" any way I chose, should be able to speak to a person and not around someone. I wanted to interact with people as equals, to see myself as an individual and use language accordingly. These things cut to the very essence of my Americanism. It made me passionate, really, about who I was, and where I came from. And then it also made me question: is this the only way to be?</p><p>In an essay, "Why We Travel," Pico Iyer explains, "We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; we travel, next, to find ourselves." The greatest lesson is not merely to recognize the incongruities, as I had first imagined; I had sought Americana across the world and then found it, jarringly. But rather it is to learn to maintain a delicate balance between the familiar and the foreign--to preserve one's identity without dismissing that of others as mistaken. Even if an idea contradicts that which you hold dear, even if it makes you suck in your breath and grit your teeth, it is not inconsequential. It lives. You must grasp what you cannot embrace.</p><p>In the same essay, Iyer says the essential distinction to make is not between a "tourist" and a "traveler," as is so fashionable nowadays, but rather between one who leaves his assumptions at home and one who doesn't. I liked this line, and highlighted it as something to remember before leaving for Japan. But upon returning, I've changed my mind. It is impossible; you simply cannot leave your judgments behind. I couldn't set aside my Americanism any more than I could force it upon a small community in rural Japan. The real question is whether you allow yourself to challenge your beliefs while you're there. The real question is whether you bring those same assumptions back with you, unmoved.</p><p> </p><p class="articletitle"><em>Crutcher '00 works in Boston as an ESL instructor and is an intern at a literary agency.</em></p></td></tr></tbody></table> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2002-06-01T00:00:00-04:00">Saturday, June 1, 2002</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dm-main-images/questionsa.jpg" width="620" height="407" alt="Teacher-san: Crutcher in the center of class." /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Writer:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/author/kathy-crutcher" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Kathy Crutcher</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/may-jun-2002" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">May - Jun 2002</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-photo-credit field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Photo Credit:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/photographers/courtesy-kathy-crutcher" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Courtesy of Kathy Crutcher</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">After a year in Japan teaching English, one young teacher learned about the country and its culture-and something about herself.</div></div></section> Sat, 01 Jun 2002 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501863 at https://alumni.duke.edu Education, From A-Z https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/education-z <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <table width="98%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td><table width="45%" border="0" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="1" align="left"><tbody><tr><td align="center"><img src="/issues/050602/images/educationa.jpg" alt="" width="267" height="366" border="1" /></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="articletitle">The roots of teacher preparation and education run 150 years deep at Duke--deeper than the name, deeper almost than the school itself. In 1851, Union Institute was re-incorporated as Normal College, and the school began awarding degrees for teaching in the public schools. Normal, under the leadership of Braxton Craven, was one of the first chartered institutions in the country for teacher preparation and became renowned as one of the outstanding teacher-training colleges in the South.</p><p>In 1859, Normal College became Trinity College, continuing its tradition of teacher preparation. When Trinity became Duke University in 1924, the Indenture of Trust by which James B. Duke established his vision of the new university placed teacher training among the school's primary missions: "I advise that the courses at this institution be arranged first with special reference to the training of preachers, teachers, lawyers, and physicians, because these are most in the public eye, and by precept and example can do most to uplift mankind."</p><p>During the nearly eighty years since that charter, the status of education at Duke and on the national stage has gone through several permutations. The Department of Education existed for decades; in the 1960s, it began to offer a Master's of Arts in Teaching degree. In 1982, during a period of "retrenchment," the department became instead the Program in Education and the M.A.T. languished until 1989, when it was resurrected as a program of the Graduate School.</p><p>The directors of those two programs, David M. Malone Ph.D. '84 of the Program in Education, which prepares undergraduates for teaching at the primary and secondary levels, and Rosemary Thorne of the M.A.T. program, which prepares teachers for secondary education, spent several hours discussing education in its various forms, from teacher preparation at Duke to teacher induction in the public schools, and many issues that face educators today. And finally, they revealed a new direction for education at Duke.</p><p class="brwntextheader"><span class="articletitle"><strong>150 Years of Teacher Preparation</strong></span></p><p class="articletitle"><em>How committed is Duke to the idea of teaching teachers to teach?</em></p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: That sentence in the indenture says a purpose of the university is preparing teachers.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: And that will always be a part of Duke. There will always be discussions of how Duke ought to go about that, and how much emphasis Duke will place on that. I don't see a resurrection of a huge department of education ever at Duke.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: Nor a need for one.</p><p>There's a wonderful group of Duke faculty who, during their time at Duke, have been extremely supportive and insistent that Duke stay involved in teaching. They helped keep teacher preparation alive at a time when it might have been thought that Duke really didn't need to devote resources to it.</p><p class="articletitle"><em>How close did Duke come to that point of not devoting resources to teacher education?</em></p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: There was a time, not that many years ago, where there was some thought that the university would quit preparing teachers at the undergraduate level. But I don't think at any time during the past 150 years has there been any thought of Duke getting out of the business of preparing teachers altogether.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: Right. It was more a matter of what degree of resources are going to be allocated. That's not true just at Duke--that's true at a lot of places. If you look at UNC at Chapel Hill, right now they have no undergraduate secondary teaching program.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: They've moved to all-M.A.T.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: In some ways, Duke was in sync with some national trends.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: One of the things that's been missing for the last fifteen or twenty years or so is that the program in education hasn't been as well integrated with the research and scholarly mission and academic mission of Arts and Sciences as it needs to be.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: But that's changing.</p><p class="articletitle"> </p><p class="articletitle"><em>So the programs are smaller--they're not a "School of Education" or even a department--but, qualitatively, where do you stand?</em></p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: We're producing students who we think are going to be excellent teachers, and have proven to be excellent teachers.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: I don't want to take anything away from any graduate from Duke's former Department of Education, but we've never produced better teachers than we're producing now.</p><p class="brwntextheader"><span class="articletitle"><strong>Teaching Teachers to Teach</strong></span></p><p class="articletitle"><em>Teaching is so much more than standing in front of a classroom and lecturing. What do teachers-to-be have to learn?</em></p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: When we think about how we design a curriculum to teach students to become teachers, we start with awarenesses the students might not have, understandings they might not have. Not only about how children learn, but their own private theories about what teaching is. Both of us have probably spent an awful lot of time in our programs trying to get at these presuppositions that Duke students have about teaching and learning and growing up and developing. A liberal-arts education does a lot to kind of expose all those theories, misconceptions, and assumptions that students make about teaching.For instance, when they use terms like "covering the material." When we're talking about what a good teacher does, they'll say, "Well, she certainly covers all the material that's part of the course." I like to propose the difference between "covering" and "discovering." The idea of good teaching isn't about covering the material, it's about helping students to discover it. In order for them to be great teachers, they're going to have to do a whole lot more than cover the material.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: Teachers are responsible for student learning, not just responsible for delivering the information.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: Let me throw something out on that, Ro. I remember one time visiting a classroom, and I asked the teacher how things were going. She said that things had been going slowly and she was a little bit behind, but now they were going better because there had been a good number of students absent because of the flu, and the fact that they were absent enabled her to catch up in terms of the amount of material that she could cover because there were fewer people there, fewer questions, fewer interruptions.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: There's a whole lot that you have to have to be a good teacher, a whole litany of knowledge you have to have. But you also have to have a connection with your students.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: One of the questions I'll try to reflect back to almost anybody I see who comes and asks me about being a teacher: Have they had any good teachers themselves? I know the answer is going to be yes, that they've had personal experience with the impact that a good teacher can have, and in some ways they want to have that same impact as a teacher themselves.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: In my graduation speech every year, I tell my class that society will never reward teachers in the way that they should be rewarded, either with respect or with monetary reward. But then I tell them, and I firmly believe this, that there is no more important calling. That a teacher has more power to end human suffering than does a doctor, to lift the human spirit than does a minister, and to change civil rights, to change our public discourse, than does a politician or an attorney. Teachers are much more powerful in what they do every day than any of those persons. And there truly is no more important profession.</p><table width="23%" border="0" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="1" align="right"><tbody><tr><td class="brwntextheader" width="100%"><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 224px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/050602/images/educationb.jpg" alt="Teachers’ teachers: Thorne, standing, and Malone" width="224" height="402" border="0" /><p class="caption-text"><p><span style="text-align: -webkit-center;">Teachers' teachers: Thorne, standing, and Malone.</span></p></p></div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="brwntextheader"><span class="articletitle"><strong>Finding and Keeping Teachers</strong></span></p><p class="articletitle"><em>Facing the teacher shortage, how do you bring more people into the profession through the Program in Education or the M.A.T. program?</em></p><p class="articletitle"> </p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: There are several things that have to happen. One is that the perception in the academy of teacher preparation needs to change. We need to think that it's a viable occupation for our best and brightest students. It has to be considered a reasonable choice and a prestigious position.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: It seems to professors, in many cases, that it's an odd choice when one of their better students in their discipline has decided to become a teacher. They see that as something that isn't necessarily a good choice for them.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: And that is coming from a teacher.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: A teacher at the college level. And in many cases, if they do see them as becoming a teacher, it's always that they become a teacher for a few years before they go back to graduate school and get a real job. In some ways, that's the attitude a lot of our students hear from their parents and from faculty members.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: Another thing I believe strongly that we need to do is raise teacher salaries. As long as a man or a woman can not reasonably support a family on a teacher's salary, it's not a viable career choice.</p><p>Students who come into the M.A.T. program typically aren't rich. There's been a small handful of students who have been able to pay their way or their parents have been able to pay their way, but I'm talking four or five over the last thirteen years. M.A.T. students have loans. Huge loans. And typically, they already have undergraduate loans. They come into the program with debt, and they accumulate more debt when they're in the program, and then they enter a profession that is going to pay them, to start, $27,000 a year. That's a problem. Some people--and I am entirely sympathetic to this--say, I would love to do this, but it's not a reasonable return on my investment.</p><p>I think of the other things we could do if we had the budget. We could do more to prepare these guys to teach. We could provide broader experiences, and God knows, it would change the face of who we could admit. Who could come.</p><p class="articletitle"> </p><p class="articletitle"><em>With all the hurdles in mind, who does come?</em></p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: In general, the students we see now who are coming to ask us about what it's like to become a teacher and how to prepare to be a teacher are different from the types of students who were my peers when I was preparing to be a teacher. The types of students we see now seem very committed to issues of equity, issues of social justice, issues of wanting to change the world. And they have an idealism that I think is very refreshing.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: I don't know that I see that as much as you do in the M.A.T. program.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: I don't hear many students saying to me, I need to prepare to be a teacher in case I don't get another kind of job or as a fallback position.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: I don't see those kinds of people either, although when I was in school there were those people: "In case I don't get married at graduation, then I better have a teaching certificate so I have something to do until I get married." That we don't see anymore.</p><p>We put such an emphasis on study within the discipline that the students I see love their academic disciplines. They love mathematics or they love history or they love English literature. And they're very good at it. They don't necessarily want to become a researcher in that field, but they have a love of this topic and they want to share it.</p><p>Those are the students that I see more often. And every year, I see students who would love to go into teaching, but they look--not even so much at the entry-level pay scale of a teacher--they look at the fact that after twenty years they will be making what their peers will be making right out of undergrad school.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: The disparity is just too great. Even if it was different, and there was less of a gap...</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: If you see that, after twenty years I'm going to be making $45,000, that's a disincentive to go into teaching. And I am tired to death of hearing policymakers say we need to quit throwing money at education. Throw some money at teacher preparation. Throw some money at teachers in terms of salaries.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: I think it's really sad when you go to Harris Teeter and you see your own children's teachers bagging groceries. I've seen them at Home Depot, in second jobs. Teaching is a very difficult job in and of itself, but then to have to get a second job....</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: You could live off that salary, but it's difficult to live within the culture, the times, what we expect of a reasonable, middle-class salary.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: Yeah, $200 for a family of four to go to one baseball game. That's a lot of cash.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: You don't do that on a teacher's salary. You just don't.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: But given the parameters and given the constraints of how the profession of teaching is structured in our society, there's still a lot we can do to attract undergraduates to it.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: Absolutely. For a good share of the people who have come through either of our programs, they couldn't imagine doing anything else. They love what they do.</p><p class="brwntextheader"><span class="articletitle"><strong>Testing, Standards, and Accountability</strong></span></p><p class="articletitle"><em>You can't talk about education now without talking about some of the new trends and requirements. How does testing affect what your teachers have to learn, and how they teach?</em></p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: For all of the bad news--and please don't let my graduates read this because they'll all come holler at me--but the standards movement and the accountability movement in North Carolina has been largely a good thing. It doesn't hurt the best teachers. The best teachers who are out there are not hurt by, and they're not really teaching to, a test. That's really for the most part not happening.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: I think some of that "teaching to the test" goes on, but the question is whether that's necessarily all a bad thing.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: Sure. What were they teaching to before? It is absolutely true that we had children who were not learning in the past--who just weren't. We had kids who were being shuffled through, who were not reading at grade level, and [standards] had to happen in order to establish a floor and to raise all children up to a level where they're prepared to learn. Although it has been hugely unpopular among teachers, this kind of accountability measure, this kind of standardizing the curriculum, had to happen.</p><p>And this is not the only thing that had to happen. Teaching to a one-dimensional measurement of student learning is never going to tell the whole story about how children learn or what children learn or what children know and/or are able to do. We need to go far beyond that to a different kind of assessment strategy.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: That's becoming an emerging consensus, that the current accountability programs are having some positive results. But the problem becomes when we see them as an end in themselves, as a be-all and end-all and that somehow by this one measure we have an absolute perfect assessment of what a child's life in school is like. That's what we need to move beyond.</p><p>We need other things. What was the quality of teaching that students had prior to this? Perhaps one of the positive consequences of end-of-grade testing has been that the students in the back of the classroom who were getting absolutely no attention at one time now cannot just be left alone to sit there. Now the teacher has to say, I'm going to be held accountable for how they do.</p><p>Another positive outcome has been that the data were originally gathered in an aggregate form, but then it began to be disaggregated, and you began to see that there were different groups of students that were performing differently as groups. This aggregate data gave rise to the idea that there's this huge achievement gap between African-American students and white students and between Latino students and white students, and that's drawn a lot of attention and focus on that issue that might not have been there had we not had this kind of accountability.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: Now, there's all sorts of bad stuff that happens with accountability standards. We tend to shuffle students out of courses that have an end-of-grade test into other kinds of classes so they're not held in the aggregate numbers. They're put in classes that don't have [end-of-class tests]. And that's horrible. We don't have it right yet.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: No. And there's a good deal of research that shows that the amount of time that's spent on nonreading, nonmath types of learning environments like music and art, special types of classes, science and social studies, is diminished in order to prepare for the test. So there are some positive outcomes, but there are also some things we need to work on.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: We need to look carefully at what we're doing. It's an evolutionary process. In a relatively short time, we've gone from no accountability, and what went on in a classroom was the teacher's business. Now it's in the newspaper--you can find out how teacher X did in this school with this group of kids.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: A big part of our job now is to prepare our teachers for that kind of environment.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: Well, I agree. I hope we continue to figure out the best way to assess student learning and the best way to expand horizons for all students. And to make sure that we're insisting all students achieve.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: I think we're getting closer to that.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: I think we're making progress toward that. I hope we continue to make progress in that direction, but it's not a guarantee.</p><p class="brwntextheader"><em></em><strong>The Ideal</strong></p><p class="brwntextheader"><em>What would "progress" be for education? Progress to--where?</em></p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: Like "no child left behind"?</p><p class="articletitle"><em>Like that. Is it that simple?</em></p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: I think one of the goals is that we have high expectations of every child. That our teachers have a sense that every child can learn. People make a joke like, in Lake Wobegon, "all the children are above average." But we're not really talking about being above average here. We're talking about setting criteria for high performance, and then aiming at that. Then you can raise the bar, and say, Now we've got everybody at this certain level, and now we're going to try to do even better than that.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: It takes a belief that all children are capable of learning.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: That's one of the things we have to do in our program.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: It takes that belief. But I would like to see the day when the public education system in the United States creates a level playing field--</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: That's a good way of putting it.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE:--so that children are not limited by their socioeconomic or family background. Because today they certainly are.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: As you said earlier, it's an evolutionary process. I think we can see that some children who might not have had the opportunities twenty-five or fifty years ago, some of those kids are having opportunities now. Though there does continue to be a huge disparity problem.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe that there is any inner-city school system in the United States where all students are achieving. It's not happening.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: But there are inner-city schools where children are achieving.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: Individual schools, right. And I think that is a change from twenty-five, fifty years ago, when we weren't educating, we didn't have the diversity in those schools, we didn't have students with some of the learning problems--</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: And all the social problems...</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: --and all the social problems, but it is a tragedy and a travesty that if you live in an inner city, and you go to a public school, the chances are pretty damn good that you're not going to be well-educated.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: In many ways, that's what the accountability program is aimed at addressing. That's one of the good things about having Duke students go into teaching. They have a strong liberal-arts background, which I think is important to them to understanding the broader social issues that are involved in the educating of these children, the historical issues, the economic issues. It gives them a perspective that might be a little different from just a technical perspective of "this is the best way to teach this particular lesson." They understand this thing in sort of a more social-human context.</p><p class="articletitle">By that same reasoning, teachers end up having to be so many things every hour of the day in the classroom. Not just teacher, but psychologist, social worker, confidant, juggling all of that and maintaining professionalism and maintaining order in the classroom. Can they be prepared for that?</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: We're asking so much more of teachers than we've asked in years past. School is the largest social construct in which children spend their lives. We have a vacuum in some areas that we expect people to take over. And we have more children coming to school with more social problems, and we're expecting the schools to solve those. Schools are not easy places to be.</p><p class="articletitle"><em>Is that a failing of the schools?</em></p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: We certainly ask too much of schools and teachers. But we have to ask that much of the schools and teachers.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: All of those conditions that created what we think of school now in many ways are conditions that no longer exist. The whole way we think of school will change dramatically in the next few decades, to a much more holistic, multi-service place that involves activities that we think of in some ways now as happening outside of school.</p><p>Right now, we have the school day, and then we have after-school, but in some way they're separate. As school evolves, they'll be places where things happen throughout the day, and we'll see learning as occurring in all those different situations.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: Never before have we tried to educate so many students, and educate them well. We have never attempted to keep everybody in school until twelfth grade. We've never had such rigorous standards as we do now. It's an experiment that we're trying. We're not doing it very well in all areas. But for what we're trying to do, for the lack of resources that we have, and for the fact that education is so politicized, in some ways you have to look at it and say, well, we're doing better than we thought.</p><p class="brwntextheader"><span class="articletitle"><strong>What's Next</strong></span></p><p class="articletitle"><em>You've spoken of Duke's commitment to education over the past 150 years. At the moment, that commitment manifests itself in support for your two smaller but strong programs. What changes are on the horizon?</em></p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: [Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences] Bill Chafe and [Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences] Karla Holloway recognize that our program has an important mission not only in terms of what it offers to Duke's students, but what it offers to the state, regionally, and nationally. They recognize that education is a mechanism for social change and for progress.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: There's a real synergy here at Duke. And the Program in Education, with help from the M.A.T. program, is in a very good position to capitalize on that. There will be a re-energizing in the program, revitalization, with new hires in the very near future of senior scholars who are going to bring in new energy and new leadership to the program.</p><p class="articletitle">MALONE: This is something we've been talking about for the past year--thinking about schools differently. The university is committed to creating a new interdisciplinary entity that would find ways to bring together questions about children and schools that all disciplines have. Whether anthropologists, historians, economists, psychologists, public-policy scholars, bring those people together.</p><p>Part of the interest is that so many of the social issues and social problems that we are currently experiencing, all get played out in the schools. Who socializes children? You have families, you have schools, you have the media. These are the forces that shape their perceptions, their attitudes, who they're going to be, and, in many ways, what our future is going to be.</p><p>There's understanding among people making decisions at Duke that Duke has a responsibility to find ways to affect the experience children have in school. First of all, that we can understand what goes on there, and that we can improve it, strengthen it, and do a better job of having an impact on it. It's not just about preparing teachers, but it's about understanding that whole social context of what children do from seven in the morning until five in the afternoon.</p><p>It's also about the way teaching can be informed by all the scholarship that people are doing, whether it's in economics, English, anthropology, psychology, sociology, medicine, law, or business. All the scholarship of those areas can make teachers' understanding of their own work greater.</p><p class="articletitle">THORNE: How will education change? I think, particularly at Duke, that's it. Education becomes truly an interdisciplinary enterprise. Historians look at what history should be taught and mathematicians look at what mathematics should be taught. But we also have psychologists who look at issues of learning and teaching and cognitive development, and sociologists who look at school transitions and social organizations within schools, and we have engineers who figure out how schools ought most effectively to run, and business schools who look at the organization of schools and how effective those are.</p><p>At Duke and across the nation, it's too important for us not to bring in all of the knowledge that we have from all of those different disciplines and solve the problems that we have with children and schools.</p></td></tr></tbody></table> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2002-06-01T00:00:00-04:00">Saturday, June 1, 2002</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dm-main-images/educationc.jpg" width="620" height="410" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/may-jun-2002" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">May - Jun 2002</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-photo-credit field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Photo Credit:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/photographers/les-todd" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Les Todd</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue<section class="field field-name-field-sub-header field-type-text-long field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Sub-header:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">&quot;One of the questions I&#039;ll try to reflect back to almost anybody I see who comes and asks me about being a teacher: Have they had any good teachers themselves? I know the answer is going to be yes, that they&#039;ve had personal experience with the impact that a good teacher can have, and in some ways they want to have that same impact as a teacher themselves.&quot;</div></div></section> Sat, 01 Jun 2002 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501862 at https://alumni.duke.edu Silver Season for the ADF https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/silver-season-adf <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-rss"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p> </p><table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2"><tbody><tr><td width="631"><table width="209" border="0" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="1" align="right"><tbody><tr><td align="center" width="195"><p><div class="caption caption-center"><div class="caption-width-container" style="width: 376px;"><div class="caption-inner"><img src="/issues/050602/images/depgaz9.jpg" alt="Brass acts: Dorfman and Froot at ADF" width="376" height="255" border="1" /><p class="caption-text"></p><p>Brass acts: Dorfman and Froot at ADF.</p></div></div></div></p></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="articletitle">Celebrating its twenty-fifth year at Duke, the American Dance Festival will offer eight commissioned works and thirty-nine performances on campus June 6 through July 20. In addition, approximately 450 professional and pre-professional dancers from around the world will unite at the ADF School for intensive training in modern dance.</p><p>Professional companies performing this year are: Paul Taylor Dance Company, June 6-8; Shen Wei Dance Arts, June 10-12; Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, June 13-15; Pilobolus Dance Theatre, June 18-22; African American Dance Ensemble, June 24-26; Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, June 27-29; David Dorfman and Dan Froot in Live Sax Acts, July 2-3; Doug Varone and Dancers, July 4-6; Trisha Brown Company, July 11-13; and the Mark Morris Dance Group, July 18-20.</p><p>The ADF was established in 1934 in Bennington, Vermont, with Martha Graham, Hanya Holm, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman as founding artists. Currently under the direction of Charles and Stephanie Reinhart, the ADF has been the site of more than 500 premieres. Major sponsors include the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Phillip Morris Companies, Inc., the City of Durham, The Herald-Sun, and the North Carolina Arts Council, an agency funded by the state and the NEA.</p><p>For tickets, call (919) 684-6402.</p><p> </p></td></tr></tbody></table><!-- #EndEditable --> </div></div></div> <h3 class="field-label"> Published </h3> <span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2002-06-01T00:00:00-04:00">Saturday, June 1, 2002</span><section class="field field-name-field-main-image field-type-image field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Main image:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-none" src="https://alumni.duke.edu/sites/default/files/default_images/dukmag-horizontal-placeholder.jpg" width="238" height="140" alt="" /></figure></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-issue field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Issue:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/issue/may-jun-2002" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">May - Jun 2002</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-photo-credit field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-rss"><h2 class="field-label">Photo Credit:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/magazine/photographers/joe-mineau" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Joe Mineau</a></li></ul></section> <h3 class="field-label"> Featured article </h3> No <h3 class="field-label"> Background color </h3> blue Sat, 01 Jun 2002 08:00:00 +0000 Joseph Sorensen, JOSEPH E. 18501860 at https://alumni.duke.edu