Page 19 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 94, No. 1 Fall 2013

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conversations about teaching. We hoped that was going
to happen, but to see it happen and to have veteran teach-
ers talk about it happening is really exciting.”
Second-year humanities teaching fellow Max Gordon
describes his relationship with mentor Relinde de Greef
as a collaborative one, in which he is able to question
methods of teaching practice and de Greef, in turn, is able
to reflect on her own practice as she works to explain
those methods. Both say it results in a better experience
for students, as Hirschfeld envisioned.
“I had a lot of good teachers in college and in high
school,” says Gordon, a graduate of Phillips Exeter
Academy and Carnegie Mellon University, “but learning
about the profession makes you respect how hard the
really good teachers work. So much goes into running a
good class. It doesn’t just happen all the time. It takes a
lot of planning and buildup. Seeing what good teaching
looks like makes me think about being a teenager like
my students are and wishing I had known all this when
I was their age. Seeing how much goes into it increases
your respect for teachers.”
With excitement brewing around the application of
new approaches to teaching and learning, Hirschfeld is
quick to caution that this is not an indictment of previous
practices, but rather an attempt to inject the newest
methodology through professional development. For
alumni who may question if these new practices are a
rejection of the education they received as SPS students,
and to the parents who may question the logic of inserting
inexperienced teachers into their children’s lives, Hirsch-
feld speaks of the need for schools to evolve.
“At St. Paul’s and places like it, we talk really casually
in my view about being leading boarding schools,” the
Rector says. “Ensuring the very best teaching here and
institutionalizing a dialogue about teaching and best prac-
tices in the classroom and outside the classroom – we
should be doing that. To me, we are doing what we have
always been doing because we think it’s best for our
students. That our relevance will ultimately depend
on the quality of teaching is a really safe, smart bet. I
make no assumptions about why we are great. Let’s just
make sure we are great and make sure we are providing
great teaching.
“For a faculty so successful in their careers, this can
be hard. We want to become, at the end of the day, a much
more reflective institution and culture. It’s hard to crit-
ically look at what we do. But again, that’s a key element
of good teaching, being able to think about what and why,
and how you’re doing what you’re doing. My job is to pro-
vide an environment where that can happen.”
Addressing the issue of parents who might question why
they are paying for their children to be taught, in some
cases, by inexperienced teachers, Gordon speaks of the
slow introduction of the fellows to the classroom and also
of his ability to relate to the students. While he is a teacher,
he is also a student at the same time. Feuerstein says she
understands why there could be concern, but speaks of the
student-centered learning endorsed by the Penn faculty,
concepts about which the fellows are constantly thinking.
“I think it’s a legitimate concern,” Feuerstein says. “But
I would say everybody has to start somewhere, and these
are the best first days I could have had as a budding teach-
er. Everyone in this program really wants to devote their
lives to teaching and learning. I would want that type of
teacher to teach my child, someone who wants to learn
to be better.”
Despite the positive reviews of the PRMT thus far, there
are no plans to expand, primarily because the adminis-
trators who steward the program are pleased with the
current structure.
“We have schools clamoring to get involved, but we
think the program is at its ideal size,” says Penn pro-
fessor Christopher Pupik Dean, the assistant director of
the PRMT. “We would like to see it grow somehow; it’s a
very productive model. But part of the effectiveness of
this is the relatively small size of the cohort.”
PETER FINGER
Second-year fellow Max Gordon meets weekly with his mentor, Relinde de Greef.