BrewsterConnections(PDF) - Brewster Academy

Marilyn Shea, Bobcat Since 1987
Academic Dean
My first day at Brewster was truly daunting. I had never taught at a school
that devoted so much time to preparing for the opening of school, and I felt
overwhelmed with it all. I could appreciate how the efforts would make for a
much smoother start to the year for students, but I will never forget the feeling
of struggling to process it all at once. It sticks with me to this day and always
makes me very sensitive to the experience of new faculty.
During my early years I watched the school grow slowly, year by year, but the
real enrollment increases came with the reorganization of the school into the
Model’s small teams of students, which I found to be a wonderful way to work
with students. It allows you to really focus on the students with whom you are
working and allows more time to build relationships.
I have been pleasantly surprised each year to find that I have ample
opportunities to get to know students. Initially, I worried that an administrative
role might limit these opportunities or that my role would become overly
focused on working with students only when they got into trouble,
but this has not been the case. Of course, I am in my element when I
am teaching a class and doing that is one way of staying connected to
students. There is something magic about Brewster’s students. They are
so open and accepting that relationships seem to develop naturally, and
I find myself still very involved in the lives of students and grateful to
have it that way.
Over the years, changes in the school’s physical plant allowed for more
needed classroom space. I was a little saddened to see the familiar
give way to a new look as changes took place, and I still catch myself
reminiscing when I walk past the space that used to be the late Peter
Friend’s classroom or the old computer lab. When I walk into what is
now our Tech Office, I get a twinge of nostalgia remembering this was
the space where I first taught 10th grade English. I can still see Heather
Vaillancourt ‘90 talking about the “Allegory of the Cave” when we read
The Republic or John Gibbs ‘90, Eric Kanov ‘90, and Jon Davenport ’90 working
on a project of Utopian literature. There are so many memories of old rooms
behind new doors.
The growth in facilities hasn’t changed my work as much as technology has,
however. Although the printing press made access to materials easier and did
much to standardize spelling, surely it made the world seem very different to
anyone who lived during its introduction and evolution. Computers and the
Internet have changed how much we can know and how quickly we can access
information, and they have given us completely new ways to acquire learning.
They have changed how we connect to each other in ways that are at once
wonderful and horrifying – at least if you are an old lady! And they change how
I work largely because they keep
changing, so I must, in turn, keep
changing. It’s exciting. And some
days it’s exhausting!
With the arrival of the Model I felt liberated to do so much of what my instincts
had always told me was the best way to teach. At its heart, the Model asserted
that all students can learn if given the right curriculum and materials and the
time needed to learn as well as being frequently assessed to discover what they
have learned and what they still need to master. I disliked the idea that I needed
to fail a few students if my grading was to be taken seriously by colleagues. And
it seemed to me an unfortunate paradox to put a deadline on learning and tell
a student he or she needs to get it right the first time. What was wrong with
letting students get retested? Isn›t the point that you learn? It felt to me as
though schools were places where learning was secondary to the race. So I guess
I was simply already posed to embrace the tenets of the Model. I really found
very little in it that did not reinforce what I already believed. In the early years,
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