Fall/Winter 2010 - Pingry School

As a teacher of creative writing who
is always looking for new approaches
to creative thinking, English teacher
Dr. Susan Dineen attended a creativity
workshop in Barcelona; her
fellowship also connected creativity
and global outreach, two areas that
are being examined in Pingry’s
Curriculum Review. The workshop,
taught by novelist Shelley Berc and
artist Alejandro Fogel, provided ideas
that can be used in group settings.
“I’ve already used one of the workshop
activities in my classes—introductions
not by introducing yourself,
but by interviewing another person
and then taking on that person’s persona.
When you start using ‘I,’ you’re
forced to become more creative about
finding an imaginative trajectory
among the different parts of another
person’s story,” Dr. Dineen says.
“You’re also pushed into becoming
more empathic as you start identifying
with someone different from
yourself,” she adds. Other activities
were designed to make participants
more observant and aware, sparking
new ideas and projects.
She plans to incorporate more drawing
and automatic writing in her
spring semester Creative Writing
classes, activities in which students
draw or write continuously for about
10 minutes after getting simple
prompts. “Sometimes the results
are amazing,” she says.
“The workshop taught a very important
lesson about creativity—you
have to remind yourself to look
around to notice things. I think my
students will benefit from these exercises
that make you look at the world
in new ways,” Dr. Dineen says.
Teaching her students about environmental
sustainability and being
responsible about the world’s resources
are of utmost importance to Grade 1
teacher Heather Smith-Willis P ’16,
who has been using her fellowship
to participate in monthly activities
related to gardening, composting,
Heather Smith-Willis P ’16 at the Atlanta Botanical Garden.
water conservation, and growing
medicinal herbs and plants.
In July 2009, she attended the
NAIS (National Association of
Independent Schools) Leadership &
Sustainability Conference at the
Woodward Academy in Atlanta,
where she formulated a plan for
bringing the information back to
Pingry. “After visiting a landfill in
Georgia, I came up with the theme
of ‘There is No Away.’ I started
thinking about what the word ‘away’
means to children and generated two
essential questions for first-grade students
to see if they really understand
what happens to their garbage—how
do we dispose of things, and what
happens to them” she explains.
Because she continued to ask “then
what happens” the students realized
that waste can easily accumulate,
which has motivated them to be
more conscious about waste management.
One immediate change in the
fall of 2009 was to replace plastic
bags with reusable bags to deliver
afternoon snacks—a decision that
saved over 2,700 plastic bags during
one school year.
Since then, Ms. Smith-Willis has
bought children’s books and handson
science and garden activities, and
visited science centers, nature centers,
botanical gardens, and schools
in Georgia, as well as the New York
Academy of Sciences. “I want to start
teaching students at a very young age
to be good stewards of the earth and
their community. My ultimate goal
is to get the Kitchen Garden up and
running [see article on page 17] and
help to change the students’ and
teachers’ habits toward our renewable
resources,” she says.
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fall/winter 2010