By Ilsa Dohmen, Director of Teaching & Learning
I’m toothing. (Singular). That’s right, as I sit at my desk writing this article I’m undergoing an exciting and unusual change for someone my age: I’m getting a new tooth. It’s a supernumerary molar—a distomolar, to be precise—and the phenomenon occurs in somewhere between 0.1-3.8% of the adult population (according to Nayak, G et al. 2012 article in Dental Research Journal). So I guess that makes me pretty lucky. It’s exciting; I find myself eager to share the news as I pass people on campus. It’s a little painful too. But the soreness serves as a curious reminder of earlier times in my life, when everything felt like it was still coming to be.
Probably like many of you, I vividly remember moments from my first visit to Hillbrook. I’d been hooked. There was something about the way I saw children being on-campus that felt right. Now in my seventh year here, I can better name what that is: valuing relationships and individuals above all, knowing children, and keeping their choice and engagement at the center of learning. What I didn’t see on my first visit, though, is what has kept me at Hillbrook since: valuing adult relationships and individual passions, experience and expertise, while also keeping learning at the center of why we’re here, no matter our age and stage.
In 2012, I was hired by Hillbrook’s new Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) to join the first-ever cohort of Resident Teachers. That August there were four of us, two in lower school and two in middle school. At the time, the CTE had three major goals, to offer speakers to our community, to engage educators in seminars about best practices, and to nurture early-career teachers while individualizing learning for students through the Resident Teacher Program. That first year, teaching alongside Brian Ravizza as a Resident in 7th and 8th grade science, I learned more than I could have ever imagined.
Coming from a background as a classroom researcher, I was accustomed to being one of two teachers in a classroom. I had been trained to co-design and co-teach lessons, under observation, and to measure student learning in lessons with slight variations, in order to test our lab’s hypotheses about what conditions led to the best math and science learning in classrooms around the Bay Area. So the Resident program was just the place for me to lead with comfort in what I knew—co-design, measurement, observation—while stepping into some scary new territory—like growing long-term relationships with adolescent students, and nurturing a love of, and fluency with, science habits and skills that wove throughout a school year and beyond “class time.” My job in that first year was not only to grow into a better advisor and science teacher, but to observe and ask critical questions of my colleagues and the administrators at the school, so we all became increasingly reflective and collaborative.
I’m now in my seventh year working at Hillbrook and have held a number of roles. This year, one of those roles is as Director of Teaching and Learning, which means I oversee the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE), including the now-thriving Resident Teacher Program. We’ve grown in seven years to have eight Resident teachers across lower and middle school each year, and to have had over 30 Resident teachers in total. I’m proud to say it remains a central part of our efforts to nurture a community of lifelong learners here. And I see much more now of the CTE than I did in that first year as a Resident. The Center for Teaching Excellence has given me the opportunity to be a researcher on campus, a co-designer of agile learning spaces and of a new schedule, an observer in Instructional Rounds, a learner about Inclusivity, Diversity, and Equity through SEED protocol groups and through faculty/staff meetings, a feedback-asker and giver, and a co-teacher with colleagues across grade levels and disciplines each year (in science, in advisory and now in Reach Beyond Block). It’s allowed me to participate in an audit of one of our student programs every year, and now to help facilitate those audit teams. It’s encouraged me to pull from my own areas of expertise and passion to design real-world, engaging learning experiences for students off-campus during Reach Beyond Week. It’s supported my own attendance at conferences and classes, as a presenter and as a participant, in topics that have ranged from innovation in leadership to elemental music and movement, from expeditionary learning around Portland, to “Wonder Women” right nearby. It’s also given me the opportunity to help support the passions and interests of colleagues, who we send to literally over a hundred classes, workshops, experiences, and certifications each year.
More than anything, though, the Center for Teaching Excellence has been a philosophical stake, a tether in the fabric of the adult community at Hillbrook that challenges me to be my best self, over and again. Sometimes it’s exciting, like when I’m reading a new book and sharing notes with colleagues (Winners Take All, right now), designing a Reach Beyond Block about something that matters to me, or when I’m leading a tour of visiting educators from Singapore or Kazakhstan. Other times it’s a little painful, like when I’m invited to share about my own privilege or coached to give direct feedback to a colleague with whom I’m upset. So I guess that makes me pretty lucky. After all, this chance to be held in a close community that values adult relationships and individual passions, while keeping learning at the center of why we’re here, no matter our age and stage, that has got to occur in somewhere between 0.1-3.8% of the adult population. It’s the chance to show up each day and feel like my life is still coming to be, new teeth and all.
P.S. If you don’t already, follow the Hillbrook Center for Teaching Excellence on Twitter @HillbrookCTE to learn more about our work.