First, came a tragedy. In 1980, Andrew Warren Lurie, a Brookline High School graduate in his freshman year at the University of Chicago, died of an infection at school.
Years later, his parents, Bob and Syrul Lurie, came to Bob Weintraub, the headmaster of the high school, and explained that they wanted to create a memorial space at the high school in Andrew’s honor. They offered to pay to construct and furnish a beautiful library — named for Andrew — in School Within a School (SWS), which Andrew had attended.
The question was: could a public school use private money to do this kind of project? The Luries and Weintraub cited endowments for public colleges and universities as examples of spending private money for public institutions. The superintendent of schools, James Walsh, and the school committee supported the idea.
The Andrew Lurie Library exists to this day. And the project had an added effect: it sparked an idea. Weintraub recalls Andrew’s father, the late Bob Lurie, saying, “You know, if we can raise money for a room, we can probably raise private money for other stuff you need, Bob.”
A team from BHS visited the Boston Latin School and spoke with the headmaster, Mike Contompasis, and the school’s very sophisticated development team. Boston Latin actively solicited and cultivated their alumni — which included some very prominent and generous folks — and had built a multi-million dollar endowment. The Brookline team left Boston Latin saying, “We can do this.”
As this idea was germinating, two renowned senior teachers at the high school – Margaret Metzger and Gayle Davis — approached Weintraub to tell him that they were nearing retirement, and felt a need to create ways for seasoned staff to ease the entry for newcomers. Long story short, the plan for “Teachers Mentoring Teachers” was born. The teachers would be released from one of their classes so they could devote time to developing and running it, and their professional lives would be enriched. It wouldn’t be very expensive. Weintraub figured it would cost around $25,000. But that was money he didn’t have.
So he spoke with Bob Lurie and another prominent BHS grad and Brookline citizen, Arthur Segel, and a team began to coalesce around a goal — starting a private, non-profit foundation to support innovation at the high school. The Brookline Education Foundation already existed and was widely beloved for the awards and recognition it gave teachers — but its grants tended to be small.
“This was a very different idea,” Weintraub says. “This was to do big stuff, in the spirit of Brookline’s innovative history.”
“Local Solutions to National Education Challenges” became the mantra that defined the project. Brookline High would address important educational problems and develop compelling programs that, if validated, could be disseminated nationally. “Through this foundation, we can improve public education and simultaneously polish the mystique of Brookline High,” Weintraub argued.
After copious work by Lurie, Segel, and others, the Brookline High 21st Century Fund was launched with a gala in December 1998 at the home of a team member. The launch featured a star-studded list of speakers who graduated from Brookline High, including Mike Wallace, Mike Dukakis, Conan O’Brien, and Bob Kraft. More than 50 donors attended and kicked in $10,000 each. With $550,000 in hand, the “BHS 21st Century Fund” was born.
The Fund didn’t have much structure at the beginning, Weintraub says; it tended to generate ideas informally, focusing on problems and how to solve them. Teachers Mentoring Teachers was the first program and proof of concept. It was evaluated and validated, research conducted on the program was published in prominent national educational journals, and the program leaders — Margaret Metzger and Gayle Davis — presented to school systems across the country. Both Metzger and Davis acknowledged that their engagement with the program prolonged their careers at Brookline High by many years.
The Fund — now known as The BHS Innovation Fund — is celebrating its 20th anniversary. It has created 15 programs, including the nationally significant African-American and Latino Scholars Program, the Social Justice Leadership Program, and BHS Tutorial.
The Tutorial Program, which has also received national recognition, began with a research project. Weintraub saw that the only academic support/tutoring available at The High School was through the special education program. The “experiment” removed 40 students — the experimental group — from the special education Learning Centers and placed them with regular classroom teachers for tutoring. Forty other students — the control group — with similar academic profiles remained in the Learning Centers. The format for the services was the same — five students met with a tutor every day for one class period. Data was gathered over two years.
The results demonstrated that for students with mild learning issues, tutoring with regular classroom teachers — math, social studies, world languages, and science — was more successful in terms of academic data. Students in The Tutorial Program also reported feeling better about going into a mainstream classroom than a special education classroom.
For teachers, the program provided some professional variation, working with a small group of students in a different way, once a day. And for parents, it offered tutoring that they could not afford otherwise. Good for students; good for teachers; and good for parents.
In 2017, the Fund’s name was changed to the Brookline High School Innovation Fund, to more accurately reflect its mission. As it celebrates its 20-year anniversary, this mission continues to be not only relevant, but also paramount in supporting Brookline High School students as they enter today’s world.
How does a writing teacher return to the “beginner’s mind” of students, and how does doing so influence his teaching practice? Ben Berman shares how the frustrations he experienced and the lessons he learned when he tried to write a screenplay changed the way he approaches teaching writing to his high school students.
Despite the fact that I don’t own a TV, don’t subscribe to Netflix, haven’t been to a movie theater in years, and wouldn’t know a slug line if it slugged me in the face, I decided to add a screenplay unit to my creative writing class this year.
To prepare for this, I applied for a grant from the Brookline, Massachusetts High School’s BHS Innovation Fund to spend my summer working on my own original screenplay. Not only would this teach me a little something about the genre, I thought, but if I happened to pen a big hit I just might never have to cover lunch duty again.
As a poet, I had very little experience writing dialogue or plotting stories into three acts. But returning to beginner’s mind offered me many insights into the challenges that my students—who are often writing creatively for the first time—tend to face.
I have tried to describe, here, the messy evolution of my screenplay and how it’s changed my approach to teaching creative writing.
Writing the Screenplay
DRAFT 1: Transformations
My first idea involved a character that feels lost in the modern world until he starts helping out at a funeral home. I was particularly interested in dramatizing an inner transformation through motifs and spent a week meticulously plotting the story out and storyboarding some of the scenes.
But when I actually started to write the screenplay, I ran into the same problem that my students often face—my characters weren’t interested in doing what I wanted them to do. I’d planned their lives before I’d taken the time to get to know them, and I soon realized that I would need to start over with a new premise and new process.
DRAFT 2: Are We Here Yet?
A few days later, I ran into a former student who had recently graduated from college and was struggling to figure out whether to accept a job offer or spend the summer travelling abroad. She asked me for my advice. I asked her if she wanted to be the main character in my screenplay.
I started wondering what would happen if people didn’t actually have to make big life choices—what if my character could implant part of her soul into a pod and then send that pod abroad while she started her career? Would this solve my character’s problem, I wondered, or simply create new ones?
After working with this sci-fi premise for a little over a week and discussing it with everyone I knew, a screenwriter friend asked if I understood the whole budget aspect of films. What do you mean? I asked. If you set ten minutes of your film abroad, he told me, you add $100,000 to your budget.
And I realized that I was still writing with the freedom of a poet, rather than attending to the realities of this new genre.
DRAFT 3: The Fad of the Land
The next day, I was at the farmer’s market with my daughters when I saw a sign for Paleo Cookies. Paleo cookies? I thought. What Paleolithic ancestor ate vegan chocolate chip cookies sweetened with agave nectar?
I decided to start over entirely and write a comedy about two rival groups—the Paleos and the Kaleos—at a farmer’s market.
I knew right away that this was a dumb idea—that I was writing a skit and not a feature-length film—but sometimes pursuing dumb ideas is an essential part of the creative process. It pressures us into a minor existential crisis, forces us to step back and reconsider our connection to our work.
And as I was thinking about why people would want to return to the traditional diets of our ancestors, I started contemplating my own relationship to the modern world, how the experiences that have felt most transformative to me—serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer and becoming a father—both involved a return to simpler ways of living.
DRAFT 4: Vicarious 1
All of a sudden, I started to see some connections and patterns in my drafts and realized that what I really wanted to explore was this: In what ways do the modern technological advances in this world help us feel more fulfilled? In what ways do they only exacerbate our loneliness?
I decided, then, to return to my previous sci-fi premise. My next draft was called Vicarious and was about a woman trying to save her family’s pod service company from being sold to a hedonistic rival group.
This draft seemed to be going quite swimmingly—I felt deeply connected to the existential anxiety of my characters and had written half the screenplay when I realized that while I’d surrounded my protagonist with all sorts of interesting, quirky and troubled characters, she was primarily a witness to the world around her—no struggles, desires or conflicts—and therefore no potential for an interesting arc.
I was disappointed that I was going to have to start over again—but I knew, too, that a heightened awareness of problems in a creative work is always a healthy sign.
DRAFT 5: Vicarious 2
So after three weeks of getting to know my main character, I decided to get rid of her. I kept the sci-fi premise but chose one of my minor characters to be my new protagonist—someone who uses her pod (now called Vikes) to avoid and escape—and someone with the desire to change, as well. Finally, I had both a plot and main character with potential, and the first twenty pages of the screenplay flew out of me in less than a week.
The only problem, now, was that summer was over.
Some Takeaways
I went into this project thinking that it would teach me the craft behind screenwriting. And in many ways it did. But the real question that emerged for me was this: How do we help students embrace the incredibly messy process of creative work?
You Say Revise, I Say Revive
It took me five different story treatments and well over 200 pages of writing to net the first act of a screenplay. Yet each attempt was a better failure than the previous one. And that’s not just because I’m a really bad screenwriter—every poem I’ve ever published has a hundred pages of failed drafts behind it.
And yet something that felt like such a natural part of the process to me—starting over—was something that my students always seemed to resist.
One strategy that I tried out this year was having my students write vision statements (sometimes called What-the-Hell-Am-I-Doing Statements) after they completed their first drafts.
One student, for example, had written a ten-page screenplay about the fallout between three friends after two of them begin dating. In her first draft, she followed the arc of the character that became the third wheel. But in her vision statement, her story was exploring what it means to follow your heart even if it hurts someone else.
When we sat down to conference and recognized this disconnect, it was like a split-screen scene out of Annie Hall.
Now you just have to switch main characters and rewrite the story, I said.
Now I have to switch main characters and rewrite the story??!! she said.
Once she accepted this, she produced a much more realized draft. And I realized how important it is to build enough time into my units for deep revisions, to teach students the difference between finding material and shaping material, and to convince them that starting over is not a step backward but a step forward in a better direction.
Breaking Those Seas Frozen Inside Our Soul
But if I was going to ask my students to commit to deep revisions, I needed to help them think of their work, as Frost wrote, as (a screen)play for mortal stakes.
Another student, for example, turned in a first draft that was fifteen pages long and followed eleven different characters. When we sat down to conference, I suggested that she, umm, perhaps, choose one or two characters to focus on.
I can’t, she said.
Why not? I asked.
I can’t decide which one, she said.
And then suddenly she was on the verge of tears, talking about the college process and having to decide between theater and field hockey, and these two very different boys that she kinda liked, and how she never really knows what to do, and how her plot (or total lack thereof) was just one more example of her inability to ever make a decision about anything.
After depleting our class’ PTO-sponsored box of tissues, we stepped back and realized that maybe what she really needed to do was transfer her own personal struggles onto her characters and let them deal.
She wrote twenty brilliant new pages over the weekend, following the story of a young actor struggling to decide whether to accept a role in a movie in which he’d have to appear nude.
When we first sat down to conference, I had thought she needed help understanding the art of rising action; it turned out that she just needed to find a theme that she cared deeply about.
Putting My Grades Where My Mouth Is
If I wanted my students to embrace the messiness of the creative process, I needed to shift how I was grading them and put much more weight on process, learning, and habits of mind.
I had one student, for example, who decided to adapt his favorite sci-fi book into a screenplay. His final product was pretty good, but it wasn’t until I read his reflection—where he documented the struggles of his process—that I was truly able to see just how much he had learned. Here is a paragraph from his reflection:
I began with the main events that I knew I wanted to transfer from the book to my screenplay, and wrote them down on a timeline. I then got more and more specific, choosing what events I wanted to translate, and ordering them in a way that both made sense and followed the three-act structure that movies so often do (in a book, for example, climaxes are not built up to as dramatically as in a movie). This turned out to spawn a sort of liar’s paradox, because whether a specific event could be included often depended on if there was a place for it, but where an event was to go often depended on whether another event could be included. In addition, the interwoven subplots and their subtle interactions with the main plot made the process somewhat like that of putting together a jigsaw puzzle made of shape-shifting pieces.
In creative projects, our learning is often inversely related to our success. My best students weren’t necessarily the ones who were producing the most polished pieces—they were the ones coming away from their experiences with the most nuanced understanding of the challenges they had faced.
Conclusion
Slogging through my own screenplay made me realize that while I was offering students many opportunities to be creative, I wasn’t really teaching them how to be creative. I was showing them what good writing (the noun) looked like, but I wasn’t teaching them what good writing (the verb) looked like.
Even in my creative writing classes, I tended to offer students neat packages of learning with a focus on product over process: here is some content, here are some skills, here is an assignment that will measure your learning.
But the creative process looks more like this: here is a setback, here is a minor epiphany in middle of the night, here is where you need to start over.
Just the other day, I received the following email from one of my students on the verge of completing her first draft of a twenty-page screenplay.
I just woke up in the middle of the night (it’s 3:25 am) and realized I’m not really passionate about my story. I think it strayed way too far from what I originally wanted to accomplish because looking back that goal was a little too big and overwhelming. So now it’s turned into something completely different that I barely have any personal connection to. So I’m kind of freaking out here. I want to rewrite it but I’m worried it’s too late. What should I do? Ahhhh!!!
And as messed up as this sounds, I almost cried tears of joy.
Teaching craft is essential. But if I want my students to think of writing as a lifelong apprenticeship, what I really need is to teach them to embrace the spirit of what Beckett meant when he said, Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Ben Berman began his teaching career as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Zimbabwe. He then spent eight years teaching in the Boston schools and has spent the past eight years at Brookline High School in Massachusetts, where he teaches creative writing and helps run the Capstone program. His first book, Strange Borderlands, (Able Muse Press, 2013) won the Peace Corps Award for Best Book of Poetry, was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Awards, and received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. His new collection, Figuring in the Figure, is recently out from Able Muse Press. Berman is the poetry editor at Solstice Literary Magazine and lives in the Boston area with his wife and daughters.
From left to right, a vibrant printed gown, a strapless fuchsia dress with organza overlay and a brocade romper, sketched by sophomore Alison Kushner, add to her fashion design collection.
Her hands continue to sew the dress, tailoring it in the seconds before the model takes the stage. She works fast, ready to move on to several other pieces soon to be displayed to the waiting audience.
Last year, the high school’s 21st Century Fund, which has been responsible for supporting numerous classes and programs at the high school already (such as EPIC and African-American and Latino Scholars) started a new program called the Innovation Fellowship. The fund picks a teacher and allows him or her to teach one fewer class, giving them the opportunity to create new, interesting and innovative options for students to explore and potentially pursue.
English teacher Elon Fischer is this year’s fellow for the program. After hearing of a largely untapped interest in fashion at the high school, Fischer decided to use the resources of his fellowship to help provide more class options to reflect students’ creativity.
After finding a few interested students, he contacted the House of Colors, an arts studio on Washington Street, and got the names of more high school students who work with the studio.
“I called the woman who runs it, Michelle, and we met and we talked, and she introduced me to students in her class,” Fischer said. “That’s how I met with Ali[son] and Basya and we just started talking about things we could do. It was kind of fun.”
According to Michelle Muhlbaum-Aviksis, the owner of the House of Colors, she has worked with students since they were in elementary school.
“I was known mostly to the elementary school students because it’s very easy to access the elementary schools in Brookline,” Muhlbaum-Aviksis said. “So, now the [art students] are getting older and are now in high school.”
After noticing this opportunity in a newsletter, sophomore Alison Kushner began working on the project. Kushner was sewing and sketching from a very young age, learning from her grandmother. After going to the House of Colors, Kushner obtained new skills and applied them to actual fashion shows.
From the group of students interested in fashion design, formed a club. After getting in contact with Kushner, Fischer proposed trying to create a class that reflected her passion with the existing club, and has helped pursue the project.
“He’s been really great with getting us meetings with different teachers like Ms. Brennan, Ms. Mitchell, and organizing different events and meetings,” Kushner said. “He really cares about getting this elective. It’s not just us students; he clearly wants to help us get this elective to be a reality.”
Sophomore Basya Klein, also an aspiring designer, was introduced to the project by Kushner. Klein has been interning for former Project Runway designer Nathalia JMag and working on her portfolio, creating collections that she broadcasts on social media. She explained the obstacles the group faced at first, such as how realistic the demographic for a potential class would be.
“At first, it was a little bit difficult because we did have a different ideas of us coming from the fashion world, and [Fischer] coming from ‘Well how do we get things done?’ side, but once we sat down and talked a few times, we figured out where each of us was at,” Klein said. “It was great.”
In addition to trying to start a class, the club has already put on displays of Kushner’s and Klein’s pieces outside the MLK room.
“[Fischer] is really really good at getting stuff done,” Klein said, “So, that’s been really useful. For someone who doesn’t do fashion design, he’s very passionate about helping us and getting to this place in the school.”
The group hopes to start the class during the 2018-2019 school year. According to Fischer, elective classes are extremely important and valuable to the high school.
“I think if it was a class, it would serve a lot of students who are not currently being served as well as they could,” Fischer said. “The electives in my mind are some of the best parts in this school.”
Kushner emphasizes that anyone can do fashion.
“Fashion isn’t just a cookie-cutter model of a person,” Kushner said. “It’s for anyone who’s interested. You can be male, female, gender fluid. You can be a freshman or senior; it doesn’t matter who you are, it just matters that you have a passion for it.”
PROVIDED BY ALISON KUSHNER
Iman Khan, Arts Writing Editor
Social studies teacher Stephanie Hunt has taken on the additional role of teaching in the African American Latino Scholars Program. Hunt carries an enthusiasm about the program as she prompts her students to think about their own identity as scholars.
What is your position?
I am part time in the social studies department and part time working with the scholars program. I am currently teaching the sophomore scholars seminar.
What was the process of getting selected for that role?
I had applied for the scholars coordinator position and it worked out where Dr. Lemel was hired and there was money in the budget to bring on another teacher in a part time fashion so my love for scholars was alive and it is still present so it made sense for me to take this opportunity and even though it wasn’t the opportunity that I had initially sought, it was a great opportunity to still be connect with the program.
What do you do in a day to day class?
The sophomores get PSAT help twice a week and then the other two meetings they are with me in seminar. Currently we are looking at the identity of a scholar and my goal is to provide them with a more comprehensive view on what a scholar looks like and to provide them with examples of scholars that look like them and that have similar experience, obstacles, and successes that they do. So right now it’s all about exposure and defining or even redefining what it means to be a scholar and what it means to be a pioneer in your community
Do you think teaching scholars classes has affected how you teach your other classes?
I think what has had an effect on me is last year Dean Poon and Ms. Ramos came up with this idea of the identity curriculum. It’s about getting the students more connected with what they are learning whether it be in history, english, math and science. The goal is for students to feel like they are connected and represented in what they learn in the classroom and I think that has definitely impacted my view of curriculum. With scholars I have more flexibility to play with things, but even with my modern world history classes I feel like when I am looking at my curriculum I am thinking “Okay, in what way can we bridge the past and the present. In what way can we bridge these subjects with who our students are”.
What are you hopes for the future of scholars?
My hope is that more students know what the scholars program is. I fear that the broader community only knows it by name and does not know enough about what they do, who they are, and what their accomplishments are. My hope is more visibility. I would love scholars to get involved in other programs as well. I want the program to grow. If the program grows, that means that more and more students are hitting the requirements. Our expectations aren’t lowering, but students are meeting them and that’s a testament to the support staff that work with scholars and a testament to the students that continuously are bringing each other up and helping each other succeed.
Lauren Mahoney, Sports Writing Editor
Some of the recently hired teachers have had little teaching experience, yet the school has consistently been highly ranked; US News and World Report stated it is 23rd in Massachusetts in 2013.
Headmaster Deborah Holman said the school, when hiring, focuses on the quality of the teaching by prospective teachers.
“We aim to hire the best teacher who is the best match for that program and that teaching position at the time.” She said that experience can range from one year to 20. “You have to think about the composition of the department already. Does the department have a bunch of folks in their 40s and older, and you want to bring in someone in their 20s, just to do some balancing?”
Holman said high-quality teachers can have varying degrees of experience.
“Sometimes a quite together, thoughtful, new teacher who maybe has one year of experience shows a ton of promise,” Holman said. “We might make a decision to say that’s worth it for us, because this person brings these different characteristics. Therefore, the department head would have to commit to supporting that person very, very heavily if they’re new to the teaching profession as well as new to Brookline High School.”
Mathematics Curriculum Coordinator Joshua Paris said his department’s hiring process, which he said resembles that of the other departments, starts with posting a position’s availability on the website SchoolSpring. He then goes through the applicants and chooses 10-15 out of 50-60, on average, to be reviewed by a committee of four to five teachers and himself.
The committee, according to Paris, then selects five to 10 teachers to interview, and to four of the remaining teachers usually asked to teach a class at the school. In the past, Paris said, he has seen videos of teachers or gone to visit them if they could not come to the school.
Holman said she wants to always be available to observe these teaching sessions because she will have a fresh perspective on the candidate, whom the hiring committee already knows from his or her interview and resume.
One or two of the candidates are chosen to be interviewed by Holman in the final step of the decision process, according to Paris.
“I won’t repeat the interview that the department interview committee had. I want to converse with the person and find out why they’re interested in Brookline High School specifically, who they are as a
person. I’ll talk to them about favorite books that they read, things in education that they’re particularly interested in,” Holman said. “I’m asking questions to see if they are a reflective teacher, or if my sense is that they think they have all the right answers.”
She also says she wants to get a sense of their teaching, the way they interact with kids, and their overall personality. She often asks about past situations.
Paris said he looks for regional, ethnic and experiential diversity when he hires teachers.
“I think more experienced teachers and newer teachers have different things to offer the school. I like to create a balance of those,” Paris said. “I might look at what type of person I think could enhance the department. Do they have a perspective that we don’t necessarily have that might push us in a certain direction?”
The school offers the Teachers Mentoring Teachers program to teachers new to Brookline, according to Paris. The program is currently run by math teacher Meghan Kennedy-Justice and social studies teacher Robert Grant. The program has new teachers discuss their experiences. In addition, they are given teacher mentors and they observe other teachers’ classes.
Holman said the program was created by the 21st Century Fund in the late 1990s.
“It was the idea of how you can get new teachers who come into the high school acclimated and oriented to not just teaching in a classroom, but the Brookline High School and Brookline community culture,” Holman said.
According to English Curriculum Coordinator Mary Burchenal, not all teachers are eligible for the program. Teachers who teach less than half-time and long-term substitutes who are not at the school for a full year are not included in the program. She said these teachers may have unofficial mentors, although overall, they do get less support.
Burchenal said this is a difficult place to be a new teacher.
“There are a lot of really great teachers here. Kids have high expectations, parents have high expectations, department heads have high expectations, colleagues have high expectations,” she said. “Although everybody is very understanding of a new teacher’s dilemma, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a challenge every day to plan every day, teach every day and have all these expectations surrounding you.”
Holman said she looks to hire teachers who strive to self-improve.
“If you get, collectively, a teaching staff, which we do not have, that is pretty self-satisfied, that’s not a lot of fun,” Holman said.
She said she will not hire a teacher who is not open to feedback from others or is not willing to help all of his or her students.
“Every kid who shows up in your classroom in September, regardless of who they are, what strengths and challenges they have, where they’re from, you support all of those kids,” she said.
Paris said there are benefits to hiring both new and experienced math teachers.
“To be a good teacher is a mix of an inherent energy and passion that you have for teaching, for math and for working with teenagers. Starting from there, I think high-quality educators learn how to take those ideals and implement them in the classroom. An experienced teacher has already figured out how to do that,” Paris said. “Their classroom management skills are usually excellent. The way they write lessons is well-defined. Newer teachers have to learn that, because that comes from experience, but what you get is that idealism and energy that I want all of our teachers to have.”
“I am going to college because of the Brookline High School Tutorial. The program saved my academic life; it’s as simple as that.”
— Danny
A Massachusetts high school demonstrates that a mainstream academic support program for students with mild learning problems can help motivate students to learn and improve their academic performance as well as promise long-term financial savings at a time when special education budgets are increasing dramatically.
refocused and distracted, Danny was diagnosed with a learning disability during middle school. That diagnosis meant that Danny was placed in the special education program when he enrolled as a student at Brookline High School in suburban Boston, Massachusetts. By his sophomore year, he was struggling to pass his courses and complained to his mother that he was unhappy with being in the high school’s learning center for special education students.
JULIE JOYAL MOWSCHENSON is a teacher, vice chair of the 21st Century Fund at Brookline High School and director of the Premedical Summer Institute at Harvard Medical SchooL ROBERT J. WEINTRAUB is a teacher, headmaster of Brookline High School and trustee of the College Board
“I didn’t have a learning disability, “he says. “I just couldn’t focus, and didn’t know why.” In 2002, during his junior year, his mother enrolled him in Brookline High School’s new Tutorial Program, an alternative to the more traditional special education learning center. The Tutorial serves students with learning disabilities, replacing conventional special education support with academic guidance from regular classroom teachers. Tutorial students meet daily with a team of two teachers — usually one from the humanities and the other from math/science – in a regular C-block class. Meeting with regular academic teachers allows students like Danny to escape the stigma often associated with special education. These students have greater access to the general curriculum, prepare for the state-mandated standardized test required for graduation, and feel more like an integral part of the mainstream school community. While enrolled in the program, Danny’s confidence and performance improved, and he made honor roll for the first time. He has already been on the dean’s list for three semesters in college.
Educators’ initial sense that too many students were being diagnosed with learning disabilities led to the creation of Brookline’s innovative Tutorial Program in 2002. The Tutorial offered an alternative to a system that was stigmatizing too many students and costing too much money. Brookline High Schools is now better able to address the needs of students defined as special education students by moving them into a mainstream academic support program. At the same time, the program offers teachers a new, inspiring, and reinvigorating means of interacting with students and sharing their love of the subjects they teach. Parents also see the positive effects in their children’s intellectual self-confidence and their ability to succeed in mainstream academics.
The Tutorial corrected a system that was stigmatizing too many students and costing too much money.
At BHS, over 100 students have left special education for the Tutorial. As the Tutorial becomes more established in the school, this promises a long-term shift in moving special education dollars into the regular education budget.
In recent years, many students have been diagnosed with disabilities because this was too often the only way they could receive academic support services. BHS psychologists reported, for instance, that they were at times ambivalent about diagnosing disabilities. In order to receive an Individual Education Plan (IEP), a student must have a diagnosed disability and must not be making “effective progress” in school. Students might well need assistance, but not necessarily “specialized instruction” provided by special education staff. The psychologists wanted to help these students and thus recommended special education services. The psychologists also reported that they felt pressure to recommend IEPs so that students could receive accommodations on standardized tests like the SAT (Miranda and Goldberg 2003). This dynamic is especially prevalent in more affluent communities where there is intense competitive pressure among students and their parents. As a result, the number of students on IEPs and 504 Plans is large and growing.
Educators, policy makers, scholars, and practitioners have long debated the most effective way to educate special needs students, both in financial and academic terms. Since the 1997 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a consensus has been growing that students are best and most efficiently served by having access to the mainstream general education curriculum. As the National Center for Educational Restructuring and Inclusion has found, students with disabilities in inclusive, integrated classrooms show academic gains in a number of areas, including improved performance on standardized tests, mastery of IEP goals, higher grades, on-task behavior, and increased motivation to learn. They also show better postgraduation outcomes, such as employment, postsecondary education, and income. Research shows that the benefits of inclusive classrooms reach beyond the academics, allowing children who are mainstreamed to feel that they are part of the community instead of being segregated from their peers (Hehir 2006).
HOW IT WORKS
The idea for the Tutorial Program originated in a visit to Oxford University in 2002. As the headmaster of a large urban-suburban high school, Robert Weintraub (one of the authors) was impressed by the content-based tutorial style of teaching at Oxford and felt that, with some adaptation, a tutorial could be a powerful model for helping students who struggle academically. During the Oxford visit, Weintraub envisioned an alternative and effective way to support students, allowing them to succeed academically in the mainstream, alleviating the stigma commonly associated with special education, reducing paperwork, increasing teacher morale, and saving the district money over time.
The BHS Tutorial establishes teams of two academic teachers, pairing a teacher from the humanities with one from mathematics or the sciences. Each two-person team is assigned 10 students for the school year, matching student needs with teacher strengths. The students meet with their Tutorial teachers for one, 50-minute period. Teachers monitor the students’ academic lives as they help students set goals, establish benchmarks, focus on content in specific academic areas, check in with the students’ other teachers, and communicate with parents. Students receive one academic credit for the course.
Another important ingredient in the Tutorial recipe is the availability of teachers beyond the two on a student’s team. If, for example, a student needs to prepare for a test in a world language and there is no world language teacher on the student’s Tutorial team, the student can go to an adjacent room where a world language teacher is available. Six Tutorial teachers are available during each instructional block.
RADICAL CHANGE
The Tutorial Program represents a radical change in the structure and organization of the school. With increasing interest in educating students with disabilities in inclusive settings and with federal requirements mandating that all students achieve high academic standards, BHS identified an opportunity to restructure its approach to special education. The Learning Center provides “specialized instruction” for students with mild learning disabilities. It is a skill-based program in which certified special education teachers follow each student’s IEP and tailor the curriculum accordingly.
This change was fueled by our growing sense that too many students were being diagnosed with learning disabilities and our skepticism about the efficacy of “specialized instruction” for students with mild learning issues. Before the Tutorial Program, there was no formal instructional support — outside of special education — during the school day for students struggling with subject-specific issues. Parents often expressed concern about this. While appreciating the excellent work done by the special educators in the learning centers, students and parents asked for help in the content areas that defined the heart of a strong academic high school: math, science, world languages, English, and history. They wanted teacher/tutors to preview their academic work and to reinforce the instruction of their classroom teachers. Content specialists were not available in the Learning Center, as is the case at most public high schools.
It became dear, in short, that many students needed content-based support. The fundamental innovation of the BHS Tutorial, therefore, is that it stresses subject-specific support rather than generalized “study skills and learning strategies.” If a student needs help in Spanish, the Tutorial will get them a Spanish teacher; if he needs help in science, Tutorial gets him a science teacher.
FUNDING THE PILOT
But how can a public high school, with always constrained budgets, spend $150,000 to launch a new pilot program, paying eight Tutorial teachers, a program leader, and researchers? Innovation requires venture capital.
Brookline is fortunate to have the BHS 21st Century Fund, a nonprofit organization founded in 1998 by a dedicated group of alumni, parents, educators,and philanthropic members of the community, which provided the funds. “Our goal is to serve as a sustainable source of funding for innovative programming at the high school. We are a venture capital fund that supports and helps facilitate local solutions to national challenges in public education,” said Tony Friscia, the fund’s chair.
The fundamental innovation of the Tutorial, therefore, is that it stresses subject-specific support rather than generalized “study skills and learning strategies.”
The 21st Century Fund enables BHS to explore bold, pioneering programs that address the challenges confronting public education nationwide. BHS is the perfect place to try new ideas, an ideal laboratory for innovation. Our students represent 76 nations and a full spectrum of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. Not unlike other large diverse high schools, many BHS students achieve at high levels, while others struggle. Supporting high achievement across the spectrum of the student body is a fundamental expectation of public education and a critical goal of the fund.
The investments of the fund have met with an impressive return, financially, academically, and professionally. Even in an area as seemingly inconsequential as paperwork, for example, the Tutorial Program has made a significant impact. Millions of dollars are spent each year in this country on documentation to comply with current special education regulations. Problems with paperwork can result in lawsuits. In addition, paperwork places a heavy burden on teachers who already have too little time to devote to students. Special education teachers spend on average five hours a week completing forms and administrative paperwork, about the same amount of time they spend preparing lessons. Many special education teachers feel the job now requires “a Ph.D. in paperwork” (Shorr 2006).
In addition to its immediate benefits for students, therefore, the Tutorial also addresses the issue of teacher retention and recruitment by providing new professional opportunities. Participating in the Tutorial involves time and commitment on the part of the teachers, but the Tutorial work is different from work associated with teaching regular classes and therefore provides welcome variation. Teachers also appreciate the opportunity to work closely and develop strong relationships with a small group of students. Finally, they enjoy the opportunity to develop collegial relationships with staff from other departments. In part, because of the Tutorial Program, teacher attrition at BHS is one-third the national average.
The Tutorial experience also has a positive effect on teachers’ course loads, enabling them to teach four regular classes instead of five; the fifth assignment is the Tutorial. For teachers, this is a major improvement in their working conditions and an important change in their professional responsibilities. With five classes, they were responsible for about 100 students — planning and preparing for classes, correcting and grading student papers, providing extra help, interacting with colleagues about the students they share, communicating with parents, and teaching classes. Teachers spend at least 15 minutes a week grading papers for each student they teach. For the 20 students in the fifth class, that saves about five hours of work each week.
Teachers’ responses to the Tutorial have been enthusiastic. “I think the Tutorial is one of the most successful programs at BHS. It provides students with content-based tutoring within a formal structure,” said one history teacher. `All teachers provide kids with ‘extra help,’ but that is so much more difficult to schedule during a busy school day. The magic of the Tutorial is that we see the kids every day for an hour for thisvery important supplementary academic support.”
A math teacher said, “The Tutorial experience has been enriching because it has given me a greater sense ofwhat the whole school is about, rather than just my subject. I find it interesting to see what the students are working on, and I find it fulfilling intellectually.”
In addition to students and teachers, parents constitute a third group that has voiced its enthusiastic support for the Tutorial Program. This is important, not least because educators understand that parents are an essential constituency. Parents have reported a positive effect on their children’s academic self-confidence. The Tutorial has helped de-stigmatize students’ learning problems. “All Oliver wanted was to go mainstream,” said the mother of the graduating senior. “He did not want to be in a `Sped’ or special education program. He found that demoralizing.”
Another parent reported that her daughter had been “totally disorganized.” The Tutorial helped her become organized without the extensive testing and labeling associated with special education. “The Tutorial experience really put all her pieces together and saved her. She established strong relationships with her Tutorial teachers, and she would not have graduated from high school without the support of the program.” Parents are also appreciative that the program saves them money on private tutoring.
EVALUATING THE TUTORIAL
External evaluators from the Harvard Graduate School of Education found that Tutorial students improved their grades, test scores, academic self-confidence, and organizational skills as much or more than students from the traditional special education learning center. The evaluation done in 2004 concluded that the direct academic support from content teachers was a contributing factor to the higher grades of these students and that the Tutorial Program “constitutes a compelling alternative to the more traditional approaches to special education — and offers effective ways of addressing many of the issues that continue to frustrate special education programs in a public school setting” (Hehir et al. 2004).
The evaluation focused on 80 randomly selected students, 40 who remained in the special education learning center and 40 who joined the Tutorial. Evaluators examined student academic performance, looking at four academic measures — state assessment scores, PSAT scores, SAT scores, and grades. They also looked at qualitative differences in the two programs. They collected data from classroom observations, teacher interviews, student focus groups, parent surveys, current and previous IEPs and 504 plans of students, as well as student transcripts.
“The magic of the Tutorial is that we see the kids every day for an hour for this very important supplementary academic support.”
In an interview after completing his study, evaluator Thomas Hehir reiterated his sense of the success of the program. “The BHS Tutorial is based on the premise that what these kids really need is high-quality instruction by teachers who have the content knowledge. All school districts struggle to improve the academic performance of disabled kids. It is critical to give students real solutions that have a high degree of promise… we have found this solution in the Tutorial Program at BHS,” he said.
The Tutorial Program had only 40 students when it was launched in 2002. Now, Tutorial has more than 200 students and is fully supported by the high school budget. When the Tutorial began six years ago, 260 students were enrolled in the learning center; today that number has dropped to 160 students. Tutorial’s growth — after it was validated — required a shift in funding from the venture capital of the 21st Century Fund to the budget of the Brookline Public Schools. Instead of creating a burden on the school budget, the Tutorial Program gave the school greater flexibility in allocating resources and actually reduced the special education budget. There were eight Learning Center teachers before the Tutorial; now there are five, a movement of $150,000 from the special education to regular education budget.
In Brookline, the school budget for special education has been steadily increasing. Between 2002 and 2007, the special education funding went from $10 million, or 20% of the school budget, to almost $16 million, or 25%. The Tutorial Program is a legitimate and compelling alternative to special education for many students. Over time, as more and more students and parents choose the Tutorial, fewer students will be enrolled in special education. That is already the case at BHS, where almost 100 students have left special education for the Tutorial. Funds have moved from special education to regular education. Over time, with fewer students in special education, the “special education bureaucracy” — staff that does the testing, conducts the IEP meetings, and spends hours on paperwork — will shrink, providing a real savings for the school budget.
Researchers have validated our belief that students with mild learning issues benefit more from subject-based tutoring by regular education teachers than from special instruction by certified special education teachers. This conclusion has revolutionary implicadons for all public schools because these effects need not be unique to Brookline High. Schools across the country can implement similar programs with equal success. Ultimately, the Tutorial is surprisingly simple: It asks regular classroom teachers to tutor kids who have a variety of learning needs. And it works.
- Hehir, Thomas. New Directions in Special Education: Eliminating Ableism in Policy and Practice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Education Press, 2006.
- Hehir, Thomas, Allison Gruner, Joanne Karger, and Lauren Katzman. “Brookline High School Tutorial Program: Year 2 Evaluation Report.” Manuscript, Harvard School of Education, August 16, 2004.
- Miranda, Helena, and Arnie L. Goldberg. “Brookline Tutorial Program Evaluation Report for the 2002-2003 Academic Year.” Manuscript, Boston College, September 3, 2003.
- Shorr, Pamela Wheaton. “Special Ed’s Greatest Challenges and Solutions.” District Administration 42 (May 2006): 48-53.
Beyond Special Education: A New Vision of Academic Support
By Julie Joyal Mowschenson and Robert J. Weintraub
Phi Beta Kappa. Downloaded from SagePub.com
