ELON FISCHER’S CAVERLY AWARD ACCEPTANCE SPEECH

Dr. Lupini, Dr. Fischer-Mueller, members of the board, colleagues, friends, and family,

I accept this award with the greatest appreciation and as the greatest honor. I invited my parents to today’s ceremony because, for me, this is the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer, the Stanley Cup. There is no more meaningful award that I could win than this. In fact, were I smart, I would probably retire immediately after this ceremony. Actually, several of my colleagues have been subtly suggesting this.

This is a very emotional moment for me, and I won’t be surprised if I shed a few tears before this is over. I also need to say what an honor it is to share the stage with Mr. P, who is not only an outstanding teacher but who has had an outstanding career as a teacher in the Brookline Public Schools. His more than 30 years of service in the Brookline schools is pretty astounding.

Several people in my life are owed a great deal of thanks, and I want to start with them: My wife, Anna, is the reason why I’m able to get up every morning and do the job that I do. She’s my anchor, my muse, and my strength. Emily and Zach, my daughter and son, are probably hoping that I’ll use this opportunity to announce that I’m getting them a puppy. Perhaps someday. When I push myself to become a better teacher, I have them in mind. My parents, Ruth and Newell, who drove up from Philadelphia to share this moment with me, taught me to listen to the stories others tell, and this has always been the centerpiece of my own teaching. And my in-laws, Elly and David, who drove all the way from West Newton, have helped me to learn to value every milestone.

An officemate once referred to John Andrews and myself as “Bert and Ernie.” (That officemate is no longer employed by the Brookline School System.) I’m convinced that John moved to BHS because he knew that his support would enable me to survive the trials and tribulations of the classroom. Our desks sit less than 10 feet apart, yet we share at least 10 e-mails a day. John and I have spent hours and hours and hours talking about teaching, and I’m fond of quoting wise things he’s said. I must also thank Mary Burchenal and Bob Weintraub, who have trusted me more than I ever deserved and encouraged me even when they had no idea what the heck I was doing. When your friends are your bosses, you’ve got a pretty good job. Bob has served as my model, my mentor, and my hero, showing me by example how to be a fully engaged, civic-minded, optimistic, merry prankster. If anyone’s to blame, it’s him. Finally, the person I need to thank most is Margaret Metzger, who showed me how to be a teacher. As my teacher at Brown University, my mentor when I first came to BHS, and as my friend, she’s shown me that teaching is the greatest of intellectual challenges, that it is a philosophical problem that needs to be faced every day, that it’s something that challenges our most strongly-held beliefs on a regular basis. I’m the teacher that I am because of what Margaret has taught me (explicitly and implicitly), and I’ll always be in her debt.

Receiving this award and giving this speech is pretty overwhelming. I feel far too young, far too inexperienced, far too unsuccessful as a teacher to be standing in front of you today.

Previous Caverly winners have spoken about the difficulty of preparing this speech, and with this I greatly concur. Skye Kramer’s invitation asks me to “share my story with friends, colleagues, and fans.” My story. Beth Thompson began her story by describing how in the small town where she grew up in Texas, the weather was always unbearably hot and unpleasant. In Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, where I spent my formative years, it was occasionally humid, and sometimes I had to sleep with a fan on, but this isn’t much of a story. Ric Calleja spent his childhood in Cuba and lived through the communist revolution of Fidel Castro. I, on the other hand, had an aunt and uncle whom we visited in Ft. Lauderdale. Not quite the same. Pat Harrington went to Catholic School and dreamed of one day becoming a saint; I went to Hebrew school and dreamed of Heidi Levine, whom I was too shy to talk to. Ellen Lewis was a member of the Mother Jones Revolutionary League. I played second base for the Hymie’s Deli Mets in the Penn Valley little league. My coaches showed me that I could always get on base by crouching down low, creating what was probably a negative strike zone that no 12-year-old pitcher could ever hit. I played second base and Stephen Spector played shortstop. Stephen Spector was a small kid, and his lack of height earned him the nickname, “Speck.” I was known as the kid who was shorter than a kid who had the nickname “speck.”

I’ve spent a great deal of my life—an extraordinarily great deal of my life—with my nose in a book. Perhaps I could tell you about how I fell in love with Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel and spent the next two months reading all of his novels; or the summer I spent holed up in a dorm room reading George Eliot novels; or about the four years I spent in grad school mastering the entire literary canon; or about how three summers ago I read 8 of Upton Sinclair’s Lanny Budd novels; or how I devoted another entire summer to the novels of Simenon; or how I’m now addicted to pulp fiction. While others keep a diary or journal, I keep a list of books read. Perhaps I could read you that. But I’m not sure that that is a story you’d want to hear.

When Bill and Skye and Bob and Mary hiked up to my office to tell me that I’d been chosen for this year’s award, I didn’t know what to think. I knew who had won the award in the past, and I had—and still have—a hard time seeing myself in that company. What, exactly, is this award for? I decided to do some research. From the Foundation website I learned that “The educators receiving the awards are designated as Ernest R. Caverly Associates in recognition of their dedication to the ideals of Dr. Ernest R. Caverly, a distinguished public school leader, educator, and Brookline Schools Superintendent (1931–1964).” Since I am being recognized for my dedication to these ideals, I figured it would be a good idea to find out what these ideals actually are.

While by all accounts Dr. Caverly was an outstanding Superintendent of the Brookline Public Schools, he was perhaps best known for a position he took in 1938 in an article entitled, “Shall the High School Eliminate its Failures.” In this essay, Caverly took on what was a popular notion in public education at the time: the idea that perhaps for some, a high school education was a waste of time. In an essay entitled, The Education of Every Normal Youth,” Dr. Thomas H. Briggs had written:

“[The goal is high school is] To retain each student until the law of diminishing returns begins to operate, or until he is ready for more independent study in a higher institution; and when it is manifest that he cannot or will not materially profit from further study of what can be offered, [our job is to] eliminate him promptly, as wisely as possible directing him into some other school or into work for which he seems most fit.”

Dr. Caverly found this reprehensible. He wrote in response to Briggs,

“We must find out what these candidates for elimination can and will profit by studying--that is a task for educators. Then we must report to Society that we have some suggestions to offer whereby every member of Society may be adequately served; and Society will listen, and act.”

Caverly was arguing that the job of schools was to adjust its practices to the changing needs to all students. Our job as teachers (he might say) is to develop a curriculum and a pedagogy whereby all can be served. How was this to be accomplished? According to Dr. Caverly’s obituary,

In 1941, Mr. Caverly scrapped Brookline High's rigid academic system, which had a number of curriculums specializing in Latin, science, industrial arts, college preparatory and secretarial skills, for one of "guided electives" affording students considerable choice. English, US history and physical education became the only mandatory courses.

Or so we are lead to believe.

However….

There is potentially darker side of Dr. Caverly that I came across in my research, one that shouldn’t be overlooked.

According to the Harvard Crimson of January 16^th, 1939…..

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January 16, 1939

Sophmore Runs for Brookline School Committee; Calls Members 'Stooges'

Paul Kerins Grows Moustache as He Plans Campaign "With Gloves Off"

NO WRITER ATTRIBUTED

Hurling blistering charges into the Brookline political arena, Paul Kerins '41, who turned 21 three days ago and is growing a moustache to prove it, has launched what he calls a "bitter campaign with the gloves off" for a seat on the Brookline School Committee.

A Government concentrator, Kerins tossed his first bombshell last week when he publicly charged that the "Brookline Stooge Committee" was "a little group of obliging Charley McCarthys toddled on the knee of Mr. Caverly." Ernest R. Caverly is Superintendent of Schools.

Kerins first became interested in Brookline education when he took five years to complete a four-year high school course there. "This is the case with 45 per cent of Brookline's high school students." he stated last night. "This situation is due to inefficiency and incompetence on the part of our school committee. Besides, the annual per capita is $150, the highest in the Commonwealth."

But the youthful crusader hasn't really begun to fight yet, and won't until after midyears. Then he plans to "put pressure on from every angle." On Monday, January 30, at a meeting in Whitney Hall, he will make five "sensational" charges against the school committee.

The source of Brookline's troubles, according to Kerins, has been the surrender of all authority by the school committee to Caverly and Wilfred H. Ringer, principal of Brookline High, who have “hypnotized the staff, the students, and the community into doing their bidding.” “It’s time for us all to wake up to what’s been going on,” insisted Kerins. “What these two men are doing is downright dangerous.”

I’m very taken by this image of the Superintendent and the High School Principal working together as a team of Svengalis, leading the zombie-fied faculty in doing their bidding.

Now, there is every reason in the world to dismiss this politically motivated depiction of Dr. Caverly: the misspelling in the article’s headline; the fact that the article’s author remained anonymous; the fact that Dr. Caverly’s accuser was only 21; and the fact that the charges seem preposterous. But…is there no reason to believe these charges? No reason to suspect that Dr. Caverly’s success was due to his use of dark powers? No reason to believe that this very award celebrates these very same powers?

Well, there’s this:

Around the year 1530, a major revolution in the world of chemistry and medicine was going on. According to Arthur Greenberg’s authoritative history of Chemistry, the science of Alchemy—traditionally focused on turning base metals into gold—moved closer to the scientific mainstream. Alchemy of this day was dominated by two leading scientists, Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, better known as Paracelsus, and his student, Johann Baptist Van Helmont. Paracelcus brought alchemy into the medical realm, replacing herb-based medications with those derived from metals. The ibuprophen we take today is the result of his initial work. The student, Van Helmont, was more interested in psychology. He is best known for developing a form of psychological therapy that derives from Paracelsus’ own theories of metals. Van Helmont devised a therapy in which patients were put in close contact with the “better” metals (including gold) to bring their psyches closer to the idea of happiness, success, and “augustness.” In his treatise, which Greenberg translates as “On the Powers of Metallic Associations,” Van Helmont explains the basic procedures of what might be called “alchemic psychology,” a process that works best (Van Helmont explains) by first putting the patient into a mild trance. That’s right: this alchemist used a form of hypnotism as part of a therapy to treat psyches dominated by the base metals and transform them into psyches dominated by gold. As if by magic. Sound familiar?

And here’s what interests me most: like his teacher, Theophrastus Bombast von Hehenheim, van Helmont also took a more dashing, memorable moniker. According to Greenberg—and I could not make this up if I tried—our friend, Johann Baptist Van Helmont took as his professional, public name, “Caverio.” Cavario? Caverly? Caverly? Cavario? Transformational alchemy? Transformational pedagogy? Coincidence?

There is no, actual, historical evidence to link this Cavario and our own Dr. Caverly, but who’s to say? Geneology.com traces Dr. Caverly’s geneology back three generations, but no further. And such a genealogical connection certainly might not prove that Dr. Caverly used the powers of alchemy to transform Brookline Public Schools, but who’s to say? And who is to say that the spirit of Dr. Caverly/Dr. Cavario doesn’t continue to haunt the halls of BHS today? And who is to say that THIS is not why I’ve been selected to receive this award?

I started my teaching career in Cuyahoga Falls High School, just outside of Akron, Ohio, where alchemy was NOT being practiced. The ink on my Ivy League teaching degree was barely dry when I stepped into my first classroom, and, of course, like most first year teachers, I was flattened. By Thanksgiving, I was ready to quit. At the end of the first semester, I received my first-ever teacher evaluation from my Principal, Jim Schulz. Here’s what he wrote (and I quote):

“Elon Fischer seems to have a lot of interesting ideas about teaching, and I want to encourage him in his efforts to develop as a teacher. However, there are some immediate classroom concerns that he needs to attend to: a) classroom bulletin boards are less than inspiring; they do not create a positive learning environment for the students. b) The majority of students in the classes I observed have not covered their textbooks, as required by school policy. c) Unless it is a dire emergency, students should not be issued bathroom passes but be encouraged instead to utilize the facilities during passing time. d) students should be discouraged from fraternizing during the class period. School should be treated as a work environment, and students should conduct themselves accordingly. I’m certain that once Elon Fischer addresses these problems, he will find it much easier to conduct his classes in a successful manner.”

At the beginning of the next school year, all of my students’ textbooks were covered. With the help of the mother of a colleague, an elementary school teacher, I managed to construct passable bulletin boards, though I’m not sure if they created a positive learning environment. I had trained my students to sneak through the hallways to use the restrooms (they were afraid to go there between classes; that’s when the smokers took over the stalls); I’m not sure I made much progress on the fraternizing, though. Five days before the beginning of the next school year—what would have been my third (and probably last) as a teacher—Margaret Metzger called and told me about the job opening at Brookline High.

What I discovered was a world very different than the one I’d left behind in Cuyahoga Falls. I had a homeroom that first year at BHS, and I soon learned that students didn’t always remain in homeroom for the entire homeroom block. In other words, teachers let the kids out early. Given my training at Cuyahoga Falls, I was flustered. I wrote a dumb e-mail on the Staff Conference asking why “no one else” was doing their job. No one responded; many probably thought, “This kid will never last.” That year I learned that BHS was a school of “guidelines,” not rules, and that a primary goal of the attendance policy was to encourage student-teacher discussions over issues of attendance. I was a bit astonished by the number of such discussions and meetings and contracts and negotiations that went on. How is it possible that this school worked?

Fourteen years later, I’m still asking the same question: how can this school possibly work? We’ve just started the NEASC self-study process, and I don’t want to short change the process in any way, but I can already tell you much of what we’ll learn: the curriculum is not always perfectly aligned vertically, horizontally, or diagonally; strict rubrics (where they exist) are not completely adhered to; many (including myself) are not really all that sure what all of the state standards even are. AND…we’ve never been a better school. When I came to BHS in 1997, we were already a great school. 14 years later, we’re even better. And next year, we’ll be even better than we are now.

Why? How is this possible? Alchemy. The secret that Dr. Caverly knew so well. What else could it be?

Another thing I learned my first few months at BHS: students didn’t refer to their English courses (or many of their other courses) by name; instead, they spoke of taking “Mr. V” or “Metzger” or “Tobin” or “Bacote,” or “Howard” or “Cunningham” or “Dudley” or “Leverach.” At department meetings, the English teachers spoke of grand visions. Margaret explained that on essays, students should “call in the cosmos.” Steve Tipton was figuring out ways to teach semiotics and Einstein’s theory of Relativity to teenagers; Liz Kean told her classes that their papers would earn A’s only if their words “sang”; Maurine Tobin knew so much about ancient literature that she was invited by NPR to speak as an expert; George refused to allow his students to sit in a circle because “this wasn’t the UN”. At faculty meetings, Bob Weintraub would begin with quotations from Dostoevsky, Kierkegart, and Oliver Wendel Holmes. He didn’t spend a lot of time on book covers and bulletin boards.

All of these teachers were my idols and my mentors, but none of them told me how to teach. Instead, watching them, and listening to the students talking about their classes, I learned what it meant to be a teacher in the true Caverly/Cavario sense of the term: an alchemist, a magician, a hypnotist.

Here’s what I mean:

For starters, I learned how to look inside a student and see the germ of a student who was far better than the one sitting right in front of me: the gold-laden in the lead. I learned to see their best selves hidden behind their insecurities and teen-age emotions and academic weaknesses, glimpsing within them the people they might one day become. I learned that being a teacher at BHS meant convincing each student that he or she could become this person, should become this person, and that being this teacher meant that I should cajole that person into being. I learned that teaching was about my students, about helping them become students and then, eventually, adults. I learned that perhaps my tightly-held beliefs about bathroom breaks and deadlines might not be so important.

Over time, as my apprenticeship continued, I learned to concoct grand schemes for projects and curricula and pedagogy that were challenging and complicated and sometimes dramatic, keeping me fully engaged, and sometimes my students, too. I changed my grading scale so that students could only get one of three grades: A, B, or revise. One year I tried to teach my students about classical music, Modern art, and contemporary dance; more recently I’ve asked them to write 50 page novellas and create wikis and set up their own reading lists as if they were taking college courses. Some of these plans even worked! Why? Well, I’m not totally sure. My sense, though, is that the grandiosity swept me and the students into this realm of the magical where alchemical transformation just might be possible.

Mary Burchenal taught me the mantra, “relationship before task,” and I learned that if I could find a way to get students to meet with me outside of class, I’d have a whole lot easier time teaching them inside of class; that if I could learn a little about who each student was—besides whether they knew how to use a comma correctly or not, or whether they could get their homework to me on time or not—I would be much better able to succeed as a teacher. Over the years, I’ve found that I actually like most of my students. While much of the adult world finds teenagers terrifying, I find them pretty funny a lot of the time. I also learned that when they do ridiculous things, laughing is often more successful than yelling. Relationships are what have enabled me to get my students to do the work, to write the third (or fourth or fifth) revision, to try another approach rather than giving up.

I’ve also learned to be wary of easy formulas, rigid rubrics, and scientifically-tested pedagogies. We work in an age of metrics, where teaching is often thought of as a craft—rather than as an art—as a behavior that should produce clearly measurable outcomes and align with tests and standards and rubrics. However, teachers—good teachers—know that teaching is far more than this. We know it’s not about following the written procedures for converting base lead into silver or aluminum or tin. We know that it’s about the ancient art of producing shiny, glimmering gold even if gold isn’t what’s on the MCAS or the SATs or the state frameworks. We meet Dr. Caverly’s high standards only when we look at the potential gold inside each of our students and try to figure out the formula, the spell, the incantation that just might bring it alive.

For these past fourteen years, BHS has been my El Dorado, my city of gold. When I moved to Massachusetts, I had only one close friend. This school took me in like family and has been my family ever since. I’ve told many of you my suspicion that telepathically, Margaret had something to do with the fact that I met my wife, Anna, at the end of my first year here. When my daughter Emily was born, I brought her in to a department meeting, and not knowing what else to do, I passed her around for the entire group to hold. So many of you have encouraged me over the years: Laurie Sheffield, Rachel Reagan, Christina Andersen, Joyce Tobias, Scott Moore, Kathy Hitchcock, Ann Collins, Angela Neilson, Gaelen Harrington, Debbie Quitt, Liz Kean, Maurine Tobin, Nancy Guttman, and Mike Franz. I’ve been inspired by Lynn Modell’s dance productions, by Mary Mastandrea’s outrageous takes on Shakespeare, and by the way Lisa Redding’s 9^th grade math students adore her. (Yes, I’ve noticed.) I’ve been roused when Chris Vick begins each class by saying, “Gentlemen and Ladies, it’s a pleasure to be in the company of scholars,” and by the way Roger Grande has his students build yurts in the atrium. I’ve been given great advice by Rosemary Pierson, Lindsay Murphy, Diane Lande, Anthony Meyer, Cy Yesner, and Gretchen Underwood. And I’ve seen Jimmy Cradle and Elaine Lombardi wield more supernatural power over children with the swing of their index fingers than Prospero ever dreamed of. For me, this is a magical place, a perfect place to make magic. I know less about the elementary schools, but I know that alchemy is going on there, too: given the amount of strange machinery in Mark Goldner’s room, something paranormal must be going on there. A plaque outside of Jeri Hammond’s room states, “Thank you for teaching our kids to fly.” Very suspicious. Francesca Stark nails sneakers to her classroom walls. And the way Amy Neale has consistently found the perfect books for Emily and Zach to read clearly indicates ESP. And I’m sure there is more—lots more.

Most days, I love being “Mister Fischer”—the guy who gets to work at 7:20, parks on Davis Ave., checks his mail, walks up the four flights of stairs, slips on his blue blazer, and gets down to work. On days that I’m out of school, I’ve heard that John has put on my blazer and tried to be Mr. Fischer, too, knowing how much fun it is. In this golden realm, being Mister Fischer means being the guy who can sometimes fix the printer, the guy to ask about the bookroom, or the video cameras, or the Internet. At 7:45, Mister Fischer is the guy that 9^th graders from the African American Scholars Program come to visit and report on their weekly travails, and at 8:20 he’s the guy who’s greeted by drowsy 12^th graders who, though not having done their assignments due for the day’s class, don’t seem to mind dragging themselves up to the fourth floor to see him. I’ve enjoyed being this guy, this alchemist, this teacher. And I owe a great deal of thanks to the Brookline Public School System—and to Dr. Ernest R. Caverly--for allowing me to perform this sort of magic.

Thank you.