Teachers who periodically have the chance to step outside the classroom, who can pause to explore their subject or some other area of interest, become stronger teachers for the experience. The Academy recognizes this, and alumni/ae, parents and friends have long supported professional development funds at Exeter. These funds allow instructors to become learners themselves, to develop skills and interests of their own as well as programs that benefit the school and other communities.

One goal of the Academy Master Plan (AMP) is to significantly increase the pool of professional development funds. In an increasingly competitive recruiting environment, such funds will help Exeter retain its superb instructors and attract a new generation of master teachers. The following four profiles of Academy instructors illustrate how investments in the personal and professional growth of its faculty members make Exeter a richer place for all.

Physics instructor A.J. Cosgrove, who has taught at Exeter since 1992, recalls his students consistently asking to do projects involving robotics, and his desire to accommodate their common interest. Now, thanks to professional development opportunities that gave A.J. the time to develop new skills and a new course, he can and does.

In the spring of 1999, at Principal Ty Tingley’s suggestion, A.J. attended a national robotics competition in Florida where he met seasoned robotics teachers and suppliers of relevant hardware and software. The following winter, A.J. accepted five students for a field course in robotics, an extra, fifth course in his already demanding teaching load and one in which he was himself as much student as teacher. During a fall term sabbatical in 2000, A.J. studied more robotics, and a summer grant for professional development in 2002 allowed A.J. to further refine his course instead of working his usual summer job. “I couldn’t have developed a course like this anywhere else,” he says. “The fall sabbatical was productive in terms of rest and robotics, and since I was able to immediately apply what I had learned to the following term’s class, we accomplished three times as much work as we had the winter before.” Two full sections of robotics now make up half of A.J.’s regular four-course load during the winter term.

Robotics students at Exeter undertake projects that are typical of undergraduate engineering labs. From the first day of class, they are building circuits, using various sensors and programming, all within a robotic interface. “This class gives kids an opportunity to build things,” says A.J, “an opportunity that isn’t available to them in many other courses at Exeter.” The Goldstein Fund, a discretionary fund administered by the science department, has enabled A.J. to build a state of the art robotics lab and purchase equipment for individual projects as needs arise. “Without adequate funding, we wouldn’t be able to pursue the new and advanced topics that we do,” says A.J., “or begin to have the flexibility in our curriculum that we have.”

For A.J., ownership of a course such as this one is valuable. “Creating this course has forced me to be a learner again, which is a healthy thing for a teacher,” he says. “As I built my own robots, I made the same mistakes the students make, and it has been helpful to keep that in mind as I teach the class. I’m more patient and aware of the time it takes to do things—especially for the first time.”

Last summer, English instructor Becky Moore used a professional development summer grant to attend two five-day-long writing seminars held at Bard and Skidmore Colleges, respectively. She wrote for five hours a day, by hand. “During the school year, I spend most of my time observing and editing others’ work,” she says. “I had not written a story or poem of my own in years.” Becky brought home several notebooks of writings and more than a few ideas about teaching. Becky, who has taught at Exeter since 1990, now treats the first weeks of her English courses in a new way, emphasizing in-class writing and poetry.

At the request of colleagues, Becky has compiled and distributed a collection of writing ideas gleaned from the workshops. Some of these have proved especially helpful to Becky at the beginning of the term, when class rosters can change and students new to Harkness classes can be shy. For example, she might read a poem aloud to the class, then ask her students to write it out from memory. “Nobody gets it word for word,” she says, “but as the students read their versions around the table, the meaning of the poem emerges in another vocabulary. We get a sense of how much a poem is enlarged by our own memories and added inferences, and we know a lot about the poem by the time we’ve gone around the table. This way, students get to know each other intellectually around texts of their own words, avoiding some of the stiffness of new discussion groups.”

Becky might also ask her students to choose any line from the poem as a first line of their own, or she might ask them to imitate the poem’s form. “Asking students to write a certain kind of poem is an alternative to the more open-ended—and sometimes daunting—personal narrative assignments that we usually give,” she says. Having recently mined her own experience for subject material, Becky is sensitive to the fact that sometimes students’ most significant stories are not the ones they are ready to tell. But for the stories Exonians are ready to tell, says Becky, “we have gatherings like weekly Meditation in which to share our writing, and places where our voices are welcome. We are so fortunate.”

Chair of the health education department Rob Morris has two pet projects: supporting teenagers who choose to live substance free, and teaching character through sports. Says Rob: “I wanted to teach at a boarding school because I wanted to connect with kids in the classroom, through sports and in the dorm.” Rob has done all three for nearly 11 years. “You can make a connection that lasts a lifetime, and you feel you can really make a difference,” he adds. Professional development funds from Exeter have enabled Rob to research and promote both issues on campus and at conferences nationwide. Whether teaching, advising or coaching, Rob hopes to help students make healthy decisions.

Rob has succeeded in doing this through his grassroots program, Leaders at Exeter Abstaining from Drugs (L.E.A.D.), a network of students who choose not to use alcohol or drugs. “Starting L.E.A.D. was a way to recognize and reinforce the positive choices that many students are making,” says Rob. “This is especially valuable in a society where the kids making poor choices are the ones getting all the press.” Students from among L.E.A.D.’s 134 members meet weekly for informal discussions and are available to support their peers in the dorms. Says Rob, “These are upbeat kids who choose not to use alcohol or drugs for any number of reasons—family values, involvement in sports or some prior experience with substance abuse.” Rob has made presentations on how to plan, implement and nurture a program like L.E.A.D. at two national conferences, and he is working hard to promote the inclusion of a non-user component in New Futures, a New Hampshire substance use reduction program. Rob is also teaching a new senior elective that he designed: “The Human Pursuit of Euphoria” is an in-depth study of the brain chemistry of addiction, and why we choose to alter our consciousness.

As to his other passion, Rob, a member of and presenter for a national program called Character and Sport Initiative (CSI), recently used summer grant support to research and plan a resource guide for coaches who want to foster character through sports. This work in progress will include relevant titles, websites, organizations, conferences and speakers and will, Rob hopes, ultimately become a formal program about sportsmanship.

Rob says his professional development experiences have changed his approach to health education. “I used to focus on the negative,” he says. “It never dawned on me to talk about and highlight the people who don’t need intervention.” This fall, Rob received the Outstanding Professional Award for Health from the New Hampshire Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance in recognition of his “exemplary teaching in this discipline.”

Although it has been three years since biology instructor Sydnee Goddard used a summer grant to attend a workshop at the Island School on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera, the experience still resonates for her, both personally and professionally. She has incorporated much of the experience into her classes at Exeter, and Sydnee was so taken with the then-new Island School and its mission that she plans to spend part of her sabbatical this year visiting the school in session.

The Island School offers students an opportunity to spend a semester participating in long-term environmental and cultural projects such as developing an artificial reef, creating educational programs in local schools or developing a farmable strain of red snapper. Students and faculty are responsible for the physical upkeep of the school, which attempts to be as self-sufficient as possible. “The Island School is an amazing place in the middle of a Third World country,” says Sydnee. “While the school’s philosophy of learning dovetails nicely with Exeter’s, its focus is more environmentally ambitious and community service oriented.”

At the ten-day conference on Eleuthera, Sydnee and representatives from other secondary schools helped develop the Island School’s curriculum while evaluating potential partnerships with their own institutions. “We really lived the program,” she says. “We exercised together in the morning, learned to kayak and scuba dive, took on chores around campus, went on field trips and slept in bunks in the dorms—we were going non-stop.” Although the experience was physically and emotionally challenging, Sydnee found herself thinking: “This is the way science should be taught.”

For Sydnee, being able to go on such a trip has definitely enriched her teaching. “Although I have always taught a unit on reef ecosystems,” she says, “it was so valuable to actually see the coral bleaching, to see juvenile conchs being harvested despite regulations against it. When I teach marine biology now, I try to focus on our own local habitats, and it has so much more meaning to me.”

Sydnee has long been passionate about marine biology, animal behavior and hands-on science. She teaches popular electives in the first two disciplines and has made ample use of the third in her efforts to pass those passions on to her biology students over the past 11 years—often on 6 a.m. field trips. “Our students constantly awe me with their intellect and curiosity,” says Sydnee, who is grateful for the chance to design her own animal behavior course. Sydnee appreciates the fact that Exeter devotes financial resources to teacher travel and the development of new ideas: Fossil hunting trips to Florida and Texas, and desert exploration and bird watching in Nevada have been instrumental to developing Sydnee’s curricula over the years. “I have met teachers from other schools who feel financially strapped, but not at Exeter,” says Sydnee. “It is wonderful that the school supports teachers in their efforts to grow professionally.”