Burke.Word

For the past few years I’ve attended the Burke Open House to talk to kids and families thinking about applying.  A common question from parents of prospective applicants is: “What makes Burke different? Why would it be good for my child?”  Why is there a school like Burke?  Where does it come from? What is the promise that Burke and other schools like it are trying to keep?

A couple of weeks  ago, I got an email from David about the death of Ted Sizer.  I wasn’t familiar with the name, and, because I’m a bad email manager, the note moved further down the dark well that is my inbox (not just b/c it was from David ).  Until today.

In the span of his life, from June 23, 1932 to October 21, 2009, Ted Sizer came to be generally recognized as a giant in the positive reform of modern education.   During that time he: taught in the classroom, served as Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, led Phillips Academy Andover as Headmaster, chaired Brown University’s education department. Then, in 1984, Ted founded the Coalition of Essential Schools and served as its director until 1997.  He also established and led the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.  He and his wife founded the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School.  He also co-founded the Forum for Education and Democracy,  To an outsider, any one of these accomplishments seems like more than a lot for one life.

I am less than a layman when it comes to education (including my own!).  But from my way-too-brief glimpse of Ted Sizer’s life and work, it’s apparent that he represents one of the building blocks that underpins what we think about when we think about Burke, as well as one of the lodestars which helps guide the school as it changes, grows and moves toward the future.  In two respects.  Certainly his scholarship and advocacy and the organizations that he created helped pave the way for schools like Burke.  But, just as importantly, the raw activity, movement, variation and creativity of his life serve as a marker for how students (and lesser forms of human life) can learn and grow through questioning, trying and doing.

Enough of my words.  The following excerpt comes from the Coalition of Essential Schools’  letter commemorating the life of Ted Sizer.  It captures for me in large measure where Burke came from, why it’s here, and what it is that we hope it continually becomes:

“The legacy of Ted’s work is affirmed every time students are able to demonstrate to their communities in deep and meaningful ways what they know and can do; every time teachers and students are given time, space, and support to make authentic meaning of the world; every time students are held, respectfully and unwaveringly, to high standards that are appropriate to them as individuals; every time a school faculty convenes to talk in serious, productive ways about students and their work; every time a school community takes seriously that it holds its own destiny in its hands and acts on that responsibility in the spirit of inquiry and democracy. These things happen in schools across this nation and around the world every day because Ted Sizer was with us as connector, persuader, critic, path-clearer, cheerleader, and guiding light.”

Ted Sizer