We Teach
Message From The Headmaster
This fall, as the election season unfolded in its unpredictable way, here at St. Johnsbury Academy our Social Studies teachers gave a series of chapel talks about the history, facts and figures related to elections. Even knowing that only a few of them are of voting age, we wanted our students to encounter the news and opinions they were hearing with a common body of knowledge, and to bring rationality and understanding to a space often occupied by distortion.
We heard from Callahan Beck about Richard Nixon sweating on TV through the presidential debate of 1960–and how that complex interplay between substance and presentation has become ever more difficult since. David Eckhardt had students play a “branches of government” quiz game and later held up an actual ballot to explain the layers of elected officials who have different effects on your daily life. Peter Mantius and Kathryn Lemieux both talked about the Constitution as a living document– “rules not for you, but for our government.” Hank Eaton elucidated the Electoral College; Emmett Quinn talked about conspiratorial thinking; Lucas Weiss explained the Presidential election process and the phases that will happen from now until certification on January 6th. We heard from Steve Levesque about Fannie Lou Hamer and the fight for voting rights–and finally last week he quizzed everyone to see if they had been listening. They had.
Each teacher even-handedly encouraged our students to think critically about what they have been seeing and hearing in these weeks, and impressed upon them the importance of being informed and civically engaged. I’m grateful that we could treat this crucial moment in American politics by following our mission to educate. And I’m proud of our teachers for rising to the occasion.
For what it’s worth, we’ve also been stressing the importance of taking deep breaths and being grateful for our community. This morning I suggested that what we are trying to create in our community is what is needed everywhere. There are too many people in our country–too many Americans–who feel like they are not participating in America’s success or even following its charted course, and for one reason or another feel that they are on the outside looking in.
It is communities like ours that will resist the division that is everywhere, because we know each other, know each other’s value, and will not stand for anyone saying that one or another of us don’t matter.
It’s communities like ours where the poet, the football player, the drummer, the electrician, the chef, the chess master, the dungeon master, the actor, the comic, the singer, the painter, the science olympian and the entrepreneur all sit in one space each morning, all stand to affirm our unity, laugh together, clap for one another, and sing together about being courageous and facing the world and making it better. It is communities like ours that will be most resilient when the call comes to take sides against “others.” There are no “others” here.
I hope that eventually our leaders will help our country to say the same–that no Americans are “other.” Even more, I hope fervently that it can be true. In the meantime: we teach.
Dr. Sharon L. Howell
Headmaster