Nancy Kelley
Former Assistant Head of School, Parent
Unsung Heroines: OPC ’92-95
Penn Charter’s bold decision, after close to three centuries of exclusively male education, to open its revered red front doors to girls is a defining, indeed historical moment in the history of this eminent institution. Like most great moments in history, there are many noteworthy individuals to applaud for this, and many less noticed contributors. . As I reminisce on Penn Charter’s transformation, fond memories are particularly stirred about one group of pathfinders.
Let me set the context. When I arrived at Penn Charter in 1991, the entire upper school was coed. The last all male class had graduated the previous June; there were several women in key teaching and administrative positions, and many proclaimed that the transition to coeducation had been successfully attained. Hardly the case - especially for those young women who comprised only one in three of their class and who every day took their places in classrooms where they were the newly arrived minority. I had the privilege to teach 9th grade history that year and was quickly introduced to one of the most, if not the most, impressive groups of young women I have taught in my three decades of teaching. These young women possessed an inner strength, a deep confidence, a sense of compassion, and an intrepid vision for themselves that was remarkable. Though only fourteen years of age, you could see and feel even then that these young women would soon make formidable contributions to the literary world, medicine, law, business, and perhaps most important, social justice. As a teacher I emphasized that at pivotal moments in history, extraordinary coalitions of activists emerge.
We have experienced this so often… in the 18th century circle of French philosophers, in the framers of the Declaration of Independence, in the leaders of the Civil Rights movement, and in the first young women who entered Penn Charter’s upper school.
Perhaps my most vivid memory of this group is when, after seemingly weeks on end of studying Ancient and Medieval History, I announced that we would have a current events day the following Friday. The students asked to debate the hotly contested topic of the recent public school decision to distribute condoms. Since I had just recently returned from a conference which urged teachers to teach the more subtle and complex issues of arguments rather than having pro/con debates, I assigned students to represent the various opinions on this ever so sensitive issue. The result was a stunning discussion from the diverse perspectives of a local minister, a Planned Parenthood clinic worker, a city politician, several school administrators, and the school nurse. Not surprisingly, the women in the class led the way in the depth of their research and their frankness in speaking on this subject. The next year, these same young women volunteered to present a schoolwide assembly on the distinction between sexual harassment and “joking around” - no easy task to do in any school community.
Without these unflinching young pioneers who entered the upper school in its initial years of co-education and who somehow confidently walked a most challenging tight rope, balancing their femininity and their dynamism with their male peers every single day, Penn Charter would not receive the coeducational kudos it does today. Their leadership and performance in all aspects of school life was exemplary and established a singular model and inspiring vision for the Penn Charter women …and men who would follow.
