US Life

It's Saturday, April 6, 4:29 p.m. I'm sitting at my desk at Penn Charter, watching the JV baseball game out my window, across the street, on the sparkling new Palaia Field. What fun the opening ceremony was! Talking with current students and parents, and reconnecting with OPCs and parents of OPCs, was so enjoyable that I was hard-pressed to grab some popcorn and tromp back inside to write this newsletter.

Finally, it feels like spring. Outside of my office window, the elm tree in the front circle is about to unfurl its leaves, and in my garden at home, the daffodils and grape hyacinths are brightly abloom. I remember clearly this time last year, April 2018: Darryl Ford asked me to serve as acting Upper School director. Devoted to the school and interested in being a school director, I excitedly agreed.

Darryl told me my job as acting Upper School director was to "keep the boat afloat" and "keep the trains running," and so I did, all the while musing about my own vision for the division, should I be fortunate enough to earn the permanent position. With two search firms aiding the school in a national search and 75 fellow applicants, I had no expectation that I would indeed become Penn Charter's next Upper School director. (To read my application materials, please see the links at the bottom of this column.)

Vision

From last April to this April, my life is both wildly different and very much this same. Officially ensconced as the Upper School director, I am now pivoting from keeping "the trains running" to advancing the vision. In many ways, that is easy — because I served on the committee that forged the 2013 Strategic Vision, and I believe in it.

Reflecting upon the seal every Thursday morning, I have been both heartened to work at a school whose values align so closely with mine and struck by the symmetry between the seal's symbolism and my vision for the Upper School:

• As the Greek words on the open book indicate, the Upper School must be a place where we "love one another," even those who are different and those with whom we feel ideologically opposed. Only by loving each other can we knit together a cohesive community.
• As the book itself symbolizes, we are committed to the life of the mind and scholarship, to inquiry and ideas and learning.
• To maximize learning, we place a premium on "good instruction," from hiring consummate instructors, to creating our own curricula, to offering a wealth of professional development opportunities.
• Finally, we are grounded in the vision of our founder and of our Quaker ideals, as Penn's coat of arms suggests. We prize integrity, equality, continuing revelation, silence and more.

It's Epic:  Honor the Spark and Spark the Mind

More specifically, my vision for the Upper School is that it be a loving and inclusive community, full of intellectual and cosmopolitan people. Given the school's philosophy, geography and egalitarianism, we are uniquely diverse, drawing from over a hundred zip codes, every major world religion, both political parties, and all levels of economic strata. As two OPCs from the class of 2017 just told me on the baseball field, they were well prepared for the wide range of people they encountered in college because they hailed from our Penn Charter heterogeneity.  

Last month, we had nationally recognized health educator Shafia Zaloom on campus to educate juniors and seniors about how personal values inform healthy relationships. I was struck by a simple exercise Zaloom did. "Think of a bear," she told us, giving us five seconds to picture a bear doing some particular action. So you do it now. Stop reading this, close your eyes, and for five seconds, think of a bear. Then Zaloom had people go around the room and describe the bears they were imagining and what they were doing. Here's a small sample of the bears people had in mind in one group: Yogi Bear trying to escape Jellystone Park. A light blue, well-loved teddy bear resting on a pillow. A huge black bear, hunting for salmon in an alpine stream. Zaloom's point was: even when we say "bear," it means different things to different people, so when people are trying to communicate with and understand each other, it's critical to make sure that they understand what the other person is thinking — and vice versa — and not to make assumptions.

While many people think of "cosmopolitan" as being synonymous with "sophisticated" or "well-traveled," I am using the word in this sense:  Cosmopolitan contains the root polit-, from the Greek word for "citizen," meaning someone who is cosmopolitan is a "citizen of the world." Hence, people who are cosmopolitan are "familiar with and at ease in many different countries and cultures" (Google.com). To be cosmopolitan, then, is to have a wide worldview, to be open-minded, well versed in difference, eager to meet new people and embrace new experiences. Cosmopolitan is decidedly the opposite of narrow, closed, parochial, provincial.  

Though humans are 99.9 percent genetically similar, we often focus on and fear the .1 percent of others that is different from us. When I was in sixth grade, and I'd just moved from Denver to Philadelphia, I was put off when a classmate asked me if I rode a horse to school in Colorado. I'd never eaten a bagel in my life, which a friend found mind-boggling, and I'd never heard about a Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah before. No doubt, my world view was small. Over the years at PC, many students have told me that they had never met [fill-in-the-blank with a particular kind of person] before coming to Penn Charter. I love that about this school. I want students to actively honor and welcome the spark of others, which will not only open hearts but also help open minds.

In addition to fostering an inclusive, cosmopolitan Upper School, I envision an Upper School that sparks the intellect, trains the mind and fuels the fire of of the adolescent brain. Psychologist Steven Pinker has a new book out, "Enlightenment Now:  The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress." In this TED Talk, he presents the thesis of the book, which is essentially that the quality of human life is better now than it has ever been, and with the power of reason and science, we can problem solve and improve the world ever more. It's a tremendously optimistic book, completely supported by data. I am moved especially by this passage:  

"We will never have a perfect world, and it would be dangerous to seek one.

But there is no limit to the betterments we can attain if we continue to apply knowledge to enhance human flourishing . . . [this endeavor] belongs not to any tribe but to all of humanity — to any sentient creature with the power of reason and the urge to persist."

I want the Upper School to spark in students the desire to learn and to cultivate in them the "power to reason."  Good instruction can indeed fire students up to question, hypothesize and problem-solve, inspiring them transform their minds . . . and the world. Penn Charter's vision is to educate students to "live lives that make a difference," and as Pinker points out, using the intellect to "enhance human flourishing" is "heroic."  Learning to reason and to be a citizen of the world, then, is epic.

Update on Work Diversity, Inclusion and Equity  

Darryl Ford invited a group of about a dozen juniors and seniors to work with Erin Hughes, Assistant Director of Upper School Lee Payton and Director of Diversity and Inclusion Antonio Williams to advance diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the division.

The group has meet three times to consider practical measures to improve school culture. Presently, the group is planning a two-day retreat to develop a Code of Conduct for Upper School and to think about ways to redesign student orientation in September. One goal of the retreat is to create an orientation that will help incoming students understand the culture of and diversity at Penn Charter. During orientation, we hope to engage students in work around cultural competency, privilege, social justice and Quakerism.

The planning group will work with Leon Caldwell OPC '87 and Penn Charter Overseer Terry Nance to find the best approach and practices to achieving our objective.

Upper School students Ainyae Holmes and Pierce Hodges, pictured below with Director of Diversity and Inclusion Antonio Williams, organized a successful diversity conference for area students. More here.

Upper School Life

February 2019

FMCD: Poet for a President

Conceived in Cuba, born in Spain and raised in Miami, poet Richard Blanco says that his central obsession in life has been the concept of "home."  All of his work, all of his poetry, all of his exploration of self and family has led him on a search for identity, for belonging, for what it means to be American and for how to define . . . home.

On Thursday, Feb. 14, Blanco was our keynote speaker for Friends Multicultural Day, a yearly tradition celebrating all forms of diversity and featuring guest speakers, student-led workshops, musical performances and more.

Blanco kicked off the day with his keynote, and Upper School students and faculty were rapt as he told stories and read poetry about his Cuban exiled parents, his beloved and homophobic abuela (grandmother), the Miss America pageant, his family vacations and more, all of which culminated in a 500-person standing ovation for his performance.

Blanco recounted how his mother left her parents and eight brothers and sisters in Cuba to come to the U.S. and what such a move says about the faith that immigrants have in American values. He implored the Upper School: "Imagine having someone tell you suddenly to 'pack your bag' . . . then leaving everything else behind." Imagine having the faith in the U.S. to do that.

In "Betting on America," Blanco recounted his befuddlement about the Miss American Pageant, which was a party-worthy ritual for the Blanco family, complete with $2 bets on contestants and confusion about how to pronounce Connecticut and where in the world Ohio was. Trained as a civil engineer, Blanco spoke about physical bridges as metaphors for language and relationships, as he tenderly spoke about his ailing and complicated father in "Papa's Bridge."  

A Quest for Home

The Gulf Motel is, or was, Blanco's personal "special, happy place," but instead of finding the motel, the adult Blanco finds that everything has changed since he was young. Consequently, he cannot share The Gulf Motel of his childhood with Mark. Memory foils us. "You can't go back home because it is no longer the same," Blanco expounded. He writes:

The legendary Cuba of the 1950s and '60s, Blanco learns, is his parents' own elusive "Gulf Motel." They can't go back, or if and when they do, it's not the same, not as magical and idealized as they remember. That makes it harder to have a foot in both worlds and both homes, as at least one proves ephemeral.

2013 Inauguration

Following in the footsteps of Robert Frost and Maya Angelou, Blanco is the fifth poet to compose and read poems for a Presidential inauguration.

When President Obama asked Blanco to be the Inaugural Poet in 2013, Blanco found himself mulling over questions like, "Am I American?"  "Do I love my country?" "Does my country love me back?"

Blanco was tasked with writing three poems in three weeks, and while Blanco was partial to the third, "Mother Country" President Obama chose the second, "One Day," for the inauguration.

After reading the poem to us last Thursday, Blanco asserted that "each one of our stories is a part of the American story."  We Americans are engaged in "cathedral building," he explained, and we don't know what the final construct will be, but "we each have a paragraph, a chapter, a story to contribute to the American narrative."

A Cuban-American, son of exiles and immigrants, gay man born of "machismo" culture, engineer and poet, Miami native and Maine resident, Blanco concluded his thoughts on home with this: Intrepid as she was in 1968 and thereafter, Blanco's mother (pictured above) grieved the loss of her native Cuba and the family members she left behind, and not until 2013 did she tell her son:

FMCD: Student Workshops

Following Richard Blanco's rousing performance, the Upper School continued with in our annual Friends Multicultural Day (FMCD) traditions, which include student-led workshops, worship sharing and, to end the day, student performances.

Ninth graders attended a workshop on managing racial stress and then joined 10th, 11th and 12th graders for workshops. Students chose which workshops to attend from a list of more than 20 different topics. Here is a sampling:

• Jews in Popular Culture
• Parkland Shooting: One Year Later
• Service Abroad: Thailand
• Representation of Women in Media
• Where Soul Food Really Came From
• French Culture and the U.S. Influences on France
• Diverse Thinking: How Language and Culture Wire Our Brains
• The N-word in Hip-Hop Culture
• Yoga: Minding Your Thoughts
• What's Going On in Virginia?
• Environmentalism in Social Justice

After lunch, students and faculty participated in mixed grade-level threshing sessions to discuss the query: "What are your experiences (personal and witness) around injustices at PC? (racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, etc.)"  

We then broke down into mixed grade-level worship sharing groups by advisories and reflected upon the following prompts:

• "Share the idea or describe the experience that was most interesting or meaningful to you today."  
• "What changes would you like to envision for Penn Charter in the next five years?"
• "What actions can we take to make those visions a reality?"  
  Finally, we punctuated the day with a rip-roaring set of student performances. 

Words Matter

On Wednesday, Feb. 13, the day before Friends Multicultural Day, Head of School Darryl J. Ford gathered the Upper School students and faculty to share several messages. 

Dr. Ford reminded us that "words matter" and "behavior matters."  Even in our toughest moments, he reminded us, Penn Charter is a great and privileged community. At the same time, we can — individually and collectively — make the community better by seeing that of God in those we like as well as in those we don't like or don't know. As a Quaker community, the "muscle we need to develop" is the one that calls us to see the spark in those who are different, who make us uncomfortable, who test our values.

People are complex, and adolescents, in particular, are growing and learning, so we need to hold folks in the light as Richard Blanco did his xenophobic and homophobic Abuela and see the good in them, forgive them, help them and accept them.

Dr. Ford extended interested students an invitation to lunch in the Gummere Library today if they are interested in the ongoing work of making our community more diverse and inclusive. The library was standing-room-only for today's conversation.

"What is Penn Charter doing about vaping?"

The question above is one I have heard often from parents this fall, along with, "Is Penn Charter doing anything about vaping?"  

The answers are: a lot and yes.

Some concerned parents have told me that their students report widespread vaping, even during classes and Meeting for Worship. That is a claim I have taken seriously. As much as parent concern might conjure images of Principal Rooney from Ferris Bueller's Day Off or Assistant Principal Vernon from The Breakfast Club, I assure you that we are cognizant of this issue and focused on it. Do some Penn Charter kids vape? Yes. At school? Some have and some probably do, but just as your own high school administrators tried to keep you from smoking traditional cigarettes on campus, we aim to limit teens' exposure to negative stimuli (nicotine, alcohol, drugs, danger, assault, etc.).

Originally intended to be a safe "step down" device from traditional cigarettes, e-cigarettes became widely available in 2007. Instead of producing tobacco smoke, e-cigarettes produce aerosol or vapor; hence, the term "vaping" was born. To vape is to inhale and exhale aerosol produced by an electric device made up of a mouthpiece, battery, heating element and cartridge containing e-juice or e-liquid.

The term e-cigarette, then, is a generic term for electronic devices that heat liquid and produce aerosol; they come in a variety of shapes and sizes, commonly called vapes, vape pens or Juuls. Typically, people "smoke" or vape liquid that contains nicotine. However, most teens believe the liquid to be flavored water and remain unaware of its nicotine contents. People can also vape THC, the psychoactive agent in marijuana. Dabs and wax are concentrated forms of THC, and the specific devices for vaping them are called dab pens or wax pens (though vape devices can use THC). Generally, when people talk about vaping, they are talking about vaping substances with nicotine, and in this column, when I use the term vaping, I am talking about the e-cigarette use of nicotine.

First, vaping is not a Penn Charter problem; rather, teen vaping is a national problem. On Monday, December 17, the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported survey results from the Monitoring the Future study, indicating that "37.3 percent of 12th graders report[ed] 'any vaping' in the past 12 months, compared to just 27.8 percent in 2017." Similarly, according to the FDA's National Youth Tobacco Survey, "1.5 million more students used e-cigarettes in 2018 vs. 2017."  That's a "78% increase [in e-cigarette use] among high school students."

To ask the question, "Why do teens vape?" begs the larger question, "Why do teens transgress?"

The chief goal of adolescence is establishing identity. In order to do that, teens learn in a variety of modes, including trial and error and experimenting with their likes, dislikes, beliefs and values. Teens both align with and compare themselves to their parents and peers, and in the process of maturing, they learn to manage stress and use both positive and, unfortunately, negative coping skills to do so. Gradually, adolescents become independent and individuated.

So, why do some teens vape? Why do they take up e-cigarettes when they know how awful traditional ones are for them? As I mentioned above, some teens don't realize that e-cigarettes contain nicotine. While I have read about that widely held misconception, I did not think Penn Charter students would be so ill-informed. I was wrong. One of the first students I talked to this year about vaping told me that he thought the cartridges contained only flavored water; at the same time, having vaped all summer, he was puzzled as to why he couldn't sit through a 40-minute class without the urge to vape. He did not realize he was addicted to nicotine. In fact, "adolescents are uniquely vulnerable to addiction," Jan Hoffman wrote in yesterday's New York Times; in her ominous article, "Addicted to Vaped Nicotine, Teenagers Have No Clear Path to Quitting," she outlines how health professionals are "alarmed by the addictive nature of nicotine in e-cigarettes and its impact on the developing brain."

This fall, I have pondered the vaping phenomenon when a teacher or administrator has asked why a student did (or didn't do) something . . . and the student has responded, "I don't know" or "I just wasn't thinking" or "It was fun." The latter response makes me think less about a teen's still-developing prefrontal cortex and more about the nucleus accumbens.  

Temple University professor Laurence Steinberg explains that the nucleus accumbens, the "pleasure center" of the brain, starts to grow in childhood, reaches peak size in adolescence and then starts to shrink. For this reason, Steinberg explains, "Nothing—whether it's being with your friends, having sex, licking an ice-cream cone, zipping along in a convertible on a warm summer evening, hearing your favorite music—will ever feel as good as it did when you were a teenager." Teens perceive risk just as accurately as adults do, Steinberg contends, but the potential reward for a teen's taking a risk . . . is exhilaration magnified.  

The lure of delighting peers, the temptation of the forbidden, the call of adventure—these indeed tickle the teen brain, and as Steinberg indicates in Age of Opportunity, this proclivity for pleasure can provide as much "opportunity" as it provides obstacles. Appeal to the nucleus accumbens, Steinberg suggests. Take your child to Terror Behind the Walls at Halloween. Take your child zip-lining. Let your child host a murder mystery dinner. Provide teens with adult-supervised experiences that stimulate brain development. Provide novel experiences. At Penn Charter, we try to do that in curricular and co-curricular ways, with class trips, the Senior Retreat, Spirit Week, PC/GA Day, Quaker Crew at the basketball games, Friends Multicultural Day, proms, Color Day, the senior rafting trip and more. The recent Upper School Winter Dance boasted a whopping 272 Upper School students and their guests, plus a heaping spoonful of enthusiastic Argentinean exchange students. Talk about a social risk! Dress up, talk to old friends, mingle with new acquaintances, dance . . .

So, what has Penn Charter done to address the national vaping problem in the Upper School? Last summer, we added language around e-cigarettes to our Drug and Alcohol Policy in the Student Handbook (pp. 42, 65). In our ninth grade health curriculum, nurse Debbie Foley uses the Stanford Tobacco Education Toolkit to educate students about vaping: the presence and addictive quality of nicotine, the deleterious effects of vapor, the marketing campaigns targeted at teens and more. Much to the annoyance of many students, we are monitoring traffic to and from the bathrooms, parked cars, and places where Upper School students are not supposed to be during the day (such as the Graham Athletics Center). Indignant students call this the "Juul Patrol." When we have concerns about students who frequent the bathrooms or other off-limits spaces, I talk with them and follow up with parents. Devoid of any medical issue, one student told me he left class three times per day to use the bathroom. Another student told me he often leaves class because he needs a "brain break" (I directed him to the water fountain and discussed strategies for re-focusing in class without leaving the room). If a student has a vaping problem, I offer help, information on cessation programs, names of addiction therapists. If they do not have a habit, I talk to them about self-regulation and consequences.

In addition to addressing vaping with students, we have done so with parents. Last year and again this fall, nurse Debbie Foley presented at Upper School parent forums: Vaping:  What Every Parent Should Know. Here are ideas for how you can address vaping at home:  

1. Educate yourself about e-cigarettes and know what to look for.  Explore the links in this column. Better yet, attend our evening program next month: Brian Jennsen is a researcher and pediatrician at CHOP whose expertise is tobacco policy and smoking cessation. On Wednesday, January 30, at 7pm, Jennsen will address parents on the topic of teens and e-cigarettes.
2. Model healthy behavior.
3. Talk to your student about vaping; this resource from the Surgeon General may help: Talk with Your Teen About E-cigarettes.

As you will recall, one of Penn Charter's themes for the 2018-2019 school year is "health and wellness." Vaping is one of several issues we are addressing with very deliberate programming. At the first parent forum of the year, Ed-Tech Director Michael Moulton presented Screen Time Tools to help parents manage their teens' screen usage. In October, Upper School students attended an assembly with Andrew from Minding Your Mind who spoke about stress and depression he experienced in college. On Monday, January 7, at 8:15am, counselor Elizabeth Hitschler and learning specialist Karen Campbell will present at the next Upper School Parent Forum on stress management and study strategies parents can use to help students negotiate the end of Semester 1. On Wednesday, March 6, at 7pm, health educator Shafia Zaloom will speak to parents about healthy relationships among adolescents, healthy sexuality and sexual consent. The following day, March 7, Zaloom will work with the juniors and seniors, the Upper School faculty, and the Health Department.  

Thanks for partnering with us as we help guide students toward healthy living. I particularly hope to see you January 30 for Brian Jennsen's presentation on e-cigarettes and March 6 for Shafia Zaloom's on healthy relationships.

Meanwhile, have a wonderful winter break.

Erin Hughes
Acting Director of Upper School