Conant Fellows: Teachers Who Learn

Traditionally, teachers have spent most of their time at the front of the classrooms. Harvard's Conant Fellowships give them a welcome opportunity to return to the learning side of the lecture hall.

Announced at Harvard's 350th birthday celebration, the Conant Fellowships give six teachers $7000 each to pay part of a year's tuition at the Graduate School of Education. The first Conant Scholars entered the Ed School last fall.

The Conants represent a gift from the Harvard Corporation to Boston and Cambridge. They are also the product of collaboration among University administrators, the Ed School and the Boston and Cambridge School systems. The gift establishes a $750,000 endowment fund that will be used to pay part of the $11,000 tuition for a year at the Ed School for each of the fellows.

Named after James B. Conant '14, the president of the University from 1933 to 1953 who was known for his interest in public education, the Conant fellowships mark the first time that Harvard has funded continuing education for area public school teachers.

Unique Opportunity

Conant fellows say the fellowships are a particularly important program because they provide teachers with a very hard-to-come-by opportunity to return to school, and they increase Harvard's involvement in urban school systems.

Many fellows say they could not have returned to school without the program. "I never would have been able to afford it," says fellow Mildred C. Blackman, who is principal of the Haggerty School in Cambridge.

The Conant Fellowships provide teachers with both an opportunity and a challenge. Most of the fellows attend the Ed School as full-time students, and several say that making the transition from teacher to student can be difficult.

"I think most aren't as fortunate as I am. Most can't do it full-time. After people have been out of school and have families, it's a big interruption not just in career but in lifestyle," says Noreen Lovett, a full time student who is on sabbatical this year from her job at South Boston High School.

"I hadn't been back to school for 13 years," Kathleen P. Conway says. "You fall back into it, but to be away for that long is very scary."

Taking time off gives teachers a much-needed chance to think about their work and evaluate their careers from a more academic point of view, Conant fellows say.

"What's really nice is that it's given me a chance to reflect on my own teaching," says Conway, who taught at the Tobin Middle School in Cambridge and in various alternative education programs in the city before going on sabbatical this year.

"I'd like to see more people take this opportunity, especially elementary school [teachers]," she adds. "I think people in the secondary level tend to be more aggressive and get out and learn. Especially at the lower levels, you just don't have the opportunity to step back."

"When you're a teacher, the job is all-consuming," says Elizabeth Grady, who is on leave from her job at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. "It takes an immense amount of time."

And having more time to think can provide valuable time for improving and augmenting teaching techniques or philosophies.

"My opinion about teachers is that they are the only stabilized change agents in the schools," Blackman says. "They need to be able to reflect on what they do."

"Sabbaticals are terrific for the faculty," says Jerome Murphy, associate dean of the Ed School. "It's very hard to keep up in-your field and bring in new ideas."

The Conant Fellowships are especially attractive for area teachers because the opportunity to take time off and study is often hard to come by. In Cambridge and Boston, sabbatical openings are limited, and the cities do not provide tuition grants for teachers who want to return to graduate school. Cambridge Superintendent of Schools Robert S. Peterkin says the school department budget does not allow room for tuition grants to teachers.

"The school department in a sense encourages it but on the other hand doesn't offer any real incentives," says Blackman, who is going to the Ed School on a part-time basis while remaining at her job. She says she finds it particularly difficult to be a student and hold down a job as well.

In Boston, sabbaticals were reinstituted as an option only last year, and even now there are only 35 openings each year for a workforce of more than 4000 teachers. In Cambridge, only about 2 percent of more than 800 teachers are allowed to be on sabbatical at one time.

In order to be eligible in either city, teachers or administrators must have worked in the system for at least seven years. If teachers take a half year off, they receive full pay, but if they stay out a full year they receive only half of their annual salary.

"The only complaint I have [about the Conants] is that people applying for the fellowship have to get a sabbatical to go and that takes away from other teachers who want sabbaticals," Conway says.

The hefty fees at graduate schools also prevent many teachers from going back to school. Even people who win the Conant fellowships must pay about $4000 towards their tuition and the fellowship is good ony for one year, the traditional length of a master's degree program. However, students who want to earn a doctorate must generally study for two years and then write a thesis.

"It's really tough. The Conant Fellowship is nice, but I have to live," says Elliot Stern, who is on leave this year from his job at Boston English High School. "I don't know how I'm going to finish," he adds. Stern is enrolled in the doctoral program at the Ed School and says he hopes to be able to finish his studies next year part-time while returning to work.

Dispelling the Myth of the Ivory Tower

Although the fellows are the most obvious beneficiaries of the program, the fellows say the program also helps the University. It serves as living testimony to Harvard's growing involvement in neighboring school systems and helps dispell many of the Ivory Tower myths that surround the school. Blackman calls Harvard "a sort of mystical place with ivy-covered walls down the street," and fellows say that few local teachers consider the University when they think about getting higher degrees.

"As a native of Cambridge I would never have chosen Harvard. If not for the fellowship, I would never have considered going back to school," Conway says.

"Harvard has such a mystique that Cambridge teachers tend to say, 'Oh, that place.' I hope to be sort of a liaison between Harvard and Cambridge," she adds.

This year's Conant fellows may end up serving as an ongoing link between Harvard and the Cambridge and Boston school systems. All of the fellows are planning to return to work in Cambridge and Boston, although some may take on new responsibilities. Several of the six fellows are fulfilling requirements that will allow them to go into administration, but they say that they will continue to work in their urban school systems.

"I have a commitment to the urban area," Stern says. "There's a need for people to work in urban areas and commit themselves." The problem with urban schools, Stern says, is the high turnover rate among teachers and administrators, which creates general instability in the system. "It just gets worse and worse because you get less support and less opportunity. The good [teachers] leave and go somewhere else and there's more turnover."

Conway says that at one point, school authorities wanted to give her a job in Belmont. "I said, 'I'm not interested.' I think urban kids are really what's going on. They're the ones who need support. There are needy children in the suburbs, but they have other support systems," she says.

The Conant Fellowships represent just one recent effort by the University to increase its involvement in urban schooling, says Superintendent Peterkin. In 1984, a group called the Cambridge Partnership was founded in order to improve education in the city, and Peterkin attributes much of Harvard's recent participation to that group. He also cites Vice President for Government and Community Affairs John Shattuck and Dean of the Education School Patricia A. Graham as important influences.

"If you get some people who are keeping the focal point up [at Harvard], the school system responds. I feel good about it," Peterkin says.

"We'd like to be able to increase [interaction] not only with Cambridge but with Boston. Boston is at least as important as Cambridge," Shattuck says.

Harvard Plays a Bigger Role

Adminstrators and fellows agree that since Graham became dean in 1982, she has played an active role in bringing Harvard closer to the urban schools.

"I think Dean Graham has really made a contribution in urban education," Lovett says. "I see Harvard not just offering lip service but actually doing things."

"She was very interested as soon as she became dean in re-establishing the Ed School as a resource both publicly and nationally," Shattuck says. Shattuck adds that one important reason the University has become more interested and involved in the Cambridge public school system is that more professors and administrators who live in Cambridge are now choosing to send their children to public rather than private school.

"I don't see as much tension between the University and city as I did when I was growing up," says Grady, a Cambridge native who has been teaching in the city for 15 years.

"Five years ago, the question was whether or not we had any of our students or faculty working in the schools," says Murphy. "Now the problem is we have so many we have to figure out how not to overwhelm [the schools]."

Murphy says he believes the Conant Fellowships have already begun to inspire other similar programs. "There's some evidence that [the Conants] are contagious," he says.

Murphy cites the Hiatt-Harvard Worcester Program as an example. The program, which will allow Worcester teachers to study at the Ed School, was established this year by a gift from Arnold S. Hiatt '48, a benefactor of the Worcester Schools. Its first fellows will be admitted this spring.

Right now, the Ed School has several other programs that work with the Cambridge and Boston schools. A principal's center provides training for school administrators in the area, and Harvard also sponsors a reading lab for children of middle school age.

The Ed School and Cambridge also help some teachers get back to class with a voucher system. Area teachers who allow student teachers from the Ed School in their classrooms are given a voucher to take one Ed School course.

If funding is available. Harvard may someday expand the number of Conant fellowships, says Dudley F. Blodgett '67, director of external relations at the Ed School.

At this time, fellows are chosen from among the students admitted to the Ed School under the regular admission program by a special selection committee. They must be teachers in Boston or Cambridge to be eligible.

"What we'd like to see is real dedication to the field of education as well as good academic potential," says Carly Moreno, director of admissions at the Ed School and a member of the selection committee for the fellowships.

"We consider [the fellowships] collaborations," Blodgett says. "We are getting as much from them as they are from us."

Participants in the program agree that it's a trade-off and say they hope that they can contribute practical knowledge to class discussions by bringing their experience as practitioners into the classroom.

"It's important for urban teachers to be present to give a practical point of view and to give an urban perspective to the discussion. I hope I've been able to offer some perspective from an urban viewpoint. I think people appreciate that," Lovett says.

And practical knowledge is often not a big enough part of the teaching process, some fellows say. Stern suggests that one way universities could increase their involvement in urban schooling would be to hire teachers from nearby school systems to teach Ed School courses.

"There's a tremendous division between theory and practice," he says, adding that teachers do not have enough voice in education policy-making in Boston.

"I'm concerned with the whole progressive reform movement in education and giving teachers more say in what goes on opposed to the central office saying, 'Use this book,'" Stern says.