David Smith, English Department
David Smith, English Department Member of the Faculty, 1981–2015 “Teaching is play, and anyone, at whatever level, who forgets this axiom will probably have a grim time of it,” writes David Smith, in his new book, Be a Teacher: A Memoir in Ten Ideas. After all, he reminds us, “[We are] but sharing a few precious hours with grumpy, cheerful, feisty, querulous, randy, reflective, impulsive, generous, and spirited teenagers, who deserve a full initiation into the human comedy before they go to college, let alone law school.” As far as I...
read moreMaria Gerrity, English Department
Maria Gerrity, English Department Member of the Faculty, 1998–2015 Young teachers hope to launch a career with curiosity and authenticity; mid-career teachers yearn to balance work and family; and veterans earn gravitas. We are here to celebrate Maria Gerrity, who has played every melodious note on just such an ascending scale of a school career. Her 20-year arc at Milton has been backlit by her natural, easy way with her students and colleagues, an ease that has always invited us to learn and laugh genuinely. Before she set foot on...
read moreVirginia Needham, Admission Office Staff, 1990–2015
Virginia Needham, Admission Office Staff, 1990–2015 Capturing all that Virginia has meant to Milton during her 25 years here is challenging. Virginia has been a welcoming, kind, supportive presence in the admission office. The admission office is often a family’s first point of contact with Milton Academy. Understandably, families may be anxious, but Virginia’s calming influence quickly puts them at ease. She brings grace and care to each interaction and signals to families that they are in good hands. Virginia’s thoughtful approach...
read moreBarbara Kennard, Middle School English
Barbara Kennard, Middle School English Member of the Faculty, 2008–2015 In The Tempest, one of Barbara’s five-star productions with the sixth grade, Prospero says, “Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve.” I disagree with Shakespeare. None of Barbara’s work at Milton Academy...
read moreJuan Ramos, Mathematics Department
Juan Ramos, Mathematics Department Member of the Faculty, 1998–2015 Imagining Milton Academy, Wolcott House and the math department without Juan Ramos is difficult. Always flexible and happy to teach what the department needed, Juan taught courses across the math curriculum. Students found his straightforward approach reassuring and his explanations clear, even when they were trying to master the most difficult ideas. More recently, Juan centered his work in the Skills Center, helping budding mathematicians at every level. There too,...
read moreMary Jo Ramos, Modern Language Department
Mary Jo Ramos, Modern Language Department Member of the Faculty, 1998–2015 Mary Jo Ramos, in the eyes and hearts of teachers, students, parents and alumni, is a most caring and generous colleague. She feeds us, supports us, challenges us, inspires us and champions us. Whether she has responded to cover a class in Ware Hall, or coached the Middle School Speech Team to nationals in a Midwestern city, or traveled to Spain with students on a new adventure, Mary Jo understands and tends to the needs and the hopes of all, building toward their...
read moreJanet Levine, English Department
Janet Levine, English Department Member of the Faculty, 1986–2014 Last year the English department saw the departure of Janet Levine, one of its most veteran members, whose worldly intellect enriched generations of students and colleagues. A writer and political activist fleeing South Africa’s apartheid government, Janet moved to Milton in 1984 when her sons, Roger and Tony, enrolled in the Middle School, and Janet turned to her burgeoning writing career that produced such diverse titles as Inside Apartheid (1988), The Enneagram...
read moreDr. Reza Aslan
Dr. Reza Aslan Religious scholar Dr. Reza Aslan visited campus as the Class of 1952 Endowed Speaker for Religious Understanding. Dr. Aslan is a professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, and serves on the board of trustees for the Chicago Theological Seminary. He is the author of bestselling Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. He is also the founder of AslanMedia — a social media network for news and entertainment about the Middle East and the world — and co-founder and chief creative...
read morePatricia Smith
Patricia Smith Award-winning poet Patricia Smith read to students from her work as the spring’s Bingham Visiting Writer. Ms. Smith has written six books of poetry, including Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah (2012), which won the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Blood Dazzler (2008), a chronicle of the human and environmental cost of Hurricane Katrina, which was nominated for a National Book Award; and Teahouse of the Almighty, a 2005 National Poetry Series selection. Her work has appeared in Poetry, the Paris Review, the...
read moreListening for Understanding — Easier when interpreting the past, than the present
by Brittney Lewer, Fellow in the History Department In high school, I thought of history as a detective game. Piecing together clues from the past, historians would deduce what really happened. Relatively late in my college career, I realized that “what really happened” is, in some ways, a moving target. History is not a fixed set of events, but a narrative that changes based in part on who is telling the story and who the audience is. Perspective taking — the skill of being able to engage with more than one person’s ideas...
read moreI Am Radar, by Reif Larsen ’98
I Am Radar by Reif Larsen ’98 Penguin Press, February 2015 In 1975, a black child named Radar Radmanovic is mysteriously born to white parents. Though Radar is raised in suburban New Jersey, his story rapidly becomes entangled with terrible events in Yugoslavia, Norway, Cambodia, the Congo, and beyond. Falling in with a secretive group of puppeteers and scientists — who stage experimental art for people suffering under wartime sieges — Radar is forced to confront the true nature of his identity. Acclaimed novelist Reif Larsen...
read moreThe Spiritual Child: The New Science on Parenting for Health and Lifelong Thriving, by Lisa Miller ’84
The Spiritual Child: The New Science on Parenting for Health and Lifelong Thriving by Lisa Miller ’84 St. Martin’s Press, May 2015 In The Spiritual Child, psychologist Lisa Miller presents the next big idea in psychology: the science and the power of spirituality. She explains the clear, scientific link between spirituality and health, and shows that children who have a positive, active relationship to spirituality are healthier and happier into adulthood. Combining cutting-edge research with broad anecdotal evidence from her work as a...
read moreIrrepressible: The Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham, by Emily Bingham ’83
Irrepressible: The Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham by Emily Bingham ’83 Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2015 Raised like a princess in one of the most powerful families of the American South, Henrietta Bingham was offered the helm of a publishing empire. Instead, she ripped through the Jazz Age like an F. Scott Fitzgerald character: intoxicating and intoxicated, selfish and shameless, seductive and brilliant, endearing and often terribly troubled. In Louisville, New York and London, she drove both men and women wild with desire, and her...
read moreDigging for the Disappeared: Forensic Science After Atrocity, by Adam Rosenblatt ’96
Digging for the Disappeared: Forensic Science After Atrocity by Adam Rosenblatt ’96 Stanford University Press, March 2015 The mass graves from a long history of genocide, massacres and violent conflict form an underground map of atrocity that stretches across our planet’s surface. In the past few decades, due to rapidly developing technologies and a powerful global human rights movement, the scientific study of those graves has become a standard facet of post-conflict international assistance. Digging for the Disappeared provides readers a...
read moreMarried Sex, by Jesse Kornbluth ’64
Married Sex by Jesse Kornbluth ’64 Open Road Media, August 2015 When a husband convinces his wife to join him in a tryst with another woman, there are unintended consequences, in this sharply observed, erotic tale about the challenges of modern marriage. As a divorce lawyer for Manhattan’s elite, David Greenfield is privy to the intimate, dirty details of failed marriages. He knows he’s lucky to be married to Blair. A Barnard dean and the mother of their college-age daughter, she is a woman he loves more today than he did when they tied...
read moreCreating a College That Works, by Grace G. Roosevelt ’59
Creating a College That Works by Grace G. Roosevelt ’59 State University of New York Press, March 2015 In 1964, education activist Audrey Cohen and her colleagues developed a unique curricular structure that enables urban college students to integrate their academic studies with meaningful work in the community. Creating a College That Works chronicles Cohen’s efforts to create an innovative educational model that began with the Women’s Talent Corps, evolved into the College for Human Services, and finally became, in 2002, what is now...
read moreBeyond Freedom’s Reach: A Kidnapping in the Twilight of Slavery by Adam Rothman ’89
Beyond Freedom’s Reach: A Kidnapping in the Twilight of Slavery by Adam Rothman ’89 Harvard University Press, February 2015 Born into slavery in rural Louisiana, Rose Herera was bought and sold several times before being purchased by the De Hart family of New Orleans. Still a slave, she married and had children, who also became the property of the De Harts. But after Union forces captured New Orleans in 1862 during the American Civil War, Herera’s owners fled to Havana, taking three of her small children with them. Beyond Freedom’s...
read morePalm Beach Nasty by Tom Turner ’66
Palm Beach Nasty by Tom Turner ’66 Permanent Press, April 2015 Burned-out, New York homicide cop Charlie Crawford goes south to steamy Palm Beach, Florida, but after six months of pink- and green-collar crime, he’s bored out of his mind. Palm Beach has plenty of glitz, glam and hedonism, but not one murder in the last ten years. One Halloween night, Crawford is first on the scene to find a 20-year-old male swinging from a stately banyan tree. This sets in motion colliding plots involving a billionaire with a thing for young girls, a...
read moreFeel Me Brave
“Dare to be true” had an appealing ring to it back in my adolescent days. For me, the words summoned the courage to connect with my authentic self — to speak and act and relate to the world from that place. More than 20 years out, I have observed how the motto stands the test of time, though now with some nuance. My younger self tended to connect to this concept of “being true” in a way that felt bold. Applying it had more to do with my academic and professional pursuits. Now, at nearly 40 years old, life has had more of a chance...
read moreTo See Clearly, Rely On “Clean Mirrors”
by Todd B. Bland Recently, a student writing for The Milton Paper asked me about my legacy — how I’d like to be known, once my tenure at Milton is complete. My list of goals is long, as you might imagine. Toward the top of that list is helping us all — as individuals and as an institution — be self-aware. We’d all agree that a data-wise leader is a more effective leader. The same is true for anyone undertaking an important endeavor: The more you know, the better equipped you are to move ahead purposefully, responsibly....
read moreKQED Is Executing a Pivot: Anne Avis ’77
“Part of the value and the beauty of the public media system,” Anne Avis says, “is that it reaches 99 percent of the country through this network of independently run local stations.” Not only in hip, urban centers but in remote, rural areas, NPR stations air news that is intensely local, as well as regional, national and global.“We need all of that news,” Anne says, “to make real and important decisions about the people and issues that affect our lives. That’s why public media is so important to democracy.” Anne recently...
read moreDiscovery: A Personal Model, a Business Model Ashley Fouts ’94
Last December, Ashley Fouts moved away from a lab bench. That is, away from her own lab bench. At Genentech, she began a new job keeping track of a molecule and the teams working on it. As a project manager, she facilitates the myriad decisions that are necessary to turn breakthrough science at the bench into life-changing drugs for patients. Genentech’s business is discovery. Genentech wants to be “the leading biotechnology company, using human genetic information to discover, develop, manufacture and commercialize medicines to treat...
read moreIn Sight, Spring 2015
Beatnik Nanseera Wolff, Class IV, Robbins House. Photo by Michael Dwyer.
read moreRecraft a Company to Create a Lifestyle Brand: David Pun ’99
Everyone has a favorite pair of jeans. Whether it’s a worn pair that has seen better days or a designer pair that fits just right, jeans are a personal wardrobe staple. David Pun’s jeans are works of art. He is the enthusiastic chairman and CEO of Evisu, a Japanese lifestyle fashion brand best known for producing jeans with high-quality craftsmanship, vintage buttons and hand-painted details.Six years ago, David was working for a private equity firm and Evisu was one of the portfolio companies. According to David, Evisu was “grossly...
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