Phillips+Exeter+Humanities+Institute+Workshop

I have the Exeter Humanities Workshop to be a very rewarding experience. It provided me an opportunity to grow professionally and interact with a very diverse group of educations from all over the country. The topic of the workshop was "Age"; this pleased me due to my years, it was a subject to which I could personally relate. The most constructive aspect of the workshop was the actual Harkness classes that took place twice each morning throughout the week. Each member of our class had the opportunity to teach, observe or be a student around the Harkness Table. I found these classes to be enlightening and refreshing. The afternoon seminars were informative, but I found them to be somewhat repetitious from the workshop seminars that Exeter conducted at Ransom Everglades a few years ago. One of the most interesting experiences was putting each class into a math or science classroom environment in order to take us out of our comfort zone and for us to experience how Harkness works in the science or math classroom. The workshop was very well organized and the two leaders of my classes were very informative and helpful throughout the week. The food was excellent and the accommodations were comfortable, although I must admit that it took a few days to get used to "dorm life" again. The campus and facilities were everything that I was expecting and more. The relatively new science building and library were exceptionally impressive. I highly recommend this workshop to my fellow colleagues at RE not only as a means to enhance discussion based learning in their classroom, but also as a means to learn from and meet many very interesting educators who share our love and commitment to teaching. Dave Hewett