Exeter+Humanities+Institute,+Summer+2009



This past summer I attended the Phillips Exeter Humanities Institute with Kathryn Bufkin of US English and Greg Noblet of MS Social Science. The conference has been "designed to explore the use of student-centered, discussion-based education that is loosely described as the 'Harkness method' of teaching". Each year the conference centers around one theme; ours was "Taste". We read approximately 50 pages per day from a collection of works that the instructors had put together about "Taste". Many of these readings were articles from the //New Yorker//, yet others were poems, short stories, or other pieces of non-fiction. There were approximately sixty educators there in all, and we were led by five or six instructors who teach at PHA. Each of the five mornings we attended two required classes which lasted about an hour. True to form, these classes were Harkness style discussions led by pairs of educators attending the conference. The evening before "my class" my partner and I devised a strategy for the discussion. Following each class, the group of twelve classmates would process the class, both its leadership and participation. This portion of the discussion always initiated with data collected from the two peer observers. We spent our afternoons in optional classes that focused on different areas of interest. The campus is beautiful (though it rained everyday) the cafeteria food was tasty, and the dorms were adequate. I highly recommend this conference for anyone who wishes to learn more about discussion style teaching including those outside of the English or Social Science disciplines. If you have questions about this conference please feel free to ask me, Melissa Ross. Here's the website: []

The week-long conference at the Exeter Humanities Institute (EHI) this summer provided daily participation in and analysis of the Harkness method. Phillips Exeter teachers, who led the EHI sessions, use the student-driven discussion technique almost exclusively in their classes, even in courses that might seem at first glance hostile to it, such as AP and mathematics.

The 60 or so teachers from independent schools throughout the country were divided into groups of 12, who formed a "class" for the week of Harkness practice and discussion. During the two mandatory sessions each day, these groups would analyze the source of success or lack thereof of the Literature/Social Science discussion. During each session, two conference attendees were assigned the role of "leader/teacher" and two others the role of "observer" (who tracked such quantitative data as the number of times and sex of each person who spoke, who spoke to whom, etc.), and the rest of the group participated in the discussion. The various methods of tracking help the teacher determine if a particular gender is dominating, if students are comfortable speaking only to the teacher, under what circumstances students tend to contribute once and then "zone out," how much eye contact is being made and with whom, which ideas participants return to more than once, etc. etc. Discussions of this data provided some of the most illuminating moments of the conference.

EHI also offered a choice of workshops in the afternoon, including "How to Assess Students on Harkness," "Writing Workshops with the Harkness Method," "Learning Differences at the Harkness Table," etc. The first two of these were of particular interest, as a newcomer to Harkness (I had never heard of it until I came to Ransom last year) and as a teacher of writing. I was surprised and interested to find that PEA students, even upperclassmen, write mostly narratives, as opposed to analytical and expository essays. I was interested also to find that EHI hosts a summer conference on teaching Shakespeare and one on writing (not teaching writing, but writing). Math teachers may be interested in an EHI conference on teaching math, which several participants I chatted with raved about.

Melissa Ross and I plan to scan into this Wiki some of the more helpful documents we received. Feel free to email or call me with particular questions at kbufkin@ransomeverglades.org. I recommend the conference highly!