Views from the Hill | 2023 Issue 1

in their 15th year

“My Hopkins Moment”:

Crystal Anniversary

Please share a moment in the last 15 years that crystallized your Hopkins experience.

Ian Clark SCIENCE

Alissa Davis ENGLISH & DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY SERVICE

“It’s very difficult to pick a single moment or event that sums up my experiences as part of the Hopkins community. Being a part of this community, which values growth in both individuals and the collective, is certainly the highlight of my teaching career. In the classroom, the moments I love the most are those when I can help Junior School students remember a fact or concept by leveraging the energy and curiosity inherent in their bright, young minds to produce an excited emotional response. For example, it’s one thing to teach students that atoms and molecules are really, really old, and that basically every atom on Earth (and in them) was part of the spinning nebula cloud that became the solar system 4.6 billion years ago. Factually interesting, sure, but there’s still a certain amount of blah, blah, blah in there to a 7th grader sitting in class right after lunch or at the end of the day. I love the responses I get when I hit students at a very different level by pointing out that water molecules are so old that basically all of the water they will ever drink passed through a dinosaur at least once. Just imagine the looks on their faces and the comments they make when they realize what I’m really saying! Teaching Earth Science at the middle school level is what I have wanted to do since I started teaching almost 25 years ago. I even said so while interviewing for the math position I was originally hired to fill. I feel lucky to have been able to transition to the Science Department within my first three years, and even luckier to now spend my days on the Hill introducing future innovators, policy makers, teachers, leaders, and thinkers to some of the science behind Earth’s physical and climate systems.”

“My Hopkins Moment: Several years ago, I was teaching a junior/senior English elective, Dangerous Books. That year, I had decided to dig back into texts that were dangerous in their own time and explore—with the students—to what degree they still were. To that end, we read Whitman's Leaves of Grass and a new, graphic novel version of Ginsberg's Howl . Both of these poems have a raw, radical voice and a passion from the gut. I remember reflecting on whether or not we give our students the chance to tap into that place of visceral and artistic expression. Do we teach them to shout, to howl, to sing of themselves? So, armed with excerpts of both poems, we drove out to the West Haven beach on a particularly blustery spring day and with the students spaced out about 20 yards apart along the beach, they each flung the poets’ words out into the air. “I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable/I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.” “Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucinations holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the abyss!” Some of the students were shy; some of them were bold. With the wind, no one could hear anyone else, so everyone could have a private experience. I hope that some of them will remember that moment. For me, it certainly crystallized why I love teaching at Hopkins: the freedom to create experiences, to be creative, to be fully immersed in great literature with students who are willing to go there with you. What more could I ask for?”

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2023 • ISSUE 1 | VIEWS FROM THE HILL

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