A Day to Honor Our Veterans

By Laura Moore

WWII Vet, John Bergmann speaking to students and fellow veterans seated before him

When United States Marine, Honor Flight Guardian and self-proclaimed "push up guy" Dave Schott stood before a gathering of veterans, active service men and women and students this past Wednesday, he shared an excerpt of a speech called "Peaches and Poundcake" given by Retired Army Major General Robert H. Scales at the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum in Independence, Missouri, on September 12, 2009.

"It’s sufficient to talk to each of you about things we have seen and kinship we have shared in the tough and heartless crucible of war. Some day, we will all join those who are serving so gallantly now and have preceded us on battlefields from Gettysburg to Wanat. We will gather inside a fire base to open a case of C-rations, with every box peaches and pound cake. We will join with a band of brothers to recount the experience of serving something greater than ourselves. I believe in my very soul that the Almighty reserves a corner of heaven, probably around a perpetual campfire, where someday we can meet and embrace all of the band of brothers throughout the ages, to tell our stories while envious bystanders watch and wonder how horrific and incendiary the crucible of violence must have been to bring such a disparate assemblage so close to the hand of God."

For those of us non-military folks who happened to be unaware of the significance of peaches and poundcake, Schott followed up the quote by explaining that after being in the field, getting the chance to indulge in that dessert was heavenly, that it was a favorite treat soldiers could share together. 

And so the image he painted with Major General Robert H. Scales words--one of a campfire where valiant men and women would gather around and tell stories, surrounded by every box there was of peaches and poundcake--smoldered in my mind for the rest of the day and into the night: an image of diverse faces, with diverse experiences, people with enormous passion, grace, bravery and conviction, people brought together by the cause of our country, the cause of defending our freedom.

And as it lived there, I couldn't help but paint the individual faces I had seen on the logs around the fire: Mike Knilans, Andy Frick, Michael Rutland, Crista Sturbois, John Bergmann, Milt Mapou, Dave Schott, Bill Richards. I could help but fill the air of my mind with their experiences, their advice, their answers, their transparent quest--despite all they have already given to us--to give us more, to share some of the hardest, most challenging moments they endured, to pass on to us their part in history, to allow us to bare witness to the violence that brought them all together, and the kinship they shared in the tough and heartless crucible of war.

I couldn't help but fill up with their stories.

Stories that often took years to emerge.

Upper Arlington resident and World War II veteran, John Bergmann, had to wait 43 years before he could speak. A mathematics student at the University Pittsburgh, Bergmann was recruited by the military to come to Washington D.C. and serve as a code-breaker, as one of the crucial minds who helped us win World War II. For 43 years his family believed the story he was forced to tell them--that he was a payroll clerk--even though he was central to the effort to break Japanese and German codes, codes that changed every 24 hours, giving the code breakers a mere day to solve the pattern before it changed once more. He interacted directly with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, but his experiences had to exist in his mind as secrets until 1985 when the British started telling their story, and Bergmann asked if it was finally okay to tell his.

A second World War II veteran, Milt Mapou, talked also about the repression of story. As a Pearl Harbor survivor, he said soldiers were not allowed to talk about the attack. They could send postcards home that said, "I am in the hospital, but I am well." They couldn't, however, give details, they couldn't say where they were or give specifics about their injuries. They couldn't process what they endured with the people they loved most.

As Mapou told his story about growing up overnight, Bergmann emphasized how important it was for people at home to write to the men and women serving us. 

"If you have family members overseas, send letters to them," Bergmann said, "I've seen grown men in a corner crying reading letters from home."

When U.S. Navy Veteran and Honor Flight Guardian, Bill Richards spoke during 8th period, he started off by saying, "What a gift to be in the same room with World War II vets. Get a picture to share with your kids."

He went on to talk about the power of Honor Flights, of giving veterans the opportunity to visit their memorials, to share their stories and to give them the homecoming they deserved. This is particularly significant for Vietnam veterans who returned to a country in protest, a country who didn't grant soldiers gratitude and respect for their sacrifices, sacrifices many of them never chose to make in the first place.

He talked about one man who wore his greens on the flight, and when Richards praised his effort to keep his uniform in such mint condition, the man said he didn't. When he got back from Vietnam he destroyed his uniform. The one he wore on his honor flight was brand new. And when he got off of that plane, he said, "today, I come home."

Toward the end of his speech, Richards said, "we all have a story to tell." 

And he encouraged us to listen. 

To these men and women and to extend ourselves to meet others. To come out and greet the honor flight participants, to clap for them, respect them, to give them the dessert of human connection.

From beginning to end, the Veterans Day Celebration, organized by teachers Betsy Sidor, Mark Boesch, Nate Palmer and the rest of the Upper Arlington High School Social Studies department, was a moving example of the power of telling our stories, of gathering around a figurative campfire and listening to the people who have come before us, the people who have made tremendous sacrifices, sacrifices that enable us to walk into our school, sit in our desks and learn.

While the soldiers didn't get a truck filled with peaches and poundcake, our students and staff tried to honor them with the best of their gifts. From performances by Ed and Gretchen Zunic's symphonic orchestra, to Eric Kaufmann's vocal ensemble, to George Edge's drum line, to contributions from Kim Wilson and her classes, Mark Boesch and Kelly Scott and the class officers, Kim Brown and student council students, Judy Miller who coordinated lunch with Rusty Bucket (Easton) General Manager Dave Redenbarger, and Karen D'Eramo and the UA Rise baristas who made coffee for the veterans to enjoy, Upper Arlington High School made every effort to welcome some of the greatest people any of us will ever meet.

Thank you, veterans, for all you've given and continue to give. You are an inspiration to us all.

WWII Veteran John Bergmann speaking to students

Intelligent Failure

By Laura Moore

When the bell rings for lunch, most students flood the parking lots and sidewalks, making their way home, or to any number of local eating establishments. Some stay behind in the cafeteria, others dive into their studies in the library and a few others crowd around the auditorium lobby, lounging on couches, munching on food, diving into pop culture analyses, high school drama, or philosophical bantering.

Last Friday, however, Upper Arlington High School's Community School students were gathered in the orchestra room, engaging in an emergency class forum run by the student "chair" they elected to lead them.

This emergency meeting occurred three days into their new unit, but the process that brought them to that point started a few weeks before when their language arts teacher, Melissa Hasebrook, charged them with a mission to brainstorm ideas for the next unit. Beginning with passion and curiosity, students listed ideas they had interest in studying. Then, they gathered in groups with others who shared that interest so they could explore it, identify essential questions about it, and locate both potential book titles as well as satellite texts (movies, TV shows, articles, artwork) and accompanying visuals for analysis (comics, posters, memes).

The set up sounds like a dream for students, but having been in the classroom for twelve years, I will admit that my palms grew misty just imagining all of the potential ways this openness and freedom could travel off course. See, while student choice is important, I know it can also be dangerous. It can lead to inappropriate pursuits or undesired outcomes. It can make people uncomfortable.

But it can also lead to tremendously valuable learning.

And that's exactly what happened in Hasebrook's class.

As student groups formed and energy built, it became obvious that there was tremendous interest in the development of a unit focusing on serial killers.

Hasebrook said there were about five students who had sincere interest, but they were able to bring their peers on board and after three rounds of voting, three classes landed on this topic as the one they wanted to pursue. The process itself was lengthy: students were tasked with developing their position with research and then presenting those ideas in front of the class. Hasebrook recorded the presentations and posted them on the class Schoology page. Once all ideas were presented, students picked the top three, whittling the field to 10 and then they voted once more, narrowing the field to four. Once the final four ideas were identified, they voted one final time, arriving at the unit they most wanted to pursue.

While kids have always been fascinated by fringe ideas, Hasebrook said this was the first time a group managed to get a fringe idea through and win. And when such a reality unfolded, she said she had to make a decision about how to handle it. Should she stop it before it started and give them the unit she wanted to teach or should she honor their wishes and forge onward?

True to her commitment to giving students experiences that enable them to learn authentically, she decided to let her students learn, to let them wrestle with their decision, to let them find their way out of where they managed to land.

At first, only four students approached her with concerns and she worked with them to design an alternative unit that explored how story impacts an understanding of the world. But as students started reading, the group of four grew. Parents expressed concern, people started having nightmares, regret started creeping through the cracks.

Mrs. Hasebrook spoke with the chair and vice chair and they decided to call a meeting with all three classes. At that meeting--which occurred during lunch--a room packed with students shared their positions. As each person spoke--facilitated by an intentional, methodical process led by a student-appointed chair--the room listened.

Even though some students still felt passionately about going on with the chosen unit, 50% felt uncomfortable; therefore, the group decided to halt its progress, to go back to the drawing board with new unit ideas, and over the weekend, they had three rounds of voting, rounds that landed them on Kafka and his novel The Trial. 

Some naysayers might look at this particular lesson and scold the power of student choice, but I look at it as a prime example of what Amy Edmondson calls intelligent failure in her Harvard Business Review article "Strategies for Learning from Failure." In this piece, she asserts that "failure resulting from thoughtful experimentation that generates valuable information may actually be praiseworthy."  She says intelligent failure "occur[s] when experimentation is necessary: when answers are not knowable in advance because this exact situation hasn't been encountered before and perhaps never will again."

This particular "failure" was intelligent because the effect of these students' choice was not knowable in advance for them. But, by being allowed to go through the process--by being allowed to actually live with this particular choice--these students learned, very deeply, about the weight of it. In a safe space, they got to see how individual choice can impact others in real and powerful ways. They learned to speak up and out. They learned to respectfully listen, to come together, to build unity despite differences. Instead of being told why that's important, over the course of a few days, students learned a lesson wider-reaching than the Common Core could ever hope to go. They learned that while the freedom of choice is empowering, it comes with real consequences. They learned that certain things cause visceral reactions in others. They learned how to manage their emotions and how to feel a sense of responsibility to members of a community.

And they learned all of this because Hasebrook let them.

She didn't issue blame. She didn't demean their curiosity. She didn't stop their progress and save them with the answer. She let them feel and dig and empathize. She let them wrestle with a challenging predicament and learn how to be civically-responsible beings. And then, she let them find their way out.

In the opening lines of her article, Edmondson tells us that "the wisdom of learning from failure is incontrovertible. Yet the organizations who do it well are extraordinarily rare."

We, at Upper Arlington High School want to be one of those organizations.

And while there are countless other examples of how we experiment and fail and learn and grow throughout the high school, today, I wrote about Hasebrook's class because I think her lesson captures perfectly why intelligent failure it is such an important ideal to pursue.

The Power of Laughter

By Laura Moore

My eyes scanned the room as I wiggled uncomfortably in my seat. From "vibrato" to "güiro" to "audiation," terms were flying left and right and students were either nodding at the epiphanies those words helped produce, or they were laughing, imagining their orchestra teacher, Ed Zunic, in a whole host of vulnerable situations.

I jotted notes furiously, intending to meet with him later so I could clear up my confusion and translate what felt like a foreign language into plain spoken English. But as the period wore on, I found that what was happening around me quickly moved from foreign to unmistakeable: bit by bit, anecdote by anecdote, detail by detail, I could hear music evolving. I could see learning happening. I could--despite my lack of musical acuity--process precisely what was going on: kids were taking risks, having fun, and pushing themselves to make adjustments so their own personal sounds would make the entire class sound just a little bit better.

And strangely enough, what initially felt so foreign suddenly felt familiar, suddenly reminded me--unexpectedly--of my days playing sports: dribbling drills before learning a new offense, spin drills before taking the mound, digging lines before 6-on-6 scrimmages. Laughter and playfulness cropping up between moments of intensity, where joy has space to emanate and camaraderie has room to grow. And as it all unfolded, Mr. Zunic's pep-talks, his mini-challenges, his ability to manage a room of 80 kids masterfully reminded me--very clearly--of the best coaches who guided my life.

He isolated the violins and the violas, the cellos and the basses, and group by group, he asked them to test out finger plucking and vibrato (which I learned was a technique to produce warm, richer sounds that feel more human, interesting and pleasing).

"If one person uses too much bow it can all fall apart" he told them, drawing awareness to the details of finger position and bow position, challenging them to perfect their form.

"Watch how the bows line up," he said scanning the room, "we need to play like one giant organism."

I sent my eyes across a space dotted with 80 students holding 4 different instruments, and I observed them struggle and excel. I watched them test and grow, experiment with vulnerability and laugh.

And then I watched them laugh some more.

In fact, despite how beautiful the music was, it was that laughter that gripped me the most, laughter that seemed to come at all of the right times through anecdotes and puns.

In discussing vibrato, Zunic gave them a mini history lesson about its origin, concluding his story by saying, "it goes Bach that far."

Later, sensing insecurity, he connected with them using an anecdote from his own life. Students had been working on audiation skills, and Zunic asked them to play a portion of a song, and then play AND sing that same portion, and then drop the instrument all together and just sing the music itself aloud. Some kids--the brave ones--acted without thought; others adopted a silent lip-moving whisper. My own insecurities about singing in public instantly sent a flash of empathy through me as I put myself in their shoes, but before I could tie up the laces, Mr. Zunic had stopped them and told them about a moment in 4th grade when his teacher assigned him to play the güiro--a fish-shaped instrument--in his class's rendition of the Don Gato song. 

"You don't need to sing," his teacher said, apparently recognizing his less-than-stellar singing voice, "just play the instrument." 

The students laughed, and Zunic continued. "I can sympathize," he said very sincerely, "with those of you who aren't strong singers."

It wasn't surprising that the next round of "play, play-sing, sing" sounded a little louder than it did the first time. 

And after watching Ed Zunic's class, it also wasn't surprising that I understood far more than I expected to when I walked into the room. From lacing his lessons with metaphors and analogies about escalators and elevators, to easing anxieties with laughter, to admitting his own challenges, Zunic has a way of making music feel accessible and fun, powerful and important and chaotically beautiful. He pushed them and pulled them and kept them on their toes, persistently looking for ways to make simple tasks complicated, to build a better mouse trap. 

He says he does this by learning from and listening to teachers in all different disciplines, looking for new methodologies and ideas to help students polish skills, to push them beyond the literal and help them embrace the details, the dynamics, the "fun stuff." 

The stuff that makes music--and life--art.

That night when I went home, I felt a little braver than I did when I left for school in the morning. Plopping myself down at our family piano, I put my fingers on the keys. Pressing against them, I tested out the sounds, sounds my two-year old son has no problem playing, but sounds that had previously seemed out of reach for me. I had no idea what I was doing, but the minute I started risking, the minute I dropped my inhibitions and let myself laugh, ideas surfaced. The discomfort inspired me, motivated me, pushed me. 

And even though I was lightyears away from making music like those students in Ed Zunic's 8th period class, as I sat before that piano, as I recalled the challenges they tackled that day, I realized that musically inclined or not, I was a better human being for having been present in the room to watch them.