March 2007
David Lynn, ’00, has known since a young age that he
wanted to teach, and so he has—in Hungary, China, the United States
and, most recently, France at the
American School of Paris
(ASP), where he serves as a middle school educator, club advisor and
sports coach.
Lynn, who majored in leadership studies and history
and minored in education, developed a love of learning early. “Since
it’s kind of expensive to be a student your whole life, I figured
being a teacher is the next best thing,” Lynn said.
He got his chance to explore his interest in teaching
right after graduation when Jepson alumna
Amanda Howland, ’99,
recruited him for the ESL-teaching position she was vacating in
Kétsoprony, a village of approximately 1,600 people in southeast
Hungary. Following his yearlong assignment there, Lynn accepted
another yearlong ESL-teaching assignment in a public high school in
Linyi, a city of two million in Shandong Province in eastern China.
Lynn returned to the United States in the fall of
2002 and entered a graduate education program at Harvard. While there,
he regularly attended lectures given by
Joanne Ciulla,
Douglas Hicks and Hugh O’Doherty (a former Jepson professor), all
of whom were serving as visiting fellows and faculty members at
Harvard at the time.
After graduating from Harvard, Lynn taught for two
years at the Shackleton School, a four-year secondary-level boarding
school in Ashby, Mass. Students hailed from diverse ethnic and
socio-economic backgrounds, including many from the inner city. The
school offered an innovative curriculum combining rigorous academics
with extended learning expeditions throughout North America in which
teachers doubled as guides and bus drivers.
When the Shackleton School closed in June 2005 due to
financial constraints, Lynn contacted an agency to help him find a
teaching job closer to his family in New Jersey. So he couldn’t have
been more surprised when he received a call from France.
The middle school director at the American School of
Paris needed to fill a last-minute vacancy and had done a blanket
search to find qualified candidates. During a two-hour phone
interview, Lynn answered numerous questions about his Jepson education
and how he incorporated it into his work both in and out of the
classroom. He received and accepted the job offer from ASP.
Founded in 1946, ASP became the first international
school in Europe. Today the private school enrolls 805 students
representing 50 nationalities in kindergarten through 12th grade and
employs 103 faculty members, guaranteeing small classes. Lynn compared
his classroom to a mini-United Nations with students coming from a
myriad of backgrounds and cultures. His 15 advisees, for example,
represent six continents.
ASP classes are conducted in English, with English
immersion classes being offered to non-native English-speaking
students. Frequent field trips throughout Paris and its environs
augment the school’s rigorous international baccalaureate and advanced
placement programs. The most noticeable differences between ASP and a
well-run American public school, according to Lynn, lie in the
tremendous diversity of the student body and the extraordinary
resources available both in and out of the classroom.
“I feel deeply connected with the educational
philosophy of the school which focuses on the holistic development of
the student,” Lynn said. “I value the professional freedom teachers
are given and the support younger teachers receive from more
experienced colleagues. As the No Child Left Behind Act inadvertently
dismantles the potential of the American public education system, it
is refreshing to work in an environment where teachers are respected
and provided with the support and encouragement they need to create
quality learning experiences for students.”
Now in his second year of teaching middle school
debate and eighth-grade modern world history, including a month-long
lesson on 20th-century leadership inspired largely by what he learned
at Jepson, Lynn has discovered he truly enjoys working with middle
school students and helping them channel their tremendous energy and
enthusiasm into a positive learning experience.
He faces his greatest challenge in designing
activities and lessons appropriate for the wide ranges in maturity and
intellectual development common among students this age. “On the most
difficult days when I am frustrated with how a lesson is going,” Lynn
said, “I ask myself, what would Dr. Wren do? The answer that pops into
my head is usually what saves the day.”
“I learned a lot about teaching from observing how
classes were run at Jepson. I try to encourage a similar learning
environment based on experiential learning, discussion, simulation,
case studies and the occasional research paper. I also do my best to
incorporate aspects of critical thinking, conflict resolution and
ethics into my lessons. It amazes me to see the level of depth that a
group of 13- and 14-year-olds can reach when analyzing some of the
challenging issues of the past decade.”
In addition to drawing on his Jepson education, Lynn
has used his broader ties to the University to his students’
advantage. For example, this February,
Scott Erwin, R’05, currently a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford
University, visited ASP on Lynn’s invitation and spoke to students
about his experiences in Iraq, first as a budget advisor for the
Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad and later as a freelance
journalist.
Lynn believes that just as students can learn much
from speakers like Erwin, they can also enrich their education through
out-of-classroom experiences. He has taken his students on field trips
to Verdun (site of a major World War I battle), Provence, numerous
museums and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) headquarters where they participated in a
simulation exercise.
Just last month, Lynn, the faculty advisor to ASP’s
Model UN Club, accompanied a group of students to Mexico where they
spent several days touring Mexico City before heading to Monterrey to
participate in the 2007 Model United Nations Conference.
Details.
In addition to the work he does with students, Lynn
serves as a faculty liaison to the ASP Board of Trustees and as an
officer for the European League for Middle Level Education (ELMLE). He
spends his free time exploring Paris, sampling the French cuisine,
improving his French and traveling. A constant stream of
visitors—“everyone seems to like a reason to visit Paris,” he said—has
mitigated his longing for home.
Like most teachers, he often devotes nights and
weekends to school-related work, but doing so seems somewhat less
onerous in Paris than it might elsewhere. “The Louvre is a great place
to go and grade papers on weekends,” Lynn said. |