Where are on a smaller scale, professionalism is not mentioned enough in teaching, relational cultivation in the context of a professional community and a broader school community, often seems absent from conversations in the educational sphere. At EPS, the absence of these two things is hard to imagine. Our culture is both fed and girded by our collegial dynamics and our connection to the broader school community.
Collegial Dynamics | Connection and Collaboration
Over a decade ago, as the EPS faculty explored the distinction between academic achievement and character education, we arrived at five responsible action measures, preparedness, engagement, perseverance, self-advocacy, and collaboration.
While the first four measures are used in different ways by different EPS faculty in their classrooms, the fifth measure, collaboration, is ubiquitous in the EPS culture. In the world of education, most people assume that teaching is an individual act; at EPS it is highly collaborative with teachers working side by side with both colleagues and students. These collaborations happen in more formal settings like the Academic Design Group, and more informal settings like breakfast and lunch.
At the school I worked at before I came to EPS, the adult culture reflected the cliquishness of the student culture. At EPS the culture of connection and collaboration in our professional community is nurtured and protected, and it is reflected in the student culture.
As I enter the LPC for meals, rather than look for specific colleagues to sit and eat with, I look forward to the opportunity of sitting with and connecting with any of my colleagues who have an open seat next to them. In these moments, I have opportunity to connect and hear how things are in people’s personal lives, what they are working on in their classes or programs, and to check-in with colleagues who are teaching a separate section of the same course I am teaching.
Understanding and Navigating the Modern World
Over my career at EPS, I have taught 18 different courses and 10 distinct seminars, along with mentoring 20 independent studies, and 3 senior theses. Currently, I teach a series of trimester-length courses focused on theory and application. These courses include Undercover Economics, Evolution of Society, and Topics in Urban Planning & Community Design. Each of these classes is interdisciplinary in nature and ask students to think about theoretical models that frame daily experience, and how exploring those models might help them better understand and navigate the modern world.
Apart from Evolution of Society, which I wrote with Jonathan Briggs, and the American Studies Program that I authored with Elena Olsen, I designed each of these courses individually. (see table) As the school’s student and faculty populations have grown, I have had the opportunity to collaborate on each of these courses with different colleagues introducing them to the core content and skills for each course. My assumption, expectation, and experience have been that collaborating with my colleagues on these courses brings them to the next level of quality and relevance.
Engaging with Colleagues
One of my favorite things about EPS is that we treat faculty and staff as professionals, acknowledging that opportunities for personal connection and professional collaboration, both on and off campus, improve our programs, our courses, and our teaching. Supporting faculty and staff, and fostering their well-being, is a less common practice in schools than many people would know.
Some of the most substantive experiences of connection I have had with colleagues have happened off campus. Whether attending a happy hour, a Mariners game, a Sounders game as the guest of EPS parents, or a full faculty retreat day to Islandwood on Bainbridge Island during my first year at EPS, establishing personal connections with my colleagues has provided me a foundation for future collaboration in a myriad of areas. These types of events and interactions contribute to the culture of high trust we often reflect on and talk about at EPS.
Current and Future Practice
| Indicator | Area of… | |
| F.1 | Develops mutually respectful and productive relationships with colleagues | Strength |
| F.2 | Partners consistently with colleagues on projects (i.e. integration, service learning) | Strength |
| F.3 | Engages in collegial activities hosted by the school | Strength |
Reflection
In the coming years, I am looking forward to more opportunities for connection and collaboration with my colleagues, teaching shared courses in the social science and interdisciplinary realms, in the context of the Resident Teacher Program and Professional Development Project, and as part of the Academic Design Group. I look forward to collaborations in these spaces to improve and evolve my professional practice and my teaching practice.
Community Membership & Support | Focusing on “The Why”
For many years, I started my open house presentation with the following phrase, “When friends and family ask me about Eastside Prep and why it’s different from other schools. This is what I tell them…” Whether I am participating in the admissions process, attending out-of-town conferences, or having casual conversations about Eastside Prep, I, excitedly and succinctly, express that what we are doing at EPS is building and re-building the school experience that we didn’t get to have as students.
One of the primary reasons we have been so successful in this pursuit is because of the dedication and focus of each of our faculty and staff members. For me, the most powerful thing at EPS is the adult, professional culture; a culture informed and fueled by my high bandwidth, genuine, and honest colleagues; a culture that trickles down to and is mirrored by our student population. I am so proud of who we are and the work we do individually and together.
Student Performances and Events
Throughout my 16 years at Eastside Prep, I have attended over a hundred student performances, athletic games, assemblies, and social events. Now, we have so many events that I try to be very intentional when I decide what I’m going to attend.
One of my favorite things to do is attend the dress rehearsals for EPS drama productions where I get to show support for our students’ work as they make final preparations and adjustments for their more formal productions. In the 2022-23 school year, my favorite performances were the dress rehearsals for Puffs and High School Musical.
I also really enjoy attending student events with my kids, Tae and Juni. Many of these productions and performances were part of their initial introduction to Eastside Prep; and now that they are students, Tae a rising 9th grader, and Juni, a rising 6th grader, I get to watch both of them and their peers on stage and the athletic field or court.
Location, Location, Location
Previous to the construction of the TALI building, my office was located in a number of high-traffic areas on-campus. Whether sharing an office with Elena Olsen in the space that also contained the student lounge in my early EPS years, or officing with my colleagues in the humanities in the main lobby of the old upper school building, it was guaranteed that I was in the middle of the daily life of the school. Even when my office was in the initial Bishop administrative building, I was in the center of the action.
Since my office has moved to the fourth floor of the TALI building, I’ve had to be much more intentional to be visible and engaged across the rest of the campus. This is still a work in progress for me. Few people make casual visits to the 4th floor of the TALI building. Some of the strategies I’ve used to involve myself more in the daily life of the school are the following: scheduling meetings in the Levinger-Poole Commons, facilitating the ping-pong club in the TMAC gym, and sitting in the TALI lobby to work on my computer so that I’ll have the opportunity for more casual interactions with students and colleagues as they move through the campus.
From Multicultural Education to Culturally Responsive Teaching
As I was exploring the idea of applying to and attending graduate school for a degree in education, I spent time working and observing in an elementary school in the South Bronx. This was not an experience that I could have anticipated in any concrete way; and it was an experience that was seminal to my desire to be an educator and further goals of pluralism and equity in American society.
While assisting in a 6th grade English class at this school, a school where the student and faculty populations were primarily Black, and where I was one of three white people who worked in the school, I turned to the teacher I was working with and said about the day’s lesson, “It’s ok if they don’t get this right away, I didn’t learn what they’re learning until I was in college.” The teacher quickly responded to me, “Most of these children are not going to be able to go to college. My job is to help get them ready to be out in the world, which is going to happen sooner than later.”
In a later class period, she and the students were exploring Langston Hughes’ poem, Harlem. As I was sitting in the back of the classroom, the teacher said, “Mr. Delaney, could you read this poem aloud for us. Feeling uncomfortable and self-conscious, I nodded my head and read the poem in a somewhat stilted voice. As I concluded, the teacher said, “Did you hear the rhythm and inflection Mr. Delaney used when he read the poem?”
She continued, “Mr. Delaney would you mind reading that poem one more time.” A little shocked and hesitant, I engaged the poem and read it again. The teacher said, “Did you notice the imagery in the poem as Mr. Delaney was reading? Did you notice the emotion in his voice and the texture of the language in the poem?”
Thinking I was finished, I exhaled and started reflecting on the experience, when the teacher said, “Mr. Delaney, I really don’t think that you truly get a poem until you read it aloud a third time. Could you read it one more time for us?” As I read it for a third time, I was able to abstract and start understanding and feeling the poem on a deeper level; but on a level of a historically privileged white male, getting only a glimpse of Hughes’ experience and commentary, and only vague notion of what the lived experience was for the students in that class.
One of the primary reasons I went to graduate school for education before starting my teaching career, was to surface and learn how to enact my personal values connected to what was referred to at the time as multicultural education. Since that time the paradigm in schools and at EPS has evolved to be a much more active approach inside and outside of the classroom, where diversity, equity, and inclusion are the concepts we map to and work to foster.
As I was working with Elena Olsen to construct the American Studies Program for our first group of 11th graders, our primary focus was on our students understanding of the different peoples that had been left outside of the arc of human rights in the Declaration of Independence. I also designed and implemented courses that had complementary focuses on diversity including Public Policy: Race, Class, Gender, and the Environment, Truth in Film: The Documentary as Social Actor, and Topics in Urban Planning and Community Design.
In each of my current classes, Undercover Economics, Evolution of Society, and Urban Planning, I have embedded the exploration of different topics that take on equity issues related to race, ethnicity, class, and gender. In Undercover Economics, we explore how the structure of capitalism reinforces a disparity in wealth and financial power; in Evolution of Society, we discuss gender balance as connected to representation in the technology industry; and in Urban Planning, we focus on economic and racial demographics and connect them to housing issues; cultural art and representation; and the unequal distribution of resources to historically and currently marginalized communities.
Equity, inclusion, and compassionate leadership are core to our mission and vision at Eastside Prep. As a classroom teacher, who focuses on the modern world, my students’ understanding and navigating issues of equity, inclusion, diversity, and compassionate leadership are essential to their efforts to make the world a better place, as reflected in the school’s vision statement, inspiring students to create a better world.
Current and Future Practice
| Indicator | Area of… | |
| F.1 | Acts as a strong and positive ambassador for EPS | Strength |
| F.2 | Attends school events and student performances (i.e. arts, athletics, social) | Strength |
| F.3 | Participates visibly in the daily life of the school | Improvement |
| F.4 | Recognizes and supports diversity in all its forms | Improvement |
Reflection
Going forward, one of my goals is to increase my presence in the daily life of the school. Were the efforts I describe above are my current approach to being out and about on the EPS campus, in the next two years, I would like to develop a more concrete and consistent plan to visit more of my colleagues’ classrooms and see our students and their learning in action.
On the equity, inclusion, and compassionate leadership front, I don’t know that I would ever list this as a strength. I will continue to do work to better understand and uncover my own identity and biases, recognize and celebrate my students’ identities in the classroom, and construct learning experiences that recognize those identities and their inclusion in the design and implementation of the courses that I am teaching, and the programs that I am building and facilitating. I am thankful that I have such a powerful and inclusive professional community in which to do this work.