Around the time the Emma Willard community was writing Leading with Purpose, the strategic plan for 2021–2026, the faculty also began imagining new aspirations for the academic program. The result was a move toward curricular cohesion centered around the pillars of intellectual flexibility, purpose and community, and equity and justice; the discussion left behind a lingering appetite for innovation. They were primed and ready to imagine new ways of teaching and learning.

The Curriculum Innovation Projects (CIPs) were born out of these inspiring conversations, combined with the passion of Trustee Susie Hunter ’68 to create time in faculty schedules to allow the space for innovation. Nurtured through support for academic excellence and the Center for Teaching and Learning via philanthropic gifts to Infinite Horizon: The Campaign for Emma Willard School, the CIPs are primarily supported by the Hunter Endowed Fund for the Curriculum Innovation Project (see the Fall 2022 issue of Signature magazine). This funding has allowed for additional instructors to be hired in multiple departments to facilitate course releases, freeing up one course’s worth of time for teach- ers who were chosen to conduct CIPs.

Associate Head of School Dr. Meredith Legg remembers those exhilarating first conversations, envisioning what could be: “We wanted to make sure we were continuing to infuse new ideas into our program and giving teachers the opportunity to do some exciting things, both because it has an amazing impact on our students and our program when we look outside of Emma to bring really good ideas in, and also because it’s an amazing opportunity to bring enormous job satisfaction to teachers.”

That sense of job satisfaction was one of the motivating factors for History Instructor Maggie Curtin to accept a position at Emma Willard. She learned of a CIP that had been undertaken with the intent of developing a class on Indigenous history, and she was hooked.

INDIGENOUS HISTORY OF NORTH AMERICA
“I majored in American and Indigenous Studies at Bard and wanted to keep studying that in some way,” Maggie shares. There was significant interest in the History Department to create an Indigenous History course, and the department was looking for expertise in this area. And so, Maggie saw a wonderful opportunity. “It definitely drew me to take the job here,” she says.

Maggie explains that Native American and Indigenous studies have risen to prominence in higher education in recent years, but she hasn’t seen evidence of the subject being taught in the same way at a secondary level. It was an exciting opportunity to bring her passion from her undergraduate work to the high school classroom.

“There were a couple of goals I had in mind: I wanted students to be able to grapple with the idea of settler colonialism and how it impacts the past and the present on the North American continent,” Maggie begins. “And then, what does it mean to see US his- tory through the lens of Indigenous history? How does that change the previous conceptions and ideas we held about the past?”

Because Maggie began teaching the class in her first year at Emma, she was essentially designing the curriculum as she went. “I was flying the airplane while I was building it, which was a wonderful project, but all these other questions started to come up, too,” she explains. “Something I loved so much about this class was I was lucky enough to have the flexibility to have it be student-driven—what were they interested in and what avenues did they want to explore?”

One of the ideas the students were interested in exploring was the concept of intersectionality. “They were thinking about the intersection of colonialism and different power structures and how that impacts not just the past but also the present,” Maggie explains. And this intersectionality could also be seen in their own experience as students benefiting from the legacy of Emma Hart Willard.

As America’s first female cartographer, Emma Hart Willard’s collection of maps and illustrations speak to a time period when settler colonialism was greatly impacting the Indigenous cultures of North America. Maggie was able to leverage this work to create a project that allowed current students to reflect on Madame Willard’s creations.

“Part of [Madame Willard’s] pedagogical theory as an early American historian is in cementing American nationalism,” Maggie explains. The class inspected Madame Willard’s map entitled “Locations and Wanderings of Aboriginal Tribes,” and Maggie asked them to describe what they found interesting about the map and how colonialism might appear implicitly in the work. They focused on deconstructing their ideas of what borders are and how borders—which feel so concrete and permanent and guarded to many of us—are human constructs that often existed as a tool of colonialism.

“Why I loved this project so much was it’s a senior elective with second-semester seniors. They are bril- liant. They are ready to go to college. And they are a little bit jaded,” Maggie laughs. “I wanted to give them the opportunity to embrace the nuance of Emma Hart Willard’s views in the 1800s and the views of present- day Emma Willard students.”

And so, Maggie asked them to write a letter. It was to be a formal letter to the founder of their school, in their own voice. They were to explain what they were studying in class, what they had learned to this point, and what the school she created meant to them. Also included were their critiques of the map itself.

“The letters were wonderful,” Maggie enthuses. “Students talked about how much love they have for this place, how much this place has changed them, shaped them.” At the same time, students addressed issues they see in the maps with the benefit of historical perspective. Maggie explains that the goal of the letter-writing project is to encourage students to hold two truths at the same time and reflect on the history of Emma Willard in a more holistic way.

BEYOND SCIENCE
While Maggie’s dynamic class on Indigenous history brought a poignant moment of reflection for graduating seniors, across campus in the Hunter Science Center, Science Instructor Kathy Mroczka was focused on the newest members of the community: 9th graders. When Kathy envisioned her CIP, her desire was to transform the 9th-grade physics curriculum by adding problems to each unit that would connect students to real-world concerns. She called it Beyond Science.

“The curriculum we’re currently using does a really nice job of teaching the science, but it doesn’t connect back to the real world. It’s very much just hard science,” Kathy shares. “What inspired me as a kid was learning about how the world worked and seeing the connection between the theory and the actual practical application. So what I’ve found is whenever we did small pieces similar to the Beyond Science problems, students just lit up. They asked a lot of questions. They’d be interested, and you would see students speak up who weren’t speaking up in other ways in response to the science.”

Her own experience and the engagement of her students influenced Kathy to apply for a CIP with the intent of building a full set of Beyond Science problems to go along with each unit in the 9th-grade physics curriculum. Last year, she spent a course release developing the problems, which range from exploring thermodynamics and urban heat islands to delving into scientific astronomy alongside the astronomical traditions of indigenous peoples.

“I was inspired in part by our pillars,” Kathy explains. “I think rigor is something we do really well in science. The equity and justice and community and purpose pillars—those are much harder, partly because as adults who have gone through programs, we did not have anything like that in our own science education. So we don’t have a model to follow.”

What Kathy found when trying to look to other schools for examples of similar work is that many used an exploration of female scientists as their nod to diversity and inclusion. “I didn’t want to do that,” she says. “I wanted it to be purposeful and meaningful. I spent a good chunk of time looking for models of others doing this, particularly in physics. There’s a bit more in biology and environmental studies, but in chemistry and physics, there’s very little of it going on.” So Kathy was on her own to imagine, research, write, and create applications for each physics unit that would tie to some element of equity and justice or purpose and community.

To launch the Beyond Science program, students reflected on a problem examined in the August 2016 issue of Smithsonian Magazine. In her article, “Is Sustainable Trash-Burning a Load of Rubbish?,” science writer Carrie Arnold quotes Monica Wilson, program manager at GAIA (Global Alliance for Incineration Alternatives): “Burning toxic garbage doesn’t magically eliminate it. All you’re doing is converting waste from solid garbage to air pollution. You’re creating a landfill in the sky and allowing companies to burn the evidence of how much toxic stuff they’re creating.”

The class was asked to spend time reflecting first on what the quote reminded them of in general and sec- ond on the details of the quote that made them think of something they had learned previously. Responses ranged from the conservation of mass to Earth as a closed system to the reduction of volume achieved by burning. Students then inspected a diagram of a waste conversion plant and were instructed to annotate the diagram using annotation skills they had learned in their English and history classes. Finally, they watched a video of how such a plant operated, noting the positive tone of the explanation and the source of the information. They ended with a list of questions on their mind, not least of which was, “What happens to the byproducts of this process?” They would soon learn the answers in subsequent class sessions as they investigated a similar energy plant on their own.

This Beyond Science practice embodies several key aspects we value most in an Emma Willard education: cross-disciplinary learning, intellectual flexibility, curiosity, and having a meaningful impact on the world.

STIRRING THE COLLEGIAL SPIRIT
Arriving at the moment CIPs are seen in action in the classroom has been a process of collaboration and discovery. “I got so much from my colleagues who already cover topics of purpose, community, and equity in meaningful ways,” Kathy notes. “There were often times during this project that I felt unsure because some of the topics really branch out beyond a traditional science class. It was extremely helpful to have colleagues in other departments who could reassure me this was really worthwhile.”

The interaction between colleagues is part of a cohort model developed around the CIP work, allowing those who are developing their projects at the same time to meet regularly—along with Director of Curriculum and Innovation Caroline Boyajian and Center for Teaching and Learning Coordinator Megan Labbate— to talk about their progress and encourage one another. To date, eight teachers have engaged in CIP projects, and two to three CIPs are expected every year going forward. Inspired by education reformer John Dewey’s quote, “We do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience,” teachers who develop a CIP chart their journey to capture what they have learned and share it with others. Those who undertake a CIP present their projects at Teaching and Learning meetings. “They are some of the most inspiring meetings we have,” Dr. Legg raves. “If you want to see and be so proud of what our faculty do every day, listen to them present on what they’re doing with their CIP time—how it’s allowed them to teach differently, work differently with students, and really engage in deeper ways than any of them have ever expected. It is so powerful, and it makes you recognize the incredible professional intellect we have on this campus.”

In addition to these internal presentations, this year’s CIP participants will apply to share their curriculum innovation project at a conference in their field. “We want to share the huge impact this has had on our curriculum,” Dr. Legg says. “And it really truly has. There are enormous implications for these curriculum innovation projects and teachers, and they are so much deeper and richer than anything we’ve seen before in terms of curriculum development.”

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This piece was written for the Fall 2024/Winter 2025 issue of Signature magazine.