Before he arrived at Fenn as a new student, in fifth grade, Colin Cunningham "was different than I am now. I didn't embrace the culture, didn't get involved." But gradually that changed, in large part due to the encouragement of his teacher, Jon Byrd '76.
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Colin Cunningham: Fenn Made Me a Better Person
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Dan Pring: On Being an Identical Twin
How many of you have older siblings who drive you insane?" ninth grader Dan Pring asked his fellow Fenn students gathered in Ward Hall as he began his Senior Reflection. Many boys, as was predictable, raised their hands or applauded.
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Patrick Romeri: On Accepting Change
The ninth grade class and many eighth graders move on from Fenn in June and spread out in all directions a few months later, attending a variety of secondary schools in the area. For one or two boys, the distance will be much further.
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Andrew Metellus: "Helping People is my Priority"
If School President Andrew Metellus could leave a legacy to Fenn, it would be, he said, "that I was nice to everyone." For his Senior Reflection Andrew chose to speak about friendship, and his actions were just as loud as his words.
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Class of 2014 Senior Project: Grease Car
During the 2013-14 school year, in the Headmaster’s garage, on alternate Tuesday afternoons after sports and on an occasional Saturday morning, a technological transformation began taking place. As part of the School’s sustainability efforts, a group of ninth graders converted a 2001 Jetta diesel-field sedan into a “grease car” that burns used vegetable oil.
Enabled in part by a 2011 summer curriculum grant, math teacher Sean Path did a year and a half of research on the project viability. He talked to other schools that had done similar conversions and addressed safety issues such as the need to acquire parent permission. A car was found on Craig’s list and a western Massachusetts distributor supplied the conversion kit.
Sean saw the project as “awesome and hands-on” and said at the time, “it allows kids to manipulate things physically.” More important, he wanted the boys to feel “a sense of responsibility and pride in their work.” To that end, he vowed to be more facilitator than teacher. “I have to be comfortable with a certain level of chaos and uncertainty and to resist the urge to prevent a struggle or solve a problem,” he said.
The project is an ideal one for students, Sean pointed out, as “it’s not like a math word problem. It’s difficult in a real way, not abstract one that isn’t relevant. I couldn’t in a classroom come up with a better problem that is more authentic.”
The grease car crew, fifteen boys whom Sean first asked to write an essay about the challenges they would have to overcome, had different responsibilities: some were working on the car or it filtration unit, some were filming the project, and some were handling marketing and solicitation. The team needed a source for used vegetable oil and therefore developed a well-articulated sales pitch to local businesses.
In order “to validate the fact that kids are putting in time” beyond their regular Fenn obligations, the car was driven when the conversion was completed—Sean used the Jetta to commute to campus. At the time he said, “we’re all learning, and we’re going to make mistakes, ask questions, do research, and get dirty, but if we can persevere, we can do this.” And they did in fact do it.
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Class of 2016 Senior Project: Thoreau's Cabin
Ninth Graders Build Replica of Thoreau’s Cabin
From a site on the hill above the soccer field came the sounds of hammering and sawing this spring. Rising from the ground was a small building that replicates the tiny home “where I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond.”
The words are Henry David Thoreau’s. He lived in that 10 x 15-foot cabin on Walden Pond in Concord for two years in the mid-1840s. Some call the cabin a “wooden inkwell,” for from it flowed the words that filled Thoreau’s journals and became the American literary classic, Walden.
Constructing a slightly smaller replica of the cabin was this year’s Senior Project, overseen by John Fitzsimmons. Ninth graders had explored Thoreau’s writing and philosophy last fall in their English classes. This led to a study of the “tiny house movement,” during which the boys were asked to ponder what it was to live “simply and deliberately,” which Thoreau exhorted his readers to do.
Most of the building, in which the majority of ninth graders participated, was done in the Fenn woodshop, in sections. Once the house was assembled outside, the group shingled the roof and walls, cut the rafters, and finished the interior, sometimes using early tools. John called the project “an epic odyssey of creation and community.” Ninth grader Tad said it was one of his most memorable experiences as a student here. “Working on the roof shingles was the best part. Perched up there I could see the whole school and think about what an incredible experience my years at Fenn have been!”
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