Our next #ASpotlight interview is with English Teacher Aidan Fennelly! Read his full interview to learn about how he ensures deeper learning in English class, his experiences educating boys during A-S Bridge 2.0, and the many other hats he wears in our community like Seventh Grade Advisor.
Can you tell me about your educational and professional trajectory? What drew you to the field of education? Why English?
I fell into secondary education mostly by accident. I’ve always loved literature – I was an English major in college – and sort of figured that I’d go to law school or something. Thankfully, a recruiter from Teach for America reached out to me during my senior year. I taught high school English in Newark, NJ for three years and middle school English in Red Hook, Brooklyn before coming to Allen-Stevenson. I’ve been at A-S for four years and in the classroom for eight.
I fell in love with teaching almost immediately. When I was a kid, I felt like English class was a place where I could escape the burdens of everyday life, and I try my best to recreate that experience for my students. English class has always felt to me like the one place in school where you could challenge assumptions. It was a place where, as a student, you were allowed to disagree with your teachers and your parents, and where, by writing, you could create something entirely your own.
How do you ensure deeper learning in English class?
English is unique in the degree to which instruction is spiraled. We keep coming back to the same ideas – clear writing, careful reading, and thoughtful analysis – again and again throughout the year. We also strive to make connections across the disciplines in order to deepen students’ understandings of the themes in the literature we read. For example, as the students worked on an immigration unit in David Kersey’s history class, we read Dear America, Notes of An Undocumented Citizen, a memoir by immigration activist Jose Vargas.
Do you have a favorite book or unit you cover with the boys?
Animal Farm by George Orwell is always a hit. In many ways, it’s the perfect book for seventh graders. It’s written simply, and its symbolism is easy to understand. But because it’s an allegory, its themes are timeless – the importance of education, the corrupting influence of power, the dangers of groupthink. It always inspires good discussion.
You work with boys on the annual Upper School Speech Contest. What do you hope the boys get out of this assignment? What value do you think it adds to their comprehensive education?
I love the speech contest because, in a very public way, it celebrates boys for pursuing a topic that they are passionate about. It’s a breath of fresh air from some of the more heavy-handed literary analysis work we do in Seventh Grade. Of course, the speech contest also exposes the boys to the challenge of public speaking and helps many of them overcome a fear that they might otherwise carry into adulthood.
Can you tell me about the Fortiter er Recte class you teach with Upper School Head Steve Cohen? What do you hope students take away from this class?
Fortiter et Recte is a class about applied ethics, the branch of philosophy that deals with right and wrong. We teach students three normative schools of ethics – Consequentialism, Deontology, and Virtue Ethics – and then they use what they learn to solve real-world dilemmas (case studies). It is valuable for several reasons. Pedagogically, it forces our students to think critically and ground what are ostensibly value judgments in logic and reason. But, more importantly, it teaches students that being a good person requires a combination of empathy and reason translated into action. As a perfunctory aside, I also must add that we teach them how to think rather than what to do.
This has been a whirlwind of a year as we have worked tirelessly to overcome the challenges of the COVID pandemic. What do you think are the advantages of our virtual learning platform, A-S Bridge 2.0?
First of all, that it exists. We are blessed to have the resources and personnel to be able to offer a robust virtual program in the midst of a once-in-a-generation global health crisis. Allen-Stevenson boys are also uniquely resilient – they don’t let things get in the way of their learning. I also think that given a student population with adequate support at home, there are benefits to learning over Zoom. There are fewer distractions; smaller class sizes make discussion thoughtful and compelling; less time is wasted with logistical concerns like passing out papers and figuring out groups (thank you, breakout rooms); and it’s surprisingly easy to meet with students one-on-one to review their work. I also feel that the School’s partnership with (and proximity to) Lenox Hill Hospital makes the in-person portion of our program feel safe, so the focus remains on learning at 78th Street.
You are an advisor for a group of seventh graders. Can you tell me a bit about that? What does a typical advisory period look like for your boys?
First of all, shout out to my co-advisor, Upper School Learning Specialist Meghan Wall. She’s a pro at this. Together we help the boys manage the stress of remote learning while also cultivating a sense of community. We try to have a different “theme” for each day of the week: Management Monday (planning), Tune Tuesday (boys share their favorite music), Word-up-Wednesday (current events and social issues), Thankful Thursday (gratitude practice), and Fun Friday (games, etc.).
Last summer, you taught classes on poetry and editorial writing during A-S Summer Bridge. Can you tell me a bit about both of those classes and why you chose to teach them?
Because of the pandemic, I was eager to find a way to fill the time I would otherwise spend travelling with something productive. Though I’ve always made editorial writing and poetry part of my standard English curriculum, I wanted the opportunity to create a course dedicated to these two topics specifically. They are both types of writing that I enjoy, and both offer students a set of skills that they can carry with them beyond the classroom.
Do you have any other roles at Allen-Stevenson that our community may not know about?
I’m part of a team of teachers working on English/History interdisciplinary curriculum, and I help out with Monday Morning Meeting – though most in the Upper and Middle School probably know that already.
