26 Charles Hartney Park’s Head of Upper School credits his 13 years (and counting) at the school with shaping the trajectory of his life. Describe your personal path and how you found your way into your current role at Park. How has your path been influenced by your own personal experience and background? My Park career began thirteen years ago when I was hired to teach Middle and Upper School English. I was welcomed in a really beautiful way by the administration and the faculty, and it was clear Park was different than the schools I had attended or the previous one in which I had taught. I was introduced pretty early to Dewey, to Mary Hammett Lewis, and to Park’s founding philosophy, and soon I was doing whatever I could to help out and make a difference: coaching the MasterMinds team, serving as department coordinator, chaperoning Middle School social nights, you name it. In many ways, Park and the people I’ve worked with over the years have made me into the person I am today. I met my wife at Park, and now our oldest is a Pre-K student in the Bungalow. I owe Park so much, and I think of much of what I do at Park as in service of a place and a community that has had a profound and lasting impact on my life. Where did you go to school? I have a B.A. in English from Canisius College and a M.A. in English from State University of New York at Buffalo. Tell us about one engaging project or lesson that’s happened in your division so far this year. In early November, I accompanied Dr. Carl Thompson, the newest member of our English department, and the students taking his Upper School elective class focused on the Harlem Renaissance to the Special Collections at the University at Buffalo. Students were introduced to numerous first edition poetry collections and anthologies from the Harlem Renaissance and got to work directly with manuscript materials by writers like Langston Hughes. I watched students work directly with Hughes’s manuscript pages of “Let America Be America Again,” one of the preeminent poems by one of the preeminent poets in American history, and was so envious of that experience happening for them so early in their reading lives. The entire visit– during which the students demonstrated such respect and reverence and curiosity for the materials they were working with–was a testament to the work they and Dr. Thompson were doing in that class and also to Park’s philosophy of engaging its students actively in the world around them. What has been your favorite Park moment? I have almost 13 years worth of moments, so there are too many wonderful ones to name. One that stands out is the commencement ceremony for the Class of 2016. I started teaching English at Park in September of 2010. The Class of 2016 was my first Grade 7 group, and their commencement ceremony was particularly meaningful to me. I had watched these kids grow up in real time and was finally getting to see them cross that threshold and move into the next phase of their lives. I was honored to be asked by the class to deliver the commencement address that day, and it was so nice to have one last chance to leave them with whatever wisdom I could muster. What is one thing you would like the WNY community to know about Park? Park’s Upper School academic programming is second to none. I’ve been in education for a pretty long time, and I’m astounded on a regular basis by the quality of the intellectual work our students are doing in the classroom and beyond. The conversations these kids are having about issues affecting our world today are conversations I never would have been able to have when I was in high school, and much of that comes from the education they get at Park. They’re given space to explore their interests and find their passions, and they’re always challenged to reflect on what they’ve learned. They are taught not what to think but how to think, to ask questions and to bring a lens of criticality to all that they encounter. It’s the kind of education every student and every family deserves. What is your favorite book? Toni Morrison’s Beloved. I gave a talk at Park a few years ago about the profound impact Morrison’s work in general and Beloved in particular have had on me. That book changed my life immeasurably for the better, and I’m so thankful for every chance I have to dive back into it. It’s always different; always evolving; always taking my breath away in new ways. What are the challenges of working with Upper School students? Much is made of the leaps-and-bounds nature of developmental growth in kids when they’re really young, but Upper School students–as they move from September freshmen to June seniors–exhibit really astounding personal and intellectual growth as well. Those Day 1 freshmen are often fundamentally different people than the same kid preparing to graduate four years later, and we have significant responsibilities in teaching our students how to navigate those changes. This is the age range in which young people start developing into the people they’re going to be for the rest of their lives, and we want them to leave us with a sense of their own core values and a belief that they can go out into the world and solve big problems. That’s complex work, especially in an ever-changing world, but the energy with which our students and faculty approach that complexity is the beauty of a place like Park. Why do you choose to work with this age group? There’s an old adage in teaching and amongst educators that teachers become the kind of teacher they needed when they were students. I always gravitated towards teachers who were able to balance their intellectualism with humor and who were exacting about their expectations. They could be intimidating but were also warm when the situation called for it. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is how many of my former students described me as a teacher, so I’d say the adage fits me pretty closely. Along those same lines, I think teachers might gravitate towards a certain age group because that was the time in their academic career when something clicked: when they met that teacher who changed their lives or when they finally had that revelation about why their education mattered so much. For me, those moments happened in high school. Maybe working with Upper School students is my way of creating some of those moments for my students. Why is the type of education that is provided at Park important to this age group? It’s everything! If Dewey’s philosophy of progressive education is rooted in the scientific method, in problem solving, and in educating for democracy, there is no age group for which that is more important than for our Upper Schoolers. They are right now developing into the people they will be for the rest of their lives: they are getting to know themselves deeply, identifying core personal values, and developing beliefs about the world around them. They’re also preparing themselves for life after Park, when they’ll be getting jobs and working in their communities and confronting the biggest questions and solving the biggest problems of our time. Our kids are actively engaged here in the classroom, so they leave us ready to actively engage with the world around them. We prepare our students to be leaders in that world, to ask questions and tackle problems head on. I don’t know that there’s any job we have that’s more important than that. What are your hopes for Park over the next 5 years? My hope for Park is to keep building on the positive momentum of the last few. We have an incredible leadership team in place led by Lisa Conrad and Keith Frome, and we’ve added some truly brilliant minds to an already outstanding and dedicated faculty and staff. Our new strategic plan is an ambitious one, but I’ve never been more confident in the school’s ability to achieve ambitious goals. I hope that word of mouth continues to spread that Park is building something special right now, and I hope people realize it’d be a shame for them to miss out on that.
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