Photo credit: ECFS
When I heard that I was to interview the incoming Head of School, Joe Algrant, I imagined our conversation would look like a segment of 60 minutes. We would be sitting cross-legged on opposite sides of a non-descript room. With lights and cameras trained on us, and microphones hidden in our clothing, we would have a formal, policy-focused discussion. As I imagined any head of school, I pictured Mr. Algrant to be stern, intimidating and persnickety. There would be no breaks or banter. It would be strictly business. As it turns out, the interview could not have been more different.
My co-interviewer Yadna Prasad and I had two major goals in mind leading up to our interview. Firstly, we wanted to get to know Joe Algrant, the man. We wished to know about his hobbies, his interests and his values. We were itching to hear his stories and his wisdom from his many years as an educator, a scientist, an administrator, a Fieldstonian and a friend of our faculty advisor, Bob Montera. Secondly, we wanted to get to know Joe Algrant, the incoming Head of School. We were curious about his vision for the community and his stances on the issues.
Before we really began preparing, we received an email requesting that the interview be more of a brief “Get to Know You” video, where we would ask a “lightning round” of icebreaker questions. Some questions were light-hearted–we asked him what he would bring to a desert island. Others were serious–we asked him to share his best piece of advice with ECFS students.
Though we happily agreed to do the video as requested, Yadna and I are journalists at heart. Mr. Montera suggested that once the cameras stopped rolling, we should interview Mr. Algrant for an article for the Fieldston News. It was then that we would get to ask the real questions–the important ones.
Yadna and I began to draft a list of questions, hoping to represent the entire ECFS community and their concerns. One of the major disappointments of past administrations was the lack of communication and transparency. Many community members felt that they had no relationship with the head of school and had no idea what was going on behind the scenes. Many people also perceived there to be a revolving door of teachers and administrators, and worried about stability in the administration. Above all, people seem concerned about social issues. ECFS is far from alone in its worries–our grievances echo a greater trend in American education, particularly in elite, progressive institutions. ECFS, however, is in the belly of the beast. As an institution that prides itself on its commitment to ethics, we have always been ahead of the curve when it comes to reevaluation and reform. However, we are also notorious for making headlines for racist and anti-Semitic incidents. In response to both social issues within and beyond ECFS, there has been much concern with regards to Critical Race Theory (CRT), diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), civil discourse, cancel culture, political bias and more. We were curious to hear what Mr. Algrant would have to say about these things.
After school on November 29, 2021, Yadna and I interviewed Mr. Algrant. We arrived at the Tate Library to be greeted by a very friendly crew. It looked like a real movie set, with lighting equipment, a high-tech camera, and microphones. Of course, Mr. Algrant did not turn out to be nearly as intimidating as I expected. He is a gentle giant–very approachable, kind and easy to talk to. After a few minutes of small talk with Mr. Algrant and the crew, we got mic’d up and discussed all the necessary protocol. We were ready to go.
In two takes, we finished shooting the “Get to Know You” video. It was totally seamless. We had gotten to know Joe Algrant, the man. Now it was time to get to know Joe Algrant, the incoming Head of School.
Mr. Algrant opened the interview, “It’s informal, pretend we’re down the street somewhere.”
We started off with an easy question. Yadna said, “So I know you taught Science and History with Montera, history and English teacher, and the advisor to the Fieldston News, for which we both work.”
Algrant said: “You have my condolences.”
We all laughed.
“Are there any funny Montera moments you would like to share?”
“There was no question that teaching history and science was three years of fun moments with him…For every hour of class we would spend an hour, an hour and a half in preparation for the class. And then we’d go in and he would be at one board and I would be at the other board and we would each go back and forth and sometimes we’d be fighting…We were able to do a lot of stuff because there were two of us in the room and it wasn’t that he did all the history and I did all the science we kind of mixed and matched so that was a lot of, not funny, but fun. The class was exciting because we looked at modern issues, such as AIDS, through both scientific and historical perspectives. We also looked at earlier epidemics and also at the environment.
There also used to be these evening things called “Cabaret”…so he and I once were Jake and Elwood Blues and performed as the Blues Brothers at a nighttime show. We did some other dance routines that used to be fun. We taught another interdisciplinary course called The Fate of the Earth, that was about Nature, that was a mixture of science and history and art and English. There were four or five teachers. We did a field trip to a park, Black Rock Forest, and we built the stone staircase for our culminating project there. Outside of school we’ve been friends since that. Thirty-five years now since we started here.”
Yadna said: “So you mentioned you’d want to teach again. What’s the course you’d most like to teach?”
“Science and history was really about epidemics, oddly. It started because of AIDS. [I] really wanted to talk about AIDS as a biologist, as a historian, as a culturalist, from all the different lenses that you can study. This pandemic, the Covid pandemic, is kind of another version of the same thing so to be able to teach that would be a lot of fun. Today I was visiting the Advanced Topics in Biology class and they were doing an experiment with seeds. I’d love to, I don’t think I ever could because that’s too many days a week, that class, but, to be just in a regular old bio class would be fun for me too.”
We then pivoted to the more serious section of our interview. Yadna asked: “Students of color at Fieldston have raised some concerns about the environment created in our school. How do you hope to make our school more inclusive and supportive of all students?”
“I think that’s kind of a critical piece. From the outside, I wondered what factors could have caused the Students of Color takeover a couple of years ago. As a school, you can applaud students for being active in their beliefs, but at the same time you have to sit back and go, ‘oh my gosh how could that ever happen, what caused such a dramatic action? I have started to talk beyond inclusion to belonging, the notion that every student should feel they belong. I know that they had made a whole list of demands that are still being processed. I’d want to absolutely take a look at those in open dialogues with students, make sure that we were working hard to make the faculty representative in the same way students of color are, for the faculty who I don’t think is as diverse. So, I think there are a lot of practical things, I don’t know what the actual percentage of students in this school…”
Yadna interjected, “I believe it’s around 30.” It is actually closer to 50.
“In the curriculum, I’d make sure that we were studying the curriculum properly to make sure that the literature was diverse enough and that the history was true to the facts and not to how they’ve been interpreted and that there were other kinds of courses and opportunities for students of color to feel exactly the way everybody else does.”
“Sorry, I have a follow up if that’s ok.” Mr. Algrant and I both responded with the same answer: “It’s informal.” At this point, it was almost like we were just chatting. Yadna asked, “The last class that has organizers of SoCM that were part of that administration building takeover is actually graduating this year so how do you plan to make sure that the dialogue stays open.”
“That’s a great question. I didn’t actually know that, so that’s really useful for me. So I’ve been put in touch by some alumni with Keith Wright, the person who was part of the takeover from the seventies, and who helped work through this one.”
Not only was Keith L.T. Wright active in the 1970 takeover, but he went on to serve in the New York State Assembly from 1993 to 2016, and was the chair of the New York State Democratic Committee from 2012 to 2014.
Mr. Algrant continued, “I hope to meet him and talk to him and hear how he perceived the takeover and how he helped resolve the issues. And, knowing this, I would love to also meet those students who are still at Fieldston, and maybe actually even have the groups who were older come back and talk a little bit about those days. First I would like them to know what has happened since. As alums now I would want them to have a stake in the school. I would want to kind of keep it alive that way and be able to use a lot of the things that they discussed.”
“I’ll mention that to some of the leaders that are still here,” said Yadna.
“That’d be great.”
Then I chimed in. “So this is kind of bouncing off of Yadna. It’s kind of a general question with a bunch of subparts. Remember, informal. How will you balance the new and old with Fieldston? My first subquestion is how will you balance the changing demands of progressive education with Fieldston’s core values.”
“I guess my first thing would be to understand what are the changing values of progressive education. That I don’t know, but would have to learn. I think progressive education, one of the beauties of it, is that any of these things should fit. True progressive education is all about authenticity and reality and experiential work. That to me survives. It can be used anywhere. You’ll have to tell me what the changing values…mean to you. But I think that a lot of the Fieldston that I worked at twenty years ago I think would hold up really well now. But I’m excited to learn the things that have changed and to learn the school anew. Schools should change. If they don’t change for twenty years, that’s a really bad sign. They haven’t changed your school schedule in I think it’s 40 years. I don’t know how that can be. It can’t be so perfect. I think it’s pretty much the same schedule that was here the day I walked in and still is here. We know a lot more about designing a brain friendly schedule that maximizes learning and attention.
Yadna, capitalizing on what seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, added, “If class could start at like 10, that would be…”
For the next minute, we bickered over Yadna’s proposal. Realizing that afterschool sports was the problem, Yadna suggested that sports be in the morning and that school go from 10 AM to 4 PM. I quickly shot that down, “I don’t want to be the guy sitting next to the kid who just came back from football practice.”
Before we could go even farther down this rabbit hole, Yadna brought us back on topic. “Going back to progressive education. I think that question was referring to CRT and LGBTQ rights, trans rights, and incorporating those into the curriculum.”
Mr. Algrant said, “Yeah. To me, there’s nothing that doesn’t allow them all, that doesn’t allow it all to come together.”
My next question was in response to the concern that many experienced teachers have left and seem to be on their way out of Fieldston: “How do you hope to preserve institutional knowledge?”
Before I could finish explaining the question, Mr. Algrant interjected, with a smile on his face, “Well, there are a lot who are still here…I was surprised.”
I continued, “But I think that’s a general concern…of students and parents alike, while the school continues to evolve.
“Well, part of that, I think, is in how the faculty works together. Part of that is in the interactions, But a lot of it is, I think, how the teachers learn from other teachers. So I learned a lot from master teachers who were what I am now when I was a whole lot younger. And culture passes through how classes operate and culture passes through the stories and culture passes through the traditions. So I think that would…have to be…very overt…I did a faculty meeting once where I gathered all the yearbooks and newspapers from all the different decades…I put them on each of the different tables, so there was the 60s, the 70s, 80s and the 90s. And I asked the teachers to go to the table that represented when they first came to teach at the school. So we had all the newer people there, all the older people here. Then they told a lot of stories to each other. And then…at the end of the day, all the teachers started telling stories across the decades in a formal way that we videotaped and turned that into a little bit of a film that actually did exactly what you’re talking about, which is to help tell the old stories that help bring it to the new.”
“And I kind of already asked this question, but how do you plan to integrate a progressive social justice agenda into education? “
Then Mr. Algrant became the interviewer and Yadna and I the interviewees.
“Is there a feeling–I’m going to ask the question about that–that that’s not happening now?”
Yadna responded with a laugh and a simple “Yes.” I nodded my head in agreement.
Mr. Algrant replied with a pensive, “OK.” He was very curious.
To answer Mr. Algrant’s question, I said, “I think there’s kind of a dichotomy at Fieldston. There are the people who think that there’s too much social justice and the people who think there isn’t enough.
In hindsight, it would be more accurate to describe Fieldston as a spectrum rather than a dichotomy. Though it may seem like the majoritarian voice at the school is unequivocally in favor of drastic reform, I have noticed far more diversity and nuance. Fieldston students have a wide range of opinions regarding social justice vis-a-vis education.
I continued, “But either way, that has to mean that it hasn’t been integrated well enough.”
“And is that because it’s being talked about separately or…”
Yadna said, “I think it’s a mix of things. So I’m working with the history department right now. So I think that one of the major changes in the curriculum because of the SoCM demands was world history becoming modern world history for the ninth graders and then US history being taught through an ethnic studies lens–is how we’re framing it. And I think specifically with that course, I’m taking that course right now…”
“US History?”
“Yes. So I think one of the concerns being raised is that it’s not in a traditional quote-unquote chronological format, and therefore…
“It is or it’s not.”
“It’s not.”
“It’s being taught thematically?”
“Yes..our first unit was “what is ethnic studies?” And then we are learning about indigenous resistance and indigenous peoples in the United States. And then we have a series of other units, which kind of focus on different parts. So we’re overlapping certain things, not just going in a traditional chronological format. And I think many people have raised concerns about learning less history because of that format, whereas for many students of color that I’ve talked to, it’s very important for them to be able to hear their own history. Sure. So I think that actually divides generally on the concerns raised by students of color. And then I think that–”
“People push back…More traditional [people] push back.” Yadna agreed.
I disagreed that it is just the “traditionalists” who push back. I said, “I feel like a lot of times there’s a perception that the efforts of ethics and social justice can border on some sort of indoctrination or forced internalization of certain values and certain political views. According to the people who I have talked to from a wide range of backgrounds at Fieldston, there are a lot of people who kind of feel like they’re walking on eggshells in classes and that there’s some policing of thought and discourse. But then there are also a lot of people who think that we aren’t… doing enough in terms of social justice or that isn’t…our job at Fieldston. So it’s really just a lot of people with different perspectives, I was curious what you think about that.”
Mr. Algrant laughed as he replied, “Sometimes when you have both sides equally angry that means you probably are doing it pretty well because you’re right in the middle.”
I laughed with him.
“When I used the word complicated, earlier, when you asked me about the school, here’s a place where it’s complicated, right? And it really gets you down to all sorts of values about what a classroom should be… And it’s a quantity and quality thing, right? For some history teachers, if you don’t start at the beginning and end at the end and they haven’t taught you history well. I don’t think it has to be that way. What you have to learn in high school is how to study history, because you can always study history on your own once you know how. The mission of a high school is to help you learn how to do research well, how to tell if something is a fact or not…how to really deeply analyze something that you read so that you then have all those tools to go forward and…decide. Again, there’s nothing unprogressive about that, there’s nothing non-progressive about learning history in terms of really, a lot of the facts that haven’t been taught well over a lot of generations, for various reasons–most of which not so good. But also, for me, I don’t understand necessarily why it has to be contentious. And why it has to be controversial, like why these things have to be pitted one against the other. And so that for me is going to be a challenge.”
“I feel the same way,” I said.
“But that’s why racism is a problem, right?” Algrant said.
I replied, “Yeah, I mean, that’s exactly how I feel about it personally, that there are people–I don’t know if this or imagined–but that people feel that there is a status quo that they have to…as there is with anything…follow. But there should be, as you’re saying, an open dialogue that isn’t particularly contentious.”
Algrant ended by saying, “We’re not in a zero-sum game here, right? People can have more. It doesn’t mean that anybody else has to necessarily have less. Everybody can have more. And if everybody has more, actually we’re all better off.”
