KIT
Marcia Ruff
School Historian
FAREWELL TO TWO LONG-TIME TEACHERS
MICHELLE LANE When Lower School Science Teacher Michelle Lane was 13, she applied to Roeper and had an interview with George Roeper. The details of their conversation are hazy “because I was a teeny bit intimidated,” but she still remembers the sense of his presence, his kindness and curiosity. Sadly, her family couldn’t afford to send her, but Michelle always kept Roeper in the back of her mind. Michelle grew up to become an educator. She was teaching at Friends’ School in Detroit when, in 1999, she applied for a Team Teacher opening at the Lower School with Carolyn Borman in Stage IV. In those days, Head Teachers hired their own Team Teachers. Carolyn chose someone else for her Team Teacher but recommended Michelle to Mary Windram in Stage III, who also needed a Team Teacher. Michelle taught alongside Mary for one year and then the next year, long-time Lower School Science Teacher Emery Pence moved over to become Middle School Director. Michelle became a Science Teacher for Stages III and IV, the position she held until she departed last summer. Both of her daughters, Abby ’10 and Ruthie ’12, were “lifers” at Roeper. The goal of teaching science for Michelle is to “help kids uncover their questions about the
12
world, figure out how to ask those questions and how to pursue answers to those questions,” she said. “Also, I felt like I was mission-driven to connect children with the world. I really firmly believe the world needs people who love the world, and particularly the natural world.”
As a teacher at Roeper, Michelle made extensive use of the possibilities contained on the Lower School campus, frequently taking students to the creek and exploring the grounds in other ways. She offered a wild foods elective, teaching students about the edible plants to be found around them (the ones without confusing poisonous look-alikes!), such as burdock root, wood sorrel, dandelions, purslane, and apples from a gone-wild tree near Tire Mountain that produced fruit every other year that she and her students made into applesauce. A meticulous scientist herself, Michelle approached science from multiple perspectives. She frequently had students create botanical drawings to sharpen their powers of attention. One memorable crossdisciplinary unit came after she, Art Teacher Jarie Ruddy, and Spanish Teacher Sara Mendez attended a Monarch Teacher Network training on monarch butterflies. That fall all the Stage IV students devoted their elective time to studying monarch butterflies — the butterflies’ relationship to Mexican culture, an artistic perspective through creating a monarch ofrenda that was displayed at the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the science of observing and nurturing monarchs through their lifecycle. Early in her teaching career, Michelle realized that independent schools were the right setting for her because the small class sizes allowed her to be more responsive to each student and she could have the freedom as a professional to develop her curriculum and electives. “One of the things I really, really appreciated at Roeper is the absolute freedom that I had to design learning experiences for my students,” she said. “That gave me the opportunity to both follow their passions and mine, and that kept it fresh and interesting. “
The goal of teaching science for Michelle is to “help kids uncover their questions about the world, figure out how to ask those questions and how to pursue answers to those questions.”
