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School May Be Out, But These Alumni Are On

One of the many ways alumni keep things fresh is by creating or leading summer programs. Here are three alums who will be spending their summers teaching values, running wind sprints, or giving kids a second chance with Shakespeare.

Ansel Sanders (Baltimore ’04) no longer teaches at his placement school, Roland Park Middle School—he followed his fiancée to South Carolina, where she is a graduate student at Clemson and he is an assistant principal at Mauldin Middle School in Greenville.

But he is back in Baltimore this summer to run Athletes and Authors, the camp he created with a colleague, Nick D’Ambrosio. They began the camp after Sanders’ second year teaching, in 2006. Last summer, 65 children attended, mostly from Roland Park; most pay to participate, but the camp also offers scholarships based on financial needs.

The camp is open to kids between 7 and 15, and each day is focused on one of its 10 core principles: respect, sportsmanship, tolerance, communication, teamwork, self-discipline, integrity, enthusiasm, perseverance, and confidence. The morning is about sports, and how to incorporate the principle of the day into the play. After lunch, there’s a language arts lesson focused on the same principle (all lessons relate, Sanders points out, to the Maryland state standards), and there’s a final, more unconventional game of handball or tag or another activity at the end of the day.

“Art, chess team, there are so many great things I’ve seen my corps do in Baltimore that have totally stemmed from their passions,” Sanders says. “The camp is what I see to be the epitome of me: I’m combining athletics and academics, all under the umbrella of teaching positive values. That is how I live my life.”

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Josh VanderJagt (Chicago ’05) had intended to head to medical school after Teach For America, but he has been so caught up in his work at Farragut Career Academy in Chicago, where he teaches science and coaches football, that those plans are on hold. “I’m so involved in things right now,” he says. “I don’t want to stop until I’ve made some of the changes I’ve initiated.”

One big change that’s already happening involves the Farragut football team. VanderJagt helped the team with conditioning during his first year teaching—a year they went 0-9 and ended the season with 14 or 15 players. When the head coach left and his replacement skipped out the next spring, VanderJagt took over as varsity coach and put together a new staff. In his rookie year, the team attracted 50 players and went 5-4; this past year they were 9-2. “We spent as much time with them as we possibly could,” he says. “We pushed them, and they responded to it. They realized, ‘We’ve got talent and we have the ability to win.’”

There’s no summer vacation for the teacher-coaches: Starting in June there’s football camp, and in August two-a-days begin. Next season, Farragut is moving up to the second division, the reward for finishing second in its conference.

VanderJagt and the school are implementing an academic tracking program for athletes to make sure they stay eligible and to remind them where their true focus should be. His own focus is still the classroom—he was featured on Chicago’s local NPR affiliate in January in its series on science education. But coaching certainly has helped him out as a teacher, he notes: “I think it’s giving me more street cred.”

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Ji Lee (G.N.O. ’00) teaches social studies, humanities, and American government to ninth graders at the College Preparatory and Architecture Academy, a small public high school within the former Fremont High School in Oakland, Calif. She used to teach English, though, and those skills have come into play as she and another teacher took on the task of planning what to do with their school’s “academic intervention” funding from the district. Their brainstorm: a summer program giving students a chance to make up a D grade in English or world history—and giving teachers a chance to collaborate on curriculum. Each teacher will teach a different play—Lee will be teaching Shakespeare—but the students will read and analyze them in similar ways.

This teacher involvement in planning marks a welcome change in her school, Lee says. She adds that the principal has loosened the reins in the last few years, allowing teachers to take on leadership roles like hers. “There are clearly problems in my school, and [teachers] like the idea that they’re going to get to stay and work on the issues as a leader in the school.”

“It does make me feel like I’m not just a little foot soldier in the army. I can see the changes that are being made . . . not just in my classroom, but in other classrooms,” Lee says. “That keeps me feeling like I’m making a difference."