Karen Deneen relaxes at her desk at the end of a school day. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
Deneen taught her last psychology and Advanced Placement psychology classes to this year’s juniors and seniors. She is retiring after 29 years at the Bromfield School and leading the social studies department since 1996.
As her Bromfield chapter was closing, Deneen speculated on what has made her psychology classes so popular.
“There’s a connection among so many of these kids, because many of them go back to kindergarten,” she said. “When we start talking about things like human development, they’ve had shared experiences that, I think, are really neat for them to go to relive now as juniors and seniors. They connect with their classmates. One of the things I find very refreshing, is they will do absolutely anything that you ask them to do. They’ll take risks. They’ll put themselves out there.”
Class of 2012 students have their own reasons. In their yearbook, which they dedicated to Deneen and retiring math teacher Dennis DeGara, the students describe Deneen as “enthusiastic, genuine, engaging, perceptive, understanding, and inspiring,” and thank her for teaching them to be “curious and independent thinkers.”
Bromfield senior Alyssa Swindells reflected the thoughts of many students.
“I loved Ms. Deneen’s class because I was able to directly connect what I learned there to my life outside the classroom,” she said.
Deneen did not set out to be an inspiring teacher. In 1978, Deneen said, she “didn’t have a clue” what to do with her degree in political science and economics from Boston College. On the suggestion of a family friend, she began substitute teaching at Leominster High School and found she loved it. She earned a teaching certificate from Assumption College and taught three years at Natick High School until she was laid off in a round of district cutbacks.
She was fortunate to get other job offers and consulted her uncle, then the Massachusetts Chancellor of Education, which one she should take. Without hesitation, he said, “Harvard.”
At the Bromfield School which then included grades five through 12, Deneen found herself teaching the five social sciences: sociology, psychology, anthropology, political science, and economics.
“Students liked psychology best,” she said.
Over time, and with help from continuing education courses, institutes, and her own research, Deneen developed a full-year curriculum for honors and Advanced Placement-level introduction to psychology.
Walking away
Deneen said she loves seeing the enthusiasm of her students and witnessing the changes they undergo as they grow from September to June. And she enjoys her colleagues. She attributes her department’s success to its strong faculty who “need only her support,” and former principal and superintendent Mihran Keosian’s willingness to maintain Bromfield’s already solid curriculum, when other schools were realigning theirs to the new Massachusetts Education Frameworks, which she described as a moving target.
“Sometimes I think, ‘what am I doing walking away from this department, walking away from teaching psych to 16- and 17-year-olds?’ These fabulous people in the department that are just so wonderful to work with, they just do everything right, all you need to do is support them,” she said. “I think I have the best job in the school system.”
Deneen has seen changes in her years at Bromfield, she said.
“The school used to be the focus of the community,” she said. “Students would spend a great deal of time here. If you were to walk the hallways right now, you wouldn’t find too many students in the teachers’ classrooms, but back in the ’80s and ’90s, students would be hanging out with teachers, doing some work, but also connecting with teachers on a personal level.”
“Kids are so over-scheduled today. School is just one facet of their lives. They certainly want to do well, because they are under such pressure to put together a stellar record for college. I feel badly that kids don’t have time to be kids, time to relax and enjoy and engage in one thing. “
Something Deneen doesn’t see is a sense of entitlement in Harvard’s students, indeed sometimes the opposite, she said. She said that while some students may from come from very privileged backgrounds, “You would never know it. They keep it in check.”
Even though in her early years at Bromfield Deneen was preparing for five different classes a day, she recalled that time as less stressful than teaching now.
“The demands of the system, the demands of education today are so much more than they were 30 years ago,” she said.
“Educators had the time and autonomy to design creative lessons and engaging assessments,” she said. “Students had the time to be more focused on academic projects beyond the school day. Recognizing how over-scheduled students are today, I have greatly reduced the amount of homework and projects that I assign. I take solace in knowing that students are engaged in other endeavors that they are benefiting greatly from and that I have not compromised their experience in my classroom.”
Much of a teacher’s time these days is spent replying to email and voicemail, she said.
“When I first started at Bromfield, if a parent wished to communicate with a teacher they would have to leave a message with the secretary,” she said. “These calls were fairly rare and they would be returned at the end of the day. After-school meetings to discuss individual students were also rare. It was common for teachers to spend their after-school time with students for extra help, review, or just hanging out.”
Deneen thinks the new generation coming into education will be able to handle its challenges because “they are moving at the same techno-fast pace as the students.”
She has advice for young teachers: “Enjoy, make sure you’re laughing with the kids. Sometimes I think the pressure of assessments has sucked the fun out education. If we could roll back the tape and walk these halls back in the ’80s and ’90s, we’d hear a lot of laughter coming out of the classrooms. You don’t hear laughter coming out of the classrooms anymore. There’s no time for fun. And that’s a shame.”
But Deneen is also thinking of the future. She is looking forward to no longer setting her alarm for a 4:30 a.m. wake-up. On the horizon, she sees more time to read, use her condo in the Florida Keys that she has been renting out, and travel at times when places are less crowded and airfares lower. She hopes to once again have time for downhill skiing, which she hasn’t done in 10 years. And she hasn’t ruled out teaching psychology at a community-college level.
“It is going to be very difficult for me to walk out the door. This has been such a great place,” she said.
“It’s been a great ride. Harvard has been good to me. It’s been a lot of hard work, but it has been a wonderfully supportive community, but more importantly, with fabulous kids.”
