Former Andrew Warde High School teacher Robert Gillette, whose experimental Operation Turn On program won him a three-year, $300,000 Teacher Challenge grant as the best teacher in New England, became somewhat of a national celebrity after the New England Program in Teacher Education picked him for the award in 1972.According to an article which appeared in The Bridgeport Telegram 36 years ago this month, Gillette, best remembered for initiating the OTO program at Warde, said that most schools in America are not training students to cope with the future.
"Man will perish or survive in the future on the basis of the flexibility and inner courages he acquires today," the former English teacher told an audience at the Bridgeport Chapter of the American Association of University Women at the First Presbyterian Church in Fairfield in March of 1973.
"In most of our schools, we are not training kids for the future," he added. "We are still talking about the past, or at best the present." Gillette said he borrowed many of the techniques from primary educators in developing his experimental high school program. Juniors and seniors of varied backgrounds and abilities were enrolled in the award-winning program.
"I loved OTO," former Andrew Warde High School student Randi Cohen Coblenz told me via email yesterday. "We had the combination of Bob Gillette and Patty Clark and then Nancy Contilini. The way that things were taught --- by doing, and by integrating the lessons with practical experience --- stays with me to this day. It completely affected how I approach learning and how I taught my classes when I taught at the Museum of Science in Boston."
Operation Turn On integrated academic, vocational, and other activities to teach students that they can succeed, contribute to society, and be in charge of their lives, according to Gillette. By the 1975-76 school year, the program included an Autumn backpacking and canoeing trip in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, a trip to Washington, D.C., and students working as teachers of younger students at the Bicentennial Process Museum of the Fairfield University Teacher's Center.
Cohen Coblenz, who attended Warde from 1976-1979 and was involved in OTO in 1977-78, now lives in Arlington, Virginia, and is a filmmaker and former archaeologist. "By the time I came into it, the program grew, as the need of the students changed. I knew instinctively that it was for me, and I was right, but I really had to do a hard-sell on my parents," she continued."From what I recall, OTO was originally geared toward kids about to drop out of high school. For my group --- I don't know how many people that applied to --- it seemed to have morphed into a diverse group of people, some on the academic cusp, some stellar academic performers, and the rest of us!"
Cohen Coblenz, who attended Stratfield School and Fairfield Woods Junior High School, has fond memories of the program and Mr. Gillette. "I remember Bob used 'chicken foot' as a way of having us structure writing our papers," she remembered. 'Chickenfoot' meant that the limb was the opening sentence and the 'toes' supported the opening sentence. And then you would expand on the 'toes' in your subsequent paragraphs. During one test, Bob actually came around with an actual chickenfoot and 'knighted' us for good luck!"Another memory was our first field trip down the Connecticut River, studying the Yankee Atomic Power Plant and learning about the river effects that a nuclear plant has on marine life," she added. "This was integrated with learning about the trappers in the area of hundreds of years ago. A three day camping trip was exciting and scary for me!
"Socially, OTO was difficult for me, as for so many people in high school," she admitted. "I wasn't in a defined clique, and struggled to have my OTO classmates see me through my eyes, and not their preconceived ideas."
English, Social Studies, Biology, Algebra, Geometry, and Study Skills were all integrated into a demanding program that was action-oriented. OTO students explored and experienced much together. The community of students and teachers taught each other and learned from each other, not just academic skills and concepts, but also what it means to share a bit of turf together.
"You cannot hear the enthusiasm in my voice, through my words, but OTO, through its relevant coursework, Bob's sense of wacky humor, and unconventionalness, allowed this suburban girl to begin to find her voice," admitted Randi, whose sister, Melanie, graduated from Warde in 1975.
"The lessons I learned, whether freezing my tush off in the winter during a three-day winter camping and backpacking trip, to canoeing out against the tide in the Long Island Sound in March, told me that I had an inner strength I'd only just begun to tap into and would continue to draw from for many years to come. Everything was an opportunity to learn."
Paul
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