RCS Faculty Explore Passions Through Personal Research
Riverdale students are not the only community members involved in studying and research. Instead of ending after high school or college graduation, a thirst for knowledge continues among Riverdale faculty members. Outside of their regular classroom activities, teachers across departments have hidden research lives of their own.
One teacher currently conducting research is Head of Upper School Mr. Tom Taylor. As a doctoral student seeking a Ph.D. in education policy and leadership, Mr. Taylor focuses on examining how certain parts of independent schools recreate whiteness. He states, “that public schools are highly segregated by race and socioeconomic status as well, that's due in large part to the fact that most schools are zoned geographically and funded by property taxes, so I'm interested in larger questions of equity in education.” Mr. Taylor’s inspiration grew from “read[ing] a book called The Possessive Investment in Whiteness by George Lipsitz,” reflecting that his read “changed the way [he] thought about how race is constructed in the United States.”
Mr. Taylor also describes how his research “changed the way [he] look[s] at structures and systems in the school.” He is specifically interested in how “word-of-mouth” can promote independent schools as the “status quo” for certain families. He explains,“I went into the research thinking that word of mouth would be largely something that functioned to primarily promote the status quo...but what I learned was that actually, word of mouth can be incredibly powerful in promoting an equitable and inclusive environment as well.” He learned that word of mouth could highlight the positives of the inclusivity of Riverdale and make the school an even more equitable place as it attracts more people committed to this ideal.
In the field of natural science, Upper School science teacher Dr. Rachel Cox has a faculty appointment at Columbia University in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology. There, she studies how plants adapt to climate change. Based on her studies at Columbia, Dr. Cox has had the opportunity to take some Riverdale students to Black Rock Forest so they can investigate how Oak trees respond to drought stress. She explains that “even though a tree, as you can imagine, can't run away, its seeds can move to a place that's more optimal for it, so what might happen is that forrests...might change drastically, and that could change habitats for animals.”
Middle and Upper School Spanish teacher Mr. Juan Pérez is finishing a thesis for his doctorate dissertation in Latin American literature and culture focusing on the work of a Chilean poet, Cecilia Vicuña. When talking about the motivation for his research, Mr. Pérez stated, “I've always liked poetry, that's the truth, and I really liked experimental poetry. So I started to follow, let's say, that intuition, that drive, and started to do some academic research on that.”
Mr. Pérez discovered that “reading about Cecilia in general, has taught me a lot about the present, and that seems to be a paradox, how can poems that were written more than 50 years ago inform the way we – my students and I – see the world nowadays.” He added, “[S]omething I took away and has helped me all the time is curiosity.”
Faculty research permeates how these teachers think of their role in the classroom, prompting them to explore how they communicate big-picture ideas to students. Mr. Perez explains how his research on Cecilia Vicuña informed his teaching, explaining that Cecilia's “work deals a lot with pedagogy, how and what do we learn when we read a poem,...[and] my general approach to pedagogy has to do with what we understand from what we're reading in class, [and also how this] impact[s] our lives out of the classroom.” Mr. Taylor notes that "[my research] informs my work on a daily basis [because] it changed the way I look at structures and systems in the school.” As a result, Mr. Taylor “tr[ies] to make sure that [these structures] are as equitable as they can possibly be.” Mr. Perez also added that “[he] tr[ies] to bring new voices [in his classroom] which is also something [he] learned doing research about Cecilia,” a poet name that many do not know well.
A consistent theme the faculty members expressed was the importance of asking pressing questions and challenging different perceptions. As Mr. Pérez aptly puts it, “[A]nswers that bring new questions that make us go back to what we think we know; those are the ones I’m most interested in, and that’s the kind of questions you ask when you’re doing research.” A vibrant community of faculty research not only gives students an example to follow but also provides a network of teachers with personal experience facing difficult questions head-on for support.
