MARLBORO — David Holzapfel's fifth- and sixth-grade classroom feels more like a small liberal arts college than it does a public elementary school.
The multi-age, multi-subject classrooms at Marlboro Elementary School embrace an interdisciplinary and experiential approach to education, influenced by the nearby Marlboro College.
Holzapfel says teachers there are given the freedom to teach the things that excite them: “That's where learning becomes infectious for kids and that's really what we want,” he says.
In this way, Holzapfel is being celebrated for doing things differently.
“The Vermont standards and the Common Core and all those sorts of things … I haven't really paid much attention to. A colleague pointed out to me, she said: 'It's funny you're getting this award for doing what you're not supposed to be doing.'”
That's not to say Holzapfel's curriculum doesn't meet those standards: he's just come up with his own way of satisfying them.
Each year his students read the epic poem “The Odyssey” and memorize the first stanza of Chaucer's “The Canterbury Tales” in the original Middle English.
“Those kinds of things don't show up on [standardized] tests,” Holzapfel says, “and yet they're the things kids remember and the things kids value. It becomes a part of them. I've never seen any research that indicates that people who do well on standardized tests are either successful or happy in their lives.”
Holzapfel says he takes issue with guidelines and standards that compartmentalize subject matter.
“When we're studying astronomy we're also reading [science fiction author] Ray Bradbury. Everything is related to everything else. And the strictures of, 'Well we can't talk about math or we can't talk about science while we're looking at art' is just silly. If you present the same material in as many different ways and through as many different lenses as possible then you just increase the chances of creating understanding.”
Students in Holzapfel's class spend a lot of time discussing images. He uses a teaching method known as Visual Thinking Strategies, or VTS, in which the artwork of M. C. Escher helps students understand geometry, and Seurat's “Luncheon on the Grass” (1863) sparks an exploration of such components of creative writing as characterization and plot.
According to Susan Calabria, education curator at Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Holzapfel was one of the first in our area to incorporate this method.
“His students are primed to be discoverers. The results in every area show David's ability to capture students' innate curiosity and to turn on their desire to succeed,” Calabria says.
Student Sloan Wyse, 11, says “David has a really silly and fun and weird side and a stern side. He's very funny.”
“- Which makes everything we do fun,” Kenna Severance adds.
But he's also strict, Wyse amends. “When we get too silly he can control us. So it's good.”
Neither of the girls claims to have a favorite subject. “It's not really broken up like that,” they explain.
That said, Severance enjoys linguistics. “I like the Mad Libs that we do.”
Wyse says, “I've been really loving math.”
Marlboro Elementary School Principal Francie Marbury describes Holzapfel as the coach on the sidelines rather than as the sage up in front.
“He's a teacher who is more a facilitator of learning. He expects his students to take a lot of responsibility for their learning but he provides the scaffolding.”
She says Holzapfel's “high expectations for his students, his wry sense of humor, and his passion for the material” make him a teacher “students remember long after they leave Marlboro School.”
The Vermont Humanities Council will honor Holzapfel with the 12th Victor R. Swenson Humanities Educator Award on Nov. 15 at UVM's Dudley H. Davis Center at VHC's fall conference, “A Fire Never Extinguished: How the Civil War Continues to Shape Civic and Cultural Life in America.”
VHC Board Chair Major Jackson will present Holzapfel the award - and a $1,000 check - at 8:30 a.m. in the Grand Maple Ballroom.