Conscious Choice: Stephanie Pace Marshall Focuses on the Goodness and Genius of her Students

August 2002

Stephanie Pace Marshall Focuses on the Goodness and Genius of her Students

by Bobbye Middendorf

For more than fifteen years, Dr. Stephanie Pace Marshall has served as founding president of the prestigious Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA) in Aurora. She was tapped by Nobel Laureate Dr. Leon Lederman, one of the founding visionaries, when the project was proposed in 1982. In 1985, the Illinois General Assembly established IMSA, charging it with two responsibilities: First, to offer a uniquely challenging education for students from around the state who were talented in math and science; and second, to stimulate further excellence for all Illinois schools in the areas of science and mathematics.

The vision of IMSA is a lofty one: "To create a learning enterprise that liberates the genius and goodness of all children and invites and inspires the power and creativity of the human
spirit for the world." The key, expounded in IMSA’s philosophy, is to treat the students "as if each one is capable of this extraordinary achievement."

Currently, IMSA serves 650 residential students grades ten through twelve. IMSA students and faculty alike participate in outreach programs that serve an additional 2,500 Illinois students in grades three through nine annually, as well as 2,500-3,000 Illinois educators. IMSA is funded through the state budget, and budget cuts have had an effect on staffing for some of the outreach and citizen programming. Nevertheless, IMSA remains an impressive and positive force in high school mathematics and science.

An educator on the administrative fast track, Marshall was serving as superintendent of schools in Batavia when she was appointed to the planning task force, then to the board of trustees that would help establish IMSA. Then, in a leap that conventional wisdom questioned, she joined the new venture, leaving behind a defined career path in educational administration to create something brand new.

Observes Marshall, "I was starting from under the bottom, because nothing was in place. But that’s what happens when you follow your bliss, when you follow your heart. I saw this as an enormous opportunity and gift. It is rare for anyone, but an educator especially, to get to start something from scratch, to start from beliefs and ideals, dreams and possibilities."

As a youngster, she regularly asked "Why?" and "What if...?" Her mother’s influence was formative as well. She told young Stephanie, "If there’s going to be an exception, it might as well be you." Marshall also credits her mother with imbuing an attitude of service by her example. "She was an incredible role model. She took on challenges with grace and courage, to make things better for people, never doubting that she would be successful."

Her mother also encouraged Marshall to open conversations with authors from a young age. This lead many years later to a friendship between Margaret Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science, and Marshall, for whom the book struck a chord. In 1991, after reading James Gleick’s Chaos and works by Fritjof Capra and others, she came upon Wheatley’s book. It connected the science of self-organizing, living systems with the kinds of leadership issues Marshall was grappling with in the early days of IMSA. "I called up Meg and said,‘You don’t know me, but I have to come out to talk to you.’ It was then I began to intentionally apply these concepts to IMSA."

Even before applying the science of living systems to IMSA, Marshall came to teaching and administration with a powerful realization gleaned during her stint student teaching at a high school in Harlem. She was just a few years older than the 16-year-olds she taught in the sixth grade. When the main teacher, who actively hated the students, was out sick, Marshall led the class. Once, a student pulled a knife. Palm out, Marshall said, "You don’t want to do that." The seemingly endless moment resulted in her taking the knife and entering into partnership with the students, if only for three days.

There can be real engagement and real learning, Marshall found, "when you really care about the children, and hold them to high standards because you really do believe in them. When you can be honest with them, not messing with their minds, and when you can authentically be who you are so they can authentically be who they are, then the teacher as mentor really sets the tone, and engages them in their being."

When asked about personal challenges she has faced, she candidly admits "The source of the real struggle for me is always around my own identity. I had to make a decision whether to stay on the upwardly mobile, culturally defined career pathway or go where there were no road markers and no path. There was only a sense of possibility of creating something new. I always had to ask myself,‘If you took choice X, would you be leading the life you know is yours to live?’ This is the challenge of giving up even those things you hold important. Being true to yourself is the ultimate challenge."

Living up to that challenge personally, while keeping the institution focused on the work it is meant to do, is part of what Marshall sees as her ongoing role at IMSA. "It’s the story of schooling versus learning. Our goal is to make sure the children excel at learning. The path is about them. The gift IMSA represents is the ability to engage the students in fundamental issues that will matter to us and the world."

At IMSA, the educational challenges are profound, because of this vision to involve the best and highest meaning-making of the entire student. "The challenge in this educational setting is to insure that deep conceptual understanding is part of that environment by design. The students have to emerge knowledgeable about mathematics and science and humanities and the arts and how they connect. These students are deeply engaged in concepts and understanding of these disciplines and are allowed to experiment, inquire, and engage in service, stewardship, and leadership," says Marshall.

She emphasizes the importance of integrative thinking that is a natural outgrowth of a curriculum focused around very real problems. "The mission is to transform — meaning to fundamentally change the nature of — the teaching and learning of mathematics and science. We do this in two ways. First, by developing ethical leaders and second, by forging connections within and among mathematics, science, the arts and humanities."

For residential students, Marshall outlines the frames for the educational design principles. "They need a deep conceptual understanding and an ability to use mathematics and scientific knowledge." This is the competency-driven part of the curriculum. The curriculum is also inquiry-based, grounded in the learners’ questions; problem-centered, not focused on disembodied content; and integrated, which is the natural outgrowth of the holistic process.

"Kids come out of this educational experience fluent in how to unpack the issues," Marshall says. "They can frame the problems — because it is how a problem is framed that decides how it is solved. They have fearlessness in how they go about solving problems and the resources they bring to it. That’s what I get back.... Knowing we’re making it possible for the kids to connect to their awesome talents."

Asked about what lights her fire, Marshall says, "The hope I see, the thirst I see in the eyes of the children, their capacity for generosity, the phenomenal questions they ask, their good-heartedness, their hunger for meaning, their desire for a new story and a new way of being in the world. I see an emergence of a whole new way of seeing. People are reframing the questions and new technologies are making connections possible. As an educator, I get to see the best piece of this emergence."

She continues, "The gifts people bring are so much bigger and deeper and more profound than we can imagine. And in almost every dimension in our culture, these gifts are not invited. They are channeled small. My work is about creating possibilities and conditions that make people want to try things they never tried before. You cannot mandate what matters."

Steps to Liberate Every Child’s Goodness and Genius

The list of projects and research conducted by young people from IMSA is truly mind-boggling — from "The Origins of Persian Sufi Poetry" to "Ion Propulsion" to "Functions of a Complex Variable." Such a nurturing and supportive environment can succeed spectacularly with gifted math and science students. Isn’t every student capable of uniquely great achievements if properly nurtured? Certainly, all students deserve to be treated as if they matter and their questions count.

Given what educators have discovered at IMSA, what might the rest of us do about the rest of the children? How can committed adults — parents and others — start to build some of these processes into the educational system? I asked Marshall for her insights to help concerned adults and parents liberate the goodness and genius of their own children and improve local schools.

Questions are ever the tools of transformation, and in this instance, engaging a school’s principal in the dialogue is the key to, as Marshall calls it, "getting a sense of the learning environment, the‘air’ children are breathing. For example, if teachers aren’t encouraged to experiment, then how will they be able to encourage their students to question and experiment?"

Open dialogue with the principal by asking questions like these to uncover issues related to identity, information, and relationships:

* What do you view as the purpose of this school?

* What information is essential for this community to gain access to its collective intelligence?

* What information matters to you?

* What are the feedback loops?

* How do you keep people informed?

* How do you foster experimentation?

* How are relationships nurtured and maintained?

* Is power shared?

Marshall suggested that the educational process be thought of as a "dance of engagement and quiet reflective time. The child has to be engaged, but not just on-on-on-on. They need also to know how to be quiet. They need time to just sit and think. Development of the self comes from quiet reflection."

When interacting with children, suggests Marshall, parents and educators might try different kinds of questions. "How did you feel? How do you think you learned that? What would make it easier? Somehow the questions have to open up possibility thinking in kids, engaging them in the questions and getting them to try things out. What are we seeing? What are we cultivating? It is incumbent on parents and educators to pay attention, to better discern where the children’s natural talents lie."

What if we could transform — fundamentally change the nature of — all teaching and learning? This is the tantalizing promise of institutions like IMSA and committed educational visionary leaders like Stephanie Pace Marshall.

For an online experience of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy and its many initiatives, visit www.imsa.edu.

Bobbye Middendorf is an independent writer based in Chicago.

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