TRIBUTE TO PRISCILLA  ALFANDRE

By Carol Kolsky and Denise Gershowitz

A legend in her own time.  This best sums up Priscilla Alfandre.  From her passion for current events to her notorious "inking over sessions", Priscilla's commitment to teaching was a driving force each day she stepped into the classroom.  As you would imagine, Priscilla's path to becoming a teacher was a bit circuitous. 

Born and raised in Palo Alto, California, Priscilla Buck was sent to Swarthmore College by her father who knew the president and was fascinated with a new honor system that had been put into place at Swarthmore.  There she met Robert Alfandre and they married two years after graduation.  Because Robert's family owned a real estate and construction business in Washington DC., the newly married couple set up house in Georgetown in 1953.  Given their exposure to a Quaker education, the Alfandres decided their two daughters would benefit from a similar experience.  They sent them to Sidwell Friends School.  There Priscilla met Bob Smith, Head of School. She has portrayed him as "an adventurous educator", someone who was always willing to try out new ideas, someone who would listen.  Well, she quickly tested that side of him.  Apparently she had a meeting with him because she had a cause she was promoting.  At the time, girls had to wear an all-cotton uniform every day in physical education class.  All-cotton meant ironing the uniform to make it look presentable.  Priscilla found this to be a colossal waste of time.  She became the expositor and head of a group called "Mothers unite; you have nothing to lose but your irons."  She presented to Bob that it might be better to have "drip dry" uniforms so mothers could be freed up to do more productive activities.  As only Bob Smith could, he listened with sympathy, thought for a moment or two, and with a twinkle in his eye promised he would talk to the head of the PE Department, Evelyn Fine.  As Priscilla was leaving Bob's office, he stopped her for a second and asked if she had ever thought about teaching.  Bob Smith opened a door Priscilla did not shut until 1994 - the year of her retirement.

The celebrated "Blue Room" became a reality in 1970.  It was a collaboration of many, as educators reached towards more innovative, creative ways to teach children.  A fire had destroyed a part of The Manor House, which, in turn, provided the opportunity to turn a dream of an open classroom into actuality.  Its name, The Blue Room, came about because of the blue carpet that was laid at the finish of the renovation.  It was an open classroom with 52 students and three teachers.  Priscilla was at the helm, navigating children through the daily rigors of learning.

Her written reports were classics.  She should have been a writer.  Those of us who were fortunate enough have received a report written by Priscilla will attest to that.  A former student writes:

In Lower School there were no grades.  Each teacher would give quarterly written evaluations.  It was through these evaluations that I learned of the power and beauty of a metaphor. Mrs. Alfandre chose to refer to me as the "Prime Minister" (if memory serves).  She likened the ups and downs of my schoolwork, social interactions, and general behavior to the ups and downs of a political leader.  The metaphor continued for all of the reports she wrote for me those two years.  I did not, perhaps, recognize the salience of this particular example until years later when I was studying song writing at the Berklee School of Music in Boston.  Entire semesters of lyric writing classes there are devoted to the very idea of establishing and committing to a metaphor.  As a professional musician/songwriter, I try to incorporate that concept as often as possible.  Little did I know at the time that with her comments about my 3rd and 4th grade behaviors, Mrs. Alfandre was actually teaching me how to write music!  For that I am indebted to her. 

Another student reminisces:

Mrs. Alfandre gave me my first experience working with a demanding editor. I spent much of my time that year slaving over reports on primitive man. Each report had to go through several edits. And only when Ms. Alfandre had signed off on all the changes made in pencil would she give you the go ahead, always with the simple, "Ok to ink" on the top of your page - to trace over your handwriting in pen. It was gratifying to see how far the work had come and then to make it permanent. At the end of the year, Mrs. Alfandre bound each student's reports into a book and painted a title on the cover with gold ink. I still have my book, and when I thumb through it occasionally, I'm still amazed at the sophistication of the subject matter. She trusted we could learn things seemingly far beyond our years. And in her hands, we did.  She would also clip political cartoons from the paper and then present and explain them to the class as a sort of social studies lesson. Anything that was in the news, no matter how complex or seemingly inaccessible to 8 and 9 year olds, made it into that presentation. I remember coming home from school one day and telling my parents, who were just as I surprised as I was, that Mrs. Alfandre had taught us about capital gains taxes, and that I understood. I think I understood better then than I do now.

 

One can only imagine how many other students have been influenced by Priscilla's teaching and mentoring.  She puts it best, "I was a fanatic about teaching and devoted to each and every child I taught."

As all Lower School teachers are able to do, Priscilla remembers most of her students vividly and has stories to tell about many of them.  She had the opportunity to teach one of her two daughters who has some difficulty in the classroom deciding what to call her mother.  As Priscilla recounts, "When she would try to get my attention at school, she would call out "Mrs. Alfandre, Mrs. Aldandre, Mrs. Alfandre"MOM!!!??  It is hard to conceive of teaching your own child, but Priscilla loved doing it.

Current events was another passion of Priscilla's.  She began each morning with a discussion about events described in the newspaper.  She had a HUGE map on the wall that she was constantly referring to as she steered children to a better understanding of the bigger political world.  It was not always easy for her students to sit during these periods.  One child, so the story goes, would set her watch alarm to go off just  as Priscilla would begin engaging the class in the current events article of the day.  Children can always find ways to communicate their displeasure!!!  Priscilla finally confiscated the watch and to this day, as far as we know, it has never been returned.

The Blue Room plays were worthy of a Broadway run.  "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing" and "The Pushcart Wars," just to name a few, have gone down in the annals of The Lower School's library of classics.

Now that she has leisure time, Priscilla loves to travel, to read and to spend time with her family.  We had trouble catching up with her for this article because she was in Tuscany with her whole family on an incredible vacation.  The Alfandres have two daughters, one who lives in Newport, Rhode Island and one who lives in Bethesda; two grandchildren are in college at Swarthmore and Boston University, and two grandchildren are at Sidwell Friends School.

Bob Smith, former Head of Sidwell remembers Priscilla as one of the supremely great teachers during his tenure who was very much at home in every aspect of teaching.  She got kids? minds engaged in the process of learning.  She brought an exuberance to her teaching rarely matched, encouraging to children to think in ways they never dreamed possible.  One of Bob's most vivid memories of Priscilla's room was a quotation written in bold letters that probably best describes Priscilla's no nonsense approach to life.

"Everything is connected to everything and there is no such thing as a free lunch."

We cheer and celebrate you Priscilla!

 

 

 

           

Last revised 5/11/2006