Blocks of Time

{Prompt: Describe the academics at NCSSM}

At NCSSM in 1980, we had a very heavy class schedule, and the schedule changed from day to day. We had only 5 minutes to get from one class to another, and on a sprawling campus in the middle of renovations, we sometimes had to run to make it to the next classroom in time.

The courses were all taught in a modified college-style schedule.  By that, I mean that most classes met on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays (MWF). About half of those also met on Tuesdays, and the other half also met on Thursdays.

Sometimes it was a challenge to remember what class was next on any given day, and sometimes it was a challenge just to remember what day of the week it was!  

On MWF, classes went for 7 or 8 hours, with a generous break for lunch (thank goodness!).  On Tuesdays and Thursdays, classes ran for about 4 hours in the morning, and stopped at lunch time.  That meant that Tuesday and Thursday afternoons were ostensibly free.  But not really.  (More on that later.)

Example of the Weekly Class Schedule from my Senior year.

The Sciences

Students were expected to take at least one course each in Biology, Chemistry, and Physics within their junior and senior years.  But because we were all science wonks, most of us took four to six science courses in those two years.  I took the following sciences: AP Biology and Biochemistry, Chemistry I and Chemistry II, Physics and Astrophysics.

Dr. Baker

I took my biology courses with Dr. Ross Baker. She had sandy brown hair and big round eyeglasses. She was as methodical and organized as a taxonomy chart, but she was also patient and kind.   

She was always well prepared, except for one occasion, when she was leading an ill-fated lab experiment, an experiment comparing the effect of cooked versus uncooked pineapple on the consistency of gelatin.  The uncooked pineapple contains an enzyme that breaks down the proteins in gelatin, preventing it from solidifying.  In contrast, the enzymes in the cooked pineapple should be deactivated, allowing the gelatin to harden.

But we never got to that point!  As the glass dishes of gelatin and pineapple heated up; one by one they started to break— dramatically! Glass began to shatter like it had been shot — hot gelatin spilling all over the top of the black enameled lab tables — students scrambling for cover.

It turns out that the dishes were not safe to use on a burner.  They weren’t made of Pyrex.  Although the experiment was aborted, I’ll never forget about pineapples, enzymes, and gelatin… or the differences between heating glass and Pyrex.

Dr. Owens

I took my chemistry courses with Dr. Rufus Owens.  He frequently wore pastel-colored button-down shirts, often with a three-piece suit.  He was as neat and clean as an Erlenmeyer flask.  He wore small metallic spectacles, like my grandfather wore, and he loved chemistry. 

His class notes were as neat and tidy as he was.  (I think he must have had an early computer word-processing program — a new development at the time.)  His lectures always went according to plan.  I think he gave us the syllabus for the entire semester on day one, and he stuck to it perfectly.  

Once, he said in the middle of a lecture, that he wasn’t being “facetious” (I don’t recall about what), and we had to stop him so he could explain what the word “facetious” meant.  (It means “flippant” or “tongue-in-cheek”.)  From then on, it became a favorite description of the kind of witty, intellectual humor that we were trying to master.  We would tell each other to “Stop being facetious!” if we were joking around during study time.  But Dr. Owens was never facetious — not when it came to chemistry.

Dr. Britton and Dr. Kolena

I took Physics with Dr. Chuck Britton, and Astrophysics with Dr. John Kolena.  They were both brilliant teachers, but as different as night and day.  Dr. Britton was a tall teacher with a heavy beard.  He liked to do just about anything to demonstrate the properties of kinetic energy. 

I’ll never forget an experiment that he devised that had the whole class running up two or three flights of stairs, to demonstrate a simple calculation of power. We figured out the amount of work required to ascend the steps (which also depended on the students’ weight), and we measured the time of each students’ ascension, and then we calculated everyone’s power. Amazingly, one of the heaviest students in the class demonstrated the greatest horsepower. He got to the top using both his arms (on the handrails) and his legs!

In contrast to Dr. Britton, Dr. Kolena was quiet and reserved. He was clean-shaven and young, but he had a bit of a comb-over.  He was usually at the chalkboard explaining the properties of light and space.  But what a great teacher!  I took Astrophysics on a friend’s recommendation, but I really thought it was going to be over my head. Dr. Kolena made it completely understandable, reproducible, and interesting.

———

Math and Computers

Students were assigned to a math course each year, ranging from Algebra II to Differential Equations, depending upon their ability.  And we took a math-related computer lab.  I took Precalculus & Calculus with Dr. Steven Davis, and I took Calculus BC with Dr. Dot Doyle.

Dr. Davis

Dr. Davis was an excellent teacher, but it always seemed like he was happiest in the computer lab, and it seemed like he was in the computer lab all the time.  (Early on, there were power surges each day that would shut the computers down, and they would have to be rebooted—daily!  You would never, ever write a program, or create a document, without saving the work frequently - like every minute or two.) 

There were many students who were passionate about programming, and I think that, for them, Dr. Davis was an incredible mentor.  I enjoyed the cool things that computers could do (at the dawn of personal computing), but for me it was more of a curiosity and a pastime.  I had no ambition of becoming a programmer or a software engineer. 

 

Dr. Doyle

Dr. Doyle was the math teacher for me.  She stuck to the math and kept us progressing through the curriculum.  From time to time, if the weather was nice, she would take the class outside for a lesson in the fresh air.  Once or twice she held a lecture on the grassy embankment outside of Beall pavilion, as the leaves were falling from the giant oak trees in autumn.

By the time I left NCSSM, my math teachers had me well prepared for college-level calculus.   But unfortunately, in college, I ended up changing my major from engineering to medicine, and the years of preparation in math went by the wayside. Still, the caliber of the mathematics education at NCSSM, and the access to a state-of-the-art computer lab (in the early ‘80s) was unbelievable.

Early PC with floppy disk drives. (Credit: 1982 Odyssey)

American Studies

American history and American literature were required during the junior year, and taught by a team of history and English professors.  Aside from your choice of foreign language, there were no electives in the humanities (in the junior year).  Every single student had to take “American Studies”.

Dr. Clark

Dr. Neill Clark was my English instructor for the course.    He had silvery gray hair and he liked to stand up and walk around the front of the class in rolled up jeans or khakis.  He always wore a pair of white tennis shoes.  He was such a laid back teacher, he sort of embodied the “beat” generation.  As a class, we meandered our way through the Anthology of American Literature at a steady pace, and I still vaguely remember the progression of American authors, and a few of the readings.

Dr. Meadows

Dr. Jackie Meadows was not quite so laissez-faire as Dr. Clark.  She was my history instructor, and she had high expectations.  In spite of her efforts, I remember little from that class, except for a phrase that she used from week to week.  She would say, “In your spare blocks of time, read ….”  It was hard to suppress a bitter laugh.  For us a “spare block of time” would have been a luxury.  We barely had spare “snatches” of time.  But she always said it without the slightest sense of irony. 

As a matter of fact, the American studies classes required an unbelievable amount of out-of-class reading.  And in my opinion, that reading homework pretty much torpedoed any chance for me to use free time in more constructive ways (like finding career mentors or identifying suitable research subjects).

As humanities teachers, they were tasked with creating well-rounded and thoughtful individuals, but I think we were pretty attentive and caring to begin with.  Whether or not “American Studies” helped to make us better citizens is subject to debate.

Part of the required reading for American Studies

Other Humanities

In our junior year, as I said, there really were no electives available to us, unless you include the choice of a language (Latin, Spanish, French, or German) and the choice of either Music or Art. But in the Senior year, a smattering of new elective classes became available.  My humanities electives were Spanish, English Literature, and World Religions.

Dr. Houpe

Dr. Don Houpe was my Spanish instructor for Spanish I and II.  He was a lanky gentleman who was encouraging and kind.  He usually had a gentle smile on his face as he listened to our embarrassing attempts to sort out the grammar and speak with the right pronunciation and accent.  (Thankfully, the class size was small, and the extent of my embarrassment was confined to less than a dozen classmates.) 

In retrospect, I wish that I had taken more advanced foreign language classes, but I dropped foreign language classes without a second thought when I went off to college.  I hated conjugating verbs, worrying about the gender of nouns, inverting word order, and basically… struggling to speak.  Still… I regret that I squandered the good start that I was given. 

Dr. Miller

In English Literature, I learned to think about context and meaning from Dr. Jon Miller, a man with a natural look of amusement (or bemusement) on his face at all times. He always wore khaki pants, a light blue button-down shirt, and a tie (ever loosening as the day went on), and he spoke in a sonorous baritone voice, with which he wielded both wit and sarcasm, in equal measure.  Sometimes, it was hard to tell if he was serious.

In class, he often told us to take out “a half sheet of paper”, and then we would have to write an impromptu paragraph or two, regarding a question related to a recent reading assignment.  He was a great believer in brevity and clarity, as I learned from his feedback.

Dr. Wilson and Dr. Litle

I also took World Religions, a wonderful course taught by Dr. Ginger Wilson and Dr. James Litle. I remember taking a couple of field trips to witness other houses (and forms) of worship (i.e. not Methodist). I was surprised to discover that there were Protestant denominations that I had never even heard of, like the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church. It was an example of just how segregated my life was, as a white boy in the South, even 10 years after school desegregation in my hometown.  This course on world religions did a lot to expand my appreciation of other people, religions, and cultures.

Spanish class with Dr. Houpe (Credit 1981 Odyssey)

Art Class

Of all the classes that I took at NCSSM, I loved this one the most. I had never taken an art class before, even though my father was a technical draftsman for a company that made electrical switches, and he was skilled in calligraphy as a hobby.  My mother loved taking pictures and doing all kinds of crafts, so there had always been some art in my childhood.

But I had never really learned about art or photography in a systematic way. So when I entered Joe Liles’s art studio to learn the principles and techniques of art; it was like a revelation.

Joe Liles was an earnest young man with a pony tail, who sometimes wore a bandana or a hat.  He liked to hike and he liked to tell stories. He usually had a camera strapped over his shoulder, or somewhere nearby, ready to go. He was skilled in architectural drawing, printing, photography, and other art media. 

He was also one of the most instrumental members of the original faculty, in my opinion. He took photos of the school, including candid pictures of the students, staff, and faculty for a number of early publications. He created an art studio and an arts program from the abandoned buildings of the historic Watts Hospital (probably on a shoestring budget).

He also began the tradition of a year-end slideshow, set to contemporary music, which became a moment to reflect and bond after a year of tribulations.  I’m pretty sure our class slideshow (class of 1982) began with the swirling synthesizer intro, evocative lyrics, and haunting melody of “Dreamweaver” by Gary Wright. It’s etched in my memory.

Joe also established a yearly Native American Powwow at the school. I think the first one was somewhere near the Ninth Street entrance to the school (the Bryan Living and Learning Center) — somewhere on the grounds outside.  We, the students, were sitting in a very big circle, and members of a local North Carolina tribe (Haliwa-Saponi, Cherokee, or Lumbee) gave a dramatic demonstration of the visceral music and dance of their tribe, in full voice and costume.

Joe’s photo studio

As for his art class, Joe was a wonderful teacher, and we had unparalleled access to the studio, including darkrooms and screen-printing presses.  For a brief moment in time it seemed like half of us had SLR cameras and a small allotment of black and white film, provided by the school.  If you weren’t careful, you would surely end up in someone’s photograph.  (I think I spent as much time with a camera in my hand as I did with a soccer ball at my feet… which is really saying something.)

In art class, I learned the principles of photographic composition.  I learned about shutter speed, and aperture, and the effect of  both on depth of field.  And then, when all the pictures had been taken for a single roll of film, the rest of the class and I learned to unload the film canisters and wind them onto developing spools in a pitch black darkroom! 

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sequence of moves or the dexterity required to: open the film canister, insert the tab into the center axle of the winding spool, gently bend the film while winding it onto the reel, and then cut the end off the film, and pop it into the developing canister.  After developing the film, we would cut it into strips of four or five frames, and hang them on a string in the photo lab to dry.

That was only half of the process, because then you had to choose which negatives were worth developing (if the film hadn’t been ruined by exposure).

After choosing which negatives to enlarge, there was a long process of loading the enlarger, exposing the photographic paper, dodging areas to be highlighted, dropping the paper into developing chemicals to achieve the right amount of contrast, transferring the print to the “fixer” tray to stop development, then rinsing and drying.  All without the services of a pharmacy.  (That’s where we sent film to be developed, in those days, before the advent of digital cameras.)

I think it is nearly impossible to imagine how much photography has changed, if you grew up in the digital age.  I’m incredibly proud to say that I was able to take a picture from concept to fruition, using a film camera and a darkroom.  It was incredibly hard, with so many steps between the click of the camera and the final product (with none of the instantaneous feedback that is available today).  Here’s one example:

Richard Saccocia pitching during the baseball season - 1982.

Physical Education

The school also included a recreation and sports requirement in the Junior year, worth half a credit.  Perhaps it was a concession to student and parent concerns for more sports activities.  Branson Brown was the instructor.

Branson played minor league baseball in Florida before he became a physical education (PE) instructor.  I think he always brought a team mentality to his work.  During his first year at NCSSM, he was also working as a resident advisor in Wyche House, and he had a real challenge trying to mold a bunch of boys into a “winning team”.  He also believed in the virtues of “less talk and more action”, and in “leading by example”.

I only remember snippets of the PE course… a little bit of golf to demonstrate the importance of life-long sporting activities… a fitness test in which we found ourselves running circles in the southeast parking lot… a relaxation demonstration in which many of the participants fell fast asleep.  He also arranged a fundraiser called “Jump Rope for the Heart”.  And… oh yeah… he (and Joanie) had a baby boy during the winter break.

Fitness test for the Sports and Recreation class

Outside of fatherhood, and the PE class, Branson was busy running intramurals in everything from ping pong to basketball — arranging competition for flag football (against the School of the Arts), soccer (against the School for the Deaf), and other sports, including cross country— the first of any varsity sport to compete against other schools.  In the 80-81 school year, NCSSM was not yet a member of any high school league.  But only a year later, Branson had made arrangements for a full interscholastic sports program for NCSSM (except for football).

Joanie, Branson, and son Brennan (Dialogues Newsletter 1981)

Work & Community Service

But wait, I’m not done. In addition to class requirements, every student was required to perform a certain amount of weekly work service, doing things like washing dishes in the kitchen, or distributing fresh linens; and a certain amount of weekly community service, doing things like tutoring young children or assisting with Durham parks and recreation programs.

Remember those “free” Tuesday and Thursday afternoons?  If we weren’t busy studying, we were often trying to complete our weekly requirement of work and/or community service.  I personally, became well acquainted with the conveyor style dishwasher of our basement cafeteria, and I saw the impressive capacity of the cafeteria’s walk-in freezer and cooler.

In the winter, it was much nicer, and less repulsive, to work for the laundry, distributing the freshly dried blankets, sheets, and towels in the big blue plastic utility carts.

Robert Lee washing trays in the cafeteria (Credit: 1981 Odyssey)

Research

For students with an interest in research, there was also time set aside on every other Saturday morning for independent research.  For the rest of us, I think it became a time for independent study — another disappointing loss of free time.

Mentorship opportunities were available at Duke University, only a mile or two away, and many students found a chance to conduct research there during “Special Projects” week, in April 1981.  However, those of us without a mentor or a plan for research found ourselves attending mini-lecture style classes on topics like Solar Energy, Non-Euclidean Geometry, and Jungian Psychology.  Bleh.

Ami Shah - Drug Synthesis  (Credit - Ravi Rao)

Academia at NCSSM

A remarkable amount of learning occurred in each of the four semesters of our junior and senior years— learning in science and math, arts and humanities, work and community service, physical education, and independent research.

Although didactic class time was usually packed to the gills with information (and sometimes pop quizzes), there was usually time outside of class to meet with the teachers for questions and conversation—during lab and studio sessions or during the teachers’ office hours.

It was quite common to see a teacher and a couple of students engaged in lively discussion in an office as dinnertime approached.  Eventually the teacher would have to bring the discussion to an end, and head for home. The students, in contrast, would head to their dorm rooms or to supper in the cafeteria.  We were already at “home.”

Dedicated staff and faculty made all those academic opportunities possible… all vying for the students’ interest and commitment… all divvying up our “free blocks of time” into time for homework, lab work, art studio, music ensemble, independent study, or research.  

Although the details of the lessons have (largely) been lost to time, some experiences (like shattering glasses of gelatin) were unforgettable. And on the whole, like clay in an art studio, the content of our characters was stretched, molded, and fired into a useful form by the teachers that formed the founding faculty of the School of Science and Math.

Stippled ink drawing of a photo projection from art class - 1980.