Message From John Dewey Academy

As 2012 begins, we at the John Dewey Academy have news from the Castle to share. Our first priority in 2011, Ken Steiner's inaugural year as Head of School, was to increase our census while maintaining high standards and high expectations for our students. Despite the continuing challenge of our troubled economy, our census has increased by 50%. We are near capacity for male students and are slowly but surely increasing our numbers of female students. The larger size of our population has energized and invigorated our program, which is stronger than ever before.

Following in our tradition of 100% matriculation at highly ranked colleges and universities, our six 2011 graduates are attending Carleton College, Clark University, Columbia University, Peabody Institute/Johns Hopkins, Vassar College, and Wheaton College. All six are succeeding brilliantly with one college semester under their belts. Happily, this year's college season has gotten off to a terrific start: two of our six seniors have already been accepted at college. One will be attending Reed College in Oregon; the other has been accepted to the Honors Program at the University Of Illinois School Of Engineering and is awaiting the results of his other applications before making a decision. Several of our seniors took courses at Williams College this fall and excelled, thus further strengthening their college applications. We look forward to another successful college season.

Our alumni community continues to amaze us with their post JDA achievements, especially when we contrast the lost and troubled adolescents who arrived at the Castle with the successful young adults who are forging healthy lives in a challenging world. Last summer, for example, all nine members of our Dewey Class of 2007 graduated from college: three are now in law school, five are working, and one is attending Yale's PhD program in Comparative Literature on a full scholarship. It's of course impossible to list all the news of our talented alumni, but this year we are particularly pleased to mention one first-time achievement: a member of the JDA Class of 2008 has been awarded the prestigious and competitive Marshall Fellowship for study at Oxford during the next two years.

We are delighted to announce the hiring of Dr. R. Joseph Hoffman as history teacher and chair of our Social Sciences Department. He replaces Michael Sletcher, who left to take a position at Stanford University. Joe has a BA and MA from Florida State University, two master's degrees from Harvard University, and a PhD from the University of Oxford. He has served as a Fulbright Professor in Lahore, Pakistan; as a distinguished scholar and a program director at Goddard College; and as a Senior Vice President (Academic) at the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, New York. Hoffmann has been chair of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER) since 2003 after serving on its executive committee and acting as editor of its journals for twenty years. He is now senior associate editor of The Human Prospect, the journal of the Institute for Science and Human Values, where he serves as honorary provost.

He has taught in numerous colleges in the US, United Kingdom, Germany, Lebanon, Australia, Africa, China, and Papua New Guinea, where he established the first interdisciplinary program in historical religious studies and served as chair of the Department of History. From 1999-2003, Hoffmann was Professor of Civilization Studies at the American University of Beirut, the Middle East's oldest English Language University. At Oxford University he was tutor in Greek at Keble College, Senior Scholar at St Cross College, and later (1991-1999) Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies and a member of the Faculty of Oriental Studies (Near Eastern Studies). He is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the American Historical Association, and a fellow of the Highlands Institute for American Religious and Philosophical Thought. In addition to two Fulbright exchange scholarships, he has won teaching awards at the University of Michigan (the Matthews Undergraduate Teaching Award) and the Faculty Distinguished Teaching Medal at Wells College. In December 2011 he was awarded a certificate for outstanding teaching by the Department of Foreign Studies of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Hoffman has also been widely published, served on numerous editorial boards and on the Fulbright/Hays and Radcliffe-Ramsdell Fellowship Selection Committees. We are all looking forward to welcoming Joe to our excellent academic team in June at the beginning of our summer term.

During this past year, our clinical staff has presented at conferences and participated in radio discussions about topics such as caring confrontation (Ken Steiner and Lisa Sinsheimer) and the overuse of psychotropic medications in treating adolescents (Lisa Sinsheimer). Also in 2011, Andrea Esperat, our Dean of Students, presented at the NAGC (National Association for Gifted Children) on multiple topics. These include "Developing Future Moral Leaders: Striving for Excellence Above and Beyond Academics" and "Ways That Gifted Schools Support Social and Emotional Needs." Andrea's work in this area resulted in an invitation for her to present at the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented at the University of Connecticut in March of 2011. This year, she has agreed to serve as the co-chair and proposal reviewer for the Special Schools Network of NAGC.

Tom Bratter, our founder and owner, continues to work at the Academy as his health allows, and has also been devoting considerable time to writing about the therapeutic approach he has pioneered at JDA. He returned on a part time basis from April to December 2011, after recovering from the surgical implantation of the mechanical heart pump device (LVAD). He and his wife Carole are currently back in Texas for the winter months. Unfortunately, Carole suffered a severe heart attack shortly after arriving in Texas. We are happy to report that Carole is recovering well and is attacking rehabilitation with a determination we find inspiring.

Despite Tom's ill health in 2011, he published two papers last year. The first, entitled "Compassionate Confrontation Psychotherapy: Working with Gifted but Self-Destructive Adolescents in a Therapeutic Boarding School," appeared in Adolescent Psychiatry. The second, "Compassionate Confrontation Psychotherapy: An Effective and Humanistic Alternative to Biologic Psychiatry for Adolescents in Crisis," was published in Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry.

We love visitors, and hope that any of you interested in stopping by will do so this year.

With best wishes for a productive 2012, we remain, as always, in the struggle together,

Ken Steiner, Head of School
Tom Bratter, Emeritus Head of School/President
Andrea Esperat, Dean of Students
Lisa Sinsheimer, Intake Coordinator/Parent Liaison