Kit Abel Hawkins, Doctor of Social Studies

Kit Abel Hawkins received an honorary Doctor of Social Studies at Grinnell College Commencement 2015.

Kit Abel Hawkins is founder and director of the Arbor School of Arts and Sciences, a private K-8 school in Tualatin, Oregon. Established in 1989, Arbor is the manifestation of Hawkins' dream that education should be "decisive and enduring." Hawkins also established the Arbor Center for Teaching, a 2-year apprenticeship program in partnership with Marylhurst University for six individuals to receive their Master of Arts in Teaching. In nominating Hawkins, Rebecca Garner ’15 praised Hawkins for her "passion for a model of active engagement with learning."

Doctor of Social Studies

Many students see school as little more than a series of hurdles to overcome: tests to pass, concepts to master, papers to complete. But great teachers help students transform obstacles into the pathways that help them discover who they really are. Through her commitment to — and exceptionally high expectations for — her students, Kit Abel Hawkins helps her students discover their strengths and use them to pursue excellence in all of their endeavors.

As the founder and director of the Portland, Ore.-area Arbor School of Arts and Sciences, Hawkins has used the school to bring her educational values to life. Classes are small, technology is minimal, and the latitude that students receive to pursue the ideas that fascinate them is vast.

Through yearlong independent projects with close guidance, the school’s students learn to to plan thoughtfully, to explore widely, and to become an expert in their chosen area. They learn to fail, and they learn to succeed after that failure. Whether they are rebuilding broken-down tractors or creating intricate, hand-drawn maps of the world, students develop curiosity and persistence that lasts a lifetime. The same is true for Hawkins. Though her teaching philosophies have remained constant, she is constantly seeking new ways to help students learn.

But Hawkins’ commitment to education is about more than a philosophy: it is about being present for her students, who come to her with different strengths and different challenges. Hawkins truly listens to her students, she believes in them, and she champions them. It is her bedrock confidence in them that makes so many of them stay in touch for years — even decades — after they graduate. Her students say the lessons she taught them helped them understand who they are as human beings. Grinnell is pleased to recognize Kit Abel Hawkins for her unflagging devotion to educating her students in ways that stay with them for a lifetime.

Acceptance

Transcript

What a deeply moving form of recognition has been conferred on me today. I extend my profound thanks to President Kington and Dean Latham, Professor Marslov and the honorary degree committee for the privilege of joining the procession of educators on whose work Grinnell has chosen to shine a light. It's an honor to address the Grinnell class of 2015, and to offer you the gift of a poem, "The Way It Is," by William Stafford, poet laureate of Oregon.

There's a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change.
But it doesn't change.

I hope a thread has become palpable to you in your years at Grinnell. By the time your remarkable classmate, Rebecca Garner, was in the 8th grade at the school I founded a quarter-century ago, Becca had begun to recognize that she had a thread she was following, one that spun together filaments of art and tendrils of biology. At that time, she formulated a senior project, for that is what we call the year-long work each 8th grader undertakes at Arbor, in which superb drawings of her rabbits, accompanied a precocious research paper on the genetic markers of the baby rabbit her breeding program produced. She has followed her thread, continuing to distinguish herself as an artist and a scholar here at Grinnell.

Stafford goes on:

People wonder what you are pursuing.
You have to explain the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it, you can't get lost.

Following your thread means that you know what you are made for, what your métier is. What it is you have to offer up to a world whose broken parts must constantly come under repair through the agency of those who care.

I was fortunate; I felt a thread in my hands when I was young. I went off to Oberlin College with the thread securely gripped in my hands, determined to develop the intellectual background I needed to teach ambitiously and, ultimately, to build and lead a school. May your collegiate experience prove as generative and lastingly important as has mine.

Holding onto the thread means not getting lost, and it also means finding joy, finding joy in work that suits you and that makes a difference. There are obligations that are entailed by your calling, whatever it is, and those obligations will exact their toll. Yet, the deep well of quiet joy that arises from following your thread is sustaining.

"Tragedies happen," Stafford continues;

people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you can do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't let go of the thread.

Yes, I am getting older but I haven't let go of the thread. Truth to tell, I still never tire of helping a student navigate the maze of long division or of guiding a reading group through a great piece of literature or of supporting an 8th grader as she crafts a senior project that displays her promise. I continue to be restless in pursuing new ideas for Arbor to improve its capacity to inspire learners. And since Rebecca was with us, I created a new arm of the school devoted to attracting engaged and broadly educated people like you to the world of teaching. Three cheers for what Peggy and Chuck are doing. And, for those of you who are doing it with them, I laud you all.

There are consolations to growing old. The thread only grows stronger, more resilient, and more vibrant. Here with you today are your beloved families and this esteemed faculty, those who have nurtured you, chided you, encouraged you, worried for you, cheered and comforted you as you worked to reach this point, the point at which knowing what you are good at will help you know what you are good for.

May your threads shine.

Thank you.