foCus on faCulty

mElissa dolan ’98

Furnishing the Toolbox

The antidote to hopelessness,” says eighth grade humanities teacher Melissa Dolan, “is not optimism, but agency. We’re giving students the tools they need to enter this world and make it better.”

Has there ever been a more challenging—or more vital—time to convey that message to students? Dolan, who also serves as director of Middle School curriculum, is acutely mindful of the moment and how it might affect what happens in her classroom. “We’re learning about the interconnectedness of systems, with the pandemic and the protests. And we need citizens and leaders who are leaning into that complexity.”

But in Dolan’s view, the complexity has been a long time coming—predating the pandemic by several years. “I’d trace it back 10 years, as partisanship has increased. It’s not something that just appeared recently.”

The shifting political and cultural winds caused Dolan to overhaul the eighth-grade humanities course, formally known as “Systems of Justice and Injustice,” a few years back. “For a number of years, it has centered around the theme of human rights, and in particular on the U.S. Constitution,” she explains. Then, she says, around the time of the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, she noticed that students “weren’t necessarily making connections in using the past to navigate current events.” For example, she says, she realized that the course’s approach to the civil-rights movement treated it as a fait accompli rather than an ongoing struggle. “I was teaching it as though it were a moment in history, one that had a happy ending. No wonder they weren’t making the connection.”

Another challenge, she says, lay in the increasingly divisive nature of discourse, in and out of the classroom. “We were struggling to get beyond one side versus the other side and wrestling with the idea of trying to break free of those binary perspectives.”

The solution lay in refocusing the course on “systems thinking.” “We’ve gone from looking at human rights to analyzing systems of justice. We’re working with similar material but having students analyze how systems influence individuals and see who in those systems holds power.” It’s a scaffolding for understanding that can be applied broadly: “We wanted to build a framework that could help them process whatever came their way and navigate a rapidly changing world. And they walk out of class knowing they have a voice and they have power.”

Dolan has seen Rivers classrooms from both sides of the desk. “I had an extraordinary experience as a student,” says Dolan. “I was a quiet kid who would have been happy to fly under the radar. Rivers didn’t let me do that; it pulled me out of my shell.” When she returned, after college, it was initially to coach hockey; she also worked in the alumni and advancement offices, an “incredibly influential” experience that helped her better understand the behindthe-scenes work that takes place at independent schools.

As a middle school teacher, she does sometimes earn both pity and plaudits from those who find the age group challenging. Dolan is decidedly not one of their number. “I love the energy that middle schoolers bring every day,” she says. And, she notes, the learning—and indeed the systems thinking—flows in both directions. “I love how frequently my students make me see the world differently and change my perspective. They constantly encourage me to think in new ways.” — Jane Dornbusch