The Chronicles of Thayer High School

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Last month Thayer High held its final graduation as a 4-year high school.

The cheers and speeches are familiar to Marcia Ammannd.

She�s heard them as a teacher, school board member, mother, and student.

It was her good high school experience that brought her home.

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:00� When I came back after college, and marriage, and teaching, I guess I pictured it would be the same for my children. And then I was pretty, taken back.

Ammannd found a depressed town. Winchester�s largest employer had closed.

Tom Carney Executive Editor of the Keene Sentinel says the unemployment was just the town�s latest problem.

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:48 there are various studies that indicate it has a lot of problems that are indicators that the community is going ot have problems�High dropout rates, teenage moms, as interesting of a community as it is, it has a lot of signs of a town in trouble.

Ammannd saw that trouble reflected at the school.

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1:43� I just saw chaos. I was asked to supervise a study hall and there were supposed to be 58 kids in the study and there were three�I think they were out and about�

Then school board member Marian Polaski.

...they were, in front of my house, under the trees, driving the neighbors crazy, smoking cigarettes and things, and like the cafeteria, there were holes�the tables, big holes in them, and the food on the cafeteria walls, they would just throw the food, and nobody seemed to do anything about this. It was bad.

In 1981 Thayer�s principal retired.

Polaski, as a school board member, sat in on candidate interviews.

And she says they all pretty much looked alike.

With one exception, Dennis Littky.

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:54 when he came in for the interview, he wasn�t in a suit and tie and jacket, like all the others were, he was just Dennis, the hair, and the wild looking beard, and he said what you see is what you get.

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:02 � there wasn�t a 3-piece suit in the world that could contain who he wsa

Again, Marcia Ammannd.

� �1:10 I think people all agree that it was time for a change. But some didn�t want a radical change. And he represented something very radical.

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:00 � You have to change a culture in school, and as long as it was it�s cool to be bad, rather than it�s cool to be good, you don�t have a shot. Doesn�t matter a thing I do.

Dennis Littky.

He speaks from experience.

Before coming to Thayer, he�d run a Long Island high school.

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2:08 �Then for rules, rather than me coming in as the big principal, we spent the first three months, all together working on the rules. So the kids, and you know what, the kids always make them tougher, than we do. So it was a combination of those kidns of things.

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1:29 also looked in the building, it didn�t look very good physically. So that is where we spent a fair amount of time during the summer. Hired a lot of kids, got grants to repaint it, redo. � So it was beginning to represent change is coming.

Karen Thomspon was a junior in Littky�s first year.

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2:21�Everybody was looking at itself really differently. The whole school, just the physical building, and after we saw all the differences, we were like, wow.

Some teachers and parents were wowed too.

Littky encouraged teachers to find new ways to develop curriculum and get to know students.

He�d hold parent teacher conferences instead of sending home report cards.

He started an apprenticeship program.

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:00 I think we were a school in motion �it wasn�t that you came to school and went from class to class. You came back here and you did some computer work, or some research, or to write a paper, but no one ever just stayed here.

Instead students built a barn, or worked for the newspaper, or studied voter registration, or investigated a proposed landfill site.

Winchester native and current Thayer computer teacher Rick Durkey noticed an attitude shift.

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1:54 � Towns around Winchester would always say, �oh, your from Thayer,� as if it�s an insult. The kids at Thayer also used to say it. But while D. was here, the kids at Thayer didn�t say it anymore.

Soon people began using the words Thayer and national model in the same sentence.

Littky says he and his staff received countless invitations to speak about their success.

And Littky says, people also wanted to visit.

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:53 �So we said, we mioght as well charge them. So this was way back 20 years ago, we charged them $100 a person to walk into the school�And you know what? Once you charged, the amount of people who wanted to come to our school tripled.

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3:05 but all through his time, was not a smooth time�

Retired English Teacher Valerie Cole.

...he had as many people nipping at his heels, as the principals, before and after�.The kids should be in school, or how come you are taking so many field trips, what are you reading that book for, why are you doing journals in school.

While Cole loved parts of the curriculum, it could be frustrating too.

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3:58 sometimes you really want to lecture, you really want to give a pen and pencil test. And sometimes you felt guilty doing it that way�

As the school�s national reputation grew, Littky�s critics got louder.

People complained kids didn�t learn the basics, there was no apparent structure.

Littky disputed the charges.

Trouble boiled over.

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:00 it was a great story, you had an entire community consumed by this one issue...

The Keene Sentinel�s Tom Carney.

... L. had become the lighting rod for this town. For every aliment this town had, L. became the lighting rod, and you were either with him or against him. You rarely get stories that galvanize a whole town to that level.

The school board attempted to fire Littky.

Littky and his supporters held their ground.

The media swarmed.

The town�s struggle became fodder for a book, a made-for-TV, and news programs like CBS�s W. 57th Street.

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West 57th St. program

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Sound montage of critics

Littky survived the attempt to remove him.

And now, some 15 years later, he says he learned a lesson.

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1:32 so I would say, if there was any mistake I made, it would have been how to go to more pig roasts, play more ball, have more people understand me as a human being. So I was not so threatening.

Littky stayed on until 1994, leaving on his own terms.

His departure, says Marcia Ammannd, one of the principal�s biggest supporters, was demoralizing.

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:00 D. believed when he left, the staff was so empowered, so well versed in this whole philosophy, it would go on with their own strength, but I think we knew immediately, that the air had gone out of our lungs. It wsa very hard, and we came to a place where we went to the lunchroom and reminisce.

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2:25 � I don�t think any of us can advocate that this is right for every single kid. But for crying out loud, when something works, to see it chocked and killed, �It�s just so sad�

Thayer Science teacher Susan Romano

�it�s so sad that this school, this model was chocked off into oblivion. Everyone is screaming right now, you read all the journals, you stay caught up with what is going on, they are all screaming about keeping kids engaged. This is a model that kept kids engaged.

Debate over what happened at Thayer continues.

Opinions and theories vary and merge.

High teacher and administrative turnover.

Leadership that didn�t believe in the Littky model.

Tests and standards gained favor over experimentation.

Monadnock Assistant Superintendent Margaret Sullivan says Littky never left behind a blueprint either.

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3:42�there are a lot of things that have to stay in place for to continue on in the same if the people who are remaining, don�t know the model, don�t belivie in the model, the structure isn�t there, it will change. But that isn�t bad always.

That depends, says Thayer computer teacher Rick Durkey.

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2:52 if you measure it by have students covered all the classic books, we are more successful. If you believe what is important is exposing kids to the world, then we are less successful.

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1:19 � in terms of the education that people were getting at Thayer, national model, I think that�s way too strong a term�

The Keene Sentinel�s Tom Carney.

�I think if you look at test results, they were not that good.

Anecdotally, though, many people who experienced it seem convinced, what existed at Thayer from 1981 to 1994 was exceptional.

Thayer English teacher Peter Issensteder says sometimes his students pick up the book or watch the exaggerated TV movie about the school.

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1:53 ...they always ask me, why don�t we do that anymore� Why don�t we feel about that place the way they did then. What happened?

In 2 years Thayer will be closed.

Perhaps that was the fate of a small town high school.

But for a while, at least, according to Monadnock Superintendent Kurt Cardeen, Thayer defied the odds.

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2:20 did it deteriorate? Did it deteriorate from when he was there, my answer is yes. Did it go back to what it was before that, I think yes. And if D. hadn�t come, I think what is happening now, would have happened sooner.

This spring the town voted to begin sending students to Keene for high school.

It is the second to last high school in Cheshire County to consolidate with a larger school district.

And the move has divided the town in a way that hasn�t been seen here, since a red-bearded outsider became principal.

For NHPR News, I�m DG.