Local named Educator of the Year

Don Dawson, a member of the California Teachers’ Association Board of Directors, noting Lance was chosen for a number of reasons including his work in transforming Hillsdale into small learning communities, but also "involvement of the students in exciting projects such as the micro-loans to Guatemalan women and the student-produced video about it.”

Lance humbly points to the supportive nature of Hillsdale faculty that makes any of these projects possible.

"Everything that has happened was a team effort,” said Lance. "If I was a teacher at another school, I don’t think I would have gotten this award. Hillsdale allows a certain kind of teaching to happen.”

Lance’s journey to Hillsdale began as a young boy growing up in Santa Barbara.

"I always felt a little unsure of how you figure out what you’re supposed to do in life. … Home and school were the only two worlds that I understood,” Lance said, leading him to want to help others figure out there was more than those two worlds.

Lance started his educational journey after high school planning to become a park ranger. The decision led to camping trips, river rafting and exploring the Grand Canyon. But the requirements of geology and chemistry changed Lance’s plans. After graduating from the University of California at Santa Barbara, Lance applied to teach English in a rural area of Japan. He spent two years in the region where he was the only foreigner and most people did not speak English when he arrived. The experience piqued Lance’s interest in Japanese culture. He found a graduate program at Stanford University combining a teaching credential and a master’s degree in East Asian studies.

Turns out only one person had gone that route over 15 years prior and the difficulty of the combination led Lance to only pursue the master’s degree. At the same time, Lance began working with a curriculum development organization on campus called the Japan Project writing curriculum for elementary schools.

It was during graduate school that Lance met his future wife, Ashia Chacko. A teaching assistant in one of Lance’s classes, he was quick to note the two did not date until after the class ended and Chacko did not grade his papers. Today, after nearly 20 years of marriage, the couple lives in San Carlos with their 7-year-old daughter.

After further study in Japan, Lance applied and was accepted to the STEP program at Stanford to get his teaching credential. He was placed at Hillsdale for his student teaching. Upon graduation, Lance still had a vested interest in Japan. He took a job at Stanford working with exchange students who came for summer programs. When Lance decided to leave the nonprofit world for teaching in the 1993-94 school year, Hillsdale happened to have an opening, which he took. Lance has been a staple at Hillsdale ever since, because he enjoys that Hillsdale is always changing.

Small learning communities, which Lance took a sabbatical to study and help write grant forms to fund, is a great example of this.

In 2003, Hillsdale began its redesign into three semi-autonomous smaller learning communities, called SLCs. Those groups centered work around five cornerstone values: equity, personalization, rigor, autonomy and collaboration/shared decision-making. Students often end up with teachers in core classes for two years. Each student also is assigned an advisor with whom they meet several times a week. It’s this set up which Lance attributes to his success in making learning an experience students can use to implement change.

"Creating projects that link what we’re doing in the classroom with what’s going on outside the classroom. That’s really something I’m excited to try and do and still trying to figure out how to do that better,” he said.

Two larger projects Lance’s students have been a part of are truly noteworthy of this kind of change — one helps fund education for a class of girls in Afghanistan, the other offers micro-loans to women in Guatemala to start businesses.

Lance introduced "Kite Runner,” a novel following two boys in Afghanistan through tumultuous times, to his students.

"It’s important for students to understand it’s not just reading; it’s about real people,” said Lance. "There really is such a place, with similar struggles. It’s not something they have to sit back passively and observe. The can influence and have an impact. That’s something a school needs to help foster in young people — a sense that they can make the world better.”

That idea of improving the world took the form of an annual Kite Festival, from which students generated money to fund a class of girls in Afghanistan through a partnership with Afghans4Tomorrow. Lance attributed the school’s structure and work of a team of teacher to make the festival happen.

Micro-loans was an exciting new program that grew out of a "Grapes of Wrath,” unit.

"Basically, we were looking at poverty and looking at what makes it hard for people to get out of poverty and what would make it possible for people to get out of poverty,” said Lance, who was approached by the San Mateo Rotary around the same time to see if students would be interested in micro-loans. Lance saw a teaching opportunity.

Called the Hillsdale Effect, the group began with a small number of students interested in mission to raise funds for micro-loans and inform others of international efforts to combat poverty.

Nineteen-year-old Fiona Murray, now a freshman at Lewis & Clark College, was a junior in Lance’s class at the time. She and a handful of others worked on the project through her senior year in collaboration with Namaste Direct to give small loans to women in Guatemala so that they can start their own businesses. The group traveled to Guatemala over that summer to meet the borrowers.

"Lance has impacted my life in a few ways: He helped me become a better writer, and he gave me something to be passionate about. Creating the Hillsdale Effect was the best experience ever,” Murray wrote via an e-mail interview. "I had the most amazing time and he taught us all that we can make a difference. He believed in the nine of us and told us that we could change the world if we wanted to. He definitely empowered me to make a difference and a change. He made me see that it really isn't that hard to start something that can actually have a lasting impact on the world.”

Though the original crop of students have left Hillsdale, the effort of the Hillsdale Effect lives on. Students raised $7,000 this year in coins through a penny war. In addition, the students are hoping other schools in the Bay Area will join the effort, starting their own clubs.

"That’s really important,” said Lance. "We’re not preparing kids to be multiple choice takers, although sometimes the pressure to do that is there. Kids are going to need to be able to collaborate with each other, organize and plan events; need to know how to … interact with adults. The danger of kids becoming cynical and thinking they can’t change the problems our world faces is there; kids should graduate from schools feeling empowered. And it’s important we do that.”

The Hillsdale Effect is hosting a taco dinner from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Feb. 11 on campus for $10. Food was donated by Mollie Stones Markets. Money raised will go toward the group’s efforts to fund micro-loans to women in Guatemala.

Heather Murtagh can be reached by e-mail: heather@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: (650) 344-5200 ext. 105.