Robert College visit

We spent the morning on the RC campus, attended two morning meetings, were introduced twice, once to 9 and 10the graders, the other to upper classmen. We talked with John Chandler, who seems very laid back and has little or any expectations for my stay, which is good. Visit classes, come and go as you wish, and perhaps give him some feedback at the end. Two changes in the school will be effecting faculty, no longer will they be paid for extracurriculars, rather all wil be expected to do things and their will good teachers will be recognized by in they paycheck After the meeting, we talked with Johh, then went off and visited with Umran in the business office, quite a professsional, serious, friendly, and knowledgeable; I can see why everyone likes her, appreciates her work. She knows Hasan well, and talked about him, as they have socialized together. She was extremely helpful, wants to make sure we have a ride to the airport on the 19th of October, which is great. We then walked up to Barton Hall, took pictures, the Cedar of Lebanon was still there, as were the column bottoms which we had used to create a patio. After walking a bit, we stopped into the Alumni office to visit with Leyla, who also was fun to talk with. She knows everyone, took our picture, and wrote some notes for an rticle in the RC Quarterly, or one of he magazines. We had a nice chat, went to the library for a bit, looked at yearbooks, from Hasan’s year and remarked on how he was on almost every page. We also sat in the faculty room for about 15 minutes, talked with a couple of newer Turkish literature teachers; interestingly, the American faculty had little interest in us. I ended up introducing myself to Phil Espositio, the English Chair, and as we talked, one of my students from 72’ came up to say hi, named Neserin. Also, on our ride up the hill, we sat next to Phillips, a black gym teacher, who also played for Besiktas for a few years…he referred to me as the legend, and seemed to be a really good guy. He came in 78’ and has stayed all these years, obviously loving the life and getting along well with everyone.
Friday Oct 2: Sat in on Phil Esposito’s senior elective, discussed Montana 1948 and Mr. Gee’s science Fiction Elective, where a student gave a power point on the Voyager, as they are studying Neuroman by Phillip Gibson, the writer who influenced the making of Matrix, things like that.