trevordayschool

Daniel Lind '83 Professor and Chair, Ethnic Studies Department at Cypress College 5 3 T R E V O R D AY S C H O O L n S U M M E R 2 0 2 1 – 2 0 2 2 and where I stood amongst my peers. From Fordham Prep, I went to Bowdoin College in Maine, which was another shock, because I was a city kid from New York City. At Bowdoin, a small liberal arts college, I encountered people who had never met a person of color in their lives. eir only reference point was what they saw on TV shows like e Jeffersons. In that environment, the African American students became like a family. We became our own needed support system. At the same time, a few African American professors served as our mentors. I was truly nurtured at Bowdoin, by students and staff. I thank God it was such a small school, because it was good for me. At Bowdoin, I had professors of all ethnic backgrounds who supported me. I double-majored in African American Studies and History, with a minor in Spanish. I remember taking Introduction to Hispanic Literature. It was basically a literary analysis class in Spanish, and the first paper I wrote was supposed to be two pages, which meant I had to be succinct. I couldn't do that at the time; instead, I wrote a five- page paper and shrunk the font so it would fit. I thought I was clever, but when I got that paper back, I received a C. My teacher called me out on reducing the font, and then gave me the best criticism, which I've never forgotten. She said, "Danny, you may think I'm hard on you, but I would not be hard on you, if I didn't think you could handle it." I still have that paper. When I visited Bowdoin in 2019, I thanked her and told her that it was because of professors like her that I had chosen to become a professor. In high school, I took a course in American History and that's when my interest in this field started. e teacher presented history as a narrative. It wasn't just facts and dates, but an intriguing story, and he was a narrator who kept me and my classmates engaged. en I began to understand why I love history: e information fits together into a story; and when that story's told, people understand how we got here. One of my first courses at Bowdoin was Introduction to African- American Studies (now entitled Introduction to Africana Studies). at's when I realized how much history had not been taught to us, how much had been withheld from us, and how much had been excluded from the typical K–12 curricula. I finished Trevor (then e Day School) in 1983, and from there I went to high school at Fordham Prep in the Bronx. Let's just say that was a shock to the system! At that time, e Day School was very open-ended with regard to the academic structure of its curriculum. As I recall, there were about four subjects that were taught in a reasonably typical classroom environment. Several other subjects were taught using an individualized, self-paced system where you utilized a free period to do your work in foreign languages, art, and the Science Lab. By comparison, Fordham Prep, a Jesuit all-boys prep school, was structure on steroids! In my first year, I think I only had one day when I had a free period, besides lunch. Not only that, but the focus was on tests and grades…"a B+?...HUH?!!" To go from e Day School, which utilized long student evaluation reports, to this grading system was a seismic change for me. Well, believe it or not, in that overly structured environment, I thrived. If I met or surpassed a standard, then I was doing well. It was very different from e Day School, but I found I liked the quantified measure of how much I was retaining information, Left: Daniel with a box of tissues on his head, from the 1983 Yearbook; Right: Daniel (back row, fifth from the left) at the 20th Anniversary Celebration of Bowdoin's African American Society and Africana Studies Program. It's telling that even to this day, I have students in their 20s and 30s who ask, "Why am I just learning this now?"

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