Latin School of Chicago

Background: Eighth grade trip to Washington, D.C. "Steve Sommers made the experience of studying history come to life. He fostered discussions in non-traditional ways that we weren't used to and were very exciting. He motivated us to work at a level far beyond what we thought we could do. Those classes with Steve inspired my interest in history well beyond my years at Latin." – Bob Chapman '78 looked at my resume and said: 'Well you are 36.' I said, 'No, I am 26.' He said: 'For God's sake don't tell anybody. We'll see how you work out." It turned out that when Sommers, who had only done minimal teaching thus far, was hired in June, some members of the History Department had just resigned in protest of Van Gorder's non-traditional ideas about teaching. Over the next few years, Sommers and his teachers, most of them new hires, reinvented courses, added new courses and made cultural history and anthropology part of the curriculum. Euro Civ., which Dick Dolezal, Humphrey Cordes and John Austin had developed in the '60s, became a team-taught course, and American Civ. was started. The first Advanced Placement test was also introduced in the History Department. "If we hired someone and we knew that they had a particular interest, we encouraged them to pursue that interest in what they were teaching," said Sommers. "The headmasters generally let us go on with what we were doing as long as things were going well." In January 1978, Ingrid Dorer Fitzpatrick, who had been completing her graduate studies and teaching in Italy, was looking for a short-term job while doing her dissertation research at the Newberry Library. When she heard that Latin was looking for a history teacher to finish out the year for someone who had left unexpectedly, Dorer Fitzpatrick jumped at the chance to earn some extra money while remaining close to her research library. A few months turned into a second year when Sommers proposed that she design an elective. "I was given the freedom to design what I wanted as long as it fulfilled the History Department's contemporary European history requirement," said Dorer Fitzpatrick. She went on to combine her interests in the Nazi era and its broader context going back to the 19th century, totalitarian regimes and psychology to create the nationally recognized Nazi Mind class. Over the last 35 years, the course, and its culminating Nuremberg trials simulation, has become one of the most significant academic experiences for the estimated 1,200 Latin sophomores who have taken it. It also is the longest-running elective at the school, followed by the Russian Revolutions course, which Dorer Fitzpatrick created a year later. This freedom to create electives in history and literature that not only interested her but also clearly interested students, Dorer Fitzpatrick said, kept her at Latin. "This is something I frankly thought could only happen at the university level. I didn't think it was possible at the high school level." In the decades to follow, this approach that was introduced at Latin School at the end of the '60s has allowed generations of teachers to develop the distinctive programming that continues to be a hallmark of the Latin educational experience. Ingrid Dorer Fitzpatrick Nazi Mind is the longest-running elective at Latin. Steve Sommers LATI N SCHOOL OF CHI CA GO 79

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