Ten Years of Harkness Teaching in the Classroom

By Cathy Kanaday, Dean of Faculty

Ten years ago, Episcopal’s English classrooms underwent a quiet revolution. Traditional desks gave way to oval tables in the G Building, and the familiar rhythm of teacher lecture-discussions yielded to something more dynamic: the sound of students wrestling with ideas. In a recent sermon, The Rev. Teresa Seagle, Director of Spiritual Life and Service, reminded our community of Jacob’s transformative struggle in Genesis — how he wrestled through the night with both divine and human, emerging changed but blessed. Her words captured something essential about what we’ve discovered over a decade of Harkness discussions: there is profound value in learning to engage deeply with difficult ideas. 

Contrarily, technology is to thank for the emergence of Harkness and student-centered learning at Episcopal. In 2013, new technologies like the iPad offered exciting new avenues for discovery. As ESJ faculty looked into such possibilities for classrooms, one of the most valuable findings was the enormous power of that dark screen and its enticing apps. While screens could take our students in all sorts of educational directions, they could also be a vortex that could too easily suck in students and interfere with face-to-face exploration of those ideas. 

Looking for alternatives to screen-centric classrooms, a handful of English and History teachers who had independently heard of Harkness-style classrooms started working together toward a solution. Constantly comparing approaches and discoveries of this pedagogy during planning periods and lunches, they worked towards creating increasingly learner-centered classrooms which called for more active student engagement with the texts being studied.  As then-Head of School Charley Zimmer watched and listened to the energy around this experiment, he saw to it that all Upper School English classrooms were equipped with Harkness tables, followed quickly by history classrooms.

Episcopal’s incorporation of the Harkness method could not have been better timed. Gen Z students live in a world where it’s easy to spend more time online and absorb information in isolation. Harkness discussions give students regular practice with face-to-face interactions, which might otherwise feel intimidating. We often hear from recent graduates – even those who were more reserved in high school –  about the comfort (and even advantage) they have in being able to easily enter into discussions and interactions with their college classmates and professors. Just as importantly, in our increasingly polarized world, Gen Z Eagles have learned the value of listening, thinking, and responding according to solid information. 

The transformation in Episcopal’s community has been remarkable. English Department Chair Kate Wallis has watched students become “bolder—more willing to speak up, advocate for themselves, and express their ideas with conviction.” When Caitlin Fitzpatrick started teaching at Episcopal in 2017 she saw students who often seemed hesitant to follow a point without teacher validation. “Over the years I’ve watched their relationship with Harkness transform; now they relish the shared collaboration that happens between each of them at the table, and they are experts at collectively building a meaningful and impactful interpretation of a text,” she said.

We’ve seen this growth at every grade level on the Munnerlyn Campus, including Middle School. In sixth grade, Debbie Deppe helps her younger students dive into their first Harkness discussions, eagerly sharing their ideas and interests and backing them up with evidence from their reading. In seventh and eighth grades, Peyton Chunn sees her students  “learning to respectfully disagree, and practicing the core tenets of civil discourse.” 

Peyton Chunn, who taught at Episcopal before the shift to Harkness, has witnessed the power of this change firsthand. “I can honestly say that it has transformed the way students learn,” she said. “Because they are more active participants in the learning process, they experience greater engagement with and retention of material. Because students are pushing themselves to reflect upon literature in a new way, their writing improves. Because students are being held to high communication standards, they become more articulate speakers and better listeners.”

The transformation has reached far beyond students’ classroom experiences. Upper School instructor Marin Flint has watched skills from discussion-centered classes ripple outward. “It has empowered students to speak up on campus and take charge of things in ways they never used to,” she said. 

Teachers, too, have been changed by this decade-long journey. This shift from teacher-as-authority to teacher-as-guide has deepened our community’s capacity for genuine engagement with complex questions. Teachers have become “’more flexible and creative in the classroom, adjusting our plans to better support students’ interests and learning styles and allowing for more organic, student-driven exploration of ideas,” Kate Wallis said. Discussion also keeps things fresh and lets the teacher experience be dynamic. 

“I love how much the discussion varies from year to year and class to class,” Caitlin Fitzpatrick said. “It invites me to continue to discover new and remarkable things hiding in each of the texts I teach.”

Instructor Rebecca Hall frames the whole learning process as a shared journey with her students. “I tell my students that Harkness is a way for us to make meaning together,” she said, describing how the method has reshaped the traditional teacher-student dynamic. She, like several other newer members of the department, said this approach was a significant part of what drew her to Episcopal.

Faculty participate in ongoing training regarding the Harkness method. Episcopal routinely sends faculty to the Exeter Harkness Institute at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, where Harkness was developed in the 1930s. Trainers also come to ESJ, helping faculty to refine their approach and focus on “what’s next” in Harkness. Beyond the critical thinking and civil discourse that are essential elements of what teachers do, discussion-centered classes also give faculty a chance to help teach confidence and belonging at foundational ages. It’s a teaching pedagogy in which there are always new and remarkable aspects to discover.  

When ChatGPT surfaced in late 2023, the English Department had long since embraced the value of thinking critically and authentic interactions. As Episcopal’s AI policy states, alongside the presence of artificial intelligence and large language models, “our programs and pedagogy continue to emphasize the irreplaceable value of that which makes us human.”

Perhaps most striking is how Harkness has prepared our students for an increasingly complex world full of apps, AI, and screens. “As the world becomes increasingly algorithmized by technologies that present themselves as shortcuts to genuine thought, students who learn through Harkness will find themselves capable of the kind of improvisational thinking and critical reasoning that seem to be falling out of favor in the larger culture,” said Dr. Derrick King.  

As we look toward the future, particularly in an era increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence and algorithmic thinking, our commitment to deep engagement with ideas becomes even more crucial. Discussion-centered classes have put our students in an excellent position for the world that lies ahead. Episcopal students don’t just learn to speak and listen; they learn to persist in the face of difficult questions, to engage respectfully with different perspectives, and to seek understanding rather than easy answers. As in the story of Jacob shared by The Rev. Teresa Seagle, they discover that transformation often comes through the willingness to wrestle with what matters most.

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2025 issue of The Magazine of Episcopal.