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Dr. Jeff P. Beedy

For the past twenty-seven years, I have taught, advised, coached, researched and administrated school-aged children in a variety of rural and urban educational settings.

While at Harvard in the mid-eighties, I studied with moral psychologists Carol Gilligan, Lawrence Kohlberg, Robert Selman, and Robert Kegan and taught Social Reflections of Literature with Dr. Robert Coles, child psychologist and philosopher of moral development. This group of re-known child psychologists introduced me to the exciting world of child psychology as we explored the philosophical and pedagogical theories of Jean Piaget, Henry Stack Sullivan, Elliot Turiel, Jerome Kagan, William Damon, and Howard Gardner, amongst others.

For the past three decades I have strived to balance a professional life of research and practice in both school settings as well as innovative out-of-school programs. My career in education began as a high school classroom teacher, adviser and coach in a small boarding school in Maine . I was struck by the impact I had on my students and wanted to know more about how children develop and how educational environments can be organized to enhance learning. With seven years of practical experience and lots of questions, I began my doctoral work at Harvard's Graduate School of Education in the fall of 1983.

During my time at Harvard, I was fortunate to experience the best of the Lawrence Kohlberg and Carol Gilligan debates on child development, psychology and gender differences. Lawrence Kohlberg served as my advisor and visited my children's pilot camp to witness his theories of a Just Community in practice. During my five years at Harvard, I also served as a researcher at McLean 's Hospital on a four-year study on the stage, phase and style of adolescence. (See Noam, Powers, Kilkenny and Beedy).

Upon the completion of my doctorate in 1988, I taught an undergraduate course for Robert Coles at Harvard called Social Reflections of Literature. Inspired by the potential power of literature as a medium for moral theme comprehension, I founded the Positive Learning Using Sports summer camp at Milton Academy in 1990. The innovative camp uses children's interest in athletics as a medium to teach reading and develop a sense of social responsibility. It now serves 300 children ages 6-to-12 and is enjoying its 15th year of continuous operation.

In 1992, I assumed the role of Headmaster of New Hampton School where I engineered the philosophical and financial turnaround of a school that had fallen on tough times. In the summer 1992, enrollment had dropped to less than 200 students many of who were post-graduate males. Today, New Hampton School enjoys a full enrollment of 350 students. My experience in curriculum development, teacher training, program development and community outreach will serve me well as both as a teacher to and an advisor of undergraduate education majors.

My research at Harvard provided the foundation for the creation of the Total Human Development (THD) Model, which serves as the philosophical underpinning for New Hampton School 's academic and co-curricular programs. The Foundations of Learning (FOL) curriculum gained national attention when New Hampton applied for the National Character Award in 2002. As a result of my innovative whole-child educational models, New Hampton School was recognized as the only private high school in America to receive the coveted Nation Schools Of Character (CEP) Award in 2002. In the same year, I was selected to the experts panel for the Templeton Foundation's research project, Character Education in the High Schools: Promising Practices.

In addition to being the headmaster, I have continuously pursued my passion for educating younger children. Beginning in 1984, I co-founded a summer camp that was the pre-cursor for my founding of the Positive Learning Using Sports (PLUS) Institute. Since 1987 this institute has researched, designed, and implemented youth development programs and curriculums for school-aged children. In 1994, Sports PLUS conducted its first inner city implementation in a middle school in Dorchester MA. In the fall of 1997, PLUS collaborated with Ameri-corps and the Lawrence ( Massachusetts ) Library and YMCA in continuing to develop a successful PLUS After School Program model. The middle school youth development program combines a child's natural interest in sports with exposure to literature in order to promote literacy, social skills, health and fitness. In the fall of 2003, the PLUS Institute conducted groundbreaking research on the impact of after-school programming on five outcome goals (character, community, intrinsic motivation, physical health and moral theme comprehension) in five Chicago pilot sites as well as in Bristol , New Hampshire . This year, based on a decade's worth of research and pilot studies, a team of researchers and I finished a 700 page K-8 character and literacy manual for training after-school teachers and caregivers.

Currently, I am working with Harvard's Programs in After School Education and Research to analyze the best practices of after-school youth development programs. Next year, we plan to sponsor a 3-day national conference titled, Sport As Learning Time (SALT) From Metaphor to Measurement: Youth Development Programs during After-school Time. The conference will bring together 40 prominent leaders from the government, funding, after-school, public health and youth sports communities to:

One of my favorite responsibilities as a leader has been teaching and mentoring young educators. Over the past three decades, I have taught, hired, trained and mentored hundred's of teachers, coaches and counselors in my role as camp director and Headmaster. Being involved with Plymouth will provide me a forum to continue to contribute to the lives of those who chose teaching as a profession. I value the importance of community outreach and would like to continue my commitment to programs that expose both rural and urban children to older students who can serve as mentors. I would welcome the challenge of developing programs that help Plymouth students make a difference in the Lakes Region area and beyond as they learn to appreciate how satisfying outreach work can be.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my interests. I look forward to hearing from you and exploring any possibilities that might exist in a unique partnership with the ultimate goal of helping the next generation of educators.

Jeffrey Pratt Beedy, Ed.D

Founder Sports PLUS Institute