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Advanced Curriculum Spotlight: ADV History of Durham

by Dylan Howlett

1,184 words | 4-minute read 

 

It is here, and it is beautiful.

After a successful pilot of eight courses in 2023–2024, Durham Academy Upper School’s new Advanced (ADV) curriculum — an internally designed, academically rigorous set of courses that emphasize depth over breadth, global relevance and independent problem-solving — celebrates its full debut this school year with 52 course offerings.

Dozens of Upper School students and teachers at Durham Academy have already experienced — and raved — about the manifest advantages of ADV courses over Advanced Placement (AP) courses, which DA has fully sunsetted. Long-lasting learning. Real-life situations. Enduring skills that span academic journeys and professional careers.

Come see for yourself. Welcome to the first installment of a series that will take you inside ADV courses across the Upper School — where rigor and authenticity are advancing farther than ever.

 

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ADV History of Durham
Dr. Brian Fennessy | 12:35 p.m.

As they fanned out in a horseshoe of desks on a Monday afternoon, the 17 students in Dr. Brian Fennessy’s ADV History of Durham class had already reckoned, to some degree, with the past. They had reviewed a timeline of DA’s history, stretching 90 years from its founding as Calvert Method School in 1933 to the completion of the Middle School Gateway Center in 2023. They had watched “Because of Them, We Are,” a 36-minute documentary that Cecilia Moore ’22 produced in the 2020–2021 edition of the class to tell the stories of alumni who were among the first Black students at DA. And they had, with eyes-wide-open zeal, engaged in the very mission of this course: to determine how DA fits into the larger context of Durham, and how Durham fits into the larger context of the American South.

“History,” Fennessy says to his students, “is complicated.”

And so his students tackle the complications head-on. During a 25-minute discussion, the 17 Upper Schoolers share what surprised them most about DA’s history and Moore’s film. Amare Burrus ’25 says he was struck by the positivity with which DA’s first Black students spoke about their experiences in the school community. It’s a sentiment that several of his classmates echo. “It was more focused on how they set the tone and started everything,” Burrus says. Fennessy nods. “It’s important in history that we not project our own assumptions on people in the past,” he says. Fennessy refers to a quote in the film from Valerie Kennedy ’81, who enrolled at DA in 1969 as a kindergartner and spoke to History of Durham students in 2021, when Dr. Rob Policelli taught the class: “We as children were responsible,” she says in the film, “for crafting the new world order.”

Students have seen that new world order, and the vestiges of an older world, for themselves. They saw it in a September visit to the Stagville State Historic Site in Durham County, which features the remnants of one of the largest plantations in North Carolina. They saw it, too, earlier this week in downtown Durham, where civic leaders and activists have been immortalized in a mural.

“What is the value,” Fennessy asks his students during class, “of the history we’re creating?” They will be charged, by year’s end, to assemble an original research project that requires each student to produce new knowledge of Durham’s history. They will conduct unique research of primary sources rather than parroting compiled works, and they will share their findings through the medium — paper, digital exhibit or documentary — they deem most appropriate. It is challenging, Fennessy says. But it is also exciting. And valuable. “Is it just to get a grade,” Fennessy asks his students, “or are you really doing local history?”

Their history, on this day, is as local as it gets. Fennessy has empaneled four DA luminaries who boast a combined 140 years of service at the school: Michael Ulku-Steiner, the head of school; Steve Engebretsen, former athletic director and PE teacher; Dennis Cullen, former Upper School math teacher, track coach and cross-country coach; and Anne McNamara, the school archivist and a former Upper School history teacher. All have seen great change, and local history, during their tenures at DA.

Public schools have come to DA for Durham-wide cross-country meets, Cullen says, since 1979. Two years before, the athletic director for Durham City Schools chose not to invite DA to the city-wide meet — even though DA had already been competing with public schools in cross-country and several other sports. But shortly thereafter, Willie Bradshaw became the first Black athletic director of Durham city schools — and Bradshaw invited DA to the Durham-wide meet in 1978. After the meet, several coaches approached Cullen and asked if DA would consider hosting the next year’s meet. Cullen agreed. The coaches came to love DA's course, and a 45-year partnership was born.

Isaac Zurbuch ’25 asks Ulku-Steiner how progress toward greater diversity and inclusion at DA has accelerated during his tenure as head of school, which began in 2013. Ulku-Steiner says he appreciates this particular interpretation of the previous decade, but he urges Zurbuch to reach farther into the past. “I think it goes way back before then,” Ulku-Steiner says. In 1992, during Ulku-Steiner’s first year as an Upper School teacher, 12 out of 13 DA students were white. Four years later, DA determined that students who would broaden the racial and ethnic diversity of the school would receive preference in admissions. “That was a bold and brave decision that sent a message to the world that we were serious about this,” Ulku-Steiner says.

The school has, in time, also become more entrenched in the Durham community. Burrus asks about DA’s influence in shaping the relationship between Durham schools and the city. Its decision in 1986 to host the Durham County Special Olympics Spring Games was instrumental, Engebretsen says, in shifting the perception of DA from an isolated institution to an enthusiastic, and welcoming, community member.

It's the same sense of community Kathleen Clement Johnson felt in 1964, when she enrolled as a third grader and integrated DA — historical perspective that arose during the panel discussion. In a 2021 Durham Academy Magazine story, Johnson said she looked back on her experience at DA as "a fond time." Her father would become the first Black member of the DA Board of Trustees, and she would serve as captain of the cheerleading squad while also playing in three varsity sports.

“My experience at Durham Academy had been a very wonderful experience," Johnson said at the time. "I really don't remember any instances of overt racism. I do remember as we were traveling in junior high, we would go to South Carolina to play a day school down there. That was an overnight trip and it was very important to find a family that was willing to house me — this is 1969, 1970, 1971. I remember them, the Abrams family, a very lovely, lovely family, lovely experience.”

Yet the future, McNamara says, must still be written. Literally. She lauds the presence of the DA student newspaper, which Upper Schoolers have published nearly every year since 1973. Student input, she says, is paramount to avoiding a top-down, administrative rendering of campus-wide discourse. “Get your voices out there,” she says. “What are you thinking? How are students thinking?”

They’re thinking, in ADV History of Durham, like local historians. They’re probing the past, and they’re advancing the future.

A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Russell Blunt, the longtime track and field coach at Hillside High School, invited DA to participate in city-wide meets. It was Willie Bradshaw, the first Black athletic director of Durham city schools, who invited DA. A previous version of this story also stated the decision to invite DA "came at the behest" of Dennis Cullen, the former DA Upper School math teacher, track coach and cross-country coach. Cullen did not have any input in this decision. We regret the error.