Speakers Share Personal and Professional Insights in Classes

4/13/2017

Often we associate experiential learning opportunities with those that literally take students out of the classroom into the real world, but just as effective are those occasions when professionals and others take the time to share their expertise and experiences with Rivers students. Three different speakers recently delved into issues surrounding death, dying, and war in Upper School elective classes.

Students in Meghan Regan-Loomis’ Interdisciplinary Studies class, Death and Dying, met with Dr. Jeff Rothschild, a critical care physician who specializes in end-of-life decisions. The new Death and Dying course gives students a multi-faceted approach through which they “can begin to understand the death process, the cultural and spiritual responses by which we signify death and grief, and the language and art through which we give meaning to the fact of our transience.”

Rothschild spoke with the students about his role as a hospitalist, helping patients—often with terminal illnesses—and their families make informed decisions about their health care options. He answered students’ questions about the ethical implications of situations where the patient refuses care, as well as the challenges associated with life-prolonging technologies that inadvertently compromise quality of life as they extend it, particularly as life expectancy has increased. Rothschild also discussed the challenges he faces in remaining detached emotionally from his patients and their families while seeing them through these crises.

History Department chair Amy Enright, who teaches Modern Vietnam: The Fight for Independence, invited Erin Leach-Ogden from the William Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences at the University of Massachusetts, Boston to speak to her class.

Leach-Ogden, a grant and research coordinator at the Joiner Institute, shared her experiences a U.S. Army pilot during two deployments in Afghanistan, particularly the difficulty of fighting a war on the ground while remaining physically isolated from the people they defended. Since her deployments, she said she is particularly interested in furthering research on women who have experienced armed conflict, and wrote her master’s thesis at Clark University on the lives of rural Afghan women in “post-conflict” conditions.

Leach-Ogden also described the mission of the Joiner Institute, named after William Joiner Jr., grandfather of Rivers’ student Ben Joiner ’18, who served as UMass Boston’s first Director of Veterans Affairs. Joiner served in the Army on Guam during the Vietnam War, and dedicated his life after the war to helping fellow veterans deal with difficulties they experienced as they returned home and attempted to transition back into society. In addition to research, education, advocacy, and outreach programs, the Institute raises awareness among high school students about the human and social consequences to violent conflicts and helps them explore varied approaches to peaceful conflict resolution.

Earlier in the year, history teacher Carol Davidson invited Holocaust survivor Israel “Izzy” Arbeiter to her IDS Holocaust elective. Arbeiter talked about the harrowing experiences he and his future wife faced in the concentration camps in Germany, and how they and their love survived the ordeal.

Born in Poland in 1925, he was only 17 when his family was rounded up and transported to camps—his parents and younger siblings were sent to the Treblinka death camp, and he and his brothers to the Starachowice slave labor camp. While there, he survived a bout of typhoid fever with the aid of his brothers and friends who covered his work allotment in the munitions factory, his future wife who slipped him food, and a prison guard who looked the other way as he escaped the barracks during a purge of sick and dying inmates. In 1945 Arbeiter was sent on a death march in the Black Forest, and was finally liberated by the Free French.

Arbieter interspersed his personal story with historical landmarks that put events in perspective for the students, and shared with students his father’s parting plea that his sons carry on their Jewish tradition. He remarked more than once that he “was lucky to survive,” choosing to see the positive in his life, rather than dwell on the past. He returned to Poland in 2015 as an invited member of the U.S. Presidential delegation to the 70th anniversary commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Each speaker brought an unforgettable, real-world perspective to these difficult topics, and helped provide an additional framework for understanding some of the essential questions raised by the classes.

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