Profile - Alan Braun

Alan Braun Alan Braun doesn't buy the radical portrait of Islam painted by the American media. Living among Moroccan Muslims while serving in the Peace Corps gave him his own standard of judgment. "The militant dimension of Islam is political and cultural," Alan says. "My reading and experience tell me that the religion is benign, forgiving, and tolerant. I saw what it means for devout Muslims to practice their faith."

This habit of judging independently and of understanding perspectives different from his own is the third thing you notice about The Northwest School's tall, soft-spoken Acting Head. The second thing is his wicked wit. The first is how much he looks like British actor Ralph Fiennes.

Alan assumes the role of Acting Head during Ellen Taussig's sabbatical just as the Board and faculty are finishing a Strategic Plan that looks 40 years into the future. Part of the plan calls for a redefinition of what it means to graduate students with "international perspective." No one epitomizes that perspective more than Alan does – and he is on a mission to bring a new kind of global awareness into the school.

Alan was born in Worawora, Ghana, in 1959, 200 km. from the capital city of Accra. His parents had gone to Africa two years earlier as medical missionaries when his brother was 18 months old and his mother was four months pregnant. "They raised four kids in very challenging conditions, but they loved their work and were totally committed to serving others," says Alan, who speaks of his parents with profound admiration. Dividing their time between two rural hospitals, the elder Brauns increased life expectancy in the region by focusing on the problems of infant mortality.

The hardest part of their job was sending their children off to boarding school when they reached six years old. "We all knew it was the best thing to do," Alan explains, because the Ghana International School in Accra "gave us a great education among a student body so international that no one was a majority." Alan describes his boarding school years as "like living in a huge extended family. I had a really happy childhood because I always had people my own age to play with. And I learned very early on to see the world through other peoples' eyes."

His family's three-year intervals in Ghana were interspersed with shorter stints in the U.S. In 1978, Alan went off to Earlham College in Indiana, where he met his future wife. Earlham also set him on the path of Quaker education. His first job took him to the Friends School in Wilmington, Delaware, and when his wife started graduate work in Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, Alan landed a job teaching American History at the prestigious Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. The D.C. years were his first experience of living in a big city; its rich mix of people from all over the world was his natural milieu.

He found a similar mix at Harvard, where he earned a masters degree in education and interned at an inner-city middle school in Roxbury. "These were low-income students, with few of the resources I had seen in private schools," he recalls. "The lessons I learned there about motivating students and working with parents were invaluable."

The Peace Corps drew Alan and his wife back to Africa in 1988, this time to Morocco. They taught at Hassan II University in El Jadida, about 100 km. from Casablanca. "It was a challenging adjustment at first," Alan says. While he had found Ghana "warm and welcoming," life in Morocco was "more guarded. Walls are important there. You find hospitality behind the walls, in homes, but on the street life is very reserved."

Eventually Alan and his wife made good friends, including two professors from Fez who allowed them to experience the warmth of Moroccan family life. Though Morocco is a western-leaning, politically tolerant country, Alan's class discussions at the university about the U.S. electoral system, the struggle for civil rights, and the Women's Rights Movement presented his students with "somewhat subversive ideas about the differences between our social and political systems and theirs."

By 1990, it was time to find somewhere in the U.S. to call home. Alan and Jenner set out to explore Madison, Portland, Seattle, and Denver. After two rainy November weeks in Seattle – "We never even saw Mt. Rainier" – their search was over. While Jenner was confident she would find a job in the high tech field, Alan launched abruptly into a "bizarre beginning" at NWS.

He was hired to teach 6th and 7th grade Humanities by then Head of School Art Scott. Starting his job the very next day required him to live in the international students' dorm for the first month, and to invent a curriculum virtually over night. The next year, Scott's leadership and the school slid into crisis. Ellen Taussig took over the Head's role, and Alan assumed responsibility for discipline in the Middle School. "It was a team effort to hold this place together," Alan says with typical understatement. The next year, he became Middle School Director.

Alan's habitual self-possession wavers a bit when he recalls his more recent history. After years of living a robustly healthy life that he always considered "charmed," he suffered a cardiac arrest while playing soccer in 2002. Immediate CPR by a teammate and a player on the opposing team saved him on that muddy field, and in the very public aftermath of this life-altering event, Alan says, "My naturally reserved self had to open up."

It wasn't just the TV documentary and media attention following the Red Cross Hero's Award his rescuers won that made Alan realize "it's okay to be myself, to let my humor out." Learning that "life can spin out of control in a split second, with no warning, has made me stop taking anything for granted," he explains. "It has allowed me to admit to being vulnerable. This lets others do the same, and, paradoxically, I think it makes teachers stronger and more engaged."

In his new position, Alan intends to invite the faculty and students of The Northwest School to re-engage with a critical issue: "Global education begs for a new understanding of what it means to graduate with a truly international perspective," he says.

In Alan's view, this will mean creating a 6th- through 12th – grade curriculum that puts students "more in tune with the world at every grade level. Everything that goes on in every classroom must fit into creating globally aware citizens." It also means redefining the role international students play at the school "so that we don't just see them as guests. The issue is how we are enriching our curriculum by their presence, how domestic and international students can be mutually beneficial."

Bring up this part of his new role, and the normally mild-mannered Acting Head grows intense. "This is about my past," he insists. "I was lucky enough to grow up learning from people of all different cultures. It's very hard to pull this off in the U.S., but this is our chance. No other school has our population, and we simply aren't tapping into the opportunity these students provide for us nearly enough. We need to embrace what it means to teach about the rest of the world much more creatively."

It should surprise no one, then, that one of Alan's first acts in his new role was to convene a Global Education Summit with faculty and administrators, and to begin leading our community toward new ideas about what a "global perspective" really means.