Autumn Years Summer 2024

superintendent George Iannacone knew Mark well and told him that as much as he would love to have Mark on staff, Mark would never be happy in the dis trict. He felt Northern Valley was a better fit for Mark’s innovative ideas and rebel lious, experimental teaching style. Mark took the Northern Valley job and never regretted it. From the very start, Mark was impressed and amazed by the learning environment in which he found himself immersed. For example, Northern Valley was home to the first public high school filmmaking class in New Jersey. As a beginning teacher, Mark collaborated with veteran teachers who served as role models for running a classroom and inspiring students. New ideas were not only embraced, they were encouraged—by the administration and community alike. “I was so lucky to teach in a district that allowed me to go my own way,” reflects Mark. Mark’s classes were rarely lectures. Rather, his students were active partici pants. In 1989, Mark bought a huge oval table to replace the student desks in his classroom. It seated 25 students and, for the first time, allowed students to com municate while looking at each other. He also built a stage in his classroom. While studying abroad, Mark learned that Shakespeare was not intended to be read looking at the back of another student’s head. As he had done in England, Mark’s students read Shakespeare on stage, making eye contact with classmates, in volving them. “I was so lucky to teach in a district that allowed me to go my own way.”

Mark’s students sitting around the oval table he purchased for his classroom.

For all of his 34 years at Northern Valley, Mark taught sophomore honors classes and senior electives, such as Cre ative Writing. He and a colleague also in vented an elective they named Humani ties, which was largely an arts criticism class. Students were exposed to various art forms and then tasked with writing reflections. “This was a dream class to teach because of the creative freedom it afforded, and it was very popular with students,” says Mark. The New York metropolitan area provided a wealth of opportunities to expose students to art, and Mark’s classes made many trips into the city over the years, especially to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mark was actively involved in his school’s American Field Services club, which raised money to bring a foreign student to Demarest and send a North ern Valley student abroad. He became an avid Northern Valley soccer fan af ter attending his first game to support the many soccer players in his classes. He directed several plays in the 1990s, including Sam Shepard’s Buried Child , Molière’s Tartuffe and Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge , not typical high school productions in those days. Coin cidentally, a revival of Buried Child was on Broadway at the time, so Mark ar

ranged for his student cast to meet their professional counterparts in person. One student later wrote an essay about the ex perience that was published in The New York Times. Mark could instinctively identify those students who were “wired differ ently” and helped them find their per sonal learning delights, too. Mark cast from the halls for his plays, not the drama club. For A View from the Bridge , Mark cast a known rebellious troublemaker as a lead. “This student learned new con cepts quickly, which made school boring and him restless, but learning lines was a breeze for him,” explains Mark. “He was phenomenal.” One administrator who attended the first performance was ini tially perplexed but ultimately impressed by Mark’s casting choice. “Challenging kids takes work, but they most often rise to the challenge,” says Mark. Mark also continued to challenge himself to learn and grow, taking ad vantage of the freedom and flexibility af forded by summers off and the fact that he did not have a family of his own. Mark did a lot of traveling, including returning to England to spend time with college friends every other year for decades. He was selected to participate in two National Endowment for the Hu

46 AUTUMN YEARS I SUMMER 2024