Judith Grace Stetson, MAT '60
Active learner, practiced teacher
Judy graduated from Swarthmore College in 1959 with no clear idea of what next. Her twin brother graduated from Harvard and was going right on to Harvard Law School, but she didn’t feel either attracted to law or felt that the Law School would welcome female applicants. Harvard Graduate School of Education, on the other hand, sent her a detailed and welcoming invitation to apply. HGSE was perfect for her: starting the summer she graduated, in twelve months she earned a Master of Arts in Teaching and was certified to teach in any public school.
That summer HGSE started students with an extraordinarily good internship in Newton where they learned educational theory and immediately put it into practice with local students who had enrolled in their classes. They were observed by their professors and debriefed with them after each lesson. The Fall semester, she enrolled in three graduate level Harvard courses: one taught by McGeorge Bundy, one by Dr. Reischaur on Chinese history, and one by Dr. Fainsod on Russian politics. As a Swarthmore graduate, she was skeptical about Dr. Bundy’s theories and his conclusions, but at least his class did prepare her for the next decades of our military policies.
The second semester, Judy had to be hired by the principal of a participating public school and then start teaching five classes of seventh graders every day. She did have the benefit of an occasional observation by a professor from HGSE. And she had a veteran teacher from her school who passed along valuable advice from the field such as “Never turn your back on the class when you use the blackboard”!
Judy was hired by the principal of the junior high school in Winchester and started teaching that Fall. It was hard work, a full teaching load with all the preparations and corrections to make in addition to the teaching itself. It was challenging but she had been well trained and found she enjoyed both the seventh graders and teaching them. This was 1960 and one geography course she created and taught was on rivers. She chose the Mekong River! She knew it was an important river, but not that it was about to become known worldwide.
On Labor Day of 1959, Judy drove to Cape Cod with a friend to see the famous scientist Jacque Cousteau and Calypso, the boat he used for his oceanographic explorations. He had come to visit the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and was holding an open house. After a memorable tour and visit, she drove the short distance to Nobska Beach to see two friends of my friend who were swimming off his boat. They both swam in to meet us. And one was Tom Stetson. Tom was a scientist at WHOI and also a close friend of Judy’s friend. Very soon he became her close friend. They were married in October 1960 and she has been living in Falmouth ever since.