Martha VanderWolk is a lifelong progressive educator who, as an eighth grader, was a member of the first student body at DS. She fondly recalled having a great amount of autonomy at the young independent school. After experiencing the intense academic curriculum at Derryfield, VanderWolk was bored by her college curriculum and left after completing her first semester. She later entered the Goddard College Adult Degree Program. VanderWolk shared that without a progressive program that supported single mothers and working people, she never would have completed her subsequent five degrees.
VanderWolk then applied to the Graduate School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, now known as the Goldman School. She earned her masters in public policy with an emphasis on property taxation and its effects on environmental policy and school funding. After completing her degree, she moved to Canaan, VT, and began searching for positions in public policy. She was delighted to discover a teaching position at Goddard, her alma mater. VanderWolk fell in love with teaching over time and shaped the curriculum at the Adult Degree Program to change the way education is approached. She earned her teaching license and spent 25 years working in public schools.
In 2011, VanderWolk “retired for the first time,” and bought the Sturtevant Pond Campground in McGalloway, ME. She exited retirement to become a professor of statistics and sustainable businesses and communities at Plymouth State University. She enjoyed this work but missed teaching children. She then assumed a new teaching role at a tiny middle school in northern New Hampshire before retiring (again), and selling her camp. In the fall of 2020, a local school was desperately seeking a math teacher, and Vanderwolk happily re-emerged from her second retirement. After a long year teaching within the restraints posed by the pandemic, she retired for what she thought would be the final time. However, history repeated itself and VanderWolk accepted another teaching position in July 2022 where she continues to feed her passion for guiding elementary school teachers in shaping their curriculum.
VanderWolk recalled her five years at Derryfield as a wonderful time of her life and shared her gratitude for the way DS informed her view of education. She doesn’t know how long she will remain in teaching, but she is excited by the prospect of instilling the educational values she learned at Derryfield with more of her students.
“Being involved in the founding of a new school was really fundamental as an educator for me. The sense that we as students had as really having a stake in the school; we were part of the shaping of the school.”