In Memory of Abbie Schirmer - Snapshots of Her Life

Check out this piece of memory: Abbie played clarinet in Schubert's Sheperd on the Rock with Nancy Hood (voice) and Fran Hood (piano) when she was 18 years old. (You need some program to play this MP3 file)

FHS (Click on this link to listen to students comments at the Opening Assembly to honor Abbie Schirmer at the Fenway High School)

Also check out An Nguyen's Blog!

Abbie’s speech on small schools given at Lesley College

July 10, 2006

My name is Abbie Schirmer. I was born in Springfield Ma but moved to Roxbury when I was 4 years old. I attended the Boston Public Schools for all of my primary and most of my secondary education. I was born into a family of activists. When I was in kindergarten I participated in my first demonstration to support our landlord who was a candidate for school committee and hot lunches were part of his platform. I wore a sign that said cold lunches hurt my tummy. My own bps education took place during the 50s and 60s. We had parents who modeled “do the right thing” and wanted us to do the same. During the 50s the communist books which were stored in our attic were arrested, and I do mean, books were arrested, and put in jail for several months to the amusement of all of the neighbors. In the sixties there were ample issues to get involved with in Boston and Chicago where I was a college student..

We participated in civil rights marches locally and in 1963 my brother sister and I went to Washington to participate in the March on Washington where Martin Luther King gave his I have a dream speech. From civil rights to anti-war demonstrations the 60s was a hectic time to be in school.

I started teaching in Boston in 1971 and have been teaching almost continuously since then. In the 70s I worked with teachers to distribute the Red Pencil, an activist paper on both pedagogy and social activism. In the union I was a member of a group of teachers called the Radical Caucus. We worked within the union on equity and social justice issues in the schools. When a progressive teacher was elected to union executive board in the 70s she told us that in order for the union to have a reasonable center position on issues activist teachers had to be involved and push issues from the left. This was a tumultuous time. The lines were drawn and you were on one side or the other. I worked at a number of small elementary schools in Roxbury during this period. At this point in time the predominantly white administration of the schools I taught in felt that Martin Luther King and Malcolm X pictures were too radical to be posted in classrooms. It felt safer to be there in Roxbury than in south Boston where feelings were running so high against desegregation. Many of us served on the desegregation committee in the union. It was also the period of the Vietnam war. I worked with a group of teachers on a Vietnam curriculum. At any demonstration we identified ourselves as teachers against the war from Boston. During one anti-war boycott day a few teachers in my elementary school wore black arm bands to protest the war. We had some of our best conversations with staff including custodians because we came to school and because we were wearing the black arm bands. When the bombing started in Iraq two years ago some of the teachers again wore armbands. We wore white arm bands as a sign of mourning for the death of Iraqi people and the US soldiers who are fighting there. This allowed us to continue to teach but also raise the issue of the war.

In the early 80s our activism included the war in El Salvador which meant that peace minded teachers were concerned with the situation and livelihood of the teachers and their students and schools in El Salvador. A small group of teacher activists was able to convince the Boston Teachers Union to make a contribution of $3000 to the campaign to raise money for the needed supplies for schools in El Salvador. In 1983 - 21 years ago - I joined a small new public high school program - Fenway as math teacher and technology coordinator at a time when we had apple 2es and upgraded to 64k. Our small school had as its core course Social Issues. We taught this course as a series of concentric circles. The inner most circle was - self, teen issues, the next circle was our local community Boston/Roxbury/Dorchester/So.Boston and finally the United States and the world. Each of our units belonged in one of those circles. If we were studying poverty in Africa, we participated in our own We Are the World, if it was the community we brought in organizers of the Dudley Street Initiative who had organized to provide better housing and youth activities for the neighborhood and for the individual teen issue we might have a unit on sex which included carrying a 5 pound bag of rice as a baby and caring for it for 24 hours. We were the first school in Boston to study the HIV/Aids crisis as it began to destroy our community. We invited an HIV infected Aids activist along with medical folks. Our AIDs infected speaker died the following week, our students knew this mourned his death with the staff and we went on. When we developed our mission statement in the mid 80s we said we wanted our students to become socially responsible and morally committed citizens of their communities including the Fenway High School community.

For example, when I got arrested as part of a demonstration against Harvard’s investments in So Africa during their 350th celebration in the mid 80s students came to the Cambridge Court house to view the trial. A Fenway teacher recently wrote “one of my all time favorite Fenway memories is bringing a bunch of students to you and your Mom’s “Trial” in Cambridge Court - we went for days and I remember the kids being in “awe”: that your mother was involved - perhaps the ring leader. It was a wonderful lesson in civil disobedience and in the caring and loving relationship that can exist between mother and daughter.” No one in administration or among my closest colleagues criticized me for this action and even protected me from backlash. Apartheid in South Africa and a teacher’s civil disobedience became a teaching moment for the school.

We are here to talk about the possible deportation of Obain Attouoman. Having grown up in the 50s/60s in an activist family, having been a part of Fenway for 20 plus years and knowing that the Facing History and Ourselves Holocaust curriculum was an integral part of our humanities curriculum it never would have occurred to me not to get involved in Obain’s case. The Humanities question for 2003-2004 was how do we govern ourselves otherwise known as Civics. Students visited jails, studied the legal system, how laws are made and suddenly we were confronted with the threatened deportation of a beloved faculty member.

From Dec to early March 2004 Fenway faculty visited Obain where he was detained with 600 others in South Bay prison. I made many Friday evening visits. Some staff felt that it was too hard on Obain to have us visit but others felt that he needed the support. Some teachers sent or brought books for him to read. Each time the books were returned or rejected - including Harry Potter in French. Each detainee was allowed 2 visits per week one on Mon and one on Fri. At each visit a detainee is allowed a maximum of 2 visitors but both must come at the same time. There are about 40 tables and chairs in a large room with a guard on each wall. Obain would entertain us with the weekly absurdity of it all. Detainees being deported one day via New York only to return the next day because the flight was canceled. Soft pencils to write with, $17 radios which cost $5 outside, maybe weekly pe, maybe a weekly phone call…. So in January Fenway faculty and administration requested a meeting with his lawyer so we could offer more than moral support of jail visits. Her report was pretty devastating. She felt at that time that his case was extremely difficult and probably hopeless. Then the most amazing things began to happen. We were asked to get 2000 names on a petition and the students and staff did. Students and staff were invited to participate in the petition gathering and many did. When we heard that his deportation was imminent we held a demonstration outside of school after the school day. The following day students were assembled and told that if they wished to participate in a demonstration during advisory class they had to have parental permission. There was a tension to this demonstration. Should students and staff demonstrate on behalf of a teacher a member of our community. There would be no judging of choices. While some students and some staff did not participate many did from both of the schools in our building. We got to the Kennedy Building where the department of homeland security is housed. One of our graduates, security guard in full uniform, asked us to obey the rules and not stand on a wall on the plaza. He laughed and said that if he was still at Fenway he would of course be demonstrating with us. How proud I felt that our social activism curriculum still resonated with our graduates There are those that might criticize our schools focus and certainly I’ve been called unsavory names by teachers who feel that school and social issues shouldn’t mix. But I’m pretty sure that we wouldn’t be here with Obain if we didn’t believe in the importance of students and staff participating in the shaping of our democracy. The rest of the story belongs to the students today.

Pictures of protest

Obituary from the Boston Globe

Abigail Boone Schirmer, 62, educator and rights activist

By Gloria Negri, Globe Staff | September 11, 2006

Abigail Boone Schirmer took part in her first protest when she was in kindergarten.

``I was born into a family of activists," she said in a talk at Lesley College in July. ``We demonstrated to support our landlord who was a candidate for school committee and hot lunches were part of his platform. I wore a sign that said, `Cold lunches hurt my tummy.' "

Ms. Schirmer followed in the footsteps of her parents, the late social activists Daniel Boone and Margaret (Fellows) Schirmer of Cambridge.

In 1987, she and her mother were arrested for refusing to leave the entrance of the Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge where guests were arriving for a Harvard fund-raising dinner. They wanted Harvard to withdraw the $300 million investment in companies doing business with apartheid South Africa.

Ms. Schirmer, a math and science teacher at Fenway High School for 22 years, died of a pulmonary embolism Aug. 23 at her Cambridge home. She was 62.

Most recently, she was involved in the case of fellow Fenway teacher and Ivory Coast native Obain Attouoman, who has been fighting an immigration department attempt to deport him. Attouoman, who was politically active in the teachers union and in an opposition political party in the Ivory Coast, says it would most certainly cost him his life if he returned.

``It was Abbie who convinced the headmaster that the school should take an active part in my case," Attouoman said. ``Abbie had a strong belief that if people work together in a struggle against injustice, change is possible. She was the most selfless person I have ever met."

As a result of her work and that of the Fenway faculty and students, he said, he now has a chance to stay. He won a reprieve until early next year and two bills that would grant him permanent residency are pending before Congress.

Ms. Schirmer taught more than math and science at Fenway, a pilot school in the Boston school system, said headmaster Peggy Kemp .

``Abbie played a pivotal role in shaping the school's course," she said. ``Fenway is committed to social activism and she helped make it a reality. She believed students could learn inside and outside of school. She did it all quietly but with passion."

Fittingly, she met her husband of 32 years, An Nguyen, in the anti-Vietnam war movement when he was a student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

``Wherever Abbie saw something unjust, she took up the cause," he said. ``I have never seen Abbie get angry or do anything mean. She was completely dedicated to her students and would spend hours after school with them or their parents when they needed her."

In the 1980s, Linda Nathan, principal of Boston Arts Academy and former head of Fenway High, and Ms. Schirmer worked together at the Boston Teachers Union organizing support for teachers' unions in Latin America.

``Abbie would fight with her last breath for social justice. . . . For her, politics and teaching were the same," Nathan said in a statement. ``The world had to be a better place and she had the responsibility to make it so."

Ms. Schirmer was born in Springfield. Her family moved to Roxbury when she was 4.

Her brother, Joseph of Madison, Wis, said Ms. Schirmer was always politically active, and she was also ``a lot of fun." Her sister, Audrey of Montreal, said, ``She had a wide-screen smile and a wonderful, joyous spirit."

After attending Boston public schools, Ms. Schirmer graduated from Cambridge High and Latin School.

Her father had spent years fighting for human rights in the Philippines and the removal of US troops there.

It was just one of his causes.

In 1936, he joined the Communist Party, which in 1951 forced him to live underground for four years, with his wife and children able to see him only on clandestine visits. When he died in May, Ms. Schirmer recalled that during those visits he would read Mark Twain and Laura Ingalls Wilder to his children at bedtime.

Her mother, Margaret, attended her last protest -- against the Iraq war -- in a wheelchair the winter of 2004. She died the following August.

During the 1960s, Ms. Schirmer and her siblings participated in local civil rights marches and antiwar demonstrations.

After she got her bachelor's degree in linguistics and German from the University of Chicago in 1967, Ms. Schirmer taught for two years in a school in a gypsy community north of London. She started in the Boston school system in 1971, and in 1973 earned her master's degree in early childhood education from Lesley College.

After teaching at the Henry Higginson Elementary School, Nathan Hale Elementary School, and Boston Prep, an alternative high school on Beacon Hill that closed in 1985, she began teaching at Fenway High in 1984.

In 1982, she and her mother were part of the Cambridge Peace Education Project that helped create the Cambridge Peace Commission, according to Cathy Hoffman, the commission's director.

``Over the decades, Abbie was a fixture at demonstrations on a breadth of peace and justice issues," Hoffman said in an e-mail. ``She was present, engaged, and active on behalf of a better world until the moment she died."

At a special assembly at Fenway High on Thursday, students remembered Ms. Schirmer as a loving and caring friend. Kemp gathered some of the students' statements in an e-mail:

``She believed in making a difference and standing up for what you believe in," said Louisa Vasquez.

``She picked me up when I was down," Joey Gonzalez said. ``I'm going to try not to cry."

``She encouraged me to do well and never give up," said Nilda Goncalves. ``Those words will remain with me forever."

Ms. Schirmer never lost patience with students and was ``the most unconditionally loving person I know," said Fenway teacher Eileen Shakespear in a telephone interview last week.

``Abbie was like a foundation here," she said. ``Suddenly, now, the foundation is gone."

In addition to her husband, brother, and sister, Ms. Schirmer leaves a daughter, Lan, and a son, Liem, both of Cambridge.

A funeral service will be held Sept. 30 at 1 p.m. in Friends Meeting House in Cambridge.

Living civics lesson: teacher's asylum bid

The case of Obain Attouoman in Boston feeds into a larger debate over immigration controls.

By Sara B. Miller | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

BOSTON - At Fenway High School, special-education teacher Obain Attouoman is so beloved by his students that he's become a verb: "Obaining" means to dress up, reflecting Mr. Attouoman's penchant for three-piece suits.

But in a few days, his name may connote something far weightier for the teens who have rallied around their Ivory Coast mentor as he's sought - and failed - to obtain asylum. He missed a hearing date in 2001 and, unless someone listens to his last-minute plea, has been ordered to leave the school and country by Friday.

His case has become a cause célèbre for his students, but it also comes at a time when immigration debate is building nationwide. Congress is considering a homeland-securitybill that would make it harder for some foreigners to prove persecution in their homelands, raising difficult questions about where to draw the lines on immigration.

Attouoman's case, which includes more than three months spent in detention, has set the student body ablaze. Though an asylum officer said in 2001 that his claim of political persecution was not strong enough for asylum, students have protested fiercely: sending out thousands of postcards and letters, passing out leaflets, meeting with politicians, and painting banners and posters that they've carried across the city on his behalf.

In the process, the halls of Fenway High have turned into a living civics lesson.

"They are my angels," says Attouoman, sitting in front of a board with the word "Obain" written all over it. "Teenagers are not what they are believed to be. They are tackling a political issue that most adults would refuse to touch."

Twice their efforts have paid off. Now they face what could be a final turning point, as political leaders - from Boston Mayor Thomas Menino to Sen. John Kerry - have all voiced their support, but still his deportation order stands.

"I can't bear to see him go," said Brian Rose, an 11th-grader who was at school on a recent snow day to strategize with fellow students - an effort he now feels may pay off. "We've learned that just because you're not an adult doesn't mean you can't make a difference."

In 1992 Attouoman left Ivory Coast, where he says he had been imprisoned for his political affiliations. He began teaching in the United States on an exchange visa and in 1994 applied for asylum, the same year he started working in the Boston Public Schools system. His initial application, was denied in 2001.

It was Attouoman's failure to appear at immigration court on June 7, 2001, that led to his deportation order. He missed the hearing, he says, because he misread the handwritten date, and was ordered deported in absentia the following day. He has tried, futilely, to reopen his case ever since.

When he was arrested in November 2003, it was his students who helped obtain his release from jail in March 2004. They also rallied last month outside the Boston field office of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which helped him obtain a three-week reprieve to find another host country. He maintains his life is in danger in his native country and, though his bags are only half packed, he might have to depart for Senegal tomorrow.

Many at the school cannot understand why a teacher who is so loved must go. Antionetta Kelley, a 10th-grader, says he's like a father figure who helps her with math homework, discusses social issues, and lends her lunch money. "I feel like I've known him a lifetime," she says.

But the case highlights the complexities of asylum in the US, especially post-9/11. Although the number of asylum applications has dropped since the 1990s, officials still must review thousands of cases each year. "The rate of baseless claims is an area of particular concern," says John Keeley, director of communications at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington.

Now, Congress is considering the Real ID Act. Sponsored by Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R) of Wisconsin and passed last month in the House, it would, among other things, tighten the grounds upon which foreigners could receive asylum. It has been touted as a counterterror initiative, but immigration advocates worry that legitimate claims of persecution will go unmet.

"There is no question that if the Real ID Act were to pass, it would be significantly more difficult for individuals to obtain asylum in the US," says Marshall Fitz, associate director of advocacy for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. The case at Fenway High School has expanded the political and social outlook of the students there. When Attouoman was arrested, the school initially kept silent. "We felt it was too harsh for them," he says.

Now they have been infused with a sense of empowerment, says Abbie Schirmer, a 20-year math teacher at the school. Shortly after Attouoman's release from jail, the school's cafeteria workers faced job losses. A student overheard a conversation that Ms. Schirmer was having about it in the lunch line and interrupted them. "We just freed our teacher," the student said to them, "so if you need any help, let us know."

As Friday approaches, the students and teachers at Fenway have not lost their drive. They've planned a third protest at the Boston field office of ICE. They've also brainstormed ways to fund a trip to Washington.

The Fenway community has turned attention to the New England field office director of ICE, Bruce Chadbourne, who they say could delay Attouoman's deportation, at least until the end of the school year.

Paula Grenier, a spokeswoman at the Boston field office of ICE, says their role is to uphold the court order for removal.

According to Susan Cohen, a lawyer representing Attouoman pro bono, Mr. Chadbourne has said that if he were to grant an exception in this case, then he'd have to grant it in every case.

But Ms. Cohen claims that Attouoman's case has a clear distinction. "His case is about much more than an individual," she says. "It's about a Boston community, and kids who will be adversely affected."

Peggy Kemp, who runs Fenway High School, says she has been waking up in the middle of the night wondering why a figure who is so respected must go - especially in the middle of the school year.

"I don't know if people don't understand the importance of a positive experience with a teacher," she says, "or how detrimental it can be to lose that."

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"I see incredible potential”

Ms. Schirmer saw the power in young people’s faces and voices. She took thousands of photographs of Fenway students over her 24 years at the school. Here are a few of her black and white portraits from early days.

Living Social Justice

All her life Ms. Schirmer held, taught and lived values of social justice. When her fellow math teacher, Obain Attouoman, was threatened with deportation, she rallied faculty and students to his support. She was very proud that Fenway received the first Young Activists award given to high school students by the Reebok Human Rights Foundation. The award was for students’ continuing civil action on behalf of Obain.

Members of Fenway’s Obain Committee
on stage at the Massachusetts College of Art
with Reebok Human Rights Award winners, June 2005

Museum Partner

Abbie was my friend and my partner-teacher at the museum. For 12 years we worked together using every possible resource at the museum to help students get excited about learning. Abbie really loved teaching at the museum. She was so comfortable in our classrooms and labs working with the students, whether it was for seminar, journal writing or math, and was so proud when they started taking 2nd graders on Eye Opener tours of the museum. Abbie really understood what was important about the students’ learning and teaching at the museum and was ready to jump into any new experience that we created to help them learn more. We will deeply miss her wisdom, her insight and her caring manner.Lynn Baum

Student Government Advisor

Ms. Shirmer gave generations of Fenway students the opportunity to learn the principles of democracy by “trying it on” themselves in student government. She never dictated what student government should do. She advised on how student governors might talk with each other and with the advisories they represented. She also supported them in joining and leading outside conferences for small schools like Fenway that believe in student voice and social justice.

Abbie's picture was on the brochure..

Abbie's reviews of books...

BTU e-Bulletin #45 (2005-06), August 25, 2006

We regret to announce the sudden and tragic death of Abbie Schirmer. Abbie died unexpectedly from a pulmonary embolism. She was a good friend and an inspiration to many people. Above all, Abbie had an overriding sense of social justice and dedicated her life to that cause. Abbie's energy knew no bounds. Her family, friends and students all benefited from her commitment to improve the world around her. For her, politics and teaching were the same, the world had to be a better place and she had a responsibility to make it so. After teaching in England., Abbie came to Boston and taught at the Higginson in the early 1970's. In 1984 she began teaching at the Fenway and has taught there ever since. Her career at the Fenway included a variety of activities. She taught, she wrote curriculum,., and she was active in promoting student government. She co-founded the Fenway-Museum of Science partnership. She will be dearly missed by her friends, family, and colleagues. She leaves her husband, two children, a sister and a brother. (Boston Teachers Union)

Boston Globe, August 30, 2006

SCHIRMER, Abigail Boone

Age 62, of Cambridge, MA, died suddenly at home on August 23, 2006. She is survived by her husband, An Nguyen; her two children, Liem and Lan; her sister, Audrey Schirmer of Montreal, QC; her brother, Joe Schirmer of Madison, WI; her nieces and nephew, Danielle, Jacqueline, Zoe, Maria, Eleni and Nicholas; and her aunt Judith Bell of England. A memorial gathering will be held on Saturday, September 30, 2006, 1PM-6PM, at the Friends Meeting House, 5 Longfellow Park, Cambridge, MA. Contributions can be made to the Cambridge Peace Commission, 51 Inman St., Cambridge, MA 02139, which she helped to found.