Rowing Toward Excellence

At St. Paul’s School, Deborah Vo brings the discipline of rowing and the spirit of the Harkness classroom together to guide students toward confidence, connection and excellence.

BY IAN ALDRICH

In April 2016, Deborah Vo was nearly eight years into teaching English and coaching crew at Elizabeth Seton High School in Washington, D.C., when a friend let her know about a job opening at a boarding school in New England. Vo, who was pregnant with her first child, didn’t think she was interested but asked where the position was located. St. Paul’s, her friend replied.

Vo took a deep breath.

“Oh wow,” she said. “I better apply.”

Vo wasn’t a stranger to St. Paul’s School. As a high school rower for the Cincinnati Junior Rowing Club, Vo and her teammates consistently found their toughest rivals to be SPS. Whether it was traveling to Turkey Pond to race or lining up against SPS at the National Championships, the teams were always neck-and-neck. At the 2002 Nationals, Vo’s senior season, Cincinnati beat SPS by just a foot.

“I think we brought the best out in each other,” says Vo, who was part of four title-winning junior teams before going on to Brown University, where she helped power that team to a pair of NCAA titles. “And they competed with a lot of class.”

At SPS, Vo has continued her winning ways for the girls rowing team. Beginning as an assistant coach and later as the program’s head, Vo has helped Big Red crews bring home four New England Interscholastic Rowing Association (NEIRA) points trophies, multiple individual NEIRA boat titles and the Peabody Cup at the 2019 Henley Women’s Regatta.

“I love the incredible history of crew here,” Vo says. “Our current athletes are well aware of the amazing athletes who have come before them. Their pictures and names are on the wall, and the current squad looks up to them and is inspired by them.” Vo has been just as much of an anchor to SPS’s Humanities Department, which she joined after spending her first year in Millville as an associate director of admissions. Now the Richard F. Davis Chair, Vo teaches Humanities III, the course that introduces Third Formers to the hallmark interdisciplinary curriculum bringing together English, history, religion and philosophy. While she has taught at various levels during her time at SPS, she says the opportunity to work with first year students has been one of the most rewarding of her career.

“The growth that ninth graders experience over the course of a year is phenomenal,” Vo says. “They have to adjust to so much when they first get here. It’s not just high school work expectations, it’s also, for many, being away from home for the first time and learning how to navigate boarding school life. There’s a lot that we’re asking them to do, and it’s fun to get to see that growth. Every year, I get to the end and it’s just amazing.”

Embedded into the department’s approach is the use of a teaching method developed by philanthropist Edward Harkness, Form of 1893, which brings students and teacher together around an oval table, casting educators less as lecturers and more as facilitators of student-led discussions. Vo loves the approach — “It means everyone has a seat at the table” — and uses it across all her courses, including her three electives: The Holocaust: History, Literature, and Film; Contemporary American Fiction; and Dystopian Literature.

“One of the things I love about teaching here at St. Paul’s is that we have such an amazing level of diversity,” says Vo, who lives on campus with her husband Thang and their three young children. “The students come from all over and from all different kinds of backgrounds. The places they’ve lived, the schools they’ve come from, their life experiences — they are all so varied. And those perspectives need to be shared.”

It’s not quite like rowing — a sport in which everyone needs to be pulling together, in perfect synchrony. But it’s a different dynamic with the same end result: individual empowerment that creates group success.