To shine a light on the transformative power of tuition assistance, Alumni Council member Ted Alcorn ’01 is telling the stories of alumni who were grateful recipients during their Academy years.
By Ted Alcorn ’01
When Norah Doss caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror in the Albuquerque Academy’s lower-school bathroom, her reflection seemed to be telling her she was out of place.
She couldn’t make eye contact with herself because the mirror was angled downward to accommodate the stature of a typical student. Norah, who was six feet tall on her first day of seventh grade, was anything but typical.
But Norah was no longer a seventh grader. Decades had passed since she’d last used this sink, and now she was on campus interviewing for a teaching job. She stared at herself in the mirror, flooded with memories.
Similar encounters with the past have since become routine for Norah, who got the position and joined the ranks of more than two dozen alumni who have returned to the school as faculty.
But the Academy had been familiar to her even upon arriving as a student, because her dad, Brent Doss, taught Spanish there for many years. “When I say I grew up on the campus, I literally mean I grew up here,” she says.
In some ways Norah didn’t fit the mold, and not just by towering over her classmates. Her mother was also a teacher, so their family lived on a tight budget. They cooked meals from scratch, Norah recalled, and had to save up when they needed new clothes.
Her parents could only afford to enroll her and her older brother at the Academy because it offered reduced tuition to the children of faculty. “The tuition remission was the key,” she said.
She didn’t click with the school’s emphasis on academics, either: she was a voracious reader but she struggled in some classes and failed math. “I just didn’t feel that competitive urge that a lot of Academy students do, and I think my priorities were elsewhere,” she said.
What drew her attention was the performing arts and the communities they fostered. She made costumes and did make-up for theatrical productions, and spent hours hanging out behind the auditorium with other like-minded thespians. She joined the speech and debate team. And she sang in every ensemble she could, including early morning chamber groups, an ensemble for girls, and, each year from grades six to 12, the choir.
Singing taught her vital lessons, including teamwork and discipline. “If you don’t know your part, then you’re letting down the people next to you,” Norah explained. “You have to literally listen to those around you, and you have to be very present.”
Here, inspired by the choirmaster Marilyn Bernard’s unrelentingly high standards, Norah strived for excellence. “She has made me cry more than any other human being, including any boyfriend I’ve ever had,” Norah said of the beloved instructor.
Norah’s home life was fraught — her dad struggled with dependency on alcohol — so long days at the Academy were in some ways an escape. But she didn’t lack support. Her mom, progressively deaf since a childhood case of scarlet fever and mainly reliant on lip-reading, could not hear her daughter sing. But she attended every concert, every musical, every play. “She was always there,” Norah said.
What Norah found at the Academy — and, after earning college and graduate degrees, what drew her back — is a community of curiosity. “I want to learn all of the time,” she says. Now an upper school English teacher, she is proud to defy stereotypes about who belongs at the school, by background or interest.
And every day on campus, she coexists with her past. Walking behind the theater, she passes photos of herself from a years-ago student production. She still attends speech and debate practices, now as a coach. And standing in the stream of time, the student she was and the teacher she is today, she can be both.
“I don’t want to separate who I am.”