"My opinion about teachers is that they are the only stabilized change agents in the schools," Blackman says. "They need to be able to reflect on what they do."

"Sabbaticals are terrific for the faculty," says Jerome Murphy, associate dean of the Ed School. "It's very hard to keep up in-your field and bring in new ideas."

The Conant Fellowships are especially attractive for area teachers because the opportunity to take time off and study is often hard to come by. In Cambridge and Boston, sabbatical openings are limited, and the cities do not provide tuition grants for teachers who want to return to graduate school. Cambridge Superintendent of Schools Robert S. Peterkin says the school department budget does not allow room for tuition grants to teachers.

"The school department in a sense encourages it but on the other hand doesn't offer any real incentives," says Blackman, who is going to the Ed School on a part-time basis while remaining at her job. She says she finds it particularly difficult to be a student and hold down a job as well.

In Boston, sabbaticals were reinstituted as an option only last year, and even now there are only 35 openings each year for a workforce of more than 4000 teachers. In Cambridge, only about 2 percent of more than 800 teachers are allowed to be on sabbatical at one time.

In order to be eligible in either city, teachers or administrators must have worked in the system for at least seven years. If teachers take a half year off, they receive full pay, but if they stay out a full year they receive only half of their annual salary.

"The only complaint I have [about the Conants] is that people applying for the fellowship have to get a sabbatical to go and that takes away from other teachers who want sabbaticals," Conway says.

The hefty fees at graduate schools also prevent many teachers from going back to school. Even people who win the Conant fellowships must pay about $4000 towards their tuition and the fellowship is good ony for one year, the traditional length of a master's degree program. However, students who want to earn a doctorate must generally study for two years and then write a thesis.

"It's really tough. The Conant Fellowship is nice, but I have to live," says Elliot Stern, who is on leave this year from his job at Boston English High School. "I don't know how I'm going to finish," he adds. Stern is enrolled in the doctoral program at the Ed School and says he hopes to be able to finish his studies next year part-time while returning to work.

Dispelling the Myth of the Ivory Tower

Although the fellows are the most obvious beneficiaries of the program, the fellows say the program also helps the University. It serves as living testimony to Harvard's growing involvement in neighboring school systems and helps dispell many of the Ivory Tower myths that surround the school. Blackman calls Harvard "a sort of mystical place with ivy-covered walls down the street," and fellows say that few local teachers consider the University when they think about getting higher degrees.

"As a native of Cambridge I would never have chosen Harvard. If not for the fellowship, I would never have considered going back to school," Conway says.

"Harvard has such a mystique that Cambridge teachers tend to say, 'Oh, that place.' I hope to be sort of a liaison between Harvard and Cambridge," she adds.

This year's Conant fellows may end up serving as an ongoing link between Harvard and the Cambridge and Boston school systems. All of the fellows are planning to return to work in Cambridge and Boston, although some may take on new responsibilities. Several of the six fellows are fulfilling requirements that will allow them to go into administration, but they say that they will continue to work in their urban school systems.

"I have a commitment to the urban area," Stern says. "There's a need for people to work in urban areas and commit themselves." The problem with urban schools, Stern says, is the high turnover rate among teachers and administrators, which creates general instability in the system. "It just gets worse and worse because you get less support and less opportunity. The good [teachers] leave and go somewhere else and there's more turnover."