This spring will mark the conclusion of my time as CAIS’s Head of Lower School. I will be transitioning into a new, whole-school position — Director of Strategic Initiatives — where I will design and oversee projects of significance and relevance to our full P-8 school community.
Though I am a bit nostalgic already at the idea of moving out of the position that has been my professional home at CAIS for the past seven years, I am thrilled about the opportunity to help us make meaningful progress toward our dream of being “One Campus, One Community,” united by a shared sense of mission alignment.
I hope to capitalize on this inflection point in our school’s history to increase community cohesion, disseminate our mission and programming to broader or untapped communities, and strengthen connection and fidelity at the person-specific level to our unique mission and Core Values. My hypothesis is that by increasing our sense of connection — both to one another and to something greater than ourselves — students, parents, and faculty alike will find more joy, belonging, and understanding in our everyday encounters at CAIS.
I plan to share more information in the coming weeks about some of the specific strategic initiatives I’ll be spearheading, and I will be looking to you all to share your insights, ideas, favorite moments, and pain points with me, so that your important parent perspectives can inform my thinking and design processes over the summer and early fall. An early area of focus for me will be building new structures and systems to foster more satisfying and informed relationships between school and home.
It’s been an honor to work so closely with Lower School students and to join families in supporting their growth and development. What a magical and wonderfully complex stage of life for kids, as they grow from fledgling readers to confident debaters (shoutout to the upcoming Grade 5 Capstone debates — being one of their judges is an annual favorite experience of mine!), from introductory pinyin to compositions in full characters, from parents picking out clothes to first deodorant (!) and exploring crushes (double !!), from a focus on “me” and “my world” to an ability to empathize and extrapolate to “my friends, my community, my world…”
I look forward to continuing to work in community with all of you this fall.
