Sarah H. (00:00) Hi everyone and welcome to the first episode of HeadWay, an official podcast for Head-Royce School. I'm Sarah Holliman, the Director of Marketing and Communications. I'm really excited to kick off this series. This podcast is all about giving you a closer look at life at Head-Royce. What's happening here, what's driving us forward, and how we're shaping the future of our school community. This year we'll focus on our new strategic direction, diving into the innovative ideas, initiatives, and people who are bringing it to life. In future episodes, we will hold thoughtful conversations with school leaders, with educators, students, and other changemakers, both within and outside of the school, to explore the ideas and actions driving our mission and vision forward. For today's debut episode, I'm thrilled to be joined by two of our special guests, Rachel Skiffer, our head of school. Hello. And Joel Sohn, our assistant head. Thank you for both being here today. They're going to talk about our new strategic direction, how it was developed, why it matters, and where it's taking us as we prepare for the future. So Rachel, last year we gathered feedback from the Head-Royce community to develop a new strategic direction. Can you share how this approach differs from a traditional strategic plan? Rachel S. (01:09) The process isn't necessarily nontraditional, but I think the proof is in the pudding in terms of the implementation process, the data gathering, the collaborative spirit of using faculty, staff, administrators to think about our long-term and near-term goals and the process by which we get there. So I think our initial process of really talking to the professional community, students, current parents, past parents, current trustees, past trustees, just the entirety of the community, including alumni as well, using a great partner, Greenwich Leadership Partners, that did really heavy lifting in terms of synthesizing all of the data so that we weren't making decisions based on hunches or gut, but actually well-developed analysis of all of the feedback that we got. And so that's what we used to inform the plan. I would say that we did that. better than maybe some other organizations. I think for us, it'll really come down to how do we take it off of the page and see it come to life through our students and the impact that this new strategic direction will have on not only their day-to-day during school, but after they're out of here and making their way in the world. How are the decisions that the community has made in terms of the direction of the program, how has that really set them up for incredible success? Sarah H. (02:41) Now I know typically a strategic plan has a timeline and it's often five to seven years. Joel, can you speak to this particular timeline for the strategic direction of the school? Joel S. (02:53) Oftentimes, you'll hear an end date associated with a strategic plan. And I think that's specifically because a lot of places do plans and not strategic directions. And we've been pretty insistent that this is a strategic direction. A strategic direction is a little bit more of a framework and it is a guide for us on how we can flexibly address the needs that we have as an institution and to address needs that arise. in any given time period. So, while we may have already set the North Star, which is our direction, it then gives us the space to be responsive to whatever comes up within that time frame. I also think that a lot of times, strategic plans that have a set timeline, like a five-year timeline, they become just an endless group of checkboxes to complete without any real concern for the long-term change and impact that the institution is going to feel. And so, as Rachel indicated, lot of the metrics of success will be about the students and what the students are doing. And s,o if we can have a checkbox of that, I don't know how to plan a checkbox of what students will do without measuring the real intent and the long-term impact we want it to have on our community. Sarah H. (04:13) And Rachel, is this something that we will be revisiting regularly or how often will we rethink some of the initiatives and the direction that the school is heading? Rachel S. (04:23) My hope is that our ultimate goals will continue to be our North Star, but as we're going through the different processes of how we get there, if we find that we're off track a little bit because we're checking in, we actually have goals that we want to hit in the interim before the ultimate goal. If it feels like we're getting off track a little bit, we should have the flexibility to rethink the how. But those goals of where we want our students to be, the hope is that they stay tried and true. Sarah H. (04:58) Now I know that part of the work resulted in a re-articulated mission statement, re-articulated values, and a new vision statement. Can you speak a little bit about the new foundational elements and how they're in alignment with the history of the school? Sure. Rachel S. (05:13) Sure, so a lot of times when you're doing strategic work and sometimes accreditors will ask you to revisit your mission and your vision. And so we did that work in parallel with the strategic direction. And I always like to say that the mission statement we have is not a new mission statement. Like you said, it's a rearticulation. And I think the history nerds in myself and in Joel in going through old documents and previous strategic. The work the school has done, and self-studies we've done through the accreditation process, and even looking at things that Anna Head wrote 100-plus years ago, those tenets of character, intellect, and creativity have always been a part of the school. And so, for us, I think it was really exciting to rediscover those and think about 2024 and beyond how those serve our students. And as a school, our focus is on our values. So that really is what we go back to as we're making decisions in service of students. Going back to character, intellect, and creativity, being intellectual, having a great education, being a smart kid, that's a great thing. But if it's not centered in character, that can be pretty dangerous, right? And I think also if you're a wonderful person and you have positive intent, it's not really that helpful if you don't have a strong... intellectual grounding as to how you make the world a better place. And I think the creativity piece certainly goes beyond technology. think sometimes people think about that or they think about it simply as artistic endeavors, and all of those are important because they inform the kind of creativity our students are going to be engaging in, certainly around solving novel problems. And I think even the tools that they have to solve those problems are new. And so when I think about the creativity piece, Joel and I were having a conversation earlier about artificial intelligence and there are a lot of policies that tell kids what not to do. We really want to focus on what kids are going to be able to do and the fact that they will be original thinkers, and you have these large language models that really collect the past. So our question i,s for the various artificial intelligence tools out there, how can they help support our kids in? thinking about the future and solving problems that they're either encountering now or to even bypass problems that could be happening in the future, but for some of the creative work that our students are able to do, again, based on their intellect and also the character that they're bringing as they're doing this kind of problem-solving. So it's very exciting for me. Sarah H. (07:58) I want to also go back to the vision. Can you talk a little bit about the vision statement? Is that something that the schools had before? And if not, why did we develop one now? And what's the purpose of the vision statement as it relates to the mission of the school? Rachel S. (08:12) For the vision statement, I think it's been ineffable. It's been in our gut as an institution, but we haven't articulated it. So, for students to think about their promise, and that doesn't mean they know what they want to be when they grow up the minute they graduate from high school, but purpose, we know, is really important, and it's part of the journey. And the fact that for Head Royce, as an educational institution, for us to be a beacon of light for other institutions and educators locally, nationally, even internationally. The fact that we are saying part of our vision is about promise and purpose so that the world will be a better place anchors it not in a limiting way but actually allows really directed focus in a way that is important for young people. Sarah H. (09:03) Thank you. Joel, I know it wasn't really easy to come up with the three tenets of the mission. Can you talk a little bit about how we landed on these three particular words, character, intellect, and creativity? Joel S. (09:14) Going back to what Rachel said is there were some evergreen aspects of the school that we didn't want to lose. And so when we looked at all the survey data that came back, when we looked at the historical archives, when we asked what's in the future, what do we want our kids to be able to do? What do we want the legacy of the school to be? We kept coming back to these three core aspects. And so intellect, I think was at the top of mind because we had named explicitly a commitment to academic excellence. What is the purpose of school in the first place? And it is to educate. is to help our students develop their minds in a way that is going to allow them then to solve these novel problems that Rachel is speaking about. Well, in order to do that, you also need the creativity. You need to be able to be a synthesizer of information. You need to be able to be a discerner of how this novel problem is going to be addressed in the future and also how we can approach those things with one another today. The other thing that then we don't want to lose is the character because, certainly there's a lot of conversation today in education around Do we just educate for intellect? Do we just educate for the creative aspects? Even this question around the use of AI in the classroom and is it going to replace people? Is it going to cut people out of work? Well, that, in many ways, is a question of character. If we have solutions to things and these problems that exist, but we don't have the wherewithal to ask, is this the ethical thing? Is this the moral thing to do? Is this going to be a thing that allows citizenship to flourish? Then we're not putting all the pieces together. And so I think having the three of them, they're not separate. They are in conversation with one another. And so it was nice to uncover this. We used a term last year called cultural stratigraphy, which is like the uncovering of all of the things that existed before you to allow you to understand what society was. And so I think we did a really good job of that in the data collection, in the historical archival information collection, to make sure that we were staying true to what Anna Head had envisioned and what Head Royce has always been while looking towards the future. Sarah H. (11:51) Awesome. Is cultural stratigraphy a real word? Joel S. (11:55) Yeah, it's a real word. Savannah, our Dean of Equity and Community, and I use this a lot when coming in new to a place and learning what the features of the place are. Better understanding the culture before you start to say, and here's the direction we want to Sarah H. (12:11) I love it. I know that the strategic direction outlines three key priorities. Can you talk about what those are and how we arrived at them? Joel S. (12:25) Sure. One of the things that I think Rachel and I talked about pretty early on was keeping things relatively simple. I think in other schools that I've seen that try to do strategic plans, in many ways, I think they start with an operation plan. They think that the strategic plan should address every component of the school. It should list every area of the school so no one feels left out. And then you should have multiple goals under all these different areas. I believe in the power of three. think our mission statement indicates that we believe in the power of three. And so having three focus areas, what we call pathways, allows us to boil down the essential elements of what we do as an institution and do them well, and then to have metrics to measure that we're doing them well. So we landed on the first one, which was teaching and learning because again, that's what we do as a school. The other one was belonging and wellbeing. And I think that goes to that. that we really believe that we can only be doing our best work if the people that are here that are supporting it and if the students that are here that are doing it have a strong sense of belonging and well-being. It came up in the surveys over and over again that we wanted to focus on those things and we needed to do it in a way that engages our community and thoughtful dialogue about how do we have both an excellent academic program and build well-being and a sense of belonging in this community. And they go hand in hand. The third one was responsibility and stewardship. One of the things that I remember reading about when I came into Head Royce was that this is a city school. So we are in Oakland and we have a responsibility to the city of Oakland and we have a place in Oakland. We've been a long part of this community. So how do we think about our responsibility to the city? In addition, how do we think about our responsibility to all the alumni that have come before? How do we think about the responsibility of sustaining this institution so we can serve all the future alumni that are going to be attending the school? And so when we talked about responsibility and stewardship, we meant how do we make sure that this institution upholds its promise and is sustaining itself for the future? Sarah H. (14:54) And Rachel, can you talk a little bit about in each of these three priorities or initiatives what's happening? What's happening at the school right now in each of these areas? Rachel S. (15:02) Can I talk a little bit about the values? Because I got really excited by what Joel just said because we have a lot of initiatives going on, and,I too, am a student of the School of Threes. That's how I was trained in my management consulting life. But I think we have five values that we've articulated that are incredibly important for us as we continue to make decisions. So, you the first one, students first. We have a lot of constituents and certainly, we have Sarah H. (15:04) I'd love for you to talk about the values. Rachel S. (15:30) the parents and guardians who are entrusting us with their children. We have the faculty, the staff, the administrators, all the professional community who really build the experience for students. And we have our alumni as well who also are thinking long-term about the health of the institution and really value the experience that they've had here. But when we make decisions, our current students, they're the ones that come first. And in schools, You always tell students as they're learning that they need to lean into the discomfort. And for the adults that are supporting the students, part of Students First is the adults leaning into their discomfort. There's something that's actually better for students that might be a little inconvenient for us as adults or is just something new for us. We just, have to put them at the center of what we do. I'd say the other values are in no particular order, but the Students First is first for a reason. We also talk about belonging and how important that is for all of our students to feel that they belong and that this is their school and that they don't have to twist and adjust themselves to fit into Head Royce because they make Head Royce. And the diversity piece is important as well. And I think it is a way that we have academic excellence, another one of our values, that we're able to provide it in a way that a lot of institutions wish they could. And I won't get into the research around when you have diverse people in a room solving problems, you actually have better answers and better solutions. In the business world, ROI is better for the things that come out of that kind of diverse group of people solving problems. And so we are fortunate that we're in Oakland and that we have families from a multitude of backgrounds who are focused on having their students learn at Head Royce because of that diversity. The other piece, the civic engagement, again, I think that goes to bettering the world. And that can start in kindergarten, right? It can start with garden cleanup, or it can start with them thinking about, when I go to the library with my parent on Saturday, that's something that the whole community owns. That's part of my civic engagement. And so building that step by step. But yeah, so I'm very excited for our five. not three values, and I think we tried to trim them down, but they just kind of burst forth, all five of them, because they're really important for us as a school. Sarah H. (18:04) I love it. I know that there are a lot of people at the school who are really busy right now working in various areas and specifically on these three priorities. Can one of you or both of you talk about what is happening in those different groups so that people understand how we're approaching these initiatives? Joel S. (18:23) We- began by identifying some early priorities. And so when we think about the strategic direction, I think about that as a long-term vision of the future. And then we needed to move that down to some goals, right? And so what are some of the basic goals we have in mind and how are those goals going to be accomplished? And those were the tactics. We have some groups right now that are doing the tactical work. One of those groups is a group around teaching and learning. It is a working group. And right now they are reviewing our philosophy of AI use in the school for both students and adults. They are looking at our curriculum and how we decide on curriculum. They are looking at the different types of learning experiences that our students would like. Inquiry learning, deep learning, experiential learning, real-world projects. We are looking at different models of practice. to both test out or to visit. And so in that teaching and learning group, we've broken ourselves into smaller groups to tackle all of these questions that we have about if the students have asked us to do more of this type of learning, this real-world, experiential, hands-on, student-centered learning, how are we going to do it? And so that has resulted in the groups breaking into these smaller groups and starting to discover how might we implement. And so we have some early hypotheses around, do we need to just say, okay, we bring in more professional development at the beginning of the year around universal design for learning and during understandings, which we did this year. And if we hold that and maintain that type of learning for the next three years, will that show a marked improvement in the number of students reporting that they're having quality learning experiences? And so that's a hypothesis that we can test in a couple of years. We have other groups. under the belonging and wellbeing, we have a working group there also looking at how do we measure these things. If we named it, how are we going to measure it? What does it actually look like when our students have belonging, when our students have wellbeing, and how can we test that year over year and make sure we're making progress or at least hitting some kind of standard? And then what is the standard? So there's a lot of data analysis, data collection there. And in addition, some conversations around are there cultural shifts that we can make. Cultures of feedback, cultures of classroom visits, of open door policy where teachers are observing one another that would help improve the conditions in which the teachers are working and the conditions in which the students are learning. Then we have the smaller groups, like a schedule redesign task forc,e to critically think about. Does each division need a schedule revision? We have a campus planning task force to think about, is the South Campus gonna be used in the most student-centered way possible to uplift this type of learning we want? And so there's a lot of work being done in discrete spaces that doesn't always necessarily look like work in the traditional sense because something is being produced, but that ideas are being shared, that the... movement towards setting stronger or more firm goals is being shared so that we can continue to make sure that this strategic direction is actually going to allow us to offer up the kind of learning experiences we want our students to have. Sarah H. (22:06) you know off the top of your head how many working groups task forces we have in place. Joel S. (22:12) Currently, we have three working groups and two task forces implemented with the understanding that two of those task forces will likely end, hence the name task force, in the spring semester and then be translated into either working groups or some type of long-term planning team. Sarah H. (22:31) And do you know about how many people at the school are involved in these various groups? Joel S. (22:36) In total, would say across the different groups, 60 to 70 people are involved, all members of the professional community. Sarah H. (22:50) You spoke to this a little bit, but I'm also curious. I've read that between 50 to 90 % of strategies fail to achieve their goals, and it's often due to poor implementation. So you did talk a little bit about how to measure success. What are we doing to ensure that we have success with these various strategies as we move forward? Rachel S. (23:10) would say it starts at the roots of the strategic direction. I think there are a lot of strategic plans that are disguised checklists for the keeping of school. So things that you're going to do anyway versus really thinking deeply about teaching and learning, for instance, and how do you support change? So let's say you have a school who's really interested in doing more with project-based learning. You can either say, OK, On Monday or in January, we want every teacher to do one project, but you don't talk about what that looks like. You don't talk about how they develop the project how it aligns with the rest of what they're doing during the year. You don't talk about how to break up your time differently in class or how do you assess the thing. And especially if students are leading some of that work, it's hard to put together a traditional rubric if all of the students in your class are doing different things. So... I think to your question, a lot of plans are duds before they start because they are plans and just checklists and it doesn't change the culture of the school in terms of staying abreast of what the world and what educators are learning about how kids think and how they learn the tools they're using. So I think that's just part of it. It's not really meant to... continue to innovate and move forward. And so we're fortunate as a school. We've been around since 1887. We've been in different locations. There's sort of the smoldering piles of schools past who I think really clung to what they were doing years and years and years ago. And it just it doesn't work. And I think the other piece is for some schools, they try to change who they are in terms of their DNA and their values. And I think that's a hard thing. as well, that often happens when schools are scrambling and we're really starting from a position of strength, which is great. And our students have told us they want more. They want more challenge. So that's a gift. And I talked to the seniors in the spring before they graduate, and I always ask them if they feel like they can have a rigorous program and get enough sleep. And they're like, of course we can. So the fact that... They're there in terms of health and wellbeing, but are really excited for the intellectual challenges. Again, that's a gift for us as administrators and as a leader of a school. Joel S. (25:47) I would also say that what I feel is different about this particular strategic direction than what I've seen at other schools is that often the other schools start with the what. So they might name, we want to do more project-based learning. And we started with the why. Why do we want the kids to do this type of experience? What do we want them to become in the future? And then how are we going to know that what we did here today actually impacted that? And so some schools that say, we want to do more project-based learning, one of their metrics might just be that every class has done a project-based learning unit by the time this semester is over. End of discussion. That's a checkbox. Whereas we said, even if we do that, what is the sustained learning? What is the transfer? What is the skill acquisition? we might not be able to see that develop until two years, three years, five years down the road. And so it takes continual monitoring. And I think what we've decided to do is to name a lot of strategic priorities that have these measurable goals that are going to require continuous monitoring and continuous conversation with our community that maybe this wasn't the right guess or maybe It's not good enough. We need to do a little bit more of something else. And so I think saying, well, what we want to do is to develop students of creativity. one way to do that might be through project based learning, giving them more ownership of their learning and then waiting a couple of years to measure. Did those students that initially did it in that year one of the plan be able to talk about it, articulate it, transfer that to another class in year three? And so it's going to take a lot more work on our part to ensure that this strategic direction is successful. But I think it's the important work of schools. Sarah H. (27:56) This year on the podcast, we are really focusing on this strategic direction. And so I'm curious, how are we going to continue bringing these different initiatives to light over the course of the year? Thought about how this podcast will. Rachel S. (28:10) I think it's really fun to have some of the teachers who are doing this work. come and talk about the things that are inspiring to them and the things that they've been able to think about and to apply or test or experiment with Small E experiment, right? Because I think it's exciting for the podcast to represent all of the voices that are participating in this strategic direction. It's really exciting. know Joel just got off a plane after traveling with two teachers to Hawaii, and this was not a boondoggle. This was just an incredible experience. I don't know if you want to talk about it a little bit. Just I think for people to hear the excitement and the wonder and the joy and the collaboration in the voices of the folks who are partnering so that we can do this work for students. Joel S. (28:59) Yeah, we just came back from the schools at the Future Conference and Honolulu. We were also able to visit a fellow independent school that is a K-12 program, similar to ours, larger, again, just equally invested in student-centered learning. And these two educators came back just fired up. They spent their time on the plane. playing with all of these new tools, texting one another back and forth, collaborating with one another. How do we get more people excited about this? What can we do about AI in the classroom? What can we do for our students to let them get excited about new types of learning that we're going to bring back? And so to see just two educators do that, I think would be incredible to hear not only from them, but other educators that we know are equally excited. In addition, we added two students to the Teaching and Learning Working Group because we felt like we wanted student voice. and we wanted different perspectives of student voice in there. And so we have a student who's new to the upper school and a student that's a lifer. And so they're able to discuss their different experiences coming through the program and what they hope their legacy of Head Royce will be for them and for the future students. Sarah H. (30:05) That's great. Was that something that came out of this conference or was that something you did before you went to the conference? Joel S. (30:09) That was something that came out of the conversations in the teaching and learning group. The reminder that our first value, as Rachel said, is students first. We feel like not enough students are involved in this teaching and learning discussion. What if we asked them what it's going to look like if we change an AI policy, if we change this policy, if we think about a portrait of a graduate? What does it mean to do different types of curriculum models? So we had to have students involved in those conversations. Sarah H. (30:42) Anything else? Rachel S. (30:43) I think the other thing about strategic direction is there are still some things that we need to support students in doing so that they can be learned people. The younger students, they will still learn how to spell. They're still going to have to perhaps memorize times tables. Homework is not an evil thing, right? So we're not just going to throw out the things that we know work. And even some of those things that may seem traditional. There's so many ways to deliver them so that the students are having fun. Also, just the realities of memorizing times tables. so a student will say, well, why can't I just ask Alexa what seven times five is, or why can't I just plug it into a calculator? And so I always say it's important to explain to students the reason why. This might feel like drudgery, but once you master this, these are all the incredible things you're going to be able. to do with it. So writing this paper in seventh grade, it may feel like the hardest thing you've ever done in your 12 long years, but you promise that as you go through and you edit and you talk to your peers about what you're writing and you get feedback from the teacher, just the excitement students have when they see their skills grow, that's an important piece too. And so we want it to be exciting and we want it to be fun. And then the reality is there are some things you just need to do, but I supporting students in that. I always say that well-being doesn't mean that every single moment of your life is just pure bliss. Well-being is being able to deal with the day-to-day, the ups and downs, and think about how you address what you're feeling in the moment, and if you're doing that in a healthy way. So I think that's another piece of... What's exciting about change? Because change is hard for everyone, but I like to think of it as more of an evolution. And the answers are here. People have been thinking about these ideas for a long time. We're on this side of COVID, and so really having the opportunity to unleash in a way that is still nurtured by our mission, our vision, our values. It's super exciting to me. Sarah H. (32:58) We look forward to really bringing some of these things to life with some of the stories that we will share over the course of the next year in these different areas, speaking to teachers, to students, and to both educators within and outside of this community. I think it will be a lot of fun to bring all of this to life. Sarah H. (33:16) Thank you both. Rachel S. (33:18) Thank you. Joel S. (33:19) Thank you. Sarah H. (33:18) And I would be remiss as the director of marketing and communications, not to mention our website. will be keeping a lot of these initiatives up to date on the site. You can at least see what we're working on at the most broad level, what these initiatives are, and then we'll really will bring them to life with stories. Thank you for tuning in to our debut episode of HeadWay. We hope you've enjoyed this conversation and have a clear understanding of our strategic direction and why this is such an exciting moment for the Headways community. To stay updated on our journey and learn more about the strategic direction, please visit headroys.org. And don't forget to subscribe to HeadWay on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. Until next time, thanks for listening.