I am excited to share an upcoming professional transition. At the end of this academic year, I will end my tenure at University Prep and become the Head of School at Stratford Hall. Stratford Hall is an independent, K–12, International Baccalaureate, progressive institution located in East Vancouver. The school serves 540 students and was founded in 2000. The school is known for an educational program grounded in inquiry, thematic connection, and global perspective, a community based on pluralism and relationships, and strong social justice practices. I look forward to joining the school this ..read more

Our student newspaper, The Puma Press, just reported on intensives. I found it well-researched and fair! UPrep Looks Back On Intensives 3 Years Later ..read more

Our presentation to the UPrep Parent Guardian Association has turned into a post on the NAIS blog ..read more

I have just published an article about making curriculum changes for this year to the UPrep blog. This is based on my recent presentation to families, who really wanted to know how we are working with our students to respond to the unfinished learning of last year. Adjusting Curriculum for Students During COVID-19   ..read more

Love this! From Seth Godin, via Leadership+Design. How many of these do you do and encourage others to do? If you’re working in an office, here are some of the checklist items that might have been omitted: Add energy to every conversation Ask why Find obsolete things on your task list and remove them Treat customers better than they expect Offer to help co-workers before they ask Feed the plants Leave things more organized than you found them Invent a moment of silliness Highlight good work from your peers Find other great employees to join the team Cut costs Help invent a new product or ser ..read more

Thought-provoking titles for our faculty and staff Each summer, we select books for the UPrep faculty and staff to read and then discuss at the start of the following school year. The books reflect our priorities and initiatives and feature human stories. One should feel equally comfortable reading these by the poolside or in the library. Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, by Cathy Park Hong This is a “level 2” DEI book, a good choice for those who have done some work on their own identity, acquired a mental framework for understanding prejudice, and are ready to tackle the diverse ..read more

Brian Gonzales, Emily Schorr Lesnick, and I created an on-demand session for the NAIS Annual Conference. We explore the opportunities we discovered to leverage sense of place when directing experiential education online. Examples include UPrep’s senior project (LaunchPad) and global programs. Conference registration is required to view the presentation ..read more

It’s been a year since the outbreak at Life Care Center of Kirkland set off a wave of school and community closures that we continue to live with today. What lessons have we learned and areas developed during this time? Context enables or constrains possibility. Regional context has had such a big effect on our ability to bring students to campus. Unlike most of the country, the west coast has largely held off from resuming any in-person learning this school year. The 74 Million newsletter published an amazing graph that showed how politics, not science, determined school reopening plans. Seat ..read more

2020 was always going to be a milestone year. It was the end of a decade. We brought the UPrep strategic plan to its conclusion. New leadership joined the UPrep community. Then the global pandemic and tragedies of black lives hit, and 2020 became significant for unanticipated and unwelcome reasons. I have been so proud of our school community through this all. The best qualities of our teachers, staff, students, and families have come forth in the face of adversity. Everyone has risen to the challenge. When it became clear that COVID-19 infection posed a major threat, we planned decisively and ..read more

1. Co-chairs welcome E-chieh Lin (UPrep), Mahtab Mahmoodzadeh (Overlake), and Dori King (OES) delivered powerful opening remarks to 7,000 attendees. 2. Opening Keynote with Dr. Joy DeGruy The country’s racial history is hiding in plain sight. 3. Affinity Groups Familiar faces from past POCCs 4. Grading for Equity with Joe Feldman and Mark Boswell How does change happen in schools? Teacher leadership with an “administrator tailwind.” 5. Anti-Racist STEM Education with Alyssa Reyes and Moses Rifkin (UPrep) and Shaye Whitmer (Evergreen) The Underrepresentation Curriculum Project, “a  modu ..read more