TO BE OR NOT TO BE AT Shakespeare with Valerie RossHA
DISTANCE LEARNING
Going the Distance On Wednesday, March 4th, Castilleja leadership sent out an email to families, letting them know that the students would be learning from home the next Monday, working on assignments their teachers had given them in advance. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Division Heads and the Academic Technology department kicked into high gear as they planned for an impromptu professional development day to prepare the faculty for a possible shift to distance learning in case of a campus closure due to COVID-19. That Monday, the faculty became the students in the truest sense. Castilleja’s core Leadership Competencies—initiative, agility, and purpose—were not just skills we were reinforcing for students, they were strengths our teachers were calling upon to prevail through challenging times. “I was in awe that day,” Dr. Jamie SullivanHA, Castilleja’s Director of Academic Technology, remembered. “The entire faculty was
4 | Castilleja School
in the dining room with laptops open, taking notes, asking questions, sharing ideas. They were completely committed. The work, energy, and love they brought to the task, I’ve never seen anything like it.” We all look back at that day now with a different perspective, as we do for so many events from early 2020. At that point, the hope was that if campus needed to close, it would reopen a matter of weeks later, certainly before the end of the school year. Soon enough, we realized that timeline was not safe. Then throughout the summer, we hoped infection rates would permit us to reopen with the start of the new academic year, which also didn’t come to pass. Since that Monday in March, we have had to adjust our mindsets and expectations again and again. But one aspect that has remained steady throughout is our faculty’s commitment to delivering an outstanding
