Letter from the Head of School

From the Hilltop

Each of us has our own 2020 story – where we were when COVID “hit,” what quarantine looked like, how we adapted to the various restrictions. While I have no desire to relive these past nine months, I am glad to record them for posterity. 2020 started on a wonderfully positive note. We experienced a record admissions season for the second year in a row. Our boys’ basketball team won its first-ever ISL championship. The Board of Trustees approved the school’s first-ever Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategic Plan. The restoration of Memorial Schoolhouse was proceeding beautifully. As we rounded the corner into March, all eyes were on spring break and the various trips we had scheduled – our Global Studies class was headed to Portugal, our sailing and lacrosse teams to Florida, and our next Geronimo crew was due to meet the boat in the Dominican Republic.

About a week prior to spring break, our Dean of Teaching and Learning, Justin Cerenzia ’01, approached me and said that he’d like to start working with Director of Technology Robyn Cavanagh on a plan for remote teaching – just in case the virus impacted our ability to get kids back to the Hilltop. While I was initially skeptical, I gave him my blessing. It couldn’t hurt, I figured.

And with that, I took off for a vacation with my family in Europe. We were in Prague when President Trump announced that he was suspending travel from Europe. With help from a very kind and generous trustee, we quickly made arrangements for our family’s return, and arrived back in the States on Friday evening, March 13.

On my last night in Europe, I spoke with the school’s senior leadership team and the executive committee of the board of trustees. Together, we made the very difficult decision to postpone our students’ return from spring break. I spent the plane ride home writing a letter to our community, while Associate Heads of School Mervan Osborne ’86 and Beezie Bickford managed the preparations on campus.

With that decision made, our first challenge was the pivot to remote teaching. Thanks to the amazing work of Justin Cerenzia and Robyn Cavanagh, we were well-prepared (p. 9). They developed a schedule that accommodated our students’ various time zones, figured out how to support those students in need of Wi-Fi, and helped teachers hone their virtual-teaching skills. Throughout that process, they helped us all to understand that we could not replicate our liveteaching practices in a remote setting. Thanks to their leadership and the incredible expertise of our faculty, we received very positive feedback about our approach to remote learning.

Initially, we assumed that we would bring our students back to the Hilltop at some point in April. We held out hope for as long as possible, but ultimately determined that a return would be impossible. Among

other things, this meant there would be no Prize Day on the Hilltop. A group of people, led by Director of Communications Suzanne McGrady, immediately set to work planning a virtual Prize Day – complete with bagpipes, students singing hymns, the senior class gathered in a “Zoom room,” and me, alone on the Old School steps, conducting our full graduation exercises, which were streamed live on YouTube for all the world to see (p. 4).

As one group here on campus was focused on planning Prize Day, others were taking on different tasks. Students had left for spring break assuming they would return — and their belongings were scattered around the dorms and locker rooms, Pompeii-like. Our Student Life Office, led by Dean of Students Xander Jones, coordinated our room clean-out effort. It was a Herculean task – requiring that we pay attention to travel restrictions, the safety of our community here on campus, density in the dorms on pick-up days. By early June, however, every dorm room had been cleaned out.

Given our great success at remote teaching, we also made the decision to open an online summer school, providing our students with opportunities to continue their learning over the summer by taking actual St. George’s courses taught by St. George’s faculty members for credit. Coordinated by faculty members Dan Leidl and Caitie Cotton, the program was tremendously successful (p. 8).

And while all of this was happening, a group of us began the process of planning for our reopening in the fall. We set up multiple subcommittees, each of which was responsible for some aspect of the return – health, academics, operations, and student life. The leaders of those subcommittees met weekly to ensure that our work was streamlined. We also received tremendous help from the Rhode Island Governor’s Office. Upon learning from our contacts in higher education about a weekly call with college and university administrators, we managed to finagle our way into that group. The support we received was truly remarkable, with weekly access to infectious disease specialists and public health officials, all of whom helped us to understand the impact on a residential setting. Ultimately, they helped us to develop a comprehensive plan that guided our return.

In the days immediately following Prize Day, our country was rocked by the news of George Floyd’s killing, and the racial awakening it evoked. Along with the rest of the world, we spent the subsequent days and weeks reflecting on our school’s history around race and racism, and listening to our alumni who shared their experiences, some very painful, with racism on the Hilltop. Under the tremendous leadership of Dr. Kim Bullock, our Director of Equity and Inclusion, we shared with the larger St. George’s community our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategic Plan, along with a series of additional action items. Emerging from our summer of awakening, a group of Black alumni came together to form St. George’s first-ever Black Alumni Council (p. 36).

When students finally returned to the Hilltop in late August, our world was fundamentally changed by both the pandemic and the nation’s racial awakening. The virus required revisions to virtually every aspect of school life – from our academic schedule to our living arrangements.

Our Director of Health Services, June Bjerregaard, led an amazing staff of nurses to oversee our comprehensive COVID-19 testing plan, conducting hundreds of tests each week to ensure the health and safety of our community.

Our students also arrived back on campus looking for more opportunities for engagement and activism. They organized a walk-out against racism and pressed the school for more opportunities to learn about the racial history of our country. Indeed, two of our fourth-form students, Alexander Gaines and Zuriel Jimenez, worked with Dr. Bullock and faculty member Emmanuel Daring, to develop a schoolwide diversity, equity and inclusion curriculum and to lead weekly all-school sessions that increased our collective understanding. Every Wednesday evening, we gathered – sometimes in person, sometimes on Zoom – to learn from one another.

As the curtain closes on our fall term, the pride I feel for our school, and its students, faculty and staff, is immense. The story of this fall could have been one of hardship and strife, but instead it became one of togetherness, learning, and joy. Yes, there were challenges. So many aspects of our life together were difficult – the masks, the restrictions, our inability to gather the whole community together for chapel and assembly. But there were silver linings. Students spent much of the fall playing together outside (p. 20). Without dances, there were campuswide games of Capture the Flag. While we couldn’t sing together, we could surf and swim. Unable to gather for full community meals, we sat around fire pits and talked about the events of the day.

Having demonstrated that it’s possible to safely open a school in a pandemic, we look forward to the return of our students in January for another season together on the Hilltop. Thank you to our students, faculty, and staff for the tremendous effort it required. I think I speak for us all when I say we are tired, but so very proud.