Building Character in the Lower School

Trey Blair joined the Falcon family in 2013. A key component of Blair’s hiring as Assistant Head of Lower School, and later as Head of Lower School in 2017, is his genuine love for kids. At his core, Blair is deeply committed to helping students, which he does by knowing each of them and engaging with all of them. With a sense of humor, professional skill set (and borderline obsession with curriculum and related reading) and team mindset, Blair is a leader who can mobilize, empower and collaborate with the adults in student’s lives to maximize potential and address challenges. He is also a “kid at heart” who can engage FWCD’s Lower School students and foster a love of learning while teaching and modeling the importance of strong character and FWCD’s core values. The Falconer posed questions to Blair so the community can learn more about the person leading the Lower School.

What compelled your career in education?

Truth be told, education was never really a consideration for me as I was preparing to pursue a career. I earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and anthropology from Kenyon College [Ohio] with my sights set on law school. Not because I loved law or had always dreamed of becoming a lawyer, but that just seemed to be the route that family members expected me to take. As some of my close friends began their law school experiences, I immediately realized that in no way was that the correct path for me. My sights turned to pursuing a Ph.D. in Archaeology because of an amazing professor at Kenyon who inspired me. I had even gone so far as to arrange admission into the University of California Davis for a program focused on Mesoamerica. As you can imagine, living in the San Francisco Bay Area was not cheap, and I needed a job to pay bills and support my graduate studies. I found work as a substitute teacher. I remember monitoring recess on my very first day of subbing and having conversations with students. I just knew that was where I was supposed to be. After the first few days, that was it for me. I found my passion. I was going into teaching. Yes, it was that transformative and that powerful of an experience. I began seeking admission into a master’s program in educational leadership at Saint Mary’s College of California and found a job as an Associate Teacher at Convent & Stuart Hall, Schools of the Sacred Heart in San Francisco.

In graduate school, I continued as an Associate Teacher and later was a “preferred substitute” in public schools. Lessons and roles were dictated to me without much room for interpretation. After finishing my master’s program, I returned to Kentucky and Kentucky Country Day (JK-12), where I really began to exercise and craft my teaching. I came on as an Assistant Kindergarten Teacher. While I wasn’t the lead teacher, the role was designed to coach me into a lead. Eventually, I was given a fourth grade classroom. That was my calling. Fourth grade is a time when you can really start to explore content, but you still have an age group that LOVES school. I also enjoyed the juxtaposition of teaching 10-year-olds during the day and coaching 18-year-olds after school: Lots of challenges and lots of thinking on your feet.

I will forever consider myself a fourth grade teacher. It was the classic independent school gig. I taught fourth grade in the lower school, helped lead the eighth grade trip to Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina each year, coached seventh and eighth grade football and varsity baseball, was the athletics sponsor for the yearbook, and worked with the financial aid office to coordinate transportation for students from underrepresented communities throughout Louisville. I worked all day and all night, and I loved every minute of it. My mornings would start with me picking up two students from West Louisville (the West End is traditionally underserved and under-resourced with low socioeconomic demographics) and commuting out to KCD in the far east end of Louisville (the East End is extremely wealthy), a 45-minute drive. I would then teach until dismissal, organize yearbook stuff in planning periods, coach until 6 or 7 p.m., and, finally, take the students I brought to school back home. Then the routine started all over again the next day. To successfully teach in an independent school like FWCD, or in this case KCD, you have to do more than is listed in your contract.

How has your educational philosophy evolved over the years?

It is ever-evolving/ever-changing. To be honest, I now speak more from the student experience than from the teacher or administrator's point of view. You cannot be selfish in education. When I started, I did a lot of soul-searching, research, reflection, etc. As I became more comfortable and confident in my abilities, I began to let go of what I would call a “selfish” educational philosophy and began to adopt a more student-centric approach. I focus now more on the character and ethical side as well. Academics and content, in my opinion, are the easier pieces to teach (and they aren’t easy!). It is the values and the unwritten curriculum where students grow the most. Great teachers give lessons in this every single day. I can coach/train anyone to teach addition. You can’t coach/train someone to instill core values and inspire.

My goal is to help grow ‘good people.’ I’ve said this a lot, and those on the receiving end of my admission presentations have heard this in some form or fashion. The academics will happen, the experiences will happen, where we can really make a difference, a value-added impact, so to speak, is teaching these students how to be empathetic, kind, honorable, moral leaders and friends.

What prompted your move to administration, and how have you evolved?

Although my graduate work was in educational administration, my plan always was to find ways to work ‘big picture’ stuff in a school setting without being an administrator. But, as the years went by, people kept approaching me about admin and doing this and that, and finally, I thought, ‘Well, maybe I should give this a look.’

How much have I grown and evolved? Wow. That is hard to relay. You don’t know what you don’t know until you are faced with what you don’t know. Admin is all about working with people. To say being a Division Head is all about curriculum and setting an academic path in school is not 100% accurate. There are so many daily situations that you constantly have to tend to, fires to put out, communications you have to clear up, etc. You have to learn how to navigate personalities. Emotional Quotient (EQ) or emotional intelligence is crucial. If you have poor EQ, you are doomed. That is where I have grown the most. People may not know this, but I am INSANELY INTROVERTED. [Note from the editor: Yes, he answered in all caps!] Every Myers-Briggs exercise I complete, my ‘introvertedness’ is off the charts, seriously. This job requires the energy and skills of an extrovert, so to say I am tired when I go home is an understatement.

What are you currently reading –– work-related and non-work-related?

I read multiple books at a time. I’m weird like that. I’m also a curriculum nerd, so I tend to read some dense stuff. Right now, I’m tackling Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear; River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile by Candice Millard; Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs by Ellen Galinsky; and Teacher Autonomy (Usma-Wilches, 2006), a dissertation from University of Northern Iowa.

What role do parents play in education, and how do you interact with them?

You can only have a school like FWCD, or any successful school for that matter, if you have genuine parent and guardian partnerships. There was a statistic I once heard from Rob Evans [Clinical and Organizational Psychologist]: A kid that goes K-12 to a private school and participates in everything they can participate in still only spends roughly 20% of their life between the ages of 5 and 18 on-campus, at school. Think about that. Roughly four-fifths of a kid’s upbringing is outside of school. So how important are parents? Without them and their support and partnership, everything we do as teachers and administrators is compromised. Plain and simple.

I like to build relationships with as many people as possible because you never know when difficult moments or situations may arise. The outcomes and conversations are far more productive if you have previously established relationships. The unfortunate aspect of the job is there are simply too many families for me to create the type of relationships I want with everyone. But I will never stop trying.