Head of School Rich Schellhas shares what he has learned over the past few years

I have learned so many things over the last few years. The first is that the GA motto, “By persevering, we shall see the fruits,” is more true than ever. We had literally only three days of downtime when Covid hit, before, miraculously, our teachers turned our entire school into a virtual learning environment, GA@Home. Our faculty and administration worked equally hard to get everyone back into the classrooms, and last year, we had students on campus nearly every day. We were the only school I know of that didn’t have any teachers working from home on a semi-permanent basis. They were all in the building every single day taking care of the kids. It’s a lot to be proud of, honestly.

Our intrepid faculty and staff showed exactly what GA was capable of when we put our minds to it. And we certainly did see the fruits, but we also had an opportunity to reinvent some of our favorite traditions and to invent some new ones. We had our very first GA/PC pep rally outside at Carey Stadium in 2021. You didn’t get that reverberating “my ears hurt” moment in the Big Gym, but you did get decorated golf cart floats, a fantastic Lower School dance, crazy seniors, as they always are, and it was really a wonderful time.

Not surprisingly, the Class of 2020 took the hardest hit because their last quarter of senior year was spent mostly off campus. Their prom was canceled; their graduation postponed. And so we tried once again to reinvent things. We took Prize Day and the Senior Send Off Celebration and we turned them into an outdoor drive-in movie theater at Temple University in Ambler.

I learned, of course, that nothing matters more than having happy, healthy, whole people in your school. I also learned that you can have a SWAT team of superhero nurses who turn your Field House into an extraordinary hub for public health. And you can do tens of thousands of vaccines and boosters and nose swabs just with the goodwill of one independent school community; we served relatives, former faculty and staff, and several hundred people from the region.

At the same time, we know health and wellness isn’t just about physical wellness. It is also about emotional and mental wellbeing. Of course, we still gave tests and assigned papers, but we also created joy for our kids that they could really savor. Given that health and wellness has been on our minds, we’ve been dreaming big. One of the things we’ve been dreaming about is a solution to our strength and conditioning room, which is currently in the corner of the Field House. It is not large enough to house our physical education classes or even a Middle or Upper School sports team.

So, we’ve started dreaming about how we can further health and wellness to support our students. I’m pleased to say that through a gift to the school, we have hired our first Director of Health and Wellness to start this coming fall, a position that will oversee PreK through 12 curriculum so that we can have 21st century, cutting edge, state of the art, really important, rigorous health and wellness education for all of our kids. We’ve dreamt that maybe we could create a GA Health and Wellness Center right in the perfect trapezoid between the pool and the Field House - 25,000 square feet of incredible fitness center spaces where we envision meditation, mindfulness, yoga, movement, dance, P.E classes, counseling classes, health and wellness classes, and more taking place. We started to dream big because we always want you, our community, to be proud of your campus.

Of course, you can only be a happy, healthy, whole human being if you see yourself reflected, admired, and encouraged by the people around you. We have made real strides in our equity and inclusion work at Germantown Academy. The Identity Wheel (as shown in our Action Plan in the last issue of The Patriot) includes some of the traits that we are thinking about intensively as a school to make sure that every kid and every employee sees themselves reflected in mirrors, but is also able to see windows of others who live a different life experience.

It is our intent to draw people together in important ways so that there are moments of affinity and there are moments of allyship. I believe it will become commonplace for all students to say, “You know, I stand up for that; I want everybody to feel safe and happy and know they belong in our school, and I’m going to be part of making that happen.”

I have also learned, and this hopefully is not a surprise to anyone, that Germantown Academy is indeed a leader among our peer schools, and not just because of how we handled the pandemic. While I am proud of that good work, my pride is extended as we continue to innovate in exciting ways. Our whole school was founded in this bridge between innovation and tradition, and the friction where those intersect is often where we do the most exciting things in our programming. In terms of being a leader, we recently had our five-year check-in with our accrediting agency – Pennsylvania Association of Independent Schools (PAIS) - with three heads of schools from other schools in Pennsylvania spending a couple of days with us. And they were so impressed. While they loved seeing things like the new buildings and new programs we are developing, they also focused on the financial management of our institution. It is my pleasure to report that they found our school fiscally sound. I know that’s not super exciting, but if we are not on the right footing financially, there would be no more GA after 262 years. However, they did point out that it will be imperative for GA to build its endowment in the years ahead to maintain GA’s financial sustainability and to keep us in business for another 262 years of excellence.

We were also proud of the fact they pointed out three other highlights: ONE– We are a school that is constantly thinking about forward momentum. We’re thinking about what we do, and how we can do better. How can we serve our kids better, and how we can provide the very best education possible? TWO–Pervasive joy was in the air when they were on their tour. They could tell that the kids were happy to be in school. I never take that for granted. THREE–The fact that we’ve had extraordinary successes in our hiring of relatively new administrators and teachers. We’ve had close to 40 retirements since I came on board at GA 13 years ago, with more slated for the end of this school year. When you have a school where the teachers want to stay, their retirements seem to come all at the same time.

We are also proud of the fact that the PAIS team noticed that we continue to have excellence in athletics, in academics, in arts, and in service. You can see it in a recent victory in our robotics team(s), which is an extraordinary Upper School program. We are proud of our engineering, our robotics, and our economics class as new, invigorating programs for our students.

We’ve also had some very recent successes on the athletic front. In addition to our boys soccer and coed golf teams’ Inter-Ac Championships in the fall, the GA coed ice hockey team won its fourth Independence League Championship in the last five years, which is amazing. After the swim teams went undefeated in the Inter-Ac, boys and girls, we also won the combined Easterns Swimming Championship held at Franklin & Marshall College.

Service is fundamental to everything we do in our mission statement and as a school. During February, we had 20 students from the Upper School take an extended trip from GA to participate in a Habitat for Humanity build in Wilmington, North Carolina, as part of our Germantown Academy Experience Program (GAXP). In early March, a Middle School student took the initiative to begin a school-wide drive to make sure that we were doing everything we could to support Ukraine. Volunteers are going over to Ukraine to hand-deliver the donations and medical supplies via the Green Route. Such an extraordinary achievement in service by one young sixth grade boy.

And, of course, we continue to celebrate the arts, which are alive and well, across the school. We just had four sold-out shows of the Middle and Upper School musical, Newsies. Our band and orchestra concerts have been outstanding, and the art and photography showcased in the Arts Center Gallery, Lower School and Middle School hallways, and Upper School Honors Art Gallery have been stunning.

We love that alumni are finding us through Patriot Connect (our online networking site) so that they can become mentors to students in the Upper School. We are grateful for alumni who want to build connections so that kids can say, ‘Okay, so this is what I can learn from my experience, and this is how I can parlay it into future success once I graduate.’ Patriot alums can be an integral part of that journey for current students. We are so much better as a school when alumni engage with us – either in person or virtually. By sharing stories, good, bad, or somewhere in the middle, alumni stay connected to their proud alma mater. We recently had folks come back for Club Med (sadly not a kind of Caribbean cruise), which is for students who are interested in pursuing careers in medicine. We hosted a mental health week in Upper School, where alum professionals volunteered and shared resources. In addition, we had numerous events where college-aged alumni shared their stories of the college counseling process and their college experience thus far with students and their parents.

And as always, coming back for reunions, alumni weekend, and coming back for GA/PC, especially next year when we are HOME - those moments matter to us. Seeing friends, sharing experiences, mentoring kids, sponsoring a senior project and yes, giving to the Annual Fund, are all important parts of being a GA alumnus.

We’ve been here for 262 years. I certainly plan for the school to be here for at least 262 years more. Our history proves that we are successful because our community stays connected and wants to further the school and make it possible for future generations of Patriots to have as good, if not a better, education.

We need your help in doing that, always. We want this dream of the perfect blend of old GA, new GA, and future GA to come together. Because you are out in the world living our mission, we will forge the next great chapter in our school story together and make the dreams of current and future students come true.

NATIONAL MARIAN ANDERSON MUSEUM VISITS

Germantown Academy was proud to host its annual Head of School Distinguished Speaker Series in early February as a kickoff to Black History Month. This year’s guest was the National Marian Anderson Museum. Founded at the Philadelphia residence of American contralto and civil rights trailblazer, Marian Anderson, the museum is run and maintained by the Marian Anderson Historical Society. Along with the museum, the Marian Anderson Scholar Artist Program is a major fixture that supports young artists, classical and opera singers, instrumentalists, and visual artists who are ambassadors of Marian Anderson’s musical legacy. These artists perform regularly for a season of shows and events that the society sponsors around the world.

Faculty and students in grades 3 through 12 enjoyed developmentally appropriate presentations by these performers throughout the day. In the evening, a community concert was held in the Arts Center where the group performed a medley from the American opera “Porgy and Bess” to the delight of the audience, both in person and on the livestream. “When I think about Marian Anderson, I am inspired, and I’ve learned that greatness cannot be stopped. That even if it’s detoured in many different directions, ultimately greatness will rise to the surface.” -Head of School Rich Schellhas 1760