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Investing in our People
Throughout this academic year, the school has continued to make progress toward the Strategic Plan priority of investing in our people, beginning with the teaching faculty who are developing new courses and academic programs, advancing our mission, and finding ways to make Frederick Gunn’s values and ideals relevant to students today.
said Emily Gum, Assistant Head of School for Teaching and Learning. “What the educational community comes down to is an excellent community of adults who are excellent educators.”
The school’s Professional Growth Task Force has been looking comprehensively at the faculty experience, “because we believe that to be great educators, you need to see every experience with students as an opportunity for learning, whether in the dorm, in the classroom, or on the field,” Gum said. “It’s a comprehensive take on what professional growth means at a boarding school, which is not just becoming a great classroom teacher.”
Pursuing professional development
The focus of the task force this year has been directed toward what it means to grow as a faculty member at The Frederick Gunn School. “The other piece of that is the actual investment piece,” Gum said. “We have a Professional Development Fund, which gives faculty opportunities to explore different avenues, whether they want to grow in the classroom, as a coach, take a program or course, or just have the opportunity to learn something new so they can bring their passion here.”
Faculty are encouraged to pursue professional development opportunities and training that support their specific teaching and coaching responsibilities, as well as their work with adolescents in a residential community. The school funds the entirety or a portion of such professional development and training on a case-by-case basis.
The fund has already helped several faculty members to begin or complete higher degrees. Math teacher Austin Arkin completed his master’s degree in mathematics at Fairfield University in August 2020. Arkin was able to use the knowledge he gained to offer a popular Winterim course on Cryptography in December 2020 and 2021, and this year introduced an Advanced Computer Science course as part of the regular math curriculum that focused on the details of writing computer software using the Java programming language.
“My capstone project was on Applications of Chaos Theory to Cryptography. I chose this program because they offered in-person classes and I was able to attend them in the evenings while I was working full time here. In general, I wanted to learn more about the subject I was teaching and how I could make more connections for students to higher level math beyond just the high school curriculum,” Arkin said. “Most schools have a standard track that focuses on algebra and calculus, but this is only one branch of mathematics. Completing this grad school program has shown me that there are many different types of math, and that there is a way to introduce these to high school students.”
Director of Residential Life and Spanish teacher Cassie Ruscz received support from the fund to earn her master’s degree in education from the University of Delaware. Ruscz is currently pursuing a Doctorate of Education in Educational Practice and Innovation with a major in Educational Systems Improvement at the University of South Carolina.
“I really wanted to continue on with my education,” said Ruscz, who is researching adolescent leadership development and student voice. “I work with kids all day, every day, and understanding as much as I can about how they function as students, and then looking at the systems we have in place on both large and small scales, can help to better the experience for both students and faculty here — even if it makes a small difference. Having more information and knowledge will help me with the ever-changing environment in education. I like to feel prepared for any possible outcome and I hope more knowledge will help me feel more prepared
We have a Professional Development Fund, which gives faculty opportunities to explore different avenues, whether they want to grow in the classroom as a coach, take a program or course, or just have the opportunity to learn something new so they can bring their passion here.“ – Emily Gum, Assistant Head of School for Teaching and Learning moving forward.” English teacher Kori Rimany ’14 is benefiting from another professional development option available to Gunn faculty: the Independent School Fellowship Program at Mount Holyoke College. Fellows apply what they learn right away, becoming both more effective educators and earning a master’s degree at the same time. Over the course of two years, fellows develop pedagogy and leadership skills, build relationships with other independent school educators, and work with mentors who challenge them and help them grow. This spring, Rimany shared some of her work on social-emotional learning with faculty and conducted a focus group on what faculty can do to support each other and their emotional well-being. In January, her paper, “A New Twist on Social-Emotional Learning: Prioritizing Educator Well-Being in the Age of COVID-19,” was published by the National Association of Independent Schools on The Independent School Magazine Blog. In addition to this, Rimany was one of eight faculty members who participated in a civic-minded retreat on campus and in Hudson, New York, in June 2021 sponsored by the Center for Citizenship and Just Democracy. Over the course of four days, faculty studied the school’s four-year citizenship curriculum and discussed how to create a thinking and learning culture on campus that promotes active citizenship.
Ongoing opportunities for professional growth
The faculty retreat, which will be held again in August, is one example of the school’s ongoing commitment to providing faculty with professional growth opportunities. Last summer, all teaching faculty were invited to read Brene Brown’s #1 New York Times Bestseller Dare to Lead, and examined various components of Brown’s approach to growth and leadership, and in December, participated in a goal-setting workshop. In his role as Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, LaDarius Drew has offered ongoing opportunities for DEI development and awareness through programs such as a conference
last summer on anti-bias teaching, sponsored by the Connecticut Association of Independent Schools, and Fairfield University’s Open VISIONS Forum in March on discussing issues of racial diversity, as well as through his role as a member of the CAIS Commission on Diversity in Independent Schools..
Similarly, the Dean of Students Office has introduced programs in connection with the school’s residential life programming, such as the faculty workshop led by Brooklyn Raney, lead trainer and founder of One Trusted Adult. The organization’s research-based programs and professional development opportunities teach the fundamentals needed to build strong connections and healthy boundaries with young people.
Endowing faculty chairs
In September, the school announced the establishment of a new endowed faculty chair through the leadership and generosity of Trustee Tom King ’60 and his wife, Kathy. Their gift of $1 million to the school’s endowment was given to honor esteemed Frederick Gunn School educators in the fields of science, technology, engineering, math, and entrepreneurship. The new Thomas R. King ’60 Family Teaching Chair will be bestowed on a rotating basis to an exemplary member of the school’s faculty. Each holder of the chair will receive an immediate stipend, and while the chairperson will change every three years, the stipend will renew annually for as long as the honored faculty member remains employed by the school. The Head of School, or his designee, will announce the first recipient at Convocation in September 2022.
Sean Brown P’22, Chief Development Officer, is hopeful that additional positions at the school will be endowed, particularly in relation to keystone programs such as the Center for Citizenship and Just Democracy, Entrepreneurship, Gunn Outdoors, and the Center for Academic Excellence. “The leadership example Tom and Kathy King have provided in establishing the Thomas R. King ’60 Family Teaching Chair sets the bar high, but it is a financially sustainable model and one we fully support in the realm of caring for our adult community members. Not only will the Fund provide a stipend for the recipient during and after their term as chair, it is also designed to provide supplemental compensation to the faculty at-large,” Brown said. “We hope to deploy this model with a ‘partner’ chair for the humanities as well as chairs for the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the Director of Counseling, and a number of other departments and programs. Ultimately, any department chair or teaching role could be supported by an endowment.”
Ensuring equity and transparency
“There’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes,” said Chief People Officer Amanda Colarusso. Quantitatively, the school has implemented faculty pay bands to help ensure that compensation is equitable across the board, and that the process is transparent. Additional strides have been made to bring greater transparency to the policies and process around faculty housing assignments. “The goal is to create an equitable and transparent process that we can share out to our community that has standards and expectations for all parties involved. We are looking to create a community that a faculty member can come into at any stage in their life and feel comfortable here,” Colarusso said. The process will acknowledge that housing needs can change after a faculty member gets married and starts a family or has grown children who are leaving for college. “We’re trying to build a process that we can fairly make those moves and accommodate the requests and be able to have faculty stay throughout those cycles.”
