Compass 2028: Inspire the future | Strategic Plan

COMPASS 2028

THE STEWARD SCHOOL

STRATEGIC PLAN

EXPRESSION

OUR MISSION is to prepare our students for college and for life in a community defined by robust academics, inspiration, engagement, and care.

As we look ahead to an exciting and unpredictable future, one thing is clear: the world our children inherit will be all but unrecognizable to us. They’ll be called on to seize opportunities and tackle challenges we can only dream of, with tools and technology we can hardly imagine.

In this context, The Steward School’s mission is as important today as it was on the day it was written 50 years ago.

As we uphold our abiding values, we must also explore innovative educational approaches that equip our students with the critical thinking and social skills necessary to engage, lead, and build a better future and a stronger community.

OUR CORE VALUES are innovation, inspiration, care and respect, achievement, individuality, and civil discourse.

That community must be one in which every member is seen, heard, and valued, and where civil discourse and mutual respect enable us to address the most complex and difficult issues and achieve our most ambitious goals.

We may not know what the future holds. But we know the possibilities are endless. The values and skills our children learn at The Steward School will prepare them with the knowledge, empathy, and inspiration they’ll need to lead in the world ahead.

The task of the strategic plan is to chart the course toward realizing Steward’s timeless mission in these exciting times.

COMPASS 2028 Inspire the Future

INITIATIVES, MILESTONES, AND GUIDEPOSTS

The Steward School remains steadfast in our long-term commitment to these goals: maintaining small class sizes; hiring, retaining, and developing the best faculty, staff, and coaches; managing our finances ethically and efficiently with an eye toward sustainability; improving the quality of our athletic program; developing highquality opportunities in the fine arts; growing alumni programming; increasing our capacities in belonging and inclusion; and continuing the work we have begun in systems and design thinking, coding, and making.

In addition, we are focused on the initiatives of our strategic plan for the near and distant future. As in our last strategic plan, Compass 2022, each is accompanied by milestones (discrete goals) and guideposts (directional objectives to move us toward each milestone). We are intentionally using the milestones as interim destinations as opposed to final stops. We believe that in exploring the feasibility and design of each milestone, we may find that it is exactly the right outcome, or, we may find in our study a similar but different direction that better meets the needs of students and our mission. It is critical that we incorporate flexibility into the process.

Guideposts include steps for the first one to three years. These will be prioritized by the senior executive team, and we will work alongside the Board of Trustees to review and update the plan on an annual basis.

While exploring these initiatives, you will see intentional redundancies, overlaps, and synergies. Each initiative is designed to work in sync with the others, one feeding the other in the greater service of the school community.

INNOVATION IN TEACHING AND LEARNING

The strategic initiatives in this section are designed to create higher levels of academic achievement, deeper levels of student engagement, and fearless exploration of our world. These innovative efforts in teaching and learning will keep Steward at the forefront of academic achievement and reflect our commitment to a learning environment rooted in a unique mix of challenge, curiosity, and care.

Milestones and Guideposts

Offer new ways for students to develop, demonstrate, and be assessed on their learning at Steward

A rapidly accelerating technological landscape continues to evolve how and what students need to learn. Mastery of both content and skills, not one more important than the other, will become something students will need to be able to demonstrate. Steward will explore new ways to support students to understand their own learning and be able to reflect on how they develop as learners and doers. Steward will:

• Establish a “Beyond A.P.” pilot that allows for greater reflection and autonomy to demonstrate mastery.

• Develop means for students to demonstrate mastery of skills and content through multiple media, in addition to traditional tests and papers and including reflection statements.

• Pilot student-led parent-teacher conferences in Middle and Upper School.

• Pilot a Summer Quarter: Experiential and project-based learning programs open to Middle and Upper School students from Steward and other schools.

Expand our Entrepreneurship, Leadership, and Service Learning programs

Entrepreneurship, leadership, and service are hallmarks of a Steward experience for students. Seeds are planted in the earliest grades for students to develop the skills and mindsets of entrepreneurs and stewards. Charting pathways for students to formally practice and be assessed on these skills as they move into the middle and upper grades allows them to graduate with demonstrated competencies that are attractive and applicable to both college and career landscapes. Steward will:

• Develop shared programming and experiences for the Entrepreneurship, Leadership, and Service Learning programs.

• Launch the schoolwide service learning initiative project.

Expand the Bryan Innovation Lab Program and Impact

COMPASS 2028 Inspire the Future

• Program a semi-annual Community Week in both the Middle and Upper Schools to promote student passions, engagement with the greater Richmond community, and increased opportunities for travel.

The Bryan Innovation Lab (BIL) is a hub of hands-on learning, building, design thinking, and creative expression at Steward. The goal of this initiative is to ensure that the BIL is seen less as a location on the campus but rather as an approach and a set of skills that students learn and practice in all aspects of the program. A modern education must offer students a mix of fundamental academic skills, practical life skills, and interpersonal skills. The Bryan Innovation Lab offers many of these already, and we expect the next five years to expand both the offerings as well as the impact of the BIL. In essence, the Bryan Innovation Lab will ensure that more courses across the curriculum integrate skills of prototyping, building, and exposing students to how things work. Steward will:

• Reinvigorate the Visiting Innovators program, design a residential innovator program, and expand JK-12 programming associated with each.

• Offer opportunities for students to learn life skills with elective classes that teach hands-on skills such as sewing, cooking, plumbing, electrical, wood, or metal work as means of exercising prototyping, design, and systems thinking skills.

• Elevate environmental leadership through vertical gardening, recycling programs, and fresh food donations.

• Develop programming in signals forecasting and social simulations to design specifically for future scenarios, based on the work of the Institute For the Future.

Leveraging technology: augmented reality/virtual reality, artificial intelligence, media literacy, and computer science

If the first quarter of the 21st century was shaped by the internet, the next twenty years will see advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual and augmented reality (VR). We know that all of these advancements will have huge benefits when used appropriately.

Steward students and graduates will exercise critical thinking and curiosity to learn how to collaborate with and leverage technology in creative and ethical ways. To that end, we will take a proactive approach to intentionally integrating technology into student work. Steward will:

• Develop assignments that incorporate generative AI but which amplify human input so as not to value or conflate the AI content over the work of the students.

• Incorporate learning experiences with AR and VR hardware.

• Provide students with guidance on ethical technology use and information literacy.

OPTIMIZING HOLISTIC, WHOLE-PERSON EXPERIENCES

Every aspect of the Steward experience contributes to our mission. The initiatives in this section reflect our belief that the School experience should teach and enrich each of our students’ and community members’ lives. We will foster a connected community that maintains a focus on individual passions and personal well-being and embodies our core values.

Milestones and Guideposts

Ensure our campus aligns with and enhances our programs and values

The design and layout of the Steward campus continue to be one of the ways we express many of our programmatic goals and live our values. We want to be sure that our campus supports the goals and core values of our School. In addition, ensuring the campus is a safe place for learning is critical. Steward will:

• Undertake a campus-wide space audit to align priorities in space allocation and design with curricula, programs, and our values.

• Seek ways to use the campus in ways that support sustainability.

• Intentionally design spaces that support well-being.

• Ensure a safe and secure campus through the completion of the School safety plan that includes conducting twice-yearly tabletop exercises with the crisis management team, formalizing after-action reports for crisis reflection and improvement, adopting a Risk Management Committee of the Board of Trustees, upgrading and expanding security equipment and communication systems, and hiring full-time security personnel.

Leveraging our humanity: the Center for Civil Discourse and Discernment

The ability to hear and understand perspectives and lived experiences that are different from our own forms the basis for civil discourse — a core value of the Steward community. In a world of increased political polarization, unfiltered social media use, rampant disinformation, and artificial intelligence, students will need, more than ever, to be able to discern truth from falsehood and recognize their own echo chambers and biases. Learning to research expertly, express opinions respectfully, communicate skepticism, and manage nuance and ambiguity are necessary skills. To that end, Steward will address civil discourse with a formal program. Steward will:

• Prepare for a Center for Civil Discourse and Discernment to parallel the Center for Engagement.

Care and balance: health and wellbeing

• Explore and adopt frameworks and techniques in discourse and both/and thinking.

Steward is a lively campus with students involved in academic endeavors, co-curricular programs, and outof-school personal passions. Our faculty and staff are deeply engaged in their work as educators, guides, and mentors of these students. There is a fine line between engagement and healthy levels of stress and feeling overwhelmed and anxious. To that end, Steward will:

• Train the Center for Engagement members and others to train all faculty and staff in Mental Health First Aid.

• Audit the School’s current use of time — both the calendar and daily schedule — to better understand the current pace and workload and impact on students and staff and make recommendations and adjustments as necessary.

• Develop a pro forma annual series of events through the Center for Engagement for the community, including parents, and including informal, organic gatherings for fellowship.

• Complete Restorative Practices (based on the work of the International Institute for Restorative Practices) training for all faculty.

BUILDING AND ENGAGING THE COMMUNITY

Not only does Steward have a vital community of our own that includes students, families, alumni, faculty, and staff, but we also exist within the broader communities of Richmond, our commonwealth, our nation, and the world. These initiatives will strengthen the ties that bind members of the Steward community to each other and the communities all around us. And in doing so, we will better prepare our students to engage and lead at Steward and beyond.

Milestones and Guideposts

Core values: define, integrate, and measure those values that matter most to the Steward community

In curated dinners and community focus sessions, we have heard again and again what parents, students, and alumni value about Steward and what makes us distinct among Richmond’s schools. The values of innovation, inspiration, care and respect, individuality, academic achievement, and civil discourse are woven throughout this strategic plan. As part of this next five years, it will be critical for Steward to define, claim, and embody these values and to work with members of the community to arrive at common definitions and ways to measure ourselves in these areas. Steward will:

• Reach consensus on definitions of: innovation, inspiration, care and respect, individuality, academic achievement, and civil discourse.

Stakeholder Partnerships and Participation

• Employ the definitions above as a starting point for describing the outcomes we believe all graduates should have.

The Steward community extends beyond the students and staff who are on campus each day. Our families and our alumni are core stakeholders whose involvement is important to our culture and the success of our program.

COMPASS 2028 Inspire the Future

The family and School partnership is enhanced when families know one another and members of the faculty and staff. For example, our alumni programs have grown substantially since the last strategic plan, and we see the mutual benefits. Steward will:

• Audit current school-based events for families and alumni to emphasize those that are most impactful (keep), least (let go or modify), and absent (build) as a means of restoring and amplifying the greater community of the School.

• Invite family members and alumni as guest speakers in classes to leverage expertise and experience.

• Create a training program to allow parents to assist with recess, lunch, and carpool coverage.

Ecosystem of partnership: opportunities with and for the external community

Our last strategic plan planted the seeds for what we imagine can become a greater ecosystem of partnerships in greater Richmond that will allow our students to apply their classroom learning in real-world contexts and enable them to follow interests and passions in new ways. These experiences might come in the form of internships, service opportunities, or entrepreneurial ventures. Regardless, this ecosystem will be a way for students to take their learning out into Richmond and for them to bring new learning back to Steward.

• Provide space and support for a gRVA (greater Richmond)-based start-up in exchange for including our community in progress discussions and allowing entrepreneurship students to work as interns.

• Study the feasibility of acquiring space in a start-up hub for student use in gRVA community projects.

• Invite schools and the wider community to all schoolbased topical events.

• Offer annual or bi-annual student-led, faculty-assisted symposia on a different theme (e.g. technology, arts, civility, health and wellness, DEI, etc.).