TRINITY VISION 2028
TRINITY VISION 2028 Trinity School will be a community of belonging, celebrating the promise and joy of learning and teaching, preparing students to be generous and committed citizens of the world we share.
TRI N I TY VI S I O N 2028
2
Background
Trinity published a strategic plan in 2011. That plan, Trinity’s first in well over two decades, was born of a particular moment in the School’s history: we had celebrated our 300th anniversary and were emerging from a long period of leadership transition. The time was ripe for a comprehensive plan that touched every aspect of school life and operation. The 2011 plan, and its 2016 update, have guided the School for ten years and powered significant programmatic, physical, and financial development. The 2021-2022 school year found the School at a critical inflection point created by the global COVID-19 pandemic and a national period of racial reckoning. It was clearly the right moment for the creation of a new strategic vision to guide the School’s development. To develop our vision for the future, we assembled a steering committee in the fall of 2021 with representation from among the School’s trustees, parents, faculty members, administrators, and alumni. The committee was committed to three core principles in its work:
• We would be guided by Our Idea of Excellence, the School’s statement of mission. • We would listen carefully to the voices of our community: trustees, faculty and staff, parents and caregivers, students, and alumni, including representatives of each of these constituencies in the process. • We would keep faith with the work and recommendations of the Anti-Racism Task Force.
The events of the past two years had already spurred deep reflection and thoughtful action: in many ways, our strategic visioning began in the spring of 2020 and has continued unabated ever since. In particular, the extraordinary work of the School’s Anti-Racism Task Force (ARTF) and its report and recommendations represent vital, ongoing strategic thinking and action already underway. As we present this strategic vision, we want to affirm in the strongest terms the critical importance of the ARTF’s work and recommendations which this document is intended to complement and reinforce.
TRI N I TY VI S I O N 2028
3
Background
To begin our work, we invited the school community into dialogue with us as we sought to identify a strategic vision for the coming years and the goals that would bring that vision to reality. Nearly a thousand members of the Trinity community—students and their families; alumni and their families; faculty and administrators; and current and former trustees—provided thoughtful input through surveys, a trustees’ retreat, individual interviews, and focus group discussions during the fall of 2021 and the winter of 2022. In addition to confirming the school community’s deep engagement with the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion and the recommendations of the ARTF, their responses affirmed:
• that Trinity’s statement of mission, Our Idea of Excellence, continues to be the touchstone by which our strategic initiatives and indeed all of our critical decision-making must be guided.
• that efforts to safeguard and enhance the physical, mental, emotional, and social health and well-being of every member of the school community are deeply important and deserving of support.
• that Trinity’s tradition of academic excellence must be encouraged to grow and deepen.
• that the care and accomplishment with which Trinity’s faculty and administration approach their work with students and families must continue to be supported and enhanced.
• that strong partnership between School and families is critical if students are to flourish. • that Chapel is central to our experience of and as community at Trinity. • that our life as a community of learners, families, faculty, staff, and alumni is valued highly and must be encouraged to grow and deepen.
• that Trinity’s curricular, cocurricular, and extracurricular programs and offerings are strong and well-defined and that the School’s efforts to continue to grow and improve are worthy of support and encouragement.
TRI N I TY VI S I O N 2028
4
Background
While affirming these core strengths and values, the community also engaged thoughtfully with the strategic challenges facing the School and suggested important avenues for the School to explore as it charts its course over the next several years. The result of the committee’s consideration and reflection is Trinity Vision 2028. Trinity Vision 2028 is organized into three strategic “clusters:” A Community of Belonging, The Promise and Joy of Teaching and Learning, and Citizenship. Each cluster offers a set of broad, aspirational goals accompanied by a set of initial recommendations for exploring the means to achieve these goals. A fourth section reflects on the resources that will be necessary for the School to accomplish its strategic vision. And now begins the work. Trinity Vision 2028 is not a traditional strategic plan; it is not a prescription for any particular program or method of pedagogy; it is not a to-do list. It is a statement of vision, of aspiration, of direction. It is intended to spur deep dialogue, careful study, and vigorous action. As a first step, the School will assemble task forces to be charged with studying these goals and recommendations and developing specific implementation processes.
With gratitude for the important dialogue that has carried us forward, we are pleased to present Trinity Vision 2028, which together with the recommendations of the ARTF and the findings of the 2022 Decennial Self-Study, will guide the School over the coming five years.
Nicole George-Middleton ‘93, P’29, P’30 Trustee
Myles B. Amend, P’24 Associate Head of School for Advancement and Operations STEERING COMMITTEE COCHAIRS January 2023
TRI N I TY VI S I O N 2028
5
Our Idea of Excellence Our vocation.
Our obligation.
Our promise.
Our means.
The conversation between student and teacher is the heart of our school; all that we do must be born of and nourish that relationship. We are called to challenge the minds, fire the imaginations, and train the bodies of the young people who have been entrusted to us; to enlarge their spiritual lives and to increase their capacity for mutual and self-respect. We intend to prepare them to learn confidently for the rest of their lives and to give generously and joyfully to others. We can accomplish these things only if we keep our students safe and well while they are in our charge.
We must ask our young people what they believe in so they can know themselves in the world. We must give them the tools of rigorous and passionate intellectual inquiry and self-expression so they can grow. In our commitment to diversity, we must show our students how to be colleagues and friends so they can act out of respect and love. We must lead them to distinguish right from wrong and then do what is right so they can be persuasive and courageous citizens.
As a school community with these purposes and responsibilities, we will engage the larger communities of city, nation, and world of which we are a part. We will serve our neighbors. We will live fully in our city—exploring its byways and playing over its terrain. We will learn its history and traditions, and what it can teach us of the arts and sciences. We will embody and celebrate its diversity.
Labore et virtute. The terms of our motto, hard work and moral excellence, are meant to strengthen us as we pursue the promise and joy of Trinity School. We ask Trinity families, alumni, and friends to join us in taking on this high calling.
Trinity School Mission Statement Adopted October 2000
TRI N I TY VI S I O N 2028
6
A Community of Belonging
GOALS
RECOMMENDATIONS
Trinity will be a community of belonging where all our students and their families, and all faculty and staff, are seen and heard; where differences are recognized and respected; where personal beliefs are honored and institutional traditions are celebrated and refined; and where we can learn from one another with dignity.
We will examine the ways in which our admissions policies and preferences impact our capacity to achieve our goals.
We will expand access to our School. We will continue to build a community of learners and teachers that mirrors the diversity—ethnic, racial, gender identity, sexual orientation, family composition, religious, socioeconomic, learning style, physical ability, viewpoint—that characterizes New York City. We will deepen the sense of community that finds joy in hard work, inspiration in play, and connection through nurturing relationships and mindful attention to physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health.
We will evaluate our financial aid policies and seek additional endowed funding so that all admitted students have full access to Trinity’s educational experience. Aligned with our mission and school-wide educational goals, we will cultivate distinctive, developmentally appropriate identities for our three divisions while ensuring that our students’ educational experience, as they move from division to division, is coherent. We will create and fund inclusive programs, experiences, and events that increase opportunities to build cohesion and nurture relationships among all constituencies in our community. We will study our physical infrastructure to ensure that our facilities fully support our educational program and enhance access and collaboration, as well as individual and environmental health and well-being.
TRI N I TY VI S I O N 2028
7
The Promise and Joy of Learning and Teaching GOALS
RECOMMENDATIONS
Trinity will seek to be a community in which the terms of our motto, Labore et Virtute, “by means of hard work and moral excellence,” are seen in and supported by all that we do and say as we pursue “the promise and joy of Trinity School.”
We will examine our assessment and grading policies and practices, seeking to improve their value in communicating with clarity and integrity each student’s progress towards important shared educational goals. We will seek to enhance the power of assessment and grading to foster intellectual engagement, deepen enduring understanding, foster creative thinking and risk-taking, and valorize the intrinsic rewards of authentic learning.
We will continue to create a culture that promotes the joy of teaching, aspires to the highest ideals of pedagogy, and nurtures the personal and professional well-being of every member of the faculty and staff. We will build a K-12 academic program for our students that encourages depth of engagement and exploration, risk-taking, academic agency, and personal integrity in our classrooms, in our gyms and on fields, and in performance spaces and arts studios.
We will seek to create an academic schedule that promotes deep learning and intellectual growth for students; provides time for reflection, collaboration, and professional development among faculty; facilitates interdivisional interaction among students and among faculty and staff; and contributes to the health of our community and the well-being of its members.
increasingly independent, self-directed “passion projects,” such as capstone experiences at Grades Four, Eight, and Twelve or a “city-semester” program in which New York City is the classroom for a semester-long program of study which might rotate among the academic departments. We will assess the efficacy of our current models of compensation and professional evaluation and development in providing for continuing growth, creativity, and professional fulfillment.
We will examine our learning support programs, structures, and practices to assure that all students have access to the assistance they need to engage deeply, learn authentically, and flourish at Trinity. We will examine our capacity to create a variety of educational opportunities in each division that will enable students to engage in curricularly-aligned,
TRI N I TY VI S I O N 2028
8
Citizenship
GOALS
RECOMMENDATIONS
Trinity will be a community that prepares our students to be “courageous and persuasive citizens” in order to be generous, committed stewards of the world we share.
We will examine our curriculum to ensure that we are teaching the skills and habits of civil discourse at each developmental level and in all areas of study.
We will seek to ensure that every student has access to at least one of the School’s Global Engagement experiences during their Upper School career.
We will seek to provide professional development programs to support faculty as they engage with students around important, challenging questions of culture, politics, climate, and economics, and seek to model the skills of civil discourse.
We will examine the ways Trinity as an institution models its expectations of citizenship and community partnership through institutional engagement with our Upper West Side neighbors and the institutions that serve and sustain our local community, the city, state, nation, and world.
We will seek to teach habits of mind which enable individuals and groups to engage in dialogue across diverse and divergent points of view. We will practice our capacity to become comfortable with the discomforts of attending carefully to perspectives that may be profoundly different from our own, acknowledging that civil discourse may require more listening than speaking, more learning than lecturing, more understanding than convincing. Students’ habits of community care and engagement will be nurtured by curricular commitments to civic education and rigorous study of systemic (political, climatic, economic, cyber) threats to, and supports for, the common good. We will continue our work to build a community that serves its neighbors and engages actively with the city, state, nation, and world in a spirit rooted in mutual and self-respect and deep understanding that every individual is of equal value and dignity.
We will explore the creation of a K-12 environmental studies and stewardship curriculum. We will seek to ensure that Trinity models sound environmental stewardship principles and practices in every area of operation and that these principles and practices are fully considered in our business relationships or any program of construction or renovation of our facilities. We will seek to broaden and deepen our Community Circle Partnerships and to build structures that facilitate students’ and families’ engagement with our partners.
TRI N I TY VI S I O N 2028
9
People and Resources Trinity’s remarkable development over the past ten years—programmatically and physically—has been achieved through the strength of the leaders, educators, students, families, and alumni who form our community and their extraordinary generosity in sharing their time, expertise, and financial resources with the School. To pursue the aspirational goals of this strategic vision and seek to implement its recommendations over the coming five years, it is clear that significant time, energy, and careful consideration will be necessary. So will increased funding.
Accomplishing these goals will require major investments, particularly in the School’s endowment. Investment in the School’s body of endowed funds will be the key driver of progress, vital to enhancing the School’s financial aid program, creating and sustaining new programmatic initiatives, and funding personnel. As we commit ourselves to achieving these goals and making Trinity Vision 2028 a reality, we invite every member of the school community to partner with us, and we acknowledge our responsibility to be good stewards of the treasure entrusted to us.
TRI N I TY VI S I O N 2028
10
Acknowledgements
WE WISH TO EXPRESS OUR ADMIRATION FOR OUR COLLEAGUES ON THE STRATEGIC VISION STEERING COMMITTEE WHO GAVE SO GENEROUSLY OF THEIR TIME AND TALENT TO DEVELOP TRINITY VISION 2028:
John Allman, P’11, P’15, Head of School
Matthew McLennan, P’19, P’35, Trustee
Myles B. Amend, P’24 Associate Head of School for Advancement and Operations
Alexis Mulvihill, Assistant Head of School
Adrienne Barr, P’11, P’18, Trustee
David Perez, P’22, P’24, P’28, President, Board of Trustees
Lisa Caputo, P’22, P’24, Trustee
Amanda Siegel-Mevorah, Middle School History Teacher
Kristin Crawford, Lower School Principal
Deirdre Williamson, Upper School Assistant Principal History Teacher
James Deutsch ‘96, Trustee
We are grateful also to Robert Vitalo of Carney, Sandoe & Associates for his wise counsel and guidance.
Nicole George-Middleton ‘93, P’29, P’30 Trustee
TRI N I TY VI S I O N 2028
11
139 West 91st Street New York, NY 10024-1326 T 212 873 1650 trinityschoolnyc.org
