Weekly Message from Head of School 2025/5/4-2025/5/9
Dear Keystonians,
Great schools are built on a simple but profound idea: when families and educators truly listen to one another—honoring each other’s expertise while working toward shared goals—students thrive. Recent moments, like our student-led conferences, reminded me how powerful this is in practice. When students lead conversations about their learning in their classrooms (rather than at the kitchen table where “What did you learn today?” often earns a mumbled “nothing”), something magical happens. Parents become the audience, teachers the facilitators, and students? They become the authors of their own educational stories.
The Layers of Expertise That Bring our New World School to Life
Students are experts in their lived experience. Their voices matter profoundly—but as any parent or teacher knows, leadership isn’t abdication. (When a 2nd grader balks at a necessary challenge, we don’t concede; we draw on our wisdom to guide them through it.) In great schools like ours, we make every decision with our students in mind.
Parents are the scholars of their children’s stories. You’ve charted their joys and struggles from their first steps to today. You’ve made deliberate choices about their education—like choosing Keystone’s bilingual program and residential life—because you see the rough sketches of their possible futures well before they can.
Teachers bring a different lens: the wisdom of hundreds of students who’ve passed through their classrooms. A 5th grade parent might know their own child deeply, but our 5th grade teaching team has collectively guided thousands through that pivotal year. They spot patterns, anticipate hurdles, and—crucially—know when to nudge a student past self-imposed limits.
School leaders orchestrate this ecosystem, trusting specialists (from our chefs to our facilities experts to our learning support teams) to excel in their domains while keeping our mission alive in every decision—from the “small” ones, like hallway décor, to the mission driven strategic plan towards our ever-evolving dream of a New World School.
The PTA is our engine for weaving these layers together. The PTA has two central goals:
Supporting School Events which build engagement, community and shared understanding based on our layers of expertise.
Promote family-school communication, especially when diverse perspectives and expertise cause intellectual friction. The PTA models and promotes productive dialogue, where “I need to understand this better” replaces “This is wrong.”
This year’s upcoming PTA elections are a chance to strengthen that fabric. There are three layers of PTA volunteer leadership:
Primary School Classroom Rep: This is a role established between home room teachers in Primary School and the parents of their students. This assignment is arranged at the start of the new year when the classes and teachers are assigned to students.
Grade Level Representatives: These are parents who tend to have some experience with the school. In some cases, individuals serve in these roles for more than one year at a time. These are arranged at the grade level in coordination with the school’s Parent and Alumni Relations Coordinator, Yiner Ya. This year we have begun to arrange monthly informal and conversational meetings with these volunteers and divisional leaders to help build relationships and discuss opportunities for improvement and areas in which parents want more understanding.
Run for election to the Executive Committee: This group has family and faculty representation from across the school. This is a main consultative group that leads and shapes the organization and parent-school connections through activities, events and communication.
More info about these volunteer opportunities for the 25-26 School Year will be forthcoming! Hope you may consider serving these important roles as we weave our expertise together for the children of Keystone Academy.
Warmly,
Emily
