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Dalton News
Productive Opening Days as Faculty and Staff Get Ready for Their Students
At the annual opening day (virtual) meeting, Head of School Jim Best warmly welcomed faculty and staff to the new school year. He thanked everyone who spent the summer preparing a quality digitalDalton curriculum for students and said that, “Navigating these past months has required resiliency, creativity, and adaptability from all of us.”
He recalled that two years ago our theme was Belonging and last year it was Serving: “Now, there might be no right word for the year ahead, but the closest I’ve come is Re-thinking. As in re-thinking our systems and structures. Re-thinking our assumptions and attitudes. And moving from re-thinking to changing to help meet the urgent challenges of the present and the unknown challenges of the future.”
In addition to focusing on reopening the school—prioritizing the health and safety of all community members—Jim discussed advances over the summer with racial equity and racial justice. The many conversations he has had with community members in various forums has helped him to establish goals to move this essential work forward. Jim and the Board of Trustees look forward to sharing specific information about our goals and the structure.
After recognizing faculty and staff members celebrating milestone years, attendees zoomed off to departmental and grade meetings to continue their week of preparations for the first day of school.
A highlight was keynote speaker Jackson Collins, Ed.D. who is Associate Executive Director at Prep for Prep. Dr. Collins shared insights, qualitative and quantitative data, and statistics from his research study on the experiences of students of color who attend predominantly white independent schools. He talked about the relationships between school climate, sense of belonging, racial coping strategies, and racial stress and the implications this research has for school communities and other predominantly white institutions. He encouraged faculty and staff to take the challenging next steps to push this essential work forward.
At the end of the week—for a moment of respite and creative team building—faculty and staff played Drag Queen Bingo! The luckiest walked away with prizes from local BIPOC businesses.
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