Building on What Matters Most

One of my favorite parts of the beginning of a school year is walking around campus at various points throughout each day.

I see middle school students huddled together before 8 a.m., catching up before the day begins. I see second-grade students run to hug each other as if they haven't seen one another in weeks, rather than since yesterday. I see students asking questions, trying something new, helping one another, and growing a little more confident in who they are and what they can do.

These moments are wonderful reminders of what makes All Saints' such a special place. They also remind me of the responsibility we have as a school: to cherish what has always made All Saints' exceptional, while continually asking what our students need from us now, and what they will need next.

These questions have always guided our work, but they’ve especially come to the forefront over the past two years.

During that time, we have listened, reflected, researched, and imagined together. Students, parents, faculty, staff, alumni, board members, and members of our broader community have helped us think deeply about the future of an All Saints' education. We've considered what our students will need to thrive in a rapidly changing world, what we never want to lose about the experience they have here, and where we have opportunities to become even stronger.

Those conversations shaped our new Strategic Plan.

At its heart is a commitment to evolving the way we teach, lead, and serve, so that every All Saints' student is prepared for what comes next. Our Portrait of a Graduate gives us a shared vision of the young people we send into the world. Our newly developed Learning Principles help us define the experiences that will help our students become those people. And our Strategic Plan gives us a path for putting that vision into practice.

Importantly, this isn't work that begins someday in the future. It is already underway.

Over the coming years, you will see this plan take shape in our classrooms, programs, opportunities for students, professional learning, and the ways we continue to strengthen the All Saints' experience from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. Some changes will be immediately visible. Others will develop over time. All of them begin with the same question: What will help our students thrive, both here and beyond our gates, in their next step and beyond?

Later this month, I hope you'll join us on campus as we officially share this next chapter with our community.

Our Strategic Plan Launch events on September 29 and October 1 will be an opportunity to experience the plan, learn more about the work already underway, and celebrate the faculty who bring this work to life every day. Our faculty will be joining us for these evenings, and I hope you’ll have the chance to connect with them and recognize the thought, care, and continued work behind your children’s everyday experiences. Most of all, I hope these evenings help you see the connections between the big ideas we’ve been exploring and the learning already taking shape across our campus.

Because ultimately, that's where a strategic plan has to live.

It lives in the classroom where a student discovers a new way to solve a problem. In the opportunity to lead before a child thinks of themselves as a leader. In the conversation that challenges an assumption. In the teacher who continues learning alongside their students. And in the experiences that help a young person discover who they are becoming.

All Saints' has never stood still. Generations of educators and families have cared deeply enough about this school to preserve what is essential while continuing to make it better for the children who come next.

Now, we get to take that next step together.

The future is taking shape. I hope you'll join us to see it and celebrate it!

RSVP FOR THE LAUNCH