From The Head of School – Aug 21, 2024

Flint Hill Community, 

Our campus is coming alive this week! On Monday, we welcomed faculty back to campus for preplanning and professional development meetings, and our Upper School fall sports began their practices for the season. Later this week, students will be arriving in the Upper School for leadership group training, and next week, campus will once again be full of Huskies! 

While Flint Hill has improved across a number of fronts this summer, I’m perhaps most eager to see the impact of significant efforts in the Upper School begin to pay off for our students, teachers, and community.

The first and most noticeable change will be in the physical spaces in the Upper School. The following upgrades — which represent tangible demonstrations of tuition and Flint Hill Fund dollars put to work to support our community — include, but aren’t limited to:

• New carpet, paint, flexible learning furniture, and technology in 28 Upper School classrooms, as well as the Multipurpose Room, College Counseling, Admission, and Upper School administrative offices.
• Updated collaborative spaces for our Upper School faculty and department chairs to meet, design innovative curricula, and support student learning.
• A remodeled and relocated IT Help Desk for our students and faculty, including a “genius bar” walkup for student tech support.
• Hallway furniture designed for students to socialize, collaborate, or meet with a teacher for individualized conversations.
• 10 new HVAC units to keep our Upper School just the right temperature for learning.

Beyond the improvements to the building itself, we are instituting and evolving unique programming for our Upper School students in order to foster the collective culture, leadership skills, and love of learning that we prize among our Huskies. Here is just a sample of some of these upgrades:

• Class Trips for the 9th and 12th Grades: On Monday, our entire Senior Class and their advisors will bond with leadership and team-building activities at the Calleva facility in Maryland; the following day, our 9th Grade students and advisors will experience specially designed activities at Calleva’s location in McLean to get to know one another and form a culture and team-first attitude to carry through their high school years.
• 9th Grade Seminar: All 9th Grade students will participate in a required seminar course during their first year in the Upper School. As a part of our JK-12 Health and Well-Being Curriculum, this course explores five major areas: identity and community, learning strategies, physical health, mindfulness and the brain, and social-emotional health. I am proud to be among the team teaching this course, which also includes members of our academic leadership, health center, counselors, Learning Center, and DEI teams engaging our students in new and meaningful learning about themselves and others.
  
• Study Sessions: While our Upper School has previously assigned study sessions for students needing additional academic support, this year we are including a curriculum to these sessions which is designed to help students understand metacognition — how their brain works and how they, as individuals, learn best — in order to support academic growth and success, now and into the future. 

Each of the above steps will be exciting, impactful, and beneficial to our students now and for years to come. We are eager to see how the students experience these intentional steps to enhance their Flint Hill experience over the coming weeks and months! Many thanks to the outstanding faculty, staff, facilities team, and others who are making these big ideas a reality for our Husky community.