These past few months have been ones of extreme rebranding, so it makes sense to hit the reset button on every aspect of Fieldston’s image. It’s a new year, with a new logo, a new library, a new principal, and now a new website to tie it all together.
Jessica Bagby, Head of School explained the reason for the change to the school’s online presence in an email, describing the feedback that the school had received from users of the old website; “The resounding takeaway from that process was that we were failing to communicate our mission and values clearly and robustly on our website and in our communications to families. We needed to tell our story in a compelling and engaging way. Folks had a hard time understanding our ethical and progressive identity. They asked, ‘Just what is it?’ We weren’t making it clear enough. They wanted more to know more about the breadth and depth of our educational program in each division of the school and across the four divisions.”
The goal of the new website is to streamline and simplify, highlighting student life and putting the school’s mission above all. Rather than cluttering the homepage with raw information, which can be difficult to take in and create a cohesive image from, the site’s design follows the golden rule of “show, don’t tell.”
“Our approach with the site was to focus first on the mission and the tenets of progressive education that were developed by our faculty,” said Darrel Frost, Director of Communications, over email. “You’ll see a bold identity statement at the outset, and the entire structure of the site is built around those ten tenets. The previous website had a tremendous amount of good information, but almost no one found this information because the site was so dense — and amidst the search, many seemed to lose track of the mission of the school. The new site keeps things clean and focused on the mission and the teaching.”
Bagby elaborated on this idea of showing the school’s tenets.
“We decided to use primary sources–the work and experiences of students and teachers–rather than an institutional narrative,” she said.
There is a prominently displayed “News” section, with stories about students and the work that they are doing. Rather than wordy explanations of how progressive education works in theory, the focus is on how it acts in practice.
“The website is in its beginning stages,” Frost said. “We’re adding to it constantly, and we are already working closely with faculty and staff around the school to bolster this tool. Websites are never complete, and the next few months of ECFS’s site will be really exciting.”
