After 10 years teaching history at Fieldston, Karen Drohan is stepping into a new role as dean for the class of 2029.
Before coming to Fieldston, Drohan taught in California for 23 years, serving as chair of the history department at a school in the Los Angeles area.
“I decided to come back to the East Coast. I grew up here” she says. “I’d known about Fieldston my entire educational career. It’s got a great reputation as a progressive institution and the opportunity to teach at this school was too appealing for me. I got very lucky, and the school seemed to want me as well.”
At Fieldston she has taught classes like Modern World History, The Modern Middle East, and the Holocaust. She has a reputation for skills building, library and research work, producing good essay writers and confident public speakers.
For Drohan, the draw of the dean’s role is the chance to focus on every part of a student’s life. “One of the things that I love doing as a teacher is working with the whole student,” she explains. “I love being able to focus on my subject matter, which is history, but also to be an advisor to students and to see all their experiences…academic, social, artistic experiences, athletics…whatever they happen to be passionate about and helping to support those passions and develop these passions. The Dean’s role is very much a whole student role.”
Thirty years and counting in the classroom have shaped her perspective. “One of the things that I’ve learned is to relax,” she says. “Students at a school like Fieldston…get overly stressed out about everything that’s going on…we are all, as human beings, much more able to be successful when we slow down, when we relax, when we don’t take on too much and we do fewer things better. One of the things I will be encouraging students is to do less and do it better.”
Drohan has also been an advisor every year, taking three advisories through to graduation. “I’ve never taken any time off from being an advisor, and that’s really shaped how I feel about moving into this new role. I love watching students develop their full potential, and maybe that potential isn’t history. Maybe that potential is elsewhere. I have had many students who are overachievers in ways that have been fantastic but haven’t always served them emotionally. I’ve had students who don’t feel like they’re the class star…but when they find their passion…you watch that blossom in ways that are extraordinary and beautiful.”
For Drohan, the top responsibility of a dean is clear: “The social emotional welfare of students…is the most important priority. If you are stressed out, if you are emotionally spent…then you’re never going to be able to be as successful as you could be.”
To put it simply, Drohan says the role also involves distinguishing between students who avoid work and those dealing with overload or outside pressures. “My job is to tell the difference between those two kids.”
Dean Drohan’s first step this year will be getting to know every freshman. “One of my regular practices for my ninth grade Modern World History class is that you have to schedule a 15-minute meeting with me. Now it will be 166 students rather than a class of 18, but I want to have a meeting with every single student. I want to see what their passions are, what their concerns are, what their fears are…Once I know that and they know that I know them, I see them and I value them, then I can support them,”
Drohan hopes to build a culture of “support and care” among the class of 2029. “We don’t need to compete with one another…We need to support one another. We need to build one another up. I’m going to encourage my class, the class of 2029, to go to sporting events, the musical theater, to go and see their classmates do the things that their classmates love to do…If you see somebody doing something they love, you see them in a brand new way.”
Dean Drohan’s advice to incoming freshmen is straightforward: “Have fun. School should be fun. Yes, it’s rigorous. Yes, it’s hard. But the bottom line is, learning is fun and if you just have fun with it, if you just open yourself up to the experience, you might discover new passions that you never knew you had.”
She also wants students to know that she wasn’t always a top student herself. “I struggled in school…I almost didn’t graduate college because of math…So I decided that I was going to tell everybody that I was a math major…and I tricked myself into thinking that math was my favorite class. It’s okay to struggle; it’s ok to not know where you’re going as long as you ask for help.
Two skills Drohan hopes her students carry into life beyond high school: “The hard skill is…organization. The soft skill is confidence.” Drohan shares how she keeps both paper and digital planners and encourages students to create their own systems. “Whatever works to stay organized makes everything easier…Trust yourself. Even if you get something wrong, you will get to the point where you can figure things out.”
Drohan also warns students against overloading schedules. “Don’t do that to yourself. You don’t need to for the college process and you don’t need to for your own mental health. Give yourself time every single day in your schedule…Building that organization will help with time management.”
Looking ahead, Drohan notes she’s eager to get started. “I’m just very excited to take on this position. I’m very excited to support the class of 2029 and be in a position to support all of the classes at Fieldston.”
