Jessica Bagby is a teacher first and foremost, a fact made evident in even the most cursory of interactions. She chooses her words carefully, sometimes pausing thoughtfully for a few seconds at a time in order to consider how to best make a point. \u201cI\u2019ve always been a very relational person,\u201d she said, \u201cI’m an English teacher at heart, and connection is really what I thrive on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, after three years as Fieldston\u2019s head of school, she worries about losing the bonds that made her love teaching in the first place. \u201cI\u2019ve had to focus so much on the business aspects of the school that in some ways I have not been as connected with the kids and the faculty as I would prefer. In a school this size with two campuses, I always feel as if there is not enough of me to go around, to be everywhere I want and need to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
In order to combat what feels to some like a divide between administration and students, \u201ca huge goal this year is scheduling,\u201d said Bagby, \u201cI\u2019ll be actually protecting time in my schedule for students and faculty. I began to do that a little bit more last year with parents, but we’re going to keep that up and I’m going to schedule time for kids this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
When we met in her spacious office overlooking the quad, she had just come from Fieldston Lower and spent the day before at Ethical Culture sitting in on classrooms. \u201cI really am making it a priority to be with kids and teachers more,\u201d she said, \u201cI’m going to have lunches with kids. You\u2019re going to be hearing about that soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Going into this school year, she came up with a few central priorities to really focus on. Before taking any action, Bagby realized, the school\u2019s central values needed to be defined. \u201cWhat I\u2019ve come to learn about that is that we don’t all agree about what progressive is, about really what ought to be our Ethics program.\u201d She said, \u201cIn some ways, we\u2019ve had ethics be a catch-all for health and wellness, Ethics and some of our Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) work, and I\u2019ll grant you health and wellness and DEI work, they are ethical issues, but they are not an Ethics program in and of themselves. Similarly, they need their own distinct pieces of curricular landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n
Self-reflection looks to be a central theme in Bagby\u2019s vision for the school\u2013after all, how can we get better if we\u2019re unsure of what it is we\u2019re striving for? \u201cI was thinking about being progressive here, and when I think about progressive I can think about it in terms of politics and the socio-political world that we live in, or I can think about it in terms of pedagogy because there are some actual schools of thought around progressive pedagogy. Often schools that adopt progressive pedagogy also have progressive politics…but right now it\u2019s about trying to get our arms around just exactly what it means for this school to say it\u2019s progressive. Those things, the cornerstones of our school\u2013progressive and ethical\u2013are super important to continue to talk about and examine.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an attempt to clarify the meaning of progressive education, posters will be put up around school illustrating its core tenets, \u201cso that kids know what we’re talking about and so we know what we’re talking about.\u201d In addition, a task force of faculty and administrators has been assembled in order to examine the professional evaluation process and root it more concretely in progressive educational practices.<\/p>\n
Change in the classroom also involves some intense introspection. \u201cLooking at what it is we actually teach, what we want kids to know, what are our essential questions? Some of them coincided in some ways with the concerns articulated by the student protest last year, many of them were our concerns before the student protest articulated them, but we\u2019re really looking at the foundational courses from sixth through tenth grade, because we don\u2019t really think the electives should carry all that weight. We need to make sure that these courses are excellent and reflect a variety of perspectives and the body of work across cultures.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another key priority is financial stewardship and sustainability, in large part because Bagby considers it important that Fieldston be \u201ca national exemplar of access for people who might not otherwise be able to afford an education with this sort of price tag, which has gotten more expensive as the income gap has widened in this country. The fact that we give the most financial aid in the City of New York for tuition is really important.\u201d<\/p>\n
Being able to manage funds\u2013which come in both from donations and tuition fees\u2013is especially difficult at a school like Fieldston, which requires quite a bit of upkeep on both an annual and a day-to-day basis. To prudently and productively wield Fieldston\u2019s annual operating budget of just under $90 million is no easy task: \u201cWe have to take care of our facilities: we have these two beautiful campuses that are aging, but they cost a lot more to repair and maintain the longer you defer maintenance, and that cost will far outstrip anything we can make in investments on financial aid endowment.\u201d<\/p>\n
As students, we sometimes forget that our school does not clean and repair itself by magic: it requires a huge commitment of time, effort, and money to keep it running on even the most basic level. \u201cWe have all these projects, we have a robust financial aid budget, but we have to make sure we can sustain that, so we have to raise philanthropic dollars for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Making the school a better place is always the most important thing in mind when distributing funding. \u201cMy first big project here was the Tate Library, which was both a wonderful renovation and facilities enhancement, and we also took care of significant deferred maintenance at the same time. We proved we could be good stewards; the project came in four months ahead of schedule and three million dollars under budget. To get the Design Studios and Student Commons done this summer was another win for our students and educational program; these projects are obviously major enhancements to our school. And, of course, little by little, we\u2019re air-conditioning the place.\u201d<\/p>\n
On an administrative level, Bagby has faced quite a few challenges: \u201cI\u2019ve had to hire some key administrative positions, and I\u2019ve had to hire a lot of them. In the time that I\u2019ve been here, I\u2019ve hired three principals, I\u2019ve hired a CFO, a COO, almost every position on the administrative council.\u201d Forming a group that can productively and empathetically deal with the school\u2019s issues is an essential factor in its success.<\/p>\n
Even though these administrative concerns can feel far removed from the issues affecting students and faculty directly, they often touch us more profoundly than we realize. \u201cThis year in particular, because we\u2019re hiring folks, there are some systems and processes in finance and admissions and all these areas that people don\u2019t see in classrooms that have taken up a lot of my time. Trying to make sure that team is collaborative and a good team and works well and is in touch with the community and faculty and students, supports each other, is really, really important.\u201d<\/p>\n
Above all other issues, however, in Bagby\u2019s eyes student wellness is \u201cprobably the most important priority, because if you\u2019re not well, none of the rest matters.\u201d She laughed wryly, \u201cI often say that we hatch eagles from eagles\u2019 eggs\u2013I\u2019ve said that my whole career, in all the schools I\u2019ve been at, and it works out nicely now that we\u2019re actually the eagles.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI see kids with pressures now that have just become intensified over the course of my 35 years in this work,\u201d she continued, \u201c it\u2019s gotten really hard to navigate, to try to find meaning as a student here and now and not be too worried about the future. We just need to try to keep our kids well, the rest of it will work itself out. We\u2019re going to be leaning into what our DEI and health and wellness plans are going to be over the next three-to-five years, we\u2019ve stacked up in those areas during my tenure.\u201d<\/p>\n
A large part of improving student wellness involves nurturing a \u201cculture of care and accountability where we have civility and respect for ideas and one another. In some of our best instincts to do the right thing, we can be very judgmental and not make a room for a variety of perspectives and thoughts…\u201d<\/p>\n
Diversity of thought, she acknowledges, can be a bit lacking at Fieldston. \u201cSometimes this place can feel, for all its valuing of diversity, pretty homogeneous in the kind of thought that it thinks is copacetic. It can feel a little bit dogmatic here. I hope when we have differences, the way we interact with each other can be more open-minded and open-hearted.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was devastated last year by a lot of the stories I heard from kids, parents, and faculty and staff about their experiences and how punitive and unforgiving the culture can be\u2013\u2013and I\u2019m talking about folks from different backgrounds and perspectives.\u201d Her voice cracked slightly at this.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve learned a lot about kids\u2019 experiences over time here, things that I wouldn\u2019t have otherwise known. It really drove home how much more connected I needed and wanted to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the corner of Bagby\u2019s office, there is a folk painting which features a Flannery O\u2019Connor quote in bold type: \u201c\u2018I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI love that painting,\u201d Bagby said. \u201cand I think that quote may sum it up. I have faced my fair share of challenges here, but on the whole, with one eye squinted I can take it all as a blessing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jessica Bagby is a teacher first and foremost, a fact made evident in even the most cursory of interactions. She chooses her words carefully, sometimes pausing thoughtfully for a few seconds at a time in order to consider how to best make a point. \u201cI\u2019ve always been a very relational person,\u201d she said, \u201cI’m an English teacher at heart, and connection is really what I thrive on.\u201d Now, after three years as Fieldston\u2019s head of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":230,"featured_media":4234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[318,58],"tags":[],"coauthors":[337],"class_list":["post-4233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-slider"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/649bIff5_400x400.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/230"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4233"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4236,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4233\/revisions\/4236"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4233"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}