Ethical Culture Fieldston School Bronx, New York Upper School Principal July 2017 ecfs.org
The Position
MISSION “The ideal of the school is not the adaptation of the individual to the existing social environment; it is to develop individuals who are competent to change their environment to greater conformity with moral ideals.” - Felix Adler, philosopher, humanist, & founder. FAST FACTS • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Founded: 1878 Grades Served: Pre-K - 12 Students: Approx. 1,700 Upper School: 600 Faculty: 325 Campuses: 2 Locations: Manhattan & the Bronx Divisions: 4 Mascot: Eagle School Colors: Orange & Blue Students of color: 34% Faculty of color: 15% Accreditations: NAIS, NYSAIS
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Situated on two stunning campuses in New York City, the tight-knit community at Ethical Culture Fieldston School is setting a model for progressive education in the 21st century. The ideals and values of ECFS founder, Felix Adler, continue to inspire and motivate a talented, engaged, and diverse school population of approximately 1,700 students and 325 faculty. The ECFS classroom functions as a laboratory, the city as an extended classroom. Passionate teachers guide students in becoming critical, creative thinkers who learn by doing. At the very core of ECFS is a commitment not only to academic rigor, but to ethical education. True to its name, Ethical Culture Fieldston School endeavors to instill a foundation in ethics beginning in its earliest grades. Ethics lessons are integrated into the ECFS curriculum, as well as taught as discrete courses. As students move through the school, their purpose gradually becomes clear: to be sharp and daring thinkers, upright citizens, and agents of positive change. The recent appointment of Jessica Bagby as Head of School has been met with excitement. Her deep leadership experience at highly respected schools in New York and Atlanta and her delight at joining the ECFS community ensure that the ECFS mission and vision will be further strengthened in coming years. Bagby’s educational philosophy is closely aligned with that of ECFS, and the Board is tremendously optimistic for the future of the school under her leadership. ECFS seeks a new Principal to lead Fieldston Upper School. The new leader will have the opportunity to build upon the strength of this special community and invite new opportunities for shared learning
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and growth. The successful candidate will be a collaborative leader—able to listen to, motivate, and inspire students, faculty, and parents. Thoughtful, reflective, and communicative, s/he will possess a keen understanding of progressive education and share the school’s ongoing commitment to its mission.
School History In 1878, under the direction of Felix Adler, the non-secular Ethical Culture Society established a free kindergarten called the Workingman’s School. At a time when educating children from poor communities was unconventional at best, the Workingman’s School grew with remarkable swiftness. The school’s initial enrollment of eight students surged to 51 in just two years, setting in motion a rich history of committed, progressive, and ethical education. Adler’s approach elevated the role of the creative and manual arts alongside rigorous academics. His emphasis on the development of students’ moral and psychological development, coupled with his commitment to serving a deeply integrated, coeducational, and diverse student community is still evident in the school’s programs today. The Workingman’s School changed its name to Ethical Culture School in 1895, establishing a secondary school program four years later. The entire school relocated to its landmark Manhattan site at 33 Central Park West in 1904. The Ethical Culture division, one of the school’s two elementary programs, still occupies this building today. ECFS continued to expand after the turn of the century. In 1928, the high school division moved to its current location on Fieldston Road in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, and was aptly named the Fieldston School. The second elementary division (Fieldston Lower School) was established in Riverdale five years later. In 1995, the New York Society for Ethical Culture voted to approve a legal separation of the school from the society, but the school has retained the name and core principles that bound it to the society for so many years. The fourth and newest division of ECFS— Fieldston Middle—was founded in 2007. The Search Group |CS&A
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Today, ECFS continues to affirm the founding values of its founder, providing an ethics-based progressive education to a diverse population of students. The school’s current strategic plan seeks to embrace this mission and founding values more tightly, setting goals that will enable ECFS to promote its innovative and inspirational model of progressive education, revitalize Adler’s ethical imperative, and nurture and sustain all of its resources.
The School Committed to academic excellence, ethical learning, and diversity, ECFS offers a rich and challenging curriculum in the humanities, sciences, and arts. A co-educational, nonsectarian independent school, ECFS serves a broad range of students and families on two distinctive campuses: one in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, the other in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. ECFS prides itself as one of the most diverse independent schools of its size in the country, with 34% of its student body identifying as students of color. Fieldston’s committed, passionate teachers have created a student-centered community that is attentive to individual student interests and learning styles. Teachers and students enjoy relationships that are respectful, informal, and collaborative. In July 2016, ECFS welcomed Jessica Bagby as Head of School. Jessica brings with her a deep commitment to creating communities, as she describes, “defined by mutual respect and responsibility as well as shared learning and wisdom.” Before joining ECFS, Jessica served as the Upper School Head and Assistant Head of School at Trinity School in New York City. Previous to that, Jessica spent twenty-one years at The Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Georgia, where she was an English teacher, English Department Head, Dean, and Upper School Head. In her opening address to the community (full transcript available here), Jessica articulated her priorities for the year: assuring an exemplary and coordinated progressive educational program; attracting, supporting, The Search Group | CS&A
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and retaining excellent leadership; and cultivating a culture of care throughout the school community. With her deep and rich experience as a teacher and leader in independent schools, Jessica is looking forward to fostering a collaborative learning community that will prepare students for “engaged citizenship and lives of conscience, purpose, and ethical action.”
Ethical Culture, Fieldston Lower, and Fieldston Middle Ethical Culture Fieldston School’s commitment to an excellent and engaged education begins with its youngest students. At the Ethical Culture and Fieldston Lower campuses, students in Pre-K through Grade 5 learn to recognize and respect multiple perspectives. They develop a deep understanding of the world around them, engaging their creativity and imagination in the learning process. High quality academics combine with a pervasive respect for all people and points of view, as teachers foster values of justice, fairness, and empathy. Elementary education is viewed as an evolving journey for teachers as well as students at ECFS. Faculty members formulate each grade’s curriculum around an essential question; this question becomes the core of student learning for the year. Respect for the whole child is ubiquitous and each child’s learning style is honored. The classroom climate of the lower school divisions invites collaboration, thoughtful dialogue, and mutual respect. In Fieldston Middle, the academic program provides an appropriate bridge between the lower and upper schools, emphasizing critical thinking skills, multiple forms of literacy, quantitative reasoning, self-regulation, and organization. Teachers strive to create an environment that stimulates, challenges, and encourages students to do their best work. This includes creating the opportunities for connection and collaboration that are so crucial during the middle school years. The ethics curriculum at Fieldston Middle is designed to help students better understand their purpose in the world, introducing adolescents to service learning, social justice issues, and personal decision-making.
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Fieldston Upper School Fieldston Upper’s progressive program emphasizes intellectual curiosity, academic excellence, ethics, and community involvement. The coursework balances a preparation for the challenges of higher education with the service learning opportunities so central to the school’s mission. The strong academic foundation students receive prepares them for sustained success in college and beyond. Students pursue coursework in English, ethics, history, languages (Chinese, French, Latin, Spanish), math, music, theater and dance, physical education, science and computer science, and the visual arts. Teachers strive to help students achieve the optimal balance that characterizes progressive education: ethical learning, academic excellence, and independent thinking. Character and academics have equal billing at Fieldston Upper. Students become leaders who are compassionate and fearless; they hold themselves to high standards in both intellect and emotional intelligence. Interdisciplinary studies emerged organically at ECFS, and now comprise a key aspect of the Fieldston Upper experience. In 10th grade humanities, students earn credits in English, history, and ethics as they explore the cross-disciplinary theme of freedom: its meanings, its conflicts, and the ways it has changed over time. The course begins with the English colonization of North America and ends with the Second World War. In addition to reading the literature of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Toni Morrison, and Tony Kushner, students study principles of ethics from Aristotle to John Rawls. Fieldston’s City Semester combines the liberal arts disciplines of English, history, science, and the arts to engage 11th and 12th graders in a complex study of the school’s wider community of the Bronx. Constructing their own learning experiences and addressing
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urban policy challenges, students emerge with the knowledge and agency to transform their environments for the better. At Fieldston Upper, there is deep regard for student voices and genuine attention to fostering their active participation in the life of the school. Upper school students are involved in program planning and decision-making. They serve on the Curriculum Committee with department chairs and on various task forces. They plan and teach ethics courses in the middle school. They organize and facilitate weekly assemblies and create service-learning projects throughout the city. In these and many other ways, students are encouraged to find and express themselves—and have fun in the process. Arts The arts comprise an important part of the upper school curriculum. The school’s strong dance, music, theater, and visual arts programs reflect Felix Adler’s vision of student-centered, hands-on learning brought to life across the disciplines. The visual arts program hones an acute artistic eye, a critical mind, and a skilled hand. Students choose from a broad range of electives that include ceramics, sculpture, architecture, painting and drawing, printmaking, and film production. In the dance program, classes offer introductions to a wide range of dance forms from ballet to jazz to contemporary and multicultural styles, providing a strong foundation in technique, improvisation, and composition. Students are encouraged to express themselves through original choreography, with an emphasis on modern dance. Students with a strong passion for dance can pursue master classes, including the audition-only Fieldston Dance Company. The instrumental and vocal music programs at Fieldston are exceptionally robust as well. Students work individually and in groups with others at their ability level to advance their skills and produce exceptional musical performances. Ensembles include chorus, opera company, vocal jazz, percussion, studio, chamber music, string orchestra, jazz improvisation, jazz ensemble, and concert jazz. The music curriculum also offers courses in digital music, music theory, and composition. An emphasis is also placed on performance; all ensembles take the stage in the Holiday Concert, while other concerts The Search Group | CS&A
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throughout the year offer more intimate opportunities for students to showcase their musical talents. The same is true of theatre at Fieldston Upper, which puts on five shows each year. The theatre program is largely student-led; teachers act as facilitators while students take on the roles of writers, directors, actors, builders, and designers. With expansive course offerings in both drama and stagecraft, including master classes for those with serious interest in dramatic arts, the theatre program emphasizes process over product, diverse methods and styles, and kind collaboration with others. Ethics The central goals of Fieldston’s ethics program are to challenge high school students to examine issues through multiple ethical lenses, to excavate and develop their own belief systems, to cultivate critical literacy, and to grapple with questions they find both relevant and engaging. A series of foundational courses anchor the ethics program, but students can also select from a range of electives in philosophy, social justice, education, psychology, comparative religion, and social/political issues. Fieldston’s Community Service Learning Program applies the principles learned in these ethics courses to the real world. As students respond to moral issues they face in their own lives within and outside of school, practice and theory unite in this “action arm” of the ethics curriculum.
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Global Learning
College Enrollment
The Global Learning program at EFCS seeks to prepare students to navigate both the opportunities and the challenges inherent in today’s interconnected world. A central tenet of the school’s new strategic plan, this program extends the boundaries of traditional learning and the traditional classroom. Partnerships with schools and other organizations in China, French Guiana, France, Spain, Quebec, and Costa Rica offer students the opportunity to learn and serve worldwide.
Student Life Extracurricular opportunities abound at Fieldston, including 50 student-run clubs, a vibrant arts program, and an extensive athletics program. Students join book clubs and chess clubs, compete in Mathletes and Model UN, and hone passions for photography and design on the yearbook staff. The athletics program focuses on the development of personal fitness, personal safety, and community responsibility. More than 65% of the student body participates in at least one sport and the school has seen considerable athletic success, earning league and state championships in basketball, field hockey, lacrosse, softball, volleyball, and ultimate frisbee. In addition to exploring their diverse interests, students at ECFS are encouraged to pursue social and political activism. During Modified Awareness Days (MADs) and Fieldston Awareness Days (FADs), the entire school community examines issues of local, national, or global importance. Every other year, students expand the depth and breadth of their knowledge during a two-day experiential learning program called Alternative Learning Period, which features classes and workshops run by students, faculty, parents, and alumni.
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The following is a partial list of colleges and universities to which students enrolled in 2015: American University, Paris Amherst College Bates College Bard College Boston University Bowdoin College Brandeis University Brown University Bucknell University Colby College Colgate University Cornell University Dartmouth University Emory University Franklin & Marshall College George Washington Univ. Grinnell College Hamilton College Hampshire College Harvard University Haverford College Johns Hopkins University Kenyon College Lafayette College MIT Macalester College McGill University Middlebury College New York University Northwestern University Oberlin University Princeton University Skidmore College Stanford University Syracuse University Tufts University Tulane University University of Chicago University of Pennsylvania Vanderbilt University Wake Forest University Wesleyan University Williams College Yale University
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Physical Campuses The Ethical Culture School occupies a beautiful, historic, seven-floor building on the corner of 63rd Street and Central Park West in Manhattan. Its attractive classrooms, administrative offices, and rooftop playground overlook Central Park. The Tate Library plays a central role in student learning by creating and sustaining a culture of reading, helping children develop research skills, and introducing new technologies. As a part of the school’s strategic plan, a task force recently conducted extensive research and data collection prior to presenting a proposal for the improvement of the Tate Library’s physical space, curriculum, resources, and personnel. An architectural firm has been hired and renovations are underway to convert this emblematic part of campus into a 21st-century hub for learning, research, and collaboration. Fieldston Middle and Upper Schools are housed in the Riverdale district of the Bronx, just a 15-minute drive from the Upper West Side and the Manhattan campus. Students enjoy the benefits of a small and comfortable campus environment in one of the greenest areas of New York City. The school also owns and maintains a recently renovated home just a few blocks from the Fieldston campus, which serves as a residence for the Head of School. The recent expansion of the Fieldston campus supports excellence at every level. The 48,000-square-foot academic building is LEED certified and incorporates many “green” features, such a vegetative roof garden frequently used by faculty and students in curricular activities. Other renovations include new performing arts and music spaces, dining hall and kitchen, student commons, and all-school admissions suite. Fieldston’s new athletic facility, opened in 2007, supports an expansive physical education program for both Middle and Upper School students. Spanning 38,000 square feet, the facility includes a double gymnasium in which two full-court basketball games can be played simultaneously, as well as a fitness center, training rooms, and two physical education classrooms. The school’s six-lane, competitive-length pool is housed in an adjacent 12,000-square-foot building.
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New York, NY The most populous urban center in the United States, New York is a global power city with significant influence in nearly every sector. Divided into five boroughs—Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island—each section of the city exudes distinctive character as well as a collective pride for its famed NYC identity. New York City offers something for every type of resident. From its Broadway theaters to its music halls to its sports stadiums, New York City is known for producing some of the best arts and entertainment in the world. Several of the country’s most famous attractions are found in NYC—the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, Rockefeller Center, Broadway, and Times Square—while our national trade and commerce is steered from Wall Street’s Stock Exchange. Several distinguished colleges and universities call NYC home as well, including Columbia University, New York University, Cooper Union, Fordham University, and St. John’s University, as well as many highly regarded schools for art, fashion, and design. A bustling center for finance, tourism, retail, media, theater, and education during the day, “the city that never sleeps” remains vibrant at all hours, thanks to its vast array of world-class restaurants and lively nightclub scene. The Riverdale section of the Bronx is an historic neighborhood of approximately three square miles in size. Much of this space is reserved for abundant green spaces and public parks. Riverdale’s high elevation affords residents stunning views of New York City’s landmarks, from the skyscrapers of Manhattan to the George Washington Bridge and the Hudson. The Search Group | CS&A
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Opportunities and Challenges The new Principal of Fieldston’s Upper School will have the opportunity to join an outstanding school and partner with a long-standing and deeply dedicated faculty. Although the school has had an excellent interim Principal, the Upper School is eager to find a permanent principal who loves working in a high school and will lead the division for years to come. The ideal candidate will have extensive teaching experience, a proven track record as a leader, and background in progressive educational philosophy. S/ he must feel a deep connection to the founding ideals of the school and demonstrate commitment to continuing the mission of the school as defined by its founder Felix Adler. To that end, the school will begin its search in the fall of 2016 with the goal of appointing someone by winter, to start July 2017. The ideal candidate will be someone who leads by example, who is committed to the wellbeing of students and the entire Fieldston community, and who works to build consensus through collaboration with many different constituencies. The search committee seeks an individual in possession of the skill set to do all of this—and more.
Qualifications and Qualities of the Next Upper School Principal The next Principal of Fieldston Upper School will ideally be: • A seasoned educator and administrator with experience in a large, urban private school; • Committed to the school and its mission; • Actively involved with and present in the community; • Student-centered; • An experienced teacher and champion of teachers; • Able to recognize and value good teaching and the variety of incarnations of good pedagogy; • A guide and mentor for students and faculty alike, helping all to become their best selves; • A good listener who values process and inclusion and can build consensus from the input of faculty and students; • Someone with a sense of humor; • A thoughtful, reflective, yet decisive leader; • An exceptional communicator. The Search Group | CS&A
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To Apply Interested candidates should submit the following materials as separate PDF attachments in one email: • • • •
Cover letter expressing interest in the Ethical Culture Fieldston School position; Current résumé; Statement of educational philosophy and practice; List of five references with name, phone number, and email address of each. (References will be contacted only with the candidate’s permission.)
Please send all materials to Jennifer Christensen and Bob Fricker of Carney, Sandoe & Associates: Jennifer Christensen | Bob Fricker jennifer.christensen@carneysandoe.com | bob.fricker@carneysandoe.com Senior Search Consultants Carney, Sandoe & Associates www.carneysandoe.com.
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