feature Learning, Leading, Making a Difference: Creating Connections Through ACE By Stacey Kertsman, Director of the ACE Center
The ACE Center is dedicated to creating a vibrant library of experiences at Castilleja that occur in a context of purposeful reflection and reciprocal learning and serve to deepen classroom learning. Through exposure to visiting speakers, and participation in community action opportunities, global investigator trips, internships, and leadership opportunities, the ACE Center empowers girls to learn, lead, and make a difference. For faculty and staff, the ACE Center helps to develop curricular links between classroom work, experiential learning, and 21st-century assessment methods in order to deepen connections within our curricular program. The new ACE Center at Castilleja is framing the context in which students engage in experiential learning at Castilleja. At orientation, in retreats, during block periods in the daily schedule, and in curriculum development with faculty, the ACE Center’s philosophy is informing how teaching and learning is evolving at Castilleja. The vision for the Center is informed by my work developing a Social and Emotional Learning
Curriculum, my experience as Founder and Executive Director of eduWeavers.org, a non-profit that partners schools across the globe, and my years as a classroom teacher. I am motivated to help students make intentional choices about experiences (ranging from internships, to community action initiatives, to project-based, global exchanges with students at partner schools) and to build a community lexicon around experiential learning. I believe that the Castilleja community has the opportunity to demonstrate the true value of experiential learning in general, but particularly for women, by building strong curricular links between co-curricular programs and classroom disciplines. The Center is now home to the following Castilleja programs: Community Action and Engagement, Diversity and Inclusivity, Global, Internships, Leadership, and Mentoring. And, working closely together, the entire ACE Center staff is focused on offering the students and faculty a consistent vision for supporting students as they develop emotionally and intellectually and begin to understand themselves as members of both local and global communities.
2 | full circle