Principal’s Letter

I have been an administrator for thirty months. I have been an administrator preparing for and responding to the impact of a global pandemic on the world of education for twenty four of those thirty months. And honestly, I don’t know if I would have wanted to start my career as Chaminade’s Associate Principal of Curriculum and Assessment any other way.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not discounting the tragedy and pain that has been felt around the world and in our own community. My heart aches for those who have lost loved ones, experienced job or financial insecurity, struggled with physical and mental health, and endured the many other stressors and anxieties brought about by the pandemic.

But as people of hope, we have all tried to find ways to understand these challenging times. We have looked for the good, the grace, the lessons, the light. I am grateful that my silver lining became apparent very early on and I have been reminded of it day after day. I was able to do something that very few new principals do in their first year on the job and many principals never do in their entire career; I got to reinvent school. And by that I mean I got to be part of a courageous administrative team, work alongside the most dedicated faculty and staff, have the support of trusting families, and be inspired by the resilience of our students, as we, the Chaminade community, reinvented school.

I could go on about Chaminade’s many accomplishments during the last two years as we reimagined school and brought it to life. But I am most excited to share about how that experience has, and will continue, to inspire our future, particularly in the area of curriculum development.

This year, Chaminade began some in-depth work on our school curriculum using the Understanding by Design framework by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins. This approach to curriculum, instruction, and assessment has a focus on developing and deepening students’ understandings of important ideas, specifically through the lens of the Six Facets of Understanding: Explanation, Interpretation, Application, Perspective, Empathy, and Self-Knowledge. Over the next several years we will work to further articulate and align our curriculum to ensure that we are offering the best possible academic experience for our students. This initiative is a major one that will take time and energy to see through. And if you have read anything about the world of education lately, you may note that time and energy are two things lacking for teachers these days. So why take this critical look at our curriculum now?

There is no doubt that teaching in a pandemic has impacted the morale of educators across the country. I would be lying if I said we haven’t had our days here at Chaminade. But those moments of challenge have not caused our teachers to lose sight of our mission, and in many ways have prepared them to better live it out.

One could argue that our faculty has never been more ready to jump into this curriculum work. That at this moment in time, they are primed for it. They have spent the last three and a half semesters examining, analyzing, learning. They have asked themselves what’s important, what’s necessary, what should stay, go, change. It is likely they have never had a more critical eye on their curriculum than they have in the last year and a half.

And we want to capitalize on that great work. We want to capture it. And write it down. And continue that examination, analysis, and learning, and we want to do it together.

The pandemic has reminded us that it is possible to change things in education, to try something new, to break tradition. So we are going to keep reinventing school here at Chaminade, over and over again, so that it best prepares our students to be the men our ever-changing world needs them to be.

Beth Dunlap Associate Principal Curriculum and Assessment