UPPER SCHOOL
IN THE UPPER SCHOOL By Brandon Neblett HEAD OF UPPER SCHOOL
This spring launched one of the biggest challenges any of us will face in our career: teaching students confined at home during a pandemic. It was a daunting experience filled with unanticipated obstacles, yet it was also a revealing opportunity. And in classic GCS spirit, our faculty adapted quickly and
CREATING THE DIGITAL DRAGONS EXPERIENCE
impressively, constructing a digital framework to deliver
In preparing for Digital Dragons—a process coalesced
a GCS education almost overnight.
the week before Spring Break—we had to strike a delicate
The Digital Dragon experience demonstrated our agility, creativity, and holistic awareness of adolescent needs in the Upper School. Learning in our virtual classrooms provided a sense of normalcy. Latin students deciphered verbs, and algebra students solved equations. Biology students prepared for the AP exam as all students continued sharing quirky anecdotes about family and friends in advisory. Other things were very different. Art students staged interpretive representations of iconic masterpieces in their own homes, while advisory groups watched a video of Athletic Trainer, Joey Sierzega, pumping iron in his living room. Engineering students explained their work to a panel of local experts, and seniors defended their Integrative papers digitally. For Upper School students, the pandemic was something of a “Twilight Zone” experience: very recognizable in some ways, yet quite bizarre in others. Tellingly, the most frustrating part was the inability to interact with students in person. While our students completed the academic year, the lack of daily face-to-face contact left us with a lingering lack of dissatisfaction, though we know we
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adapted well. We are eager to see our students again!
SPIRIT OF THE DRAGON
balance between structure and flexibility. We knew the most essential element of success in shifting to remote learning would be student engagement. We had to keep our students mentally and emotionally present every day. An academic experience lacking person-to-person contact in hallways, classrooms, and Forum meant ensuring students had a sense of control and empowerment in their education. Student engagement was even more difficult given that we knew every family would face distinct physical, emotional, and logistical challenges in the months ahead. Students had to have the freedom to attend to family needs and work within constraints while attending to their academic work. With these factors in mind, we landed on three key determinants of our weekly schedule. First, we required advisor check-ins each Monday morning and focused the rest of the day on setting expectations and getting an overview of the week’s work in each class. Next, we created a rotation of classes Tuesdays through Fridays. We emphasized a constructive balance between asynchronous work (completed by the student on their own) and synchronous meetings (connecting with others directly via Microsoft Teams or Zoom). Finally, and perhaps
