Pilot Emphasis Program Prompts Cultural Shift at NDA

vision and leadership

Pilot Emphasis Program Prompts Cultural Shift at NDA

As the world grows increasingly complex and connected, NDA faculty are continually adapting their curriculum and methods to prepare young women to be tomorrow’s leaders. Currently in its pilot year, the new Emphasis Program reimagines the high school experience by supporting and expanding NDA’s excellent curriculum with unique learning opportunities in and outside of the classroom.

Through a combination of inquiry, experiential learning, and communitywide symposia, our unique Emphasis Program challenges students to grow as they gain deeper knowledge of the world around them, develop passions, and try to solve real-world problems.

Four expert teachers lead the program’s development and bring more than four decades of education experience: Sophia Beauvy, Manny Guardado, Bob Klier, and Oscar Navarro, each of whom manages one of the program’s key pillars. Ms. Beauvy directs the symposium, a community-wide conversation with a common theme. The perspective Ms. Beauvy developed through her visual arts, advertising, education and international experience informs her approach, and she encourages students to develop skills to express themselves, successfully navigate contemporary society, and understand their communities through the study of art, design, photography, film, and art history.

“The symposium is a year-long space in which the NDA community can learn, converse, and act upon the important issues and ideas that we face,” said Ms. Beauvy. “It seeks to encourage curiosity, deep learning and critical analysis across the campus and supports our students’ journey through the Emphasis Program by mirroring a sustained inquiry.”

In his efforts to guide the Emphasis Program’s academic component, Mr. Guardado focuses on creating educational experiences and spaces that reward curiosity, celebrate innovation, and encourage collaboration. He has spent nearly 10 years implementing, managing, and facilitating educational programs at the Norton Simon Museum, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and LACMA. Mr. Klier works directly with teachers to develop units to infuse these skills and concepts into every course over four years of curriculum. In addition to master’s degrees in English and library science, he relies on his extensive education experience at the college level.

“Our primary goal of the program is to make a cultural shift at NDA in which students are experiencing an approach to education that enables them to look at academics through the context of real world challenges,” said Mr. Guardado. “It’s a community effort that will integrate gradual changes into every facet of the NDA experience.”

Experiential learning complements the other two elements and offers students an opportunity to apply their growing skills beyond the classroom in a variety of industries. Oscar Navarro serves as a liaison between the campus and the corporate community, and trades on his extensive network established through his work as director of Innovation.

We focused on representation in the media for our first Symposium Day in October. In addition to small group discussions led by faculty on a wide variety of topics, the whole community enjoyed a keynote conversation with social media content creator (and TikTok influencer) Anna Sitar. Originally an engineering student, she discovered film and almost overnight her social media hobby became her full-time job. She encouraged students to stay grounded and “accept that you don’t have all the answers. We all have work to do...don’t be afraid to try something new.”

With our pilot year well underway, the entire NDA community is trying something new everyday in an effort to refine the Emphasis Program for the future. We look forward to our second schoolwide symposium day in the spring, when we will continue the exploration of media through various lenses while also offering different perspectives.

Student View

From Francesca Parodi ‘23 and Sayuri Nagai ‘23

This year, NDA students have had the exciting privilege of participating in the pilot Emphasis Program. A major part of this new program is an immersive, thought-provoking symposium experience. Our recent symposium dealt with critically analyzing the media that surrounds us, and we certainly had the opportunity to take this discussion to a deeper level. Throughout the day, NDA offered several unique workshops for media study, including (our personal favorite) “The Connection Between Media and Self Identity.” However, we also were tasked with conducting what was arguably the most exciting part of the day: an interview with guest speakers from several different media outlets. To be quite honest, we originally went into this experience with little idea of how to tackle such a feat - after all, how often is it that you have the chance to speak with such talented professionals in front of the entire school? Hoping to expose our audience to new thoughts and ideas, we outlined the following topics for the interview: the evolution and cycle of the media, the ethics of media production, steps for critically interpreting media, and the often discreet (and yet entirely present) influence of the media around us. Then we gathered a team of researchers, editors, and writers from our recently established Speech and Debate Team, holding meetings with the symposium director and researching our guests to construct insightful, compelling questions. And in the end, our hard work undeniably paid off. The day was nothing short of a resounding success, offering unique and valuable experiences not just to us but to the entire student body. Along with learning much about the media’s role in our lives, we also learned how to think on the spot and tailor the conversation to our guests. Overall, we are beyond grateful for this experience, and cannot wait to continue with more symposium events in the future!