ENERGY

KIT ENERGY

Christopher Federico

Head of School

It is a beautiful October day The sun is streaming into my office in the Hill House through the bright red, orange, and yellow leaves that stand just outside my open window; the air is cool and fresh and carries with it the chatter and the laughter of Stage I students on their daily outing It is only one of many great days I have had in my short time as Roeper’s Head of School

We are understandably cautious about declaring a return to ‘normal’, but without a doubt a weight has been lifted and an energy has returned to our campuses That energy has already powered whole-school assemblies, and homeroom buddies, and Stone Circles, and stage meetings, and Coffee Talks, and Parent-Teacher Conferences, and rehearsals for Cabaret, and we look forward to maintaining and harnessing that energy throughout the year

Keeping that energy flowing is important because we all know that having these great days takes a lot of work from a lot of people, who devote their own personal energies to ensure the success of our students as individuals and our school as a community It also means making sure that we are devoting our energies to the right things To me, those right things fall into three broad categories that combine to make Roeper the unique place it is, remembering always that “commitment to social responsibility, development of a social conscientiousness, and contributing to the betterment of the world on the human level are to be the center”1 of everything we do here

First is to advance our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ), and in particular to move forward the work of the DEIJ audit that was completed in the spring As a faculty, we continue to participate in professional development led by experts in fields such as restorative practices and courageous conversations We recently added language to our community guidelines to make explicit our commitment to inclusion and antioppression and are also introducing a bias incident reporting procedure and tool so that we can both respond better to these incidents when they occur and track trends so we can address them on a systemic level This month we will be convening a community steering committee to prioritize and guide the next phase of the work arising from the report of the DEIJ Audit

Second is to ensure that we are delivering high quality professional learning to our staff and faculty so that Roeper remains a leader in the education of gifted students In some domains, this means looking outside the school for experts or forming partnerships to build our capacity, as we have done, for instance, with the HartmannEton Center for Teaching and Learning to better support our twice exceptional students In others, it means taking advantage of the wealth in inhouse expertise that Roeper teachers already possess: for our fall professional development day, Roeper faculty and staff will be learning from their peers about everything from the equipment in our new makerspace to design thinking to responsive classrooms

Third is for us to continue to reach the widest possible audience of gifted students in southeast Michigan and to ensure we are living up to our aspiration to admit every child who has the “ability to profit from the program ” This means both making sure that people know about the value of a Roeper education and having the necessary resources in place — the people, the facilities, and the finances — to continue to serve our community into the future

Looking forward to many more great energized days to come F

MARK WRIGHT

Keeping energy flowing is important because we all know that having great days takes a lot of work from a lot of people, who devote their own personal energies to ensure the success of our students as individuals and our school as a community