Enduring Mission, Evolving Methods, Extraordinary Experiences

In the winter of 2023, Head of School Chris Cunningham launched a comprehensive strategic planning process to guide his work in the years ahead. His goal was to develop a vision for Whitfield’s future that was ambitious and forward-looking but also authentic to Whitfield and rooted in its fundamental educational values. Partnering with Ian Symmonds and Associates, a nationally-recognized research and planning firm, with more than 20 years experience working with independent schools, Dr. Cunningham formed a steering committee including trustees, parents, alumni, faculty, staff, and administrative leaders.

This committee met throughout the winter and spring, exploring educational research, market analysis of the St. Louis region, an institutional SWOT analysis, generative exercises, and a review of trends in the independent school and education sector. This process of research and ideation culminated in the early summer of 2023, with the steering committee developing a carefully focused set of strategic priorities and initiatives. That fall, the board of trustees unanimously endorsed the committee’s work, including a new school mission statement and first-ever vision statement

Taken as a whole, the strategic plan offers a bold, ambitious roadmap for Whitfield through the end of this decade. The plan includes an extension and expansion of our long commitment to experiential teaching and learning, to creating opportunities for students to learn by doing, both in the classroom and out in the world. It calls us to fulfill the promise of community by creating a school that reflects the richness of St. Louis and by ensuring that all members of our community can participate fully in The Whitfield School experience. It challenges us to articulate to the St. Louis community the unique and life-changing benefits of a Whitfield education, and to help all of our students reach their full potential. And it challenges us to create the physical and financial infrastructure, from transformative giving to transformative new learning spaces, that will guarantee Whitfield’s financial sustainability in the 21st century.

NEW MISSION & FIRST-EVER VISION

In tandem with strategic planning, the Whitfield community engaged in a broad, inclusive process of reflection to understand, affirm, and articulate what we do as a school and why we do it.

In surveys, workshops, small group exercises, and full school presentations, the school’s faculty, staff, and administration worked with parents, students, alumni, and trustees to craft a new vision statement and new, updated mission for The Whitfield School.

The goal of our work was to identify the best and most essential parts of our past and present, while thinking ambitiously and clearly about our future.

Over the course of the 2022-2023 school year, we surveyed the full Whitfield community, asking all constituencies to reflect on the current mission and to identify those parts of it that were the most resonant and meaningful for them. In the ensuing months, we engaged in a range of exercises with faculty, staff, administration, and trustees to understand the community’s experience of Whitfield, gathering people’s expectations and aspirations, and looking for language that would capture their passion for the school.

Drawing on these community-wide conversations, we drafted a mission and vision that would be true to who we are while describing the school we aspire to be. We then shared draft statements with the full community, gathering feedback through a broad and iterative process, ultimately presenting final drafts to the Board of Trustees in the fall of 2023, which voted unanimously to adopt these guiding statements:

Our Mission Statement affirms who we are and what we do:

A small school community committed to kindness and trust, Whitfield inspires a diverse student body to lead lives of curiosity, integrity, and purpose.

Our Vision Statement asserts why we exist: To empower young people to discover and become their best selves.

Together, these two statements reaffirm touchstone The Whitfield School values: community and trust, kindness and integrity. These words and ideas are at the heart of what we do, and we heard consistently over the course of the year from all constituencies that they needed to be at the heart of our mission and vision. At the same time, these statements clarify our commitments to diversity and to providing a “small school” experience—to know each child and meet them where they are.

And they clarify that the Whitfield experience is about discovery and transformation—social, emotional, intellectual. As the statements affirm, the Whitfield experience is ultimately about inspiring and empowering young people to become their best selves—to lead lives of meaning and purpose.

Experiential Teaching & Learning

We will reimagine and refine our core academic approaches and offerings, enhancing a Whitfield education through continued curricular innovation. Now and in the years to come, Whitfield students will benefit in ever-evolving and expanded ways from active, interdisciplinary, forward-looking, and enduring experiences—preparing them for lifelong success in a changing world.

Expand experiential learning in all our classrooms. Broaden opportunities at every grade level for experiential learning, increasing the authenticity, challenge, and depth-of-learning in the curriculum.

Cultivate real-world learning beyond our campus. Develop community connections to facilitate off-campus experiences and engagement, applied learning, and opportunities for mentorship throughout the school’s program.

Create a robust, experiential environmental science program. Expand our science curriculum in tandem with campus environmental sustainability initiatives, allowing students to explore practical applications of theories in environmental science, and technology.

Enrich our advisory experience.

Construct and schedule an advisory program specific to each grade level, designed to foster developmentally appropriate social and emotional learning, academic competencies, and cross-grade level partnership, leadership, and mentorship.

Authentic Access & Inclusion

We will preserve and enhance Whitfield’s distinctly welcoming climate and culture. This plan empowers us to cultivate an even stronger sense of belonging, protect the health and well-being of one another, and ensure that all members of our community can participate fully in the Whitfield experience.

Support greater socioeconomic diversity. Build financial capacity to ensure that all admitted students, regardless of financial ability, can take full advantage of all Whitfield academic and co-curricular opportunities.

Build a team that reflects our community. Marshal the strategies and resources necessary to recruit, hire, and retain faculty, staff, and administration members who together reflect the vibrancy of our city and support the healthy identity development of our diverse student body.

Clear Identity & Capacity

We will better articulate our mission, methods, and culture, in ways that will speak powerfully— both to our city and region as a whole and to mission-aligned prospective families.

Speak powerfully to prospective families. Ensure that outside audiences encounter effective, updated, emotionally resonant messaging about who we are and what we offer—in terms of academic excellence, community support, and lifelong outcomes.

Create accessible spaces. Design, modify, and upgrade facilities, so they are inclusive and accessible, ensuring that all members of the community can access, use, and feel welcome in every corner of campus.

Extend equity and inclusion initiatives

Support and expand our efforts to develop our community’s cultural competencies as described in and developed by Whitfield’s Habits of Mind & Heart.

Protect the well-being of all. Design and implement a comprehensive Health and Wellness program to support the mental and emotional well-being of our students and employees and to contribute to an environment of caring and support.

Articulate academic identity. Develop a community-wide sense of the “Whitfield graduate” and the “Whitfield educator” to ground our mission in a collective understanding of our aspirations, uniqueness, and fundamental identity as a school.

Continue our commitment to supporting a range of learners. Design and implement an array of effective academic and support structures for many kinds of learners—neurotypical, neurodiverse, and gifted—and communicate Whitfield’s capacities clearly with current and prospective families. Continue meeting all students where they are, and more clearly communicate the advantages a diverse learning environment offers to all Whitfield students—who reap academic, social, and practical benefits that only come from learning among and from all kinds of minds.

Appeal to families from around the world. Develop a strategy for recruiting and supporting international families, providing rich and transferable academic experiences for these international students, while offering all Whitfield students unique, authentic opportunities to build cultural competence.

Lasting Stability & Stewardship

We will advance and sustain all forms of excellence at Whitfield by building a solid, steady fiscal and physical infrastructure. We will undertake wise initiatives in enrollment, philanthropy, programming, revenue, physical plant, and human resources today to assure our continued strength and sustainability tomorrow.

Fund transformative spaces.

Foster community and make space for extraordinary learning through the construction, expansion, or transformation of key facilities, including: an expanded and transformed STEAM wing, including a state-of-the-art makerspace and updated class and laboratory facilities; an expanded and reimagined Intellectual Commons, which will house a new Center for Academic Success, provide additional collaboration and meeting spaces, and updated facilities for the library and IT; a multipurpose athletic facility, to help students grow in physical strength, competitive spirit, and resilience; and an admittedly unglamorous but vitally important storm shelter.

Prioritize environmental sustainability.

Develop an innovative, ambitious sustainability program with the goal of carbon-neutral operations by 2030, thus protecting physical resources, making operations as efficient and economical as possible, and preparing our campus and our community for a world transformed by climate change.

Optimize income and outflow.

Create a sustainable revenue model to support financial aid, facility operations, faculty support, and other essential organizational operating costs.

Nurture a culture of giving.

Increase internal community involvement in philanthropic endeavors to improve financial support and build buy-in on major school initiatives.

In Conclusion

The way things have always been done may not prepare children for a future the likes of which have never been seen.

And one single way of teaching can’t cultivate the kind of extraordinary dexterity that develops when each young mind works with thinkers of all kinds, learns in myriad ways, and turns in many directions: Reading and listening, of course. But also doing, making, seeing, feeling, sensing. Experiencing.

At The Whitfield School, we are planning for a future of rigor that will be anything but rigid. For fresh, relevant forms of academic excellence. For the agility, adaptability, resilience, and risk-tolerance that today’s students— and tomorrow’s challenges—will require.

We’ll always hold true to our foundational mission and continue to build on the bedrock of our unchanging, shared values. But together, guided by this plan, we can also be sure that we’re offering the experiences that will prepare our students to meet the moment and change the world.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LEARN AT A SCHOOL OF EXPERIENCE?

Wrapping your senses around new ideas. Diving into direct contact with concepts and questions. Making, doing, and experimenting your way into knowing, understanding, and mastering. Learning at a school of experience means showing up as your whole self, bringing both your mind and heart on a journey of trying new things, taking wise risks, and supporting friends and schoolmates as they make the same courageous leaps. There are many places you can go to receive a great education, to prepare for college, and to open doors for your future. But here, you can do all of this while also seeing, hearing, touching, and feeling how the world around you works— because at Whitfield, we know it’s the experience that counts.