Lee Sprague, associate head of Trinity Episcopal School is succinct. “For a school, the hardest thing is time — there isn’t any.” That’s why it was so important to figure out a way to make a strategic plan for the future in a fast but concrete way in order to move ahead. Sprague and head of school Rob Short felt it was paramount to include all of the teachers and staff. “Everyone is invested in our long-term success and deeply cares about the students — we’re extremely collaborative here — but we wanted to engage them actively in order to carry out all the parts of our plan.”
Sprague had broken down the major tasks into components and wanted small groups to focus on each of them, but she needed members of the faculty and staff to facilitate them. The problem was that they didn’t know how. She immediately thought of Floricane. “We had modest goals,” she says. “Let’s be together, learn, and identify the challenges. Let’s do purposeful work.”
Floricane’s Kathy Greenier and Holly Gordon asked well-placed questions, she says. She was impressed with the way the two intuited when to press the group to dig deeper and when to let the conversation flower. At the end of the process, Sprague felt that both the Trinity faculty and staff had new, powerful tools with which to communicate with each other, but also with students and their families.
Inevitably, in a secondary school, there can be hard conversations with parents. “Sometimes we have to convey information they don’t want to hear about their child,” she says. They now have the tools to approach those moments so that “everyone feels heard.”
Trinity plans to continue to hold small group sessions with Florican to keep the momentum going. “It’s a really great fit! Kathy and Holly really get us, and that’s not easy!”
Written by Brandon Fox, a richmond-based freelance writer.