{"id":698,"date":"2018-06-22T01:12:17","date_gmt":"2018-06-22T01:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/labschool\/?p=698"},"modified":"2018-08-22T02:24:08","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T02:24:08","slug":"qa-with-head-of-school-chris-marblo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/labschool\/2018\/06\/22\/qa-with-head-of-school-chris-marblo\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&A with Head of School Chris Marblo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Head of the Campus School, Chris Marblo (pictured above, reading aloud to a captive kindergarten audience) sat down with Brittany Collins of the Lab School<\/em> to speak about his journey to SCCS. Below is an excerpted transcription of the conversation, in which he offers insight into his educational philosophy and hopes for the future of the school.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Brittany Collins (BC): To put a bit of context to our conversation, could you talk about your journey in the field of education, as well as your journey to Smith?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris Marblo (CM): \u201cI will give you the Reader\u2019s Digest version! I began as a high school English teacher and was considering getting a Ph.D. and going the professor route. By chance, I got a job at an independent school as a Middle School Head and an Upper School English teacher, and that got me into administration. I liked it, and eventually became a Head of School at two different pre-K-8 schools\u2014one in Maryland, one in New York City\u2014and then, after being in the field for twenty-seven years, I wanted to take a break and explore some other interests. For the past five years, I explored different leadership opportunities, one at an arts organization and another at a spiritual retreat center. Both of those experiences were good, but not what I had hoped, and I was in the process of looking at leadership positions in schools again when a good friend of mine told me about the Campus School.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a lot of fun here\u2014great for this stage in my career. I didn\u2019t want to go to a school that was similar to those I had already led; this is different because it is a school that is connected to a college, so there is a novelty to it that keeps me interested and growing. And there\u2019s a real challenge here, and a real opportunity, to move this school to a new level.\u201d<\/p>\n

BC: What do you see at the Campus School that is unique, or different from the institutions where you have worked before? How does the lab school model change your role?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CM: \u201cThe biggest difference is that it\u2019s a lab school. What an opportunity. My role has evolved; initially, this role was conceived of as a principal, an instructional leader, but we expanded my duties to really take on marketing and fundraising and strategic planning, alongside all of the other instructional leadership. It\u2019s more like a Head of School job, which is what I\u2019ve done. I\u2019ve got my hands in lots of different pots, and our relationship with the College has also been amplified; we\u2019re getting more support and connection to leadership at the College, which is great for us as a school. The College, for example, is helping to fund this new curriculum position for which we\u2019re hiring\u2014a senior level person who will do all of the important curriculum work that we have planned. The curriculum person will also be teaching a college course at Smith, and I\u2019ll be teaching a course. For me, that\u2019s great, because I have taught on the college level and loved it; working with children and working with college students is going to be amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

BC: What is your proudest accomplishment inside of education? And outside of education?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CM: \u201cInside of education, as a teacher, it\u2019s when you have an impact on a person. I can think back to my teaching days when I affected this high school student, and I know because I run into these people years later, and they tell me, and that\u2019s really rewarding. As a leader, it\u2019s when you can advance an entire institution, not just academically, but the entire interrelationship of the curriculum, and teacher development, and marketing, and fundraising, and it all feeds in, and the whole thing moves forward together\u2014that\u2019s a really particular kind of challenge, and one that I like, and one that we\u2019re pursuing here. When you\u2019re done at a place and can look back and say \u2018Wow, we really did move forward as an institution,\u2019 that\u2019s a great moment, and it\u2019s always collective work\u2014it\u2019s always team effort\u2014and you\u2019re a part of it as a leader, but it\u2019s a collective effort.<\/p>\n

Outside of school, having children, but also just the challenge of being a human being and continuing to evolve and grow and think\u2014kind of a spiritual growth\u2014is something that takes up a lot of my energy and time. I\u2019m definitely someone who is growth-mindset oriented; it\u2019s all part of a large adventure, and you want to keep excited and interested in life itself, and that\u2019s what I try to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

BC: Was there a teacher or a mentor who inspired you to enter the field of education?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CM: \u201cOh yeah, I was lucky to have many. I can think of Mrs. Miller in sixth grade; I can think of Mr. Gavin in high school; I can think of Father Fay in college\u2014amazing; Bob Berlin in graduate school. Just incredible teachers, and they definitely inspired me. I didn\u2019t go to teacher training; I didn\u2019t study education. But, when I was finished with graduate school and had studied the Humanities, I was left with \u2018What now?.\u2019 I thought about the teachers who had influenced me, and I wanted to do something meaningful, so I thought I would try teaching. And here we are!\u201d<\/p>\n

BC: Did those teachers have similar teaching styles or characteristics that inspired you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CM: \u201cYes, whether they were teaching kindergarten or graduate school, they all cared about me\u2014and every other student they had, I\u2019m sure\u2014as a person. Not just as a student, but as a person. They wanted to help me grow as a person. It\u2019s that unique, personalized attention that a great teacher has for their students\u2014and that my teachers had for me\u2014that has an empowering and amazing outcome.<\/p>\n

I was just writing, actually, about one of my former English teachers and how he created a culture in his classroom that was really respectful of reading. In the moment, it didn\u2019t look like he was working very hard, but looking back I can see how it was a lot of work, and it did elevate us into how we conceive of ourselves as a community of readers. I didn\u2019t see it in that moment; I saw it ten, fifteen, years later, so there\u2019s also that trailing, tailing effect of a teacher, which is always cool to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

BC: How does the Campus School think about community development outside of the curriculum in each classroom? As a whole school, how do you approach the ethos of this institution?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CM: \u201cThere are two responses: One, we are doing some core foundation work in terms of what we regard as our central values and principles, so we\u2019ve revised our mission statement. We\u2019re coming close to finishing some core learning goals, and some core principles, which are not just words on a paper but are real, actual, operating beliefs\u2014so that\u2019s important. But we\u2019re also doing a lot of work on diversity and inclusion. We got a grant from the President of the College to get some training, which was wonderful; we have a Diversity Committee, and we\u2019re looking to one day soon have a Director on our staff to really move this work forward, because it\u2019s so critical. So, both clarifying the foundational beliefs, and then the diversity and inclusion work, are two manifestations of community.\u201d<\/p>\n

BC: What\u2019s a little known fact about \u2018Mr. Marblo\u2019?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CM: \u201cThe musician life, being really into music; in college, I played guitar\u2014back in the early 80s\u2014and I still play. I\u2019m really into music and just wrote something in our newsletter about my first concert, which was David Bowie, and I somehow connected that to our technology taskforce. We\u2019re talking about putting together a Campus School band, as there are a lot of teacher musicians on our staff.\u201d<\/p>\n

BC: Thinking about the future of SCCS, and the future at SCCS, what are some of your tangible goals and hopes?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CM: \u201cAll of our tangible goals and hopes are articulated in our new strategic plan, which we started working on in the spring of 2017 and then had to analyze the financial implications of it, get the College to buy into it, which they did, and now we\u2019re implementing it. The reason we\u2019re doing this is because it will make the experiences of the students better. There were 20 people on the steering committee: parents, teachers. We wanted talent around the table. Part of the discussion was about what a lab school means in the 21st<\/sup> century. The model is one hundred years old, and it kind of faded in the 60s and 70s, but what does it mean to resurrect it and make it stronger now? There\u2019s room on the stage to answer that question. One of our key concepts is that we\u2019re a private school with a public purpose. We want to be open and collaborative with our public school colleagues; we want to serve the region and the profession. This is a dynamic, unique place with lots of possibilities and 91 years of history to build from. We need to keep it fun and interesting and vital.\u201d<\/p>\n

BC: How will you go about tracking that progress?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CM: \u201cI\u2019m a big believer in something Grant Wiggins said. He does a lot of thinking about backward design, and his point is: \u2018You can assemble credible evidence. It may not be quantitative, but it\u2019s credible, and it\u2019s evidence.\u2019 So everything can point to an outcome that\u2019s going to be credible. It might be numeric, like \u2018We\u2019ve grown our enrollment by X.\u2019 But it might be qualitative, in a survey, or an assessment from an outside accrediting agency. That is a big part of what we\u2019re promising, that we will somehow understand the impact of the work that we\u2019re doing, and measure it, and share it in whatever way makes sense. Just as you would do for a student, because you can\u2019t reduce everything a student does to a number. It\u2019s very similar to how you would approach teaching, to how you would approach the managing and leading of a school. Every year, I\u2019ll give an update\u2014a report card\u2014about how we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

BC: Shifting to the topic of your humanities background, are there any authors who influence your approach to education?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CM: \u201cMy approach to education is really rooted in this larger, not religious, but spiritual thing\u2014the idea that it\u2019s about a person growing. The people who really influenced me where when I was sixteen, eighteen, twenty-two\u2014when you\u2019re formative. I think about people like Dosteovsky, Camus, and Kafka; I was struggling to understand them at that age, but they were the ones that shaped the kind of existential realities of life; the challenges of living, of finding your own voice, and reasons, and meaning. A lot of history, a lot of philosophy, some theology mixed in\u2014it\u2019s all a part of what makes you think. It\u2019s the liberal arts. My particular focus was Humanities; that\u2019s what I studied in undergrad, and again in graduate school\u2014which is really this broad-based approach, and that\u2019s how I approach what I think education can and should be. Someone was saying that the Campus School is really a mirror image of a liberal arts college, and that\u2019s really appropriate. The College is our campus. The College is our school. It\u2019s our classroom, and we need to use it and leverage it for the benefit of our students.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Compiled and transcribed by Brittany Collins<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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