School’s Two-Day Summit Sparks Ideas and Engagement
This video kicked off the School's recent summit meeting.
In early August, Principia School held a two-day summit meeting titled “Future Ready: Fueling a Thriving School.” A milestone event in Principia’s history, the summit brought together faculty, staff, alumni, current parents and students, Trustees, and friends of Principia to think big about how best to prepare students for the future.
Many alumni flew in from across the country to join the conversation. In addition, numerous St. Louis-area guests from outside Principia attended the summit to lend their expertise and share ideas about forming partnerships within the local community. With approximately 160 people in attendance, the room was abuzz with enthusiastic exchanges, excellent questions, and a sobering—but never somber—appreciation of the importance of the work at hand.
In welcoming participants, Head of School Travis Brantingham spoke of Principia’s enduring commitment to cultivating vigorous, fearless, unselfish thinkers eager to better humanity (see Principia Policies 6 and 10).
Dean of Innovation and Academics Dr. Peter Dry offered context for the summit’s theme: “future ready.” Through video clips and data, he highlighted the rapid pace of technological change and the impact of artificial intelligence on the workplace. Training students to be future ready means training them for the unknown—for jobs that don’t yet exist and knowledge bases that have yet to be invented. Undaunted by that uncertainty, Brantingham and Dry are confident that—with the spiritual values underpinning Principia and the faculty’s commitment to developing students’ communication, collaboration, and critical thinking skills—the School can produce future-ready graduates prepared to benefit humanity.
The summit facilitator was Dr. Cheri Torres, an expert in the use of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) to prompt positive change. As the name suggests, AI helps organizations identify and build on a strong foundation. In Principia’s case, discussion focused on these key pillars:
- Christian Science values lived boldly
- Diversity, equity, and inclusion: the fuel for a thriving school
- All in! Fully engaged and striving for excellence
Working initially in pairs, participants shared personal highlights related to these topics. Then, in small groups, they pooled their information and tracked common themes. These themes were than shared with the group at large. By the end of the first day, each of the three pillars had a robust collection of ideas associated with it—all grounded in lived experience.
The next day, Torres invited participants to imagine what a thriving, future-ready Principia would look like in 2025—with Christian Science values lived boldly; success fueled by diversity, equity, and inclusion; and the School community fully engaged and striving for excellence. As participants, meeting in small groups, shared their visions for 2025, themes emerged. Each group then shared with the others a skit, poem, song, or drawing representing their themes.
Inspired by these visions of the future, individuals could choose to sponsor an action area or goal to explore further. Roughly 20 sponsored goals emerged. Participants then chose a goal that interested them, and each group identified some of the steps required to achieve their goal and what success would look like. After receiving feedback from others, each goal group created a poster showing initial steps for turning their idea into reality. Participants then had an opportunity to peruse the posters.
With that, the summit ended, but the work continues. The proposals produced are being considered as part of the strategic planning process. Faculty are infusing the energy sparked by the summit into their classes. And participants are strengthening the connections forged during the two days of collective thought and inspiration.
While the summit’s full impact won’t be known until the future (pun intended), its success is beyond question. In her years of leading these exercises, Torres said she had never seen a group generate more ideas so quickly. She clearly caught a glimpse of the Principia difference and noted in her follow-up letter, “I truly believe you have a message our nation of educators and administrators must hear!”
Watch a video about the summit, and hear from summit participants.