Mary Keever, Head of School, Westchester Country Day School

In an interview with Invest:, Mary Keever, head of school at Westchester Country Day School, discussed how family expectations, technology, and new career pathways are reshaping education. “We are preparing our students for whatever that path is, and we want to help them feel confident by the time they get to make that decision so that they know the next best step for them,” Keever said.

What changes over the past year have had the greatest impact on Westchester Country Day School, and what have you learned as head of school?

This is my third year, but it feels like my first. I am still learning, and business is the same as education in that regard: no two days are the same, and no two years are the same. I have learned something different every single year.

Right now in education, there is a growing trend in school choice. Traditionally, families research, visit, and select a school for a certain division, lower, middle, or upper, if not for their child’s entire K-12 experience. Now families are considering school choices every year, and the options are increasing: public, independent, charter, hybrid, and homeschooling. In our area, we are seeing a growing trend of homeschooling. 

After COVID, a lot of parents felt like the way their teenage children were able to navigate virtual school made sense to them, and that they could continue to do that on their own. A lot of families are seeing that when they homeschool, they can be done with classes and coursework by noon, and then they can do something together as a family. If they are year-round athletes, they can go to extra or longer lessons or practices.

Technically, that is true, but what they are missing from that 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. experience is the in-person socialization and connection to other students and their teachers. Our social-emotional curriculum is purposeful and thoughtful and geared toward developing lifelong skills. 

How are family expectations changing, and what are families and students looking for in their school experience today?

Education is changing. It is no longer a place where you memorize or spend time listening to a teacher lecture. Education today really has to be about building skills of flexibility, adaptability, communication, and creativity because technology can provide all the rest.

I feel like we as an institution, and most educators I know in general, have adapted to that way of thinking. We are still helping parents understand that, even if they feel it in their own workplace, they are still relying on their experience as a student. They are still holding on to the way they learned, whether that was homework, doing times tables, or memorizing a poem. That way is extinct or should be right now.

What the world is looking for is those soft skills, and they cannot be taught by memorizing them. They have to be taught in person, through innovative methods that help students learn how to collaborate.

We are a one-to-one school, and I say that lightly because, especially after COVID, we are taking a step back and looking at the ways we are using technology. We need to embrace all the wonderful ways technology can help us be efficient and learn more deeply, but we also have to realize that our students do not need to be in front of a screen all day, every day. Our younger students, in particular, do not need to be inundated with all that screen time.

We embraced the one-to-one idea, and now we are realizing that we still embrace it, but we need to make sure we are using technology in a purposeful, thoughtful way. That is another area where we are educating parents because most families have multiple screens in their homes that they are using at all times. Even our youngest children are spending a lot of time on screens. Some of that is positive, and some of it is not.

In our classroom setting, we want to make sure children are getting the interaction with each other that they need and that they are getting outside and getting to do free play on the playground. Imagination and childhood games were such a part of my upbringing. We would go outside and play with neighborhood children until it grew dark. The skills and tools that were developed through those experiences are not necessarily happening as naturally now.

How are you helping students use technology, including social media, more thoughtfully?

The way children of all ages navigate technology is seamless for them. It is like an extension of their body. They do not even hesitate.

Where we need to move carefully and thoughtfully is in teaching them how to use the social media side of technology respectfully and how to present themselves through their technology. They are inundated with a lot of examples of doing that poorly. We are trying to build all of that programming into our already full curriculum.

What work are you doing to better prepare students for careers that are rapidly evolving or may not exist yet?

Our school curriculum has not changed as much as the rest. We have always been a school that focused not only on academic essentials, but also on preparing developing citizens, teaching them how to be good friends and how to be respectful of different ideas.

Where we are making heavy changes is in middle school and high school, and in helping our teachers develop their craft in a way that is student-centered. One example is a program we are starting this year in upper school, which we will then backtrack to middle school. Each grade level will have a specific focus.

For ninth grade, the focus will be community service: how to help others, how to get to know different agencies in our community, and how to get to know different ways students can serve. Everything they do that year will focus on that.

The sophomore year will focus on research and how to learn about things that are interesting to them instead of the teacher simply saying what they are going to research. We want them to learn these skills through something important to them. It also has a public speaking component.

Their junior year will focus on entrepreneurship, hopefully building on those previous two years and exploring an idea or passion. Then, in their senior year, they will incorporate all of that into community-based internships.

We have had pieces of all these components, but we are turning this into what we are calling a signature experience for each year for each student. By the time they get to graduation, they are ready to go. If the next step is college, great. We have always prided ourselves on being a college-prep school, but we are recognizing that there are a lot of different pathways right now.

We are preparing our students for whatever that path is, and we want to help them feel confident by the time they get to make that decision so that they know the next best step for them.

How does Westchester Country Day School differentiate itself from other schools in the area?

Our distinction is that we are teaching children how to think, not what to think. We are focused on teaching them that different people have different values, belief systems, experiences, cultures, and backgrounds. It is important to learn about all of those things and to understand how to coexist and how to make your own beliefs and experiences stronger by learning from someone else’s.