Thinking About... Being Present

A DEAN DIGS DEEP: KELSEY ALLEY

Inside a typical middle school, the dean of students spends up to 95% of every day on discipline, and just the few minutes that remain on building relationships and supporting a community of young learners. At Colorado Academy, Middle School Dean of Students Kelsey Alley flips that ratio on its head.

“My biggest priority is being present,” Alley explains. “I’ve been in schools where this job is mainly reactive. But being visible and available to connect with 237 unique kids in the building enables me to be proactive in the work I do: knowing our students, making sure they feel they are supported and valued, and celebrating their efforts. I see myself as their cheerleader.”

 

As the inaugural Dean to occupy a role first created just two years ago by Middle School Principal Nick Malick, Alley came to CA with degrees in inclusive education and school leadership, and is charged with overseeing the one thing that could possibly turn an excellent Middle School experience into an exceptional one: student culture.

“So much of what we spend our time doing here isn’t related to completing tasks or checking boxes,” Malick explains. “What probably matters most is developing wonderful humans who live up to our mission to create curious, kind, courageous, and adventurous learners and leaders. We aim to educate kids who can care for others, who are willing to raise their hand not because they will get a grade for it, but because it’s the right thing to do.”

It’s a sprawling job, with profound implications.

On any given day, Alley can be spotted welcoming Sixth through Eighth Graders as they tumble off the school bus, holding “office hours” to advise leaders of student-driven clubs, hurrying a group lingering between classes off to their next destination, meeting with the members of the Student Action Committee about a spirit activity, seeking out a new student at recess to respond to their quick question, checking in with a concerned parent over the phone or email, cracking up a table of hungry Eighth Graders at lunch, cheering a team as they compete against a local rival, handing out after-school candy (always in limited supply) before Study Hall, or even teaching a class called “Critical Thinking,” a signature Seventh Grade requirement that challenges students to venture “outside the box” by questioning their own beliefs and understanding of the world.

 

Sure, emphasizes Alley—on the surface, many of these encounters might look routine or even mundane, but beneath every celebration of a win or quiet hello, there is much more that goes largely unseen.

Alley and her colleagues who provide outside-the-classroom support and counseling in the Middle School—formally known as the Student Support team—constitute the “backbone” of a three-year experience. The team reinforces the hidden but foundational structure that connects academics to social and emotional growth, athletics, service learning, the arts, and everything in between. It is the depth of that continuity which, along with their mastery of fundamental academic and social skills, ensures CA Middle Schoolers their best chance at success in high school and beyond.

“Creating authentic connections with our students creates a space where kids feel safe taking a risk when everything else is changing.”

–Kelsey Alley, Middle School Dean of Students

“Kids are finding themselves at this age,” observes Alley, “and we know it’s an awkward time. Their identity is shifting, they’re finding new things that they love, and they’re moving away from things they once loved. Creating authentic connections with our students creates a space where kids feel safe taking a risk when everything else is changing.”

Indeed, for Middle Schoolers, almost everything can seem like a risk at times: taking a visible role in shaping the kind of environment they want for themselves and their peers, empathizing with a classmate who might be struggling, speaking up when no one else is stepping in. Yet, explains Malick, this is the kind of courage that CA must cultivate.

‘THE TIME TO MESS UP’

Still, even if student discipline occupies only a fraction of every day, says Alley, it remains an essential ingredient in the growth that she and every adult in the Middle School hope to see from the young people they teach and care for.

“CA is the most ‘restorative’ school I've ever worked in,” she says, referencing a research-based philosophy and set of practices that mostly replace traditional school punishments such as detention and suspension with a community-oriented approach that emphasizes accountability, empathy, and relationships as key to repairing harm and finding solutions to behavioral and interpersonal challenges.

 

“All of us here at CA are closely aligned on wanting to support kids and help them learn from their mistakes. I often tell them, ‘Now’s the time to mess up,’ because the stakes are still a little bit lower than they will be when they get to the Upper School.”

And when things do go wrong, Alley continues, those relationships that she and colleagues have already worked to establish with students and their families mean that difficult conversations are never the first, or last, words they exchange with the school.

“Getting in trouble doesn’t define that connection,” says Alley. “They’re going to hear from me, and there may be consequences, but that’s never going to change our relationship.”

Nor will the consequences themselves, according to Alley. After one group of Eighth Graders at recess decided to play in the water and mud they churned up beneath an athletic field’s irrigation sprinklers, she recounts, they had to sit in their classes, dripping wet, for the remainder of the school day and clean up any mess they tracked into the Middle School. “Natural” consequences like soaked clothing and cleanup duty are “a way for kids to make sense of the situation and learn and grow from it.”

Jokes Malick, “We’ve had kids in our offices who beg us, ‘Please just punish me so I can be done.’ But we always respond, ‘No—your job is to understand what went wrong, and how you can be responsible for taking care of this community we all share.’”

IT TAKES A TEAM

For Alley and her colleagues, balancing an insistence on authentic connection and support with an equal emphasis on accountability when important rules are broken or trust is damaged comes with its own cost. Middle Schoolers, they know, have a keen ability to see through adult words and actions when they aren’t genuine.

“I constantly feel this tug to be in two different places—to walk both sides of a line,” she says. “There’s no question that CA puts students first; we are genuinely student-centered. But within this community, consistency and structure are just as important. I rely heavily on knowing every student as a human being, a whole child, in finding that balance.”

 

Sometimes, it takes the Middle School’s entire roster of teachers and support professionals to get it right. Malick notes that a significant percentage of student support requires a collaborative approach that accounts for social factors, emotional issues, neurodiverse learning styles, and even home life.

“Oftentimes,” he says, “student behavior issues are really symptoms of other things that are going on; just addressing the behavior doesn’t necessarily address the problem.”

Every six-day class cycle, Alley meets with the other members of the Student Support team, Learning Specialist Carmen Martinez and Counselor Abby Johnson, to assess who should be “on their radar,” Alley says—who needs a message of encouragement, who deserves to be celebrated, who is struggling academically or socially.

 

“We each have our own skill sets, ways that we reach kids, and we can bounce ideas off one another,” she recounts. Martinez is an expert at coaching students when they need help keeping up with work and busy schedules, while Johnson is adept at handling individual challenges—anxiety or attention issues, for example—privately and in partnership with families.

Another series of meetings regularly brings together the entire faculty of each grade in the Middle School, so that Alley can hear directly from teachers what’s going well and what’s not. These conversations continue throughout the week, as teachers stop her in the hall for a quick word or pull her aside at recess for a brief conversation.

“A lot of my day is actually spent picking up these little insights into what’s going on with our students in the classroom,” Alley relates.

Knowing every teacher is just as important, she adds. “I put a lot of effort into learning who they are as people as well as educators: If I really want to understand the student experience, then I need to know what their entire day looks like. Who their teachers are matters—their different personalities and teaching styles are one more factor in how well our students are succeeding.”

A TAILORED CURRICULUM

While Alley sprinkles high expectations like pixie dust throughout all her interactions with Middle Schoolers, the majority of the work to help students envision what success should look like takes place through the Advisory program, which Alley has spent the past several years refining.

Once largely in the hands of individual teachers—who as Advisors could bring their own emphasis to different topics such as executive functioning, friendships and relationships, digital citizenship, and much more—the Middle School Advisory program as Alley has restructured it today focuses rigorously on giving every student the critical skills they will need to move from one grade to the next, and from childhood to young adulthood.

“We tailor the Advisory curriculum to whatever important experiences students are managing at that moment.”

–Kelsey Alley

Whether it is time management—a key ingredient in healthy executive functioning—or conflict resolution, says Alley, “We now tailor the Advisory curriculum to whatever important experiences students are managing at that moment.”

Sixth Graders, for example, often must cope with big changes in friendships during their first weeks as Middle Schoolers. That’s why they’ll get Advisory lessons on relationships and communication skills early on: “So that when those changes that we know are coming do occur, they’ll be prepared to navigate them,” Alley explains.

By Eighth Grade, she goes on, students are ready for more discussion around identity, self-determination, and community—themes that will come to define their approaching high school years.

 

Explains Malick, “With the Advisory program, we’re intentionally creating a space where students can discuss and try out ideas about everything from etiquette at recess or lunch to deep moral issues—How do we treat each other? What role should ‘popularity’ play in our Middle School?”

“I have a lot of conversations with kids and with families about how we’re building the skill of consistency,” Alley adds. “Who you show up as every single day matters, and predictability—showing up consistently as the same version of yourself day to day—is one of the most important skills that students need in order to be successful later on.”

FINDING THEIR VOICE

Witnessing that “pipeline” of success—as students grow from awkward Sixth Graders to capable Eighth Graders ready for the Upper School—is one of the biggest rewards cherished by Alley and her colleagues.

“Middle School is just a challenging time,” she says, “and for them to persevere through that and do well in high school and then come back and say, ‘I figured it out’—I love seeing that growth.”

Often, what Alley’s students are figuring out is their own voice. Programs like Advisory, student-led clubs, or Eighth Grade service periods, she says, are all ways the Middle School pushes students to be curious about themselves and their world, to step outside of the familiar and discover what genuinely inspires them.

“For 12-, 13-, and 14-year-olds, opportunities to make your own decision or choose your own direction are few and far between,” says Alley. “But giving them those opportunities at school helps them feel like they’re being heard, and their voices matter.”

 

From dreaming up their own service initiatives to lobbying successfully for modifications to an outdated dress code, students have driven real change in CA’s Middle School. Many examples have started with the meetings that Alley and Malick hold regularly with Advisories in each grade.

These “donut conversations” (every meeting starts with Malick passing around a box of sweet treats) range from serious concerns such as inclusive bathroom signage to fun discussions about new sports equipment for recess; but no matter the topic, says Malick, “It turns out if you pay attention to kids in all aspects of their lives, they see that you care about them more, and they care about you more, and there’s suddenly much more at stake for everyone in the room.”

According to Alley, “We value that feedback and those ideas; it makes the Middle School experience feel like their own.”

Malick offers an example of how student voice and agency increasingly lead the way in his division. Recently, he recounts, he and Alley attended a Middle School Town Hall meeting—and neither one of them said a single word; students on stage did all the talking, previewing an upcoming spirit activity, promoting a sustainability initiative, and more.

“That was a goal when Kelsey joined the Middle School two years ago: to see students themselves driving those kinds of events from start to finish.”

Alley mentors the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Graders on the Student Action Committee (SAC), the group responsible for running Town Halls and envisioning other ways to bring the Middle School together. “There are plenty of times in our discussions when I’m thinking, ‘That’s not how I would do it,’” she admits. “But the benefits of hearing their ideas and running with them and figuring out how to make it work far outweigh any minor setbacks.”

Besides, she says, no Middle Schooler would make it through a Town Hall if she and Malick were the only speakers. “They’re much more inclined to listen to their peers.”

 

Still, maybe students are listening to the grownups after all. In a recent SAC meeting, students talked about what they were learning about resolving disagreements.

“When people argue, ‘Miss Alley’ steps in—in the best way,” according to Wynston Unger, a Seventh Grade representative. “And a skill we’re learning is how to be that Miss Alley in a disagreement—be that second person stepping in. Because sometimes people’s ideas are just too big, and it takes another perspective to find common ground.”