"We Take Girls Seriously"

4/1/2024

Academic Dean, Dr. Heather Mansfield

Dr. Heather Mansfield is in her 20th school year serving as the Academic Dean for DSHA. As a part of her role, she oversees the direction of the DSHA curriculum, and the institutional approach to college-prep academics. Mansfield and the DSHA teaching faculty understand that education is a long game, and that the strategy behind the approach is keenly important—from both institutional and individual student perspectives. Mansfield often says, “DSHA takes girls seriously.” The following Q&A outlines what that means—the art, the science, and why it matters for the young women at DSHA.

Q: How would you summarize DSHA’s overall strategic approach to college-prep education in the 2023-24 school year?

A: DSHA excels in helping our students learn how to learn and knowing how to best use resources to figure out what you need. This is the best gift we can give our students. “Figuring it out” can be a messy process, yet it is the love, humor, and support of our faculty, counselors, and campus ministers who help students wade through the messy and complicated process.

Q: What have we learned over the years that has evolved into our current strategic approach to college-prep academics?

A: Our faculty’s approach to teaching continues to evolve as our students evolve. Teaching is an art and a science—the art is learning about each student as an individual young person, and as a learner. Is there a student who is very risk-averse? How do we nudge her into a bit of “safe discomfort”? Is this a student who consistently takes on too much as a measure of her self-worth? How can we encourage her to say no to a few things so her yeses are more meaningful? These are the kinds of ideas that move through a teacher’s mind when looking out at a classroom full of students. And this is the calculus that teachers weigh when they think about creating a new type of assessment or when they decide that they can’t assume teenagers know how to collaborate effectively, but that they must provide direct instruction on how to collaborate. Additionally, helping our students manage their own emotional health has become a much bigger part of each teacher’s professional life here. We’ve recently had Dr. Lisa Damour, who came to campus to discuss her book Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls, in order to learn how we can adapt to best understand and serve our students.

Q: What did we learn from our recent accreditation process with Cognia (third-party accreditation

organization based in Alpharetta, GA) that you would like our current families an alumnae to know?

A: Following my last point on helping our students manage their emotional lives and health, DSHA was commended for how well we do that—that we pay very close attention to each student’s well-being in our school—whether in the classroom, in Campus Ministry, on an athletic team or co-curricular—we pay attention. This an action—we engage, we actively observe, we meet to discuss our observations and analysis in order to best meet the needs of our students.

Q: How does the DSHA faculty deliver on this each day?

A: Our faculty are so plugged in and so, so aware. We have a school building full of experts in their disciplines—seasoned professionals have advanced, specialized degrees; who present at conferences; who network with educators from across the country around best practices and cutting-edge pedagogy. And they bring all of that plus they listen, and ask, and connect, and adjust. They watch out for students’ growth across all planes of their whole-person—intellectual, social, emotional, and spiritual —and nudge them to take more risks in learning, to try new approaches, or be open to more complexity.

Our faculty are keenly aware that the art and science of their profession is a constant juggling act—they ensure that students are engaging with rigorous content (the “science”) but for compelling content to even move from introduction to application, teachers must pay attention to the learners: what else is going on in the lives of our students? Our faculty work hard to create warm, fun, inviting, and intentional classrooms that are safe places to stretch, take intellectual risks, to set high standards for each other, and to model the importance of showing up and connecting.

Q: How does the unique all-girls environment affect our approach to college-prep academics?

A: At DSHA, we take girls seriously. The all-girls environment provides young women with a myriad of examples of inspiring leaders—their fellow classmates and the alumnae who have gone before them. Girls hold all of the leadership roles, they are the robotics winners, the Latin Convention leaders, captains on sports teams, leaders on retreats, and in the spotlight on stage. Girls are immersed in this environment of inspiration and motivation. They experience girls’ leadership, excellence, ministry to one another, strength, integrity, and drive—all as normal ways for a girl to be. A DSHA parent once said to me, “When my daughter graduated from DSHA, she went out into the world with the expectation that she would be taken seriously.” And that’s what we do here. Our graduates leave here ready to contribute to the world because we expect them to contribute.

Q: What are some of the common things you hear from our graduates about how DSHA prepared them for college?

A: It is one of my greatest joys to hear from students about how they are jumping into the college environment overly prepared. Some of the most common things we hear are: “I was so well prepared for college: I know how to study; I go to my professors’ office hours, my paper/presentation was held up as an example for other students.” We also often hear girls say they are the most prepared of everyone they meet in terms of being ready to write a college-level paper. One of the most common things I hear girls say is, “I am the only girl in my class who consistently participates.” (Specialized Studies Department Chair and Mathematics Faculty) Connie Farrow and I recently heard from Sophie Paruzynski, DSHA ’23, who is now a freshman at the University of Minnesota and pursuing a computer engineering major. Her email was a perfect summary of why a DSHA education matters, and what the college-prep pay-off is at the next level—from time management and collaboration, to approaching her coursework feeling prepared, and perhaps most importantly, navigating resources well and being a contributor in a male-dominated field. This type of preparation is what sets DSHA apart.

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