Rachel Nisselson says she could never have a 9-to-5 job, sitting in a cubicle, wondering about the purpose of her work.  

“Here the purpose seems really clear — and every day is different,” Rachel says. 

She is sitting for this interview, but in the Henry R. Kravis ’63 Center for Excellence in Teaching, hardly a cubicle. The glass walls look out to the library, one of the busiest places on campus. Just a reminder of that clear purpose: everything starts and ends with the students. The Kravis Center seeks to guide and nurture Loomis faculty through various forms of professional development. 

Rachel, a teacher in the Modern & Classical Languages Department, is in her first year as the director of the Kravis Center after having served as an associate director for seven years. Rachel, who has taught languages for about 25 years, joined the Loomis Chaffee faculty in 2013. She has served as chair of the Modern & Classical Languages Department, taught French and Spanish, worked as a dorm faculty member, and coached squash. She continues to teach French and coach squash. 

“One of my mottos this year is ‘All work with students is teaching,’” Rachel says, “so I am hoping to facilitate and participate in more conversations between teachers, coaches, dorm staff. … And somewhat similarly, I am hoping to facilitate connections between the departments that have traditionally been seen as academic departments and those that have not, so I have been observing some art classes and theater rehearsals, which have been really interesting.” 

One of the internal professional development opportunities this year is Deeper Learning 2.0, led by teachers Sam Lagasse and K.C. Lawler, which follows last year’s Deeper Learning 1.0, based on the book, In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School by Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine. The book discusses core, or traditional, academic classes and learning opportunities in the periphery, such as debate, sports, and the arts, says Rachel. “It is those opportunities on the periphery that students often find more enjoyable, more rewarding, where they have deeper learning, and so how can we make the connections between [the core and the periphery]?” 

“We don’t have the answers to that yet,” Rachel says, “but I think things like project-based learning and place-based learning are ways of starting to get there.” 

Loomis Chaffee now offers many project- and place-based learning opportunities for students, and for faculty. Rachel mentions two new opportunities for faculty. One involves paddling on the Connecticut and Farmington rivers to learn about using the waterways as teaching opportunities and think about place-based education. The program is a collaboration between the Kravis Center and the Alvord Center for Global & Environmental Studies. The second new opportunity, “The Loomis Experience On and Off the Island: Past, Present and Future,” involves exploring the history of the school and making connections with members of the Windsor community to discover ways to get involved off the Island. School archivist Karen Parsons is leading the session for the Kravis Center. 

The Kravis Center recently moved its blog to Substack, an electronic newsletter platform that provides the ability for posts that can combine text, visual images or video, and allows greater interaction with users. The blog is now called “Learning Loop.”  

As the educational world changes, the Kravis Center seeks to pivot, too. Matt Johnson, the director of educational and administrative AI initiatives and an associate director of the Kravis Center, heads a faculty working group on artificial intelligence that looks at whether the use of AI is aligned with best practices around teaching and learning. 

There is a lot to think about these days. 

“AI is on the top of our minds certainly,” Rachels says and then lists others. The importance of wellness in student learning. Innovative new ways to teach and learn. collaborating with other centers at the school. Offering opportunities not only for new faculty, but also for veteran teachers, such as a teacher coaching program led by Ned Heckman, an associate of the center and a science teacher.  

Matt and Ned are joined by two other associate directors of the Kravis Center, history and English teacher Fiona Mills; and Lauren Riva, head of the Math Department and in her first year in the Kravis Center. 

All of what the Kravis Center has done in the past — and what it might do in the future — are reasons that Rachel applied to head up the center.  

“AI” can stand for something else, too, as in “always interested” — in new ways to teach and learn. 

“It seemed like a great opportunity for personal and professional growth,” Rachel says, “and we are at an interesting moment in education. AI is posing challenges and opportunities. We’re still talking about the repercussions of COVID and learning loss and what that means for our students. We have a new head of school [Jody Reilly Soja is in her second year] and a new [Loomis Chaffee] strategic plan, so it is an exciting time” to be thinking about the future of teaching and learning.