New Faculty Reflect on Their First 100 Days at Riverdale

The Riverdale community has grown by 25 new faculty and staff members this school year. Back in October, the Riverdale Review interviewed each of them as a way to introduce them to the broader community. Now, a few months later, we decided to catch up with a few of them to see how their inaugural year at Riverdale is going. Among them are Ms. Kellie Taylor, Mr. Jack Lattimore, Dr. Zane Curtis-Olsen, and Ms. Sylvia Miller. This year, Riverdale has also welcomed a new Head of Upper School, Mr. Mike Velez, and a new Assistant Head of School for Strategy and Operations, Ms. Hanifa Barnes.

Dr. Curtis-Olsen came to Riverdale from Bard High School, and was excited to teach at a school with “smaller class sizes” where he would have more of a chance to work “closely with students” and continue to enjoy the “extent to which faculty work with one another.” Now, as a teacher of History I and Constructing America, Dr. Curtis-Olsen has been pleasantly surprised by the “amount of support” he has received from his colleagues. He hopes to become more involved with that collaborative community at large once he fully settles in.

Ms. Taylor, who previously taught technical theater in her hometown of Tempe, Arizona, continues to adjust to her new position as a Middle and Upper School technical theater teacher and, like Dr. Curtis-Olsen, was looking forward to joining “a collaborative community that strives for excellence.” While stage-managing pro- ductions and constructing scenery, she found that “the relationships [she] has built with the students and faculty” have been the highlight of her first semester at Riverdale, and her original expectations and hopes have been exceeded.

Ms. Miller came to Riverdale from a smaller school where she was, in fact, the only Spanish teacher. When coming to Riverdale, she was excited to join a department with several other Span- ish teachers and be part of a collaborative group. Like Ms. Taylor, her expectations have also been surpassed. Ms. Miller reflects that she is pleased to teach at a school where her “students really care about Spanish class” and retains the goal of helping them become more comfortable speaking Spanish.

Mr. Lattimore has gotten his start teaching in the Math Department as a Penn Fellow, a mentorship program which allows teachers earning a master’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education to gain classroom experience. He is pleased to join a community where “wonderful” and “supportive” teachers and students have more opportunities to interact, unlike his previous experience as a teacher’s assistant in college. Mr. Lattimore remains excited to further his relationships with students in the second semester and continue to teach Riverdale students with a growth mindset.

Ms. Barnes joined RCS this fall as the Assistant Head of School for Strategy and Operations. Ms. Barnes was drawn to our school by its amazing campus and Riverdale’s reputation for kindness, community, and teamwork. In her role, she supports many key areas of school life, like hiring, food, security, risk management, and technology, that enable Riverdale to run smoothly and ensure the students have a safe and enjoyable school experience. She “loves the problem-solving aspect of [her] work” and looks forward to further collaboration with her cohorts to become a more “cohesive, effective, and efficient team.”

Mr. Velez came to Riverdale as the new Head of Upper School and retains the goal of furthering the quality of “student life” at Riverdale by focusing on how schools, “regardless of size or endowment,” allocate “the hours in a day.” As a former administrator at Choate-Rosemary Hall in Connecticut, Mr. Velez arrived at Riverdale with a sense of the ways in which schools structure their students’ schedules. He is eager to use this perspective to further the quality of the time Riverdale’s day students spend at school. Though he is excited to further the quality of the way students spend their time, Mr. Velez is simply happy to be part of a school with “such an excellent reputation.”