Understanding Upper School Placement: How We Help Students Find the Right Academic Path

A Collaborative Culture: Changing Campus Energy Through Student Agency

In this episode, Assistant Head of School for Community, Equity, and Student Success Mia Burton sits down with Joelle Tam, Dean of Student Life and Community, to explore the power of student-led leadership. Joelle shares how shifting from doing things to students to doing things with them radically alters school culture and deepens a student’s sense of belonging. Learn how Flint Hill creates an environment where students actively drive their own experiences — from orientation to club creation to community food drives — and why this collaborative approach changes everything.

The Hidden Curriculum: Social Dynamics and Resilience at School

It’s easy to spot a student who is struggling with a math test. It’s much harder to see a student who feels disconnected or lost in the social hierarchy. Dean of Student Life and Community Joelle Tam and Assistant Head of School for Community, Equity, and Student Success Mia Burton discuss the non-academic “hidden curriculum” — the social dynamics that every teenager navigates. They talk through how Flint Hill identifies and supports students through shifting peer groups and digital-age conflicts, offering advice on how parents can ask the right questions to understand how their children are really feeling.

The Reading Roadmap: From Playful Sounds to Fluent Readers

In this episode, host Christine Dwyer, Language Arts Department Chair, sits down with veteran Kindergarten teacher Michele Scadron to explore the “science of reading” and its transformative impact on early literacy instruction. The conversation details how structured decoding and encoding techniques shift young learners from intuitive guessers to independent readers and writers. Listeners will walk away with practical strategies to foster a literacy-rich environment at home, on the go, and throughout the upcoming summer break.

Prep for College by Choosing Authenticity Over a ‘Perfect Application’

What should I be doing right now to get into college? It’s a question every high school family asks their College Advising team, but the answer might not be what you expect. In this episode, host Susan Chiarolanzio, Director of College Advising, is joined by Andrew Kane, Associate Director of College Advising, to discuss why the best way to prepare for college is simply to focus on having a great high school experience. Instead of chasing a flawless resume, Andrew and Suzy explore how focusing on character, habits, and resilience creates a more successful — and less stressful — path to higher education. They talk about the importance of authentic engagement, explaining why admissions officers can easily spot the difference between a student who truly cares and one who is just “checking boxes.”

AI: Hype Vs. Reality

In this inaugural live-audience episode of Flint Hill School’s podcast Imagine What’s Possible, host Meredith VanDuyne sits down with alum Arjun Gupta ’08, founder and chief technologist of MokshAi. Arjun cuts through the mainstream hype to explore AI’s true realities, rapid acceleration, and impact on white-collar productivity. He offers actionable insights for modern enterprises, sharing how businesses can successfully navigate AI integration by leaning into relationship-driven trust, providing deep context to automated tools, and prioritizing specific, high-volume workflows for a real return on investment.