“This,” Tori Jueds said, gazing excitedly into a small, resin-filled orb, “is the Millennium Falcon.”
The new head of school stared at the tiny replica of the world-renowned spaceship, frozen in time in its glass galaxy.
“I’m a big fan of Star Wars, with a special soft spot in my heart for the very first of those movies that was ever made, which became known as Episode 4: A New Hope,” she said, picking up another figurine. “This is Obi-Wan Kenobi from that movie.”
Examining the items on her desk and bookshelf, she gestured toward a small stone emblazoned with the words May the Force Be With You. “Your principal, Chris Levy, made me this rock in the Innovation Lab.” Her office also featured photos of friends and family, a wooden cutout of New Jersey and a few Halloween-themed plushies.
Most of the shelf space, though, had been taken over by tiny grasshoppers. A grasshopper that doubled as a stapler, complete with popsicle-stick legs. A grasshopper pull-along toy. A giant wooden carving of a grasshopper. A PEZ-dispenser grasshopper.
The vast majority of the grasshoppers, Jueds said, had been passed down to her by former Head of School Russell Shaw. “There’s actually more, because we recently rearranged the furniture. So there are ones in boxes,” she admitted.
As it turns out, grasshoppers aren’t the only thing Tori Jueds has taken over from Shaw. As his successor, she has inherited three student bodies, hundreds of staff members and tens of thousands of square feet of land.
“I told [Shaw], ‘You know, the only thing that I’m disappointed about is that I won’t get a chance to actually work with you,” she said, smiling. “He was very organized. He [prepared] topics he would want to tell me about to make sure I’d have history or backstory or details that other people might not know, so that I could come in as informed as possible.”
Jueds, surrounded by her cloud of grasshoppers (and yes, that is the collective noun for grasshoppers), now leads Georgetown Day School. After dozens of try-outs, she’s finally entering the arena.
Her first move? Mastering the art of spectating.
The Opening Weeks
“Picture a campus that’s quite lively with GDS summer camps but very, very different from the rest of the school year,” Jueds said, reminiscing on her first few days on the job. “You have faculty that were on their summer break. [Students] are on their summer break. Members of the staff were taking some vacation time [or were] remote. So, lots of kids at summer camp, and it felt quiet.”
Despite the relatively abnormal absence of students when she arrived for her first day on July 1, Jueds was still able to capture the essence of the campus she would preside over; she’d begun meeting with Shaw every other week starting in February, so she already knew quite a lot about the space.
While the early discussions were held on Zoom, the two began meeting in person once Jueds moved to D.C. Jueds said the conversations helped to fill her in on GDS’ long history and supplied her with knowledge of its ongoing administrative projects.
“I feel myself to be very similar in important ways to my predecessor. Every now and then, Russell would tell me about a situation and a judgment call that he had made, and I would think, ‘Yeah, I would’ve made the same judgment call,’” Jueds said. “So when I would see that, I would think, ‘Oh, I’m hopeful that people will find there’s some continuity between the two of us.’”
In addition, Director of Student Community Programming Bobby Asher led Jueds on a tour of the high school building, highlighting the history of different spaces around the school.
“One of my favorite spots is by the math department [office], where you can see the doorbell from the old days of the school,” Asher said. “And that was a moment. We kind of paused at the doorbell and thought about how, you know, typically, a doorbell, you’d see at a home, but this is a place that feels like home.”
“This place is just always alive,” he continued. “I joked a little bit [about] how we used to call it the Georgetown Day and Night School.”
Asher said he appreciated the chance to show Jueds around and “share some of the history and the school culture while walking the halls and seeing pictures and seeing classrooms.”
“It just was so fascinating just to look around the dance studio, and Veronica [Ampey]’s training room, and the little different classrooms and where they’re located, and the Impact Lab, and the college counseling office,” Jueds recalled. “[Asher] knows so much, so he was able to tell me how the building evolved.”
Truly, though, Jueds’ preparation began long before she stepped onto campus—she memorized each and every teacher’s name prior to her arrival.
“The names piece, I’m still making progress on [for] the students. I’m sorry it’s taking me so long. It’s going to take me a while,” Jueds said. “But I figured the employee community [is] something I can do in advance. So I sat down with the employee directories—everybody’s picture and name and what they did.
“But then, that’s just names and titles,” Jueds continued. “Who is everyone? What do they care about? How long have they been here? What things are exciting to them about school? What things are frustrating? What are the joys that I can help them celebrate? What are the challenges that I can try to help them meet? You’ve got to sit down and have as many conversations as you can. Hours are limited in the day. You look for any opportunity. It’s so fun.”
Throughout the summer, Jueds encouraged teachers to schedule meetings with her to discuss their favorite—and least favorite—aspects of GDS. While history teacher Sue Ikenberry didn’t sustain a one-on-one conversation with Jueds, instead joining a discussion between her and fifth-grade dean Judy Brown, she appreciated Jueds’ eagerness to hear from her and her colleagues. “I can’t say that either [former Head of School Peter Branch] or [Shaw] ever did that,” Ikenberry said.
On Thursday, Jueds attended an English department meeting. “She asked, ‘Could I come? I’m interested in hearing what’s on your department’s mind,’” English Department Chair Katherine Dunbar said. “That’s something that hasn’t happened before, with a head of school saying, ‘Can I come and just talk to you all?’ So, to me, that felt glorious.”
Establishing a Routine (Or a Lack Thereof)
Instead of attempting to outline what she does on a day-to-day basis, Jueds elected to separate her responsibilities into different tiers. “You have long-term priorities that stretch a year or multiple years. And, obviously, the top priority for me this whole first year, and then some, was quite simply to get to know the community. Because you can’t do that in a tutorial. You can’t have someone sit down and tell you, ‘This is what the community is like.’”
While the bustling GDS environment is certainly new to her, Jueds said she enjoys its unpredictability. “There’s no normal ‘day in the life,’” she explained. “One of the things I love about my job is that it is incredibly varied.”
Even before the start of the school year, Jueds began getting to know the students, visiting the senior class on their overnight trip for a few hours. On the trip, Jueds “made an effort to really get to know all the seniors and kind of understand how the culture of GDS is and what we loved about it,” senior Leela Rustgi said. Rustgi added that Jueds got to know the seniors during downtime, a meal and a bonfire.
SSC president and senior Willa Wible said Jueds was eager to participate in the beginning-of-year senior traditions. Wible recalled reaching out to Jueds to see if she would participate in the senior run-in. “She was very responsive, and immediately was like, ‘Yes, I’d love to help support this,’” Wible said. “She came when we asked her to, and she was in the [run-in] video, which was awesome.”
Wible said she both appreciated Jueds’ willingness to get to know the school and would understand if she wanted to start implementing changes.
“I think taking time to acclimate is a great idea,” Wible said. “At the same time, whenever you have a new leader coming into a space, they’re going to have a vision that’s slightly different from the school, just because we’re all different people and we all have our own thoughts. I don’t think that’s a problem. As long as she’s not doing things that are against the interest of the majority and are against the safety of the students.”
“I’ve heard a very open, warm, and genuine voice [from Jueds]. [She’s] very willing to share who she is,” high school librarian Rhona Campbell said
Campbell said that, prior to Jueds’ appointment, she asked Jueds about how she would help GDS navigate the derogatory depictions of marginalized groups featured in many older texts and theatrical productions while still acknowledging the reality of the time periods they were written in.
“Her reaction was, ‘Let me tell you: We did Bye Bye Birdie at one of my schools.’ And, of course, that was funny, because we had just finished Bye Bye Birdie,” Campbell explained. While Jueds acknowledged that those types of outdated productions must be handled delicately, Campbell said, “she also aligned with what I believe to be the GDS understanding of the appropriate way: to not shy away from challenges.”
Dusting Off Old Blueprints
Among the many early-stage projects Jueds has taken over are plans to optimize the use and profitability of GDS’ assorted plots of land.
Four of those properties sit on 42nd Street, directly across from the GDS campus. Since the school’s acquisition of the buildings in 2013, the administration has considered multiple possibilities for their use. Past ideas included converting the buildings into affordable housing for GDS faculty and creating a preschool.
One of Shaw’s earliest plans, disseminated to the neighborhood in 2015, intended for some of the properties to be converted into low-rise apartment complexes with retail space on the bottom floors. Others, he proposed, could be made into townhouses. Both developments would help to generate revenue. The buildings have remained largely idle over the past decade or so; Jueds told the Bit that two are being leased to tenants, one is vacant and one houses GDS administrative offices. (The vacant one sustained superficial damage after an electric car crashed into it on Sept. 30.)
“We’re having a look at those,” Jueds said. “These are not decisions for me to make unilaterally, but to think with the Board of Trustees and school leadership and talk about what is the best use for those buildings.”
Sophomore Stella Rosenthal, meanwhile, hopes Jueds will consider converting the buildings into more specialized athletic facilities. “We have a bunch of teams that go very far away from the school to play,” she said. “[The space could be] a tennis court, maybe, or some sort of similar court, or potentially a pool, although I know the area’s a bit small.”
Separate from the prospective renovation of the standalone buildings is a possible extensive, large-scale expansion of GDS’ existing high school facilities. Plans for that project, too, were developed during Shaw’s tenure but never came to fruition.
“I’m starting to return to some planning and ideas that were generated a few years ago, dust those off, update them and then see what’s feasible for us to do,” Jueds said.
Looking Towards the Future—With an Eye on the Past
A number of changes took place just prior to and in the wake of Jueds’ first day at GDS, including the appointment of separate eleventh- and twelfth-grade deans, the lengthening of community time and the reintroduction of open forum discussions among high school students and faculty. Most of those ideas, however, had arisen far in advance of Jueds’ arrival. “Those [decisions] are things [High School Principal Chris Levy] may have talked to [Jueds] about, but those are not things that came from [Jueds],” Assistant Principal for Academics James Elish said.
As a result, Jueds finds herself piloting a ship—or dare we say spaceship?—through a sea of changes that were already in the works when she arrived. While she has continued to develop GDS’ philosophy on AI, sharing an employee usage guidebook and a “Statement on Philosophy and Approach” with the parent body on Oct. 23, many of her plans are still in their early stages.
Someday, too, Jueds may have to shield GDS’ DEI programming from the barrage of federal regulations seemingly headed its way. For now, though, she’s learning everything she can about the crew she’s captaining.
“[GDS] is definitely in the right place. How do we make sure that we continue to be in the right place as the world around us changes?” Jueds said. “I mean, the world is changing in lots of ways. This wonderful city is changing, and the people who live here. So how do we anticipate what that’s going to look like for the school?”
“I want her to be bringing her spirit, her intelligence, her energy and her expertise to us, but I think she’s also not moving forward without thinking hard about who we are and honoring who we are,” Dunbar said.
“[Jueds’] theme for this year is a theme of hope, right? How do we find hope in what we do here professionally, in what we are doing here as learners and as students, at a time in the world where hope is hard to come by in some places?” Elish said. “Trying to inculcate that feeling is one of the things she’s concerned with.”
For now, GDS, not unlike Jueds’ Millennium Falcon, has been carefully preserved in a layer of resin. It lies in wait, observing the outside world and anticipating its next big mission. In the meantime, Jueds herself has something else to take care of.
Below the assortment of grasshoppers, on one of the very bottom levels of her bookshelf, sat exactly sixteen books—a smorgasbord of novels, memoirs and how-to guides, among other genres.
“For sixteen years, Russell [Shaw] picked one book per graduating class, which I think is a really wonderful tradition,” Jueds said. “He left me with a copy of each of the sixteen books that he gave to seniors.”
“I’m going to get to build on that collection,” she said. “Every commencement.”
“Isn’t that cool?”