Introducing the new Blog Curator

Researcher and storyteller extraordinaire Brené Brown says,  

“Connection is the energy that’s created when people feel seen, heard, and valued.”

– Brene Brown, when speaking of the power of connectiveness

This informs all of my work and keeps me motivated to utilize the power of words to create connections at SLOCA and beyond. I am curious about people, communication, and collaboration. I love learning how people jump for joy, traverse through troubles, and thrive together. I believe most successes come from effective communication and compassion for oneself and others. I’m a reader, museum-goer, list-maker, hiker, enthusiasm enthusiast, a former collegiate rower, and a green thumb. Besides my career in education and social media, I’ve had the pleasure of having fantastic wines in my glass as I worked in the tasting room in Paso Robles’ winningest wineries. Education and communication are present in all these places and I thrive in them! Brené Brown’s aforementioned quote professionally resonates with me as I hope to build connections through communication as I see, hear, and value the San Luis Obispo Classical Academy community.  

My family have been Grizzlies at SLOCA since 2021. This Fall, I’m taking the reins of SLOCA’s Down Home blog from Wei Waterman. She curated the blog for over a year, bringing you valuable insight and engrossing historical references about Hatshepsut, the Friday Faces series, and many on-campus reflections. Readers know I’ve got some pretty great footsteps to follow! Just like my Trojan rowing team relied on communication when racing at a regatta, trust, cohesion, and communication are needed during the process as well. I notice that is especially important for this role because, in addition to curating this blog, I also have other tasks as I work at SLOCA in a newly created position in the Design and Marketing Department as a Communications Coordinator.

As a SLOCA parent myself we’re all in this Classical Education with a Twist together. Have you noticed that campus life is one of collaboration and communication as well? As we work with our children’s teachers we’re building a homeschooling team per se. We share Progress Reports and in-person chats and smiles during Morning Meetings. The Grid works to help us all work together in efforts to help our students be successful. These weekly plans, in addition to the Bear Necessities emails, and social media channels are part of how SLOCA builds communication and collaboration between families and the campus as well.

As the new Communications Coordinator, I hope to continue to help build our wonderful SLOCA community through the written word in this blog. At SLOCA we believe connection comes from words, and those connections have the power to encourage us to follow our dreams, remind us to slow down, and focus on what truly matters.

And now a note from Wei:

The days are getting shorter, and it does feel like the clocks will be changing soon. Here on the Down Home blog, we are transitioning to a new Blog curator, Jennifer Muller! I (Wei) have been going back in time and remembering what the world was like when I first started writing in this space. When I first started posting, we were still wearing masks and having larger meetings on Zoom or outside. As a school, we were still doing the sushi train for drop off and pick up, and had just started back with our full athletics program! For the most part, it felt like the worst of the pandemic was behind us and we were gladly looking ahead. Fast forward a year and a bit, and we are nearly back to ‘normal’ (fingers crossed!). The corridors are full of smiling faces, all of our meetings are back in person (yay for Grand Days!) and I personally am no longer like a deer in the headlights when needing to make unexpected small talk. 

Being the Down Home blog curator is an interesting gig as you get to see a little of the inner workings of SLOCA. As a long time parent, it was interesting to see how involved our staff is (VERY) and there are so many details and events that go on behind the scenes.  I also got to learn so many different things like the Merry Donation Society, Hanging Lantern Review and The Good, The True & The Beautiful. I will say that my favorites are still the Day in the Life – stand outs for me this year were LMS/UMS Full time and the Older and Wiser edition. 

Being the Blog Curator helped me re-engage with the SLOCA community after a couple of isolating pandemic years. It also helped me re-engage with the mission of SLOCA – classical education with a twist – and all of the wonderful things that we had traditionally done BC (before covid)! In a small way it got me back to writing. As a very junior underling, I first set up a blog nearly 20 years ago for my then design team, and my ex-boss still writes a monthly commentary for it. Who knew. 

I leave you with this one question, what/who can you re-engage with? What is missing from your day to day that you used to do, and would like to do again? I hope you find a little something life giving that you can re-engage with in this season.  

Thanks for allowing me to be in here in this space and for being part of our community. I look forward to seeing what Jennifer Muller has in store for the Down Home blog! 

-Wei