The Power of Community

As they crossed Nashville Avenue and strode along Loyola Street, they regularly encountered a remarkable mélange of humanity rushing to work, returning home from the night shift or making haste to one of the three other schools in the vicinity.

 

Their walk was a cultural experience, an intriguing adventure and an odyssey of sorts. It was also an indelible tutorial on social awareness, respect for diversity, compassion and gratitude.

 

“I learned as much on that walk as I did in the classroom,” said Penny Evins, the youngest of the sisters. “Our parents (Sidney, a Newman graduate, and Jill, an alumna of Brearley School in New York City) pounded into us that there was something to be learned in every environment and that it was a privilege and a gift to be well educated. They instilled a reverence for education. But they didn’t necessarily expect us to become educators.”

 

Each did, though.

 

Jennifer Rosen, the eldest, is assistant head of school for enrollment management at Isidore Newman. Allison Bach has for years taught a variety of upper level subjects at University School in Cleveland as well as at Newman.

 

And Penny, who served as a school counselor, teacher and coach before she ultimately moved into administration, officially joined the Collegiate family as head of school on July 1.

 

She brings to North Mooreland Road a plethora of energy and a depth and breadth of experience. She fervently supports Collegiate’s mission and core values. And she believes wholeheartedly that schools are communities where all constituencies work together to make each other stronger and better.

 

“Schools have always been our Mayberry,” she said, referencing the idyllic (albeit fictional) North Carolina town that was the setting for The Andy Griffith Show of the ‘60s. “They’re communities. Yes, I’ve moved to Richmond, but I feel like I’ve just moved to another community by being on a campus.”

 

As she did when, as a rising junior, she transferred from the comfort zone of Newman to Choate Rosemary Hall, a boarding school in Connecticut.

 

“There,” she said, “I had probably the most influential teachers in my life. If I didn’t like something, they asked me how I was going to make it better. Choate taught me a lot about being average in an exceptional environment. From that, I definitely gained a realization about how big the world is, how much opportunity there is in our schools, and how formative teachers can be in the lives of students.

 

“I was homesick, and it was really hard, but it was my choice to go. I got to know my faculty members as people, and I wanted to perform better in the classroom because I didn’t want to disappoint them.”

 

After her two years at Choate, Penny headed to the University of Virginia where she earned a B.A. in English and M.Ed. in counselor education.

 

In her first full-time position, she worked as an elementary school guidance counselor in Charlottesville while she completed her graduate work.

 

She then moved to the Webb School of Knoxville, where she served as upper school personal counselor, ethics teacher and JV soccer coach. A year later, she became middle school head and also taught English.

 

Opportunities arose, and her next stop was Lovett School in Atlanta where she stepped away from administration and served as a middle school guidance counselor, teacher and coach.

 

“I’m not really caught up in the role or the school division,” she said. “It’s always been, Can I serve the community? Can I get to know the children, the adults, the families and partner with them? I really liked the sense that Lovett was one large community with endless opportunities. There were expectations. There were opportunities to build relationships.”

 

It was at Lovett that she met a guy named Sam Evins, a multi-season coach and the Upper School assistant principal who oversaw athletic department operations. They married July 22, 2001.

 

Four years later, Penny moved with her family to New Orleans where Sam assumed the headship of the Upper School at St. Martin’s Episcopal School.

 

After taking a hiatus from the school business when her children Sam (a Collegiate sophomore) and June (a Collegiate freshman) were very young, Penny became Lower School head at Newman in 2008.

 

Her education continued in the very place it had begun.

 

“I did not come by school naturally,” she said. “I was diagnosed with a learning difference when I was in third grade. That was the day when you had to stay in during recess and practice your handwriting if you couldn’t make a cursive letter in the perfect form.

 

“I learned more about life staying in from recess with Ms. (Nila) Surgi, my teacher. The truly spectacular thing was that when I was lower school head at Newman, Ms. Surgi reported to me. Talk about taking your job seriously and wanting to do well for your third grade teacher!”

 

In 2013, the Evins family moved to Baltimore when Penny became head of St. Paul’s School for Girls. She remained for six years before answering Collegiate’s call.

 

Collegiate is on solid ground. All systems are working well. As with any school, though, challenges abound, especially in this unsettling climate of the times.

 

“We can model what the greater world needs to be: more arm-in-arm and around each other,” Penny said. “That’s community building. Community is the elixir: taking time to talk to people and know each other. It’s wrapping our arms around others and bringing them into our community. It’s getting out of our comfort zone and into other communities.

 

“My most important job is to ensure that our students are aware of the expectation to give back to the greater world in time, treasure, and talent and that challenges that the world faces can be alleviated in some way through them.

        

“I’m very proud to support faculty and staff. I’m proud to serve as a mentor. I’m very proud to be an educator.”

   -- Weldon Bradshaw