As part of the Integrated Learning Office, Julie works with juniors and seniors who have diagnosed learning differences that require classroom and standardized testing accommodations. She partners with students, advisors, teachers, and family members to understand each student’s learning profile and how to best support them. Julie is most proud of the ways that she works across the UPrep community to build support for our students and help them grow toward independence so they’re ready to move on from UPrep when they graduate.
 

How do you define community?
Community can look a lot of different ways. It can be a one-to-one relationship, or it could be across the entire school. It is the drive and desire to build understanding.

 

Why is community important?
Community fulfills our need for connection. At UPrep, students have the opportunity to build their own community; so do the adults. I think the thing that is unique about a school is the crossover of the ways that students and adults can observe each other in community, and also share that community together.

 

How is the UPrep community different from other communities you have been a part of? 

When people are in a community, they can develop a sense of connection and belonging. I think what sets UPrep apart from the other schools I’ve worked in is the amount of trust and voice we give to our students. We support and help develop students’ sense of self-advocacy for how they want to be seen, accepted, and interacted with. In explicit and implicit ways, we have strongly developed support systems that weave through the school, whether that’s in our LEAD program, where students are having difficult conversations with each other; advisory, where adult advisors have empathic relationships with students; or our Athletic and Fine Arts Programs, where students can excel outside of traditional classes.

 

Our role as adults is to be the example of the school’s mission. If we’re encouraging students to be intellectually courageous, we must provide them with examples. Sometimes that means taking risks and messing up big, which provides students with the opportunity to see how adults recover when something doesn’t go their way.

 

How do you build community at UPrep?
When I joined the community six years ago, I jumped in to find where I could bring value and connect with others and to find people whose interests outside of work aligned with mine. From participating in professional development with colleagues to leading students on Global Link trips, there’s so much opportunity to be included in our community.
 

 

Why is community important to your work at UPrep?
Community is vital to my work because of the one-on-one relationships I have with students. There is an incredible amount of trust and vulnerability that a student shares with me to seek support and have a person in their corner who knows a lot of confidential and personal things about them. I seek to build relationships with students based on personal interests we share outside of school. So, when I come to them to talk about the hard things in their education, they know that that’s not my sole interest in them. I’m interested in them as a whole person, not just the one thing that maybe isn’t going well for them. I do my work knowing that I’m contributing to the well-being of our students, not only their academic success. The overall success of students during their time here matters. When we see their experience has been positive, then we know that we’ve done a good job in holding community with and for them.

 

 

 

Rebecca Moe, Director of Athletics

How do you define community?
It’s a kinship. At UPrep, we have our own unique rituals and traditions that define our community, like the ringing of the bell at the beginning and the end of the school year. I will never underestimate the power of community building through sport, especially when our students’ classmates become their teammates. There’s something special about students competing against rival schools in front of crowds that include their friends and families.

 

Why is community important?
People need to feel like they belong to a group that’s bigger than themselves and that they are contributing to the greater good. I think “community” can be interchanged with words like “family” or “team,” and it makes learning fun. When you have a supportive community, you’re more willing to engage in the process, take risks, try something new, support a friend, or make a new friend. In my experience, when students are part of a sport team, they are more likely to find success in the classroom and take responsibility for helping to create community in the larger UPrep community.

 

How is the UPrep community different from other communities you have been a part of? 
UPrep is my community. My husband, David, and I were two young kids, newly married, when we moved across the country and I started working at UPrep. We had no family nearby, and it meant a lot that we were welcomed. We found an instant community. And when we had our own children (Kedzie ’20 and Dekker ’22), we added the UPrep parents and guardians to our personal community.

 

I had the honor of being asked to be the graduation speaker last year. And I took the opportunity to remind our graduates about what they have learned here:

 

 

Why is community important to your work at UPrep?
Our athletic community extends beyond 25th Avenue NE to the Green Lake Community Center, Sand Point Tennis Center, and to fields and community centers throughout our neighborhood, city, and state. Our community partners make it possible for our no-cut athletics program to offer a spot for every Puma who wants to play.

 

How do you build community at UPrep?
We have a newish tradition, the UPrep fan gram, where students stand together with their hands in the shape of a U for UPrep. Not only is it fun, it allows us to reset, connect, and focus on why we are at an event. And it’s caught on with the students, who now request that we do it at games!