As Head of Middle School, Louisa Polos has to be everywhere at once, but on a Wednesday morning in an Eighth Grade Leadership Lab, 100% of her is present with a dozen Middle School students. She walks around the room, chatting with students, helping them log in to a website, joking with them about security questions relating to pets. The eighth graders are going to take a personality assessment test — she’s doing the work she does outside the classroom every single day, which is guiding and caring for the 360 students in the Middle School. Even before they answer a single question, she encourages them to think about the results: “How can we leverage these strengths to be the best versions of ourselves?” 

Before starting as the Head of Middle School last year, Louisa Polos held the same position at the School of the Holy Child in Rye, NY. “The Northeast is very different in a lot of ways,” she says with a smile. “But it’s really exciting to be someplace where we can try new things and go new places.”

What did you learn in your first year at Charlotte Latin?

One of the things I love about being a division head is the opportunity to work with all the different parts of the school: students and faculty and the leadership team and MarCom and Safety and Security and Athletics and Performing Arts. That’s the beauty of an independent school: it’s a village that supports the whole child. Learning how to do that effectively at Latin was rewarding, professionally and personally.

At this moment, Latin is really delivering on its Strategic Plan — last year was exciting because there was so much positive change. This year, we’ve settled into the new schedule and the new cadence of the school day. We have a really strong foundation that lets us prioritize things like Community Time and Hawk Blocks, so we can dig into the work of the Portrait of the Latin Leader, while ensuring that our students have the social-emotional skill set to succeed not just in the classroom, but in their friendships and relationships and extracurricular activities.

Tell us about a moment of courage in your own life.

I had a colleague who said “How do you know what you like until you try something different?” And trying something different is in many ways the definition of courage. Moving to a city where we knew nobody and joining an established community took courage. But what’s cool about that is being able to say to a sixth grader, “I had to make new friends and find new places that felt like home. I had to learn about a new culture.” My four-year-old and my six-year-old had to jump into new situations; my spouse took a new job. I think that models courage: it’s been hard in some moments and fulfilling in others.

To what extent do you see separate cultures in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades?

One of the things that’s fantastic about Middle School is that we get students who are still really kids and eager to please with that Lower School energy. And then at the Moving Up Ceremony, we have students walk across the stage who are young adults and know who they want to be. My hope is that they will try new things, take risks, fail, pick themselves up, and learn how to navigate their own paths.

Sixth grade is so focused on the transition to Middle School: What does it mean to be a student? Where do you want to focus? We’ve done a lot of work bridging the gap from Lower School: the fifth grade curriculum is shifting over time and so is ours.

Seventh grade, you can see a shift: they’re a little more independent. There’s still support systems in place, but the guardrails shift. And in eighth grade, you home in on what you really like and classes mirror the Upper School experience more closely. You take language every day and coursework is more elevated; it requires more critical thinking. Collectively, you can see students arrive as kids and leave as strong, independent, courageous, curious young adults. 

What are your most vivid memories of Middle School?

I went to an independent school for Middle School and it was formative for me. My English teacher in seventh grade was phenomenal: she made it feel like learning mattered. Every trimester, we had to go public with one piece of writing: that could mean submitting it to the school literary magazine or entering a local library contest. I went through the motions with a poem I thought was okay, and it was published in this newspaper called Teen Ink: my poem was printed with writing from students all over the country. I remember finally feeling validated, thinking “Oh, my writing matters to someone beyond me or my teacher.”

I attribute so much of my passion for education to my own education. What I hope to create for these students is a joyful, fabulous learning experience, so their love of learning is lifelong, and it won’t end when eighth grade ends or twelfth grade ends. Another formative experience for me came in college: I took a seminar on poverty in America. We read books from The Grapes of Wrath to Nickel and Dimed, but a huge part of the class was that we were required to do a service component. I went to the local shelter and the soup kitchen once a week, and it totally reframed what service meant for me: it’s more of a reciprocal relationship than charity. We have so much to learn from each other about our lived experiences. That’s why Hawk Blocks and the trips to Williamsburg and DC are so important: it’s crucial to learn outside the four walls of a classroom.

You, Head of Upper School Tracey Vanneste, and Head of Lower School Casey Martin look like you’re thick as thieves.

We sure are. It’s really exciting to have an academic team in place that feels aligned. We share similar hopes and dreams for the school. We’re committed to the Strategic Plan. We’re committed to the Portrait of the Latin Leader. We’re committed to our mission and our Core Values. And in conjunction with Sonja Taylor’s office, we all have each other’s backs. To have two colleagues who are so supportive and funny, and who love this community, is very exciting. We’re working toward the same goal, so families can go through Latin feeling like it’s a cohesive experience.

Did you have a favorite day last year?

I loved Sunny’s Day. It was really awesome to see the littles looking up to the bigs and saying “I want to be like that,” and the grace with which the bigs handled that admiration flowing out of them. It shows how special the strength of community can be.

What would the title of your autobiography be?

Maybe the Mary Oliver line, What Is It You Plan to Do with Your One Wild and Precious Life?

What’s something you’d like parents to know?

Middle School’s a roller coaster. There’s going to be some awesome days and there’s going to be some hard days. But in the Middle School years, there’s hormones and friendship shifts and classes get harder and students don’t necessarily have the brain development to fully understand that. So understanding that and being a steady presence is really important for adults at school and adults at home.

Did you approach the beginning of the school year differently this fall?

We brought back a soft start, to launch kids into the year a little more gently. I want kids to love coming to school. I’m not Pollyanna, but the start of school should be fun. If I had my way, we would have Victor E. Hawk and an ice-cream truck. People love kindergarten and their senior year, but very few people say, “I wish I could go back to Middle School.” So how do we reframe that, so this time feels like an awesome opportunity to learn in a fun and joyful way? We know there will be bumps, but we’re not scared of them. They’re growth-promoting opportunities, and that growth is what makes Middle School awesome.