{"id":1145,"date":"2017-11-01T20:33:55","date_gmt":"2017-11-02T00:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/inside.gcschool.org\/gracegazette\/?p=1145"},"modified":"2018-01-03T16:09:00","modified_gmt":"2018-01-03T16:09:00","slug":"introducing-ms-kashyap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/introducing-ms-kashyap\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing Ms. Kashyap"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ms. Kashyap, one of the newest members of the Grace community, is the Dean of the Class of 2021 and teaches Literature of the Americas. I recently sat down with her to discuss how she came to Grace as well as her thoughts as a new administrator and member of our community.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both of Ms. Kashyap\u2019s parents are from India, but she was born and raised in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Because of the way that these identities intersected when she was growing up, Ms. Kashyap says that her \u201csense of home is a bit straddled.\u201d More challenging as a kid, the duality of her identity became easier as she allowed herself to \u201cform a relationship with India.\u201d In college at Middlebury in Vermont, Ms. Kashyap designed an independant study to travel through India for a month. This work inspired her to found a nonprofit called <\/span>The Modern Story<\/span><\/a>, focused on improving prospects for Indian public school students by empowering them to think about their \u201cidentities and senses of self.\u201d Ultimately, the goal of the program was to equip their students with technological and academic skills that would make them eligible for better jobs than they might not normally be able to apply for.<\/span><\/p>\n

While continuing to develop this program, Ms. Kashyap worked in a few schools in the Bay Area in California as well as Cambridge, Massachusetts, teaching high school level literature. She moved back to New Jersey into Montclair this past year with her husband, Remy, and one-year-old daughter and makes the commute every day to get to Grace. Due to her busy schedule, The Modern Story has been put on a temporary \u201chiatus,\u201d but Ms. Kashyap hopes to resume it with the possibility of branches in the United States in mind. Her free time, although limited by her commute from Grace to Montclair, is spent hiking, biking, and generally spending time with friends and family.<\/span><\/p>\n

The position as dean is new for Ms. Kashyap, but she says that a shift in perspective of how a school functions and runs is exciting for her. Ms. Kashyap says that she has found \u201creally good role models\u201d in the other deans in the High School Division as she gets used to this new role. Her goals for the class of 2021 include getting to know each student individually and encouraging a \u201csocially conscious\u201d class. Ms. Kashyap says that the former has been one of the most difficult parts of her job so far, as most of her first interactions with students are disciplinary in nature, and make it difficult to form relationships with those students. In regards to forming a socially conscious class, Ms. Kashyap has already begun such efforts by devoting a class meeting to current events surrounding Colin Kaepernick\u2019s protest during the national anthem at an NFL game. Ms. Kashyap played several clips including comments from President Trump as well as President Obama, presenting different perspectives on the controversy. According to Ms. Kashyap, it is important to be immersed in life at Grace, but it is also important to \u201ckeep our gaze outward.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As a new member of our community, Ms. Kashyap has a unique perspective of comparison to the other schools that she has worked in. Ms. Kashyap says that Grace has the \u201cmost innovative structure\u201d in terms of curriculum and is on \u201cthe cutting edge of 21st century education.\u201d Ms. Kashyap added that Grace has \u201cthe most racially diverse faculty\u201d that she has ever been a part of. In her final comment, Ms. Kashyap stated that at Grace, there is \u201cno stereotypical student.\u201d According to her, there are \u201cdifferent ways to be here,\u201d both socially and academically, and the fact that there is not one right way to be a student here creates a very unique environment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ms. Kashyap, one of the newest members of the Grace community, is the Dean of the Class of 2021 and teaches Literature of the Americas. I recently sat down with… Continue reading “Introducing Ms. Kashyap”<\/span> <\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":1345,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[52,65,113],"appful":[],"class_list":["post-1145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-school","tag-classof2021","tag-dean","tag-mskashyap"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9uEnr-it","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/PiyaHeadshot-150x150.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1342,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions\/1342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1145"},{"taxonomy":"appful","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/appful?post=1145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}