RE Log Spring 2023

28 Ransom Everglades LOG SPRING 2023 By Shawn Costantino, Director of Arts In the year and a half since joining the amazing faculty here at RE, winds of change have been in the air! In my role as Director of Arts, I have joined a marvelous team of teachers and creatives who are supported by a tremendous leadership team and administration. The positivity and sense of purpose among our arts faculty are palpable and the support I have received from them has been wonderful. Creative autonomy and the desire to elevate the arts were stated parts of the job and Interim Head of School Rachel Rodriguez, Associate Head of School John A. King Jr., and COO and Interim Head of the Upper School David Clark ’86 have truly supported me through many new initiatives and rethinking how we want the arts to look here at RE. I am tremendously grateful for their unwavering support! If you asked me to describe the state of the arts at RE, I would say we are on the move. In the past year, we have added vocal ensembles on both campuses, and the interest from our students and concert goers alike has been off the charts. We created a State of The Arts Ransom Everglades’ arts program is on the move first-time symphony orchestra at the upper school, allowing our band and string students to take the stage together and providing a terrific performance experience for them and our audiences. We are significantly enhancing the dance and digital arts curricula on both campuses, and have expanded the arts requirements at the middle school, giving our students broad and fulsome opportunities to experience arts of all kinds. We have also made a number of strategic hires to help advance these transformative efforts. In July of 2022 as I was in the midst of moving from the west coast, Dr. King called me and let me know that we needed to hire a new drama teacher. We found and hired Laura Montes, a force of nature who directs our upper school play and musical, and leads our brand new and thriving 6-12 vocal music program consisting of the RE Vocal Ensemble and Middle School Chorus. She also teaches our upper school acting classes. Joining her is the talented pianist Arn Xu. Arn is our new, full-time departmental accompanist. He’s the musical director for the upper school musical, and general force for good for all things requiring a collaborative and ever-enthusiastic pianist. As we navigate our way away from Covid and envision ways to build and sustain the performing arts offerings at the middle school, the inimitable middle school band director Cathi Leibinger and I restructured the elective requirements at the middle school, requiring two full years of performing