When We Collaborate, We Maximize Each Other’s Potential
- Bullis Charter School
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Karsten Stampa
Chief of Staff
@ BCS since 2023
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At Bullis Charter School, we believe that great learning begins with purpose, and purpose begins with knowing your “why.”
As the Chief of Staff at Bullis Charter School, I lead the operational, strategic, and administrative functions that support the success of our school. I work directly with the Executive Director and senior leaders to drive initiatives that ensure safety on campus, enhance the learning environment, foster collaboration, and build trust among teachers, students, staff, and parents.
We Collaborate to Achieve a Singular Goal
As a community of life-long learners, we here at BCS believe that working together maximizes everyone’s potential. It’s one of the reasons why we foster collaboration by partnering with students, their families, and as a staff. We’re supporting one another towards deeper learning, strengthened creative capacity, and effective problem-solving.
We are All Experts
Like the learners who attend our school, our staff is highly diverse with different personalities, different professional backgrounds, and different ideas. I believe that everyone in our community is an expert in their field, including the team of 13 I oversee. They are office managers (or happiness officers as I love to call them), health care providers, maintenance staff, food servers, HR managers, and IT professionals whose extensive experience keeps our campus safe, clean, and connected.
If we do our jobs right, teachers and learners don’t need to worry about the day-to-day operations here. Our goal is for our teachers to teach, not stress about field trip buses, meal prep, or health care. I want our students to study joyfully without thinking about whether the bathrooms are working. And I want our parents to feel confident that we’re taking good care of their children.
Collaboration can be messy.
I know collaboration can be messy, especially in big teams when there are several voices in the conversation. That’s when my role as a facilitator becomes important and when I work with the team to jointly resolve the messiness. That may mean I put the brakes on a lively discussion to bring us back to center and have everyone focus on the individual contributions they can make. Ultimately we work together to reach a solution.
I see this in the classroom, too. I’ve been very fortunate to serve as a coach during Intersession in the middle school. The amount of collaboration I see even with our youngest middle schoolers in the 6th grade is astonishing. When they work on projects together, they’re not the least bit competitive; that’s because our middle school teachers set a fantastic tone, highlighting how important teamwork and collaboration are. It’s a practical application of design thinking.
Collaboration is a Future-Ready Skill
I strongly believe that good business principles and processes can be applied to any institution. I have worked in several different industries including real estate, car production, finance, and fashion. I’ve written business plans for a fashion designer and an economic development plan for the mayor of Berlin, Germany. They may seem different, but there are similarities because each is built on communication, leadership, and collaboration, the essential skills that achieve results in every field.
Our learners are preparing for an unknown future. It’s a privilege for me to bring my business background to BCS and model the essential skills they are developing now for the careers they’ll pursue in the years to come.
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Family-founded, free, and public Bullis Charter School serves a richly diverse community of learners. Our TK-8th grade program is intentionally designed to offer a meaningful and challenging educational experience that recognizes each child’s uniqueness. BCS is open to students in California entering Transitional Kindergarten (TK) through 8th grade.
Email our enrollment team at enroll@bullischarterschool.com for more information.