Our entire NCS community—teachers and parents, alumnae and administrators, coaches and counselors, staff members and fellow students—creates a deeply layered support system. We celebrate your successes, encourage your resilience, and lift you up in hard times.
Counseling
NCS provides our students with multi-layered support, including counseling. Our counselors work in collaboration with teachers, administrators, parents, and students to produce an environment that is safe for all students and that helps them to achieve their goals. We have three licensed counselors, each covering three grade levels.
Seminars
We also hold seminars for our students focused on health and wellness, on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and on health and human sexuality, including issues of consent, self-care, and nutrition. Our experienced counselors ensure that our seminars are age appropriate and helpful for our students based on their level of development.
Advisors
Our intentional approach includes deep support for our students from our advisors who serve as hugely influential guides. Our Lower School students have attentive homeroom teachers each year, and our Middle School students have the same advisor for their two years in Middle School, for continuity.
In 9th Grade, students have an advisor who is a dedicated transition expert and who helps them with their academics, with broadening their social circle, with integrating in the community, and with developing their learning skills.
For Grades 10th through 12th, our students use self agency to select an advisor to have continuously for all three years. These advisors become experts in your child, knowing her goals, her strengths, and her areas of needed growth, always advocating for her and helping her to craft a sustainable, future path with as many options as possible. These advisors also serve as your child’s biggest cheerleader, attending her games and performances and coordinating any needed care.
Advisors also serve as an invaluable resource for families, providing insights and serving as a point of contact into the NCS student experience.
Academic Deans
NCS has academic deans who work with our Division Heads and teachers to oversee our students’ academic progress. These deans work with individual teachers to hold regular student success meetings, collaborating to provide support, where needed.
Chaplains
In order to support your child, NCS has three chaplains who offer spiritual guidance and care for seeking students. They also teach in the Religion Department and serve as advisors. Our chaplains are specially trained in helping adolescents to thrive.
Teaching & Learning Center
Our NCS Teaching & Learning Center (TLC) offers dedicated learning specialists who help our students with testing accommodations, study habits, and executive functioning skills, all of which are integral to their success.
The TLC is also a hub for our teachers, offering them resources and creative ways to present material effectively. We engage in universal design for learning, including differentiation. The TLC also offers a writing coach for our students, assisting them in brainstorming their ideas and in getting organized and ready to write.
Our learning specialists help our students to find what approaches work best for them, taking a holistic view. Students can drop in during open hours or have regular appointments, and they gain skills and perspective from the TLC that will bolster them while at NCS and then throughout life.
Peer Programs
NCS offers three peer programs for our Upper School students, which help them to feel connected, fostering both leadership and care.
Peer Tutors: More advanced students help newer students with their studies. This program is voluntary, and faculty pair students based on their strengths.
Peer Mentors: Older students offer younger students advice about how to approach studying and about how to develop their executive functioning skills.
Peer Leaders: 12th Grade students and some 11th Grade students receive intensive training and then provide health and wellness counseling for their peers. Students meet with each other every week and discuss how best to adapt to Upper School, how to fit in socially, how best to talk to teachers, what going to a dance or event might be like, navigating a crisis, and more.
Center For Ethical Leadership & Service
NCS champions the Center For Ethical Leadership & Service (CELS), which serves as an interdisciplinary, enriching experience for our students. CELS houses the DEI; Community Service; and Global Programs, offering students the opportunity to build an understanding of themselves and of their relationships to their own community and to communities around the world.
The CELS team works as avisors and teachers focused on the human development side of becoming an ethical leader, supporting students in that journey. Each student learns their own style and approach to leadership.
School Nurse
The school nurse is the primary medical caregiver for National Cathedral School. This work involves providing direct emergent and urgent care to the students, faculty, and staff of NCS, implementing care plans for students with chronic health conditions, and, when necessary, communicating with parents and primary-care physicians for treatment and for referral to other health care providers.
Through all of this health and wellness support, we foster the well-being of our students and strengthen their healthy development.
Meet Our Team:
Ivette Bohlen, Dean of Student Life
Kristine Franklin, Counselor - Grades 10, 11, and 12
Jordan Masters, Counselor - Grades 7, 8, and 9
Katie Miner, Director of Counseling; Counselor - Grades 4, 5, and 6
Red Wondemu, School Nurse
[Please draw from the profiles in Blackbaud.]