The School of Education is pleased to announce Janet Chance as the Director of School and Community Collaborations. For the past 20 years, she has served as a teacher and administrator focused on building community, leading diversity initiatives, and creating innovative curricula. At the start of her career, Chance taught English at Tokyo Friends School, a 7-12 Quaker school for Japanese girls, where she used theater and music to engage students in learning English. Later, at Sidwell Friends in Washington, DC, Janet taught English, contributed actively to the all-school Diversity Advisory Group, led service learning trips, and served as advisor to the middle school Day of Silence Club for LGBT students and allies.

Chance has a passion for faculty development; she has supervised prospective secondary teachers, as a social studies supervisor for the Stanford Teacher Education Program, and provided guidance to experienced elementary school teachers, as the Lower School Director at William Penn Charter School.  She has given faculty development workshops at a variety of schools and professional conferences, including the National Association of Independent Schools’ annual conferences. In addition, she co-facilitated the Friends Council on Education’s SPARC (Spirited Practice & Renewed Courage) program, a two-year series of faculty enrichment retreats based on the work of Parker Palmer.

Chance holds an Ed.M. from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, an M.A. in English Literature from Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English, and a B.A. in social and political philosophy from Swarthmore College. Her publications include Philadelphia Friends Schools, a collaborative work co-authored with Mark Franek and the Friends Council on Education. In her free time, she enjoys going to the theatre, performing jazz, classical, and Japanese folk songs as a mezzo-soprano vocalist, and learning new dance steps with her partner, Catherine Simile. “I am delighted to be leading the Office of School and Community Collaborations,” she  noted, “I’ve been impressed with the field work initiatives already set into motion this past spring, and I look forward to working with faculty and staff in the Education Department to continue developing dynamic collaborations in the future.”