The Navigator Magazine

This year has been very different from any other year in HRA’s history. After our students abruptly pivoted to remote learning last spring, our intensive and strategic planning allowed our return to full on campus classes, successfully, for the 2020-2021 school year. This year IS different. While we are missing some of the traditions that set the rhythm of the annual cycle, we have seen that the essence of our school remains our great strength. The core values of honesty, respect and responsibility are present in our students’ reaction and adaptation to the new normal. Our trust in each other and high expectations for our students and faculty continue to make HRA a healthy and happy place to think, explore and discover. Our students have been commendable in their willingness to be here and to ensure that we are doing everything we can to remain here, in person. Our daily attendance has not dropped a percentage point, either in the on-line sessions from the spring or in the on-campus experience this fall.

I believe that our success has come from a single source that has always been at the core of the Hampton Roads Academy experience, the dedication and commitment of a faculty that sincerely cares about and champions the student-teacher relationship. Their incredible efforts over the past months to prepare for on-line learning should we have to go there again, working literally around the clock at times to make this campus ready for our students to be safely on-campus where we know that learning happens best.  We have instituted policies, modified schedules and initiated protocols and mediation procedures that certainly have changed the way that we do things at HRA on a daily basis. But, at the most important level of the HRA experience, the essence, we are the same, yet stronger. More aware and more dedicated than ever to make our school the best possible place to be at any time. 

It is our sincere hope that through these pages you will see that, even in these turbulent times and with all the challenges we share, it is such a good time to be a Navigator.

Sincerely,

Peter W. Mertz
Head of School