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New head of school wanted to join Scattergood’s ‘cutting edge’ teaching
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · July 15, 2010
Christine Ashley speaks four languages, worked around the globe and made education her career.
And as the new head of Scattergood Friends School, she wants to throw open the doors to show that the Quaker beliefs in a modern age are not quaint, but “cutting edge.”
While many people rely on credit, grocery stores and contractors to afford, feed and maintain their households, Ashley said Scattergood students learn to be independent to the degree that they can survive without most of this.
“What we’ve been doing for years seems practical and sensible: we live within our means,” she said.
Ashley started July 1 and said she has been tasked with increasing bonds with the West Branch and surrounding communities and laying the groundwork for Scattergood’s future.
“We want to be engaged in the community ... by making connections and deepening connections,” she said. “And we want to embark on a path that makes us sustainable for 100 more years.”
Ashley and her family are moving from Maryland, two blocks from Washington D.C., and will live on the Scattergood campus.
She said that one of her 6-year-old twins, when he was 4 years old, said he wanted to live on a farm. Ashley knew about Scattergood from working at Quakers schools and heard about the head of school opening.
“Our family was looking for a lifestyle change,” she said. “Now I don’t have an hour-and-a-half commute — my office is 30 feet away.”
Since the 55 to 60 students who attend the boarding school learn the cook, clean, farm and more, her family benefits from the surroundings.
“I don’t have to cook for 10 months out of the year,” she said with a smile, adding that 90 percent of what students and faculty eat comes from the school’s farm.
On her first visit, she said she saw teenagers “joyfully eating vegetables.”
“That blew me away,” she said.
What sold her on the job was the “incredible staff,” the “self-aware student community,” genuine friendliness and that intellectual conversations “are the norm.”
“There’s no evidence of cliques,” she said.
While working in Nepal, Singapore, and Indonesia, the 1989 Vassar College graduate has learned to speak Tibetan, Mandarin Chinese and Indonesian, in addition to her native English.
Her jobs had her working mostly at Quaker and Montessori schools.
“While I’ve been in the U.S., I felt a deep affinity for Quaker schools,” she said.
Ashley notes that 10 percent of Scattergood’s population come from outside the United States and that the school embraces diversity, personal gifts and talents, and independent thinking.
“I will be able to put into practice all I think education can and should be,” she said.
She said she likes the fact that the school looks for “what gives you joy” and teaches the “art” of communication.
“This is an intentional community,” she said, and that decisions are by consensus, not majority. “This is very much a student-driven campus.”
Apolitical, the school wants “to cultivate strong moral, ethical positions within this world” with the ability to be self-sustaining but the desire to work together.
“We answer to God or the Spirit within,” she said.
Ashley’s mother is from Scotland and her husband, Mark Shanahan, is Irish, though born in London.
“There’s a lot of Celtic blood in us,” she said.
She and Mark have a combined total of five children: Twin boys Kieran and Callum are 6 and entering first grade at Hoover Elementary; son Sebastian is 14 and will be in ninth grade at Scattergood; stepdaughter Sophie is 20 and English, though she has spent the last three years in the United States; and stepson Thomas is 26, lives in Fiji and works at the United Nations.
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