The Strange Magic of Roeper

10/20/2026

Kelly McDowell, Upper School English Teacher

After 14 years of teaching at Roeper – and watching her child grow up in the community and graduate – Kelly McDowell reflects on the small moments that shape a Roeper education. The following is adapted from Kelly’s remarks to faculty during back-to-school week.

I have to say that it’s been a strange summer. I feel like I’ve moved into a deeper, philosophical state when it comes to our community. In my 15th year, after having watched my own kid grow up in this community and graduate, it’s as if a fuller picture is emerging. And Roeper, from this vantage point, looks a little different. Some of you have already experienced this as a Roeper parent. Some of you will in the years ahead. But even if not, I hope my experience can offer something useful for all of us.

When we study Modernism in my classes, we cover the concept of defamiliarization — which is the highlighting of the familiar, the mundane, the ordinary in a new way that brings out its beauty … its glory … its miraculousness!

These qualities have always been a part of the ordinary because they are inherent within it, but they become normalized and subsumed into the machinery of daily life. By isolating it and holding it up to the light, the modernists sought to uncover and recover the strange magic of the ordinary.

A phrase has popped into my mind on multiple occasions recently: the strange magic of Roeper. Let’s face it — no, let’s celebrate it: We are different. We do school differently. And this is a remarkable thing, especially in a world that urges students to conform to rigid, outdated educational structures.

I know we’ve all witnessed those transformative moments when our students find their voices, explore their passions, become empowered to think and learn independently, realize that their unique perspectives matter deeply. Ah … the strange magic of Roeper.

I may in fact be experiencing a Mrs. Dalloway moment. As Woolf’s titular protagonist heads out on her shopping errand, expecting it to be a day like any other, she suddenly sees her familiar Bond Street, a street she has known her whole life and has traversed almost daily, in a whole new light. Bond Street appears suddenly not normal at all but full of life, buzzing with a certain energy, electric, and containing a multitude of extraordinary human experiences.

As I stand here now, with the benefit of 14 years and a graduated child of my own, the essence of Roeper feels somehow closer, more meaningful, and truer than ever before.

Please don’t get me wrong, I certainly do not have it all figured out. But that really isn’t the point for Mrs. Dalloway or for me — or for any of us, I think. It feels more like a clarity of feeling rather than of complete understanding. And I think that is as it should be. It is a type of knowing that seems visceral … and a deep appreciation for the day-to-day strange magic of this place.

The magic is always there; it’s just that the busyness of our day-to-day can at times consume us. But big life moments, like watching your kid complete his Roeper education, have a way of making one pause — if only to attempt to get one’s feet back under them. The realization that a chapter is closing causes one to look backward for a moment … to take stock of what has been — or just to try to figure out how we got here so fast.

Even while I’m still a ball of confused emotions, I do know some things for certain. And these things have only become clearer. I can tell you that, from this perspective: The process works. What we do matters deeply. Roeper is magic. And you all aren’t educators. You’re freaking wizards!

It is clear to me now that Roeper is the culmination of countless small moments of strange magic:

Fire Class at the Lower School. The rite-of-passage creek walk. The Rethought Things Store. Ology and Passion Projects.
The time when Cathy and Suzie converted their room into an old-timey saloon for the all-stage Gold Rush project — complete with a kid-run poker table, after one of the dads taught them how to play.
Elise and Paula’s annual Buddy-the-Elf spaghetti and maple syrup bar.
Receiving an email from Lower School film teacher Dee Blankenburg requesting old clothes that could be shredded into zombie costumes for their film … and then watching a scene featuring Stacey Holloman trying to teach a “new zombie student Rocco” and another with hordes of Lower School kids running in terror from the woods as they are chased by “zombie students.”

All of this was A-OK at The Roeper School … just a day in the life.

Or … my first year when then-senior Max Raimi asked if he could store his fake blood for his movie in my room … I remember at that very moment thinking: “Wow, I’ve just joined a really different kind of school.”

Or … on my first last-day-of-school assembly, watching with amazement — and a little fear — as chemistry teacher Jamie Benigna exploded hydrogen balloons in the gym to the 1812 Overture… As real flames shot towards the rafters, I remember thinking: If the Muppets went to school, they’d go to Roeper.

I felt the Roeper magic from the start … from my very first day in this community. I remember being struck by the sheer number of people who introduced themselves to me precisely at this first day meeting of back-to-school week 14 years ago. So many people made a point to welcome me that I worried that I would forget names.

Not long after, I knew this wouldn’t be a danger because the same people who offered me help that first day proceeded to offer it again and again, and to show up at my classroom door, and to ask me to meet for lunch or to just hang out. At Roeper we walk the walk.

I was blown away back then, as a newbie. I remember feeling like I walked among giants — including people who had known and worked alongside George and Annemarie! The Pences, the Ruddys, Marcia Ruff … The history of the school was shared in ways that felt like you were being told stories by a trusted aunt or uncle.

The philosophy felt warm and tactile. Not a distant, reified relic, not something to be worshipped but something to be lived and shared. It felt generous and right … and simple.

Our job is at once monumental, complicated, and really hard … like really, really hard sometimes. As we know very well, our students bring with them each day their whole selves … their heads and their hearts, their family dynamics, their personal experiences, their social relationships.

And this means that our job is never easy. But it is also … simple, human, and dependent so much more on the countless small moments than on the big, formal, conspicuous ones.

Having experienced it as a teacher and now as a parent, I can tell you that graduation day is wonderful. It’s so nice to celebrate the accomplishments of our students and to recognize them in this formal, meaningful way.

But it’s not the real story. The real story is in the details. And the lovely, strange magic of Roeper is formed through the accumulation of countless small moments over time. And that’s the view from this vantage point.

Oh … and if you’ll indulge me as I offer a little advice from someone who is (I suppose) a veteran teacher by now and new empty nester: Soak it up. The cliché is true, and the iconic pop culture postmodernist, Ferris Bueller, is right: “Life moves pretty fast.”

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The Strange Magic of Roeper

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The Strange Magic of Roeper

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