DECIDEDLY EXCITED

Lake Forest Country Day School’s Head of Lower School-elect, Rachel Diaz, sits in a room near the school’s library and can’t stop smiling.

She’s sharing how well her 3-year-old son, River, communicates.

“He’s at that age,” Diaz says, “when everything to him makes him say either, ‘Wow!’ or, ‘That’s so cool!’ I love hearing his cute, little voice. I’ll open the door to his room in the morning, and he’ll say, ‘Oh hi, Mom!’ I once told him we’re going to go on a family walk, and River’s response was, ‘That sounds good!’

“Having a 3-year-old,” the Lake Bluff resident adds, “makes you look at the world differently.”

When Rachel Diaz wakes up on July 1, she’ll be as wide-eyed and as excited as her only child because the “elect” in her job title will have disappeared on that morning.

“I am not worried in the least that I’ll ever feel disconnected from our students or our teachers in my new role,” says the 35-year-old Diaz, who served as a fourth-grade teacher at Lake Forest Country Day School from 2017- 2020 and received the school’s Yvonne Banks Caring Teacher Award in 2019. “I never felt that way as Assistant Head of Lower School and Early Childhood (2021-2024), because our school is such a small, tight one. We’re all about collaboration and partnerships here. We’re all in this together—students, teachers, staff, and families.”

Lake Forest Country Day School (for students age 2 to grade eight) opened its doors for the first time in 1888. Its mission is a comprehensive one: “Inspired teaching, academic rigor, attention to individual needs, a commitment to responsible citizenship—these principles infuse every aspect of life at Lake Forest Country Day School and define our dedication to producing students of strong character with a passion for learning.”

Born in Park Ridge, Diaz attended John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights where performing as a member of the school’s show choir, OnStage, and in musical theatre meant the world to her. The men in her life— her father, Ted, and her husband, Tristan—are also JHHS graduates.

Ted and Rachel’s mother, Valerie, have lived in Lake Bluff since 2014. Both parents have backgrounds in painting. Ted worked for a business that became the ad agency Simple Truth.

“I thought about going into the family business,” says Diaz, who completed an internship at Simple Truth. “But it wasn’t for me; my gut feeling told me so.”

Diaz changed her major from Art History to Elementary Education before the start of her junior year at DePaul University and knew right away that she had made the right decision, thanks to Dr. Frank Tavano, who taught an Introduction to Education course at DePaul.

“He was so full of life in the classroom and super passionate,” Diaz recalls. “The anecdotes he shared were fun ones. I had fun in his classroom. The most important thing I learned from him was what a teacher should do to form meaningful relationships with students. I also learned the importance of classroom management and creating an environment of routines that establishes the way the show will be run.”

Paying attention to what her father emphasized as a businessman also proved invaluable to Diaz, who earned her master’s in Educational Leadership at DePaul.

“My philosophy in education is similar to that of an ad agency’s three buckets— copy, creative, and clients,” she notes. “Copy in education is the way you communicate, as well as how you want your students to feel in the classroom. You do that by setting a tone for the students; a warm voice can achieve that. The creative in a classroom setting is the way you design your lessons. As for education’s clients? You take care of people in a school’s setting.

“I’m a servant leader.”

She was a grade-school teacher and an instructional coach (kindergarten through fifth grade) for a combined seven years at CICS West Belden, a Chicago charter school. During her time there, the school received a grant from the Bill & Melanie Gates Foundation.

“It’s an unbelievable, highly innovative community,” says Diaz, who completed her master’s while working at the charter school. “It was hard for me to leave CICS West Belden. But I was ready for a change, and ready to move closer to my parents, when I applied for a position at Lake Forest Country Day School.”

What has her amped up for the 2024-2025 academic year is the prospect of implementing a different way to teach reading at Lake Forest Country Day School.

“It’s time to move on from teaching reading by relying only on the balanced literacy practice,” Diaz says, adding the school has been examining different approaches to teaching the vital skill since last July. “The pendulum is swinging to more of a scientific approach, to more intentional instruction. There are some wonderful parts of balanced literacy that we’ll keep. What excites me is knowing a combination of approaches should make more of our students fall in love with reading.”

Diaz has also been co-chairing, with parent and Lake Forest Country Day School Board of Trustees Member David Neighbours, the school’s Strategic Design process since last September.

“We have a mission statement and core values,” she says. “But a school can always become a better version of itself. What we have going for us is our school’s standing; we’re coming from a position of strength. Our students are happy, our partnership with parents continues to be strong, and we retain faculty.”

The school’s team of first-grade teachers launched a Changemakers program this school year. The students have studied Martin Luther King Jr., 2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai, and Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, among others.

“These 6-year-olds in our school are now changemakers themselves,” Diaz says. “They’ve called for better hallway behavior. They want more plants in our greenhouse. They think students should eat more healthy snacks. That Changemakers unit was 100-percent teacher-made, and I’m excited to help our teachers expand it to our second-, third- and fourthgrade students.”

Flash-forward to the first day of the 2024- 2025 academic year at Lake Forest Country Day School. Among the new students in the school’s Early Childhood Center is a boy named River.

The over/under on the number of times Rachel Diaz’s son utters “Wow!” on that day is 125.

Take the over.

Lake Forest Country Day School is located at 145 South Green Bay Road in Lake Forest. For more information, visit lfcds.org or call 847- 234-2350.