Marlborough Educators: Lifelong Learners

At Marlborough, exceptional teaching has never been confined to school hours. The educators who shape our students’ lives are also experts in their fields. They are researchers, choreographers, and community builders. They are people whose dedication to their work deepens everything they bring to our community. Recently, three members of our staculty pursued meaningful professional endeavors that reflect the curiosity, rigor, and sense of lifelong learning that define the Marlborough ethos.

Dr. Kendall Beeman: Published Researcher

In 2026, Dean of Students and History Instructor Dr. Kendall Beeman celebrated not one but two scholarly publications, each rooted in questions she has been curious about throughout her teaching career.

The first, “Beyond the Committee: Structures for Involving Faculty in Equity-Based Change,” published in the Journal of School Leadership, grew out of her doctoral dissertation. Using quantitative methods, Dr. Beeman examined how schools can more meaningfully involve faculty in equity-focused decision-making. What she found is that direct contact between faculty and administrators in structured forums, such as full faculty meetings, was significantly more effective than the committee structures most schools rely on. Surveys, she said, were surprisingly less impactful than expected for equity-based decisions. 

The second publication is a chapter in the book Exploring Technology Use in Middle Level Education. It begins with a question she first asked while facilitating distance learning during the COVID-19 lockdown. She noticed that quieter students were participating more actively on Zoom than in the physical classroom and she wanted to investigate why, publishing some of her initial findings in 2020.

Then, she returned to the same students when they were about to finish high school. The students who had once described needing to rehearse their answers before speaking, or worrying about being judged by classmates, had largely shed those fears by their Senior year. “The students said things like, ‘I know now it’s ok to be wrong. We are all learning together.’” Dr. Beeman’s findings pointed to something she believes deeply: giving quieter students structures to participate, even imperfectly, helps them find their voice over time.

Dr. Beeman’s research was born out of questions that emerged from her classrooms over the years, and a conviction that research and teaching belong together. “I really like reading research and doing research,” she shared. “I like that I can confidently say I know the answer [to any given question] because I have done the research.” For Dr. Beeman, scholarly inquiry isn’t separate from working with students. It deepens that work, sharpens it, and keeps her asking better questions for the benefit of all her students.

Fei Li: Building Community Through Competition

Chinese Language Instructor Fei Li spent a significant portion of her time during the 2025-2026 school year doing what she does best: bringing people together. As committee chair, Ms. Li led the organization of the inaugural Outstanding Lesson Plan Competition, a collaboration between CLTA-SC (the Chinese Language Teachers Association of Southern California) and the China Institute of America, one of the oldest Chinese cultural and educational organizations in the country.

The competition, open to Chinese language teachers from Kindergarten through university, invited participants to submit 15 to 20-minute videos presenting their own lesson plans. The video format gave participants the chance to demonstrate real results from their teaching, not just ideal plans on paper.

Serving simultaneously as organizer and judge, Ms. Li found the experience rich with insight. She was particularly struck by the range of approaches. Some teachers designed entire units around museum exhibitions and university professors paid incredible attention to designing each minute of their classes, reminding her that “every single minute of the class counts.” She was also struck by how differently the judges themselves read the same submissions. “Some had more expertise or preferences on cultural content,” she observed. “Some were more focused on pedagogical structure.” It was a detailed, thorough review process.

For Ms. Li, the competition was both professionally energizing and personally renewing—a reminder of what draws her to teaching in the first place. “Every student must have their own motivation, their own style, their own pre-knowledge before stepping into the classroom, just like we do as educators,” she said. “Marlborough is an environment that keeps my curiosity alive.”

Holly Rothschild: Choreography Out in the World

In the spring of 2026, Dance Instructor Holly Rothschild was commissioned by the City of Glendale to debut a new work at the Brand Library & Art Center. The result was a site-specific piece titled Temperature Drop that explored the friction between control and decay.

Site-specific choreography, Ms. Rothschild explained, begins long before a single movement is set. “I look at the architecture, the space, the history, the inspiration,” she shared. For the Brand Library, that meant deep research into the building and its context, understanding how and why it was built. “I like the work to complement the space,” she said. “It needs to feel organic, there has to be a connection.”

Temperature Drop was structured around tightly choreographed vignettes and pockets of structured improvisation, order pushed to its limit until it gives way to chaos. That was the final product, but Ms. Rothschild was candid about the exhilarating sense of fear that can come with approaching a new project—and clear that she considers it essential. “I always feel discomfort going into [a project],” she shared. “But I think that's what it's about, going into the unknown. I ask my students to do it, so I feel like it is important that I continue to do it as well.”

That reciprocity runs both ways. Ms. Rothschild finds that working with professional dancers sharpens her sense of what is possible, while her students keep her from becoming too certain. “Sometimes students do just amazing, unexpected, surprising things,” she reflected. “Professionals can get very structured. We know what to do, we come in, we get it done. Students bring back that excitement and surprise.”

Marlborough is proud to celebrate these three staculty members who embody the passion and dedication of our educator community. As they pursue projects and personal growth outside of Marlborough’s walls, they bring a richer perspective into the classroom, ensuring the students learn from those who never stop learning themselves.