Alumni

Anna Dejdar ’04: Learning and Growing at The Shipley School

Jared Scott Tesler
From her formative years as a Middle and Upper School student, to her teaching across many different departments (History, Interdisciplinary Studies, Latin, Modern Language, and Social, Emotional, and Ethical Development, better known as SEED), to her current dual roles as Dean of Students and Associate Head of Upper School for Student Life, Anna Dejdar ’04 has spent more than half of her life at The Shipley School.

“It truly is a second home to me,” says Dejdar, who played tennis and contributed to The Compass, the School’s literary and visual arts magazine, as a high school student. “Shipley’s always been there, supporting me, comforting me, and allowing me to grow into myself.”

During the spring semester of her senior year of college, Dejdar, a double major in psychology and Italian at Bryn Mawr College, was contacted by former Latin and Greek teacher and Shakespeare program founder Madeline “Emmy” Miller ’96 about a teaching position at Shipley.

She began teaching Latin that fall—and the rest, as they say, is history.

“I was just so eager to keep learning,” recalls Dejdar, who would eventually earn two master’s degrees—one in school and mental health counseling, the other in school leadership—from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. “With each new opportunity, I learned more about myself as a teacher and an administrator.”

Her time as a Grade Level Dean, Dejdar notes, proved particularly rewarding: “I loved being an advisor. It was a really nice opportunity to get to know an entire grade, to be a source of support for those students, to be the link between them and their parents and teachers, and to share my experiences with them and learn from them.”

These days, Dejdar continues to learn and grow as Dean of Students and Associate Head of Upper School for Student Life, overseeing disciplinary systems and student activities at Shipley, where she takes great pride and joy in building rapport with high schoolers by modeling positive communication, leadership, and risk-taking.

“I love being in the academic world. It’s something I’m committed to 150 percent,” Dejdar says. “Shipley’s really been a special place to allow me to do that. I’m so grateful.”
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The Shipley School is a private, coeducational day school for pre-kindergarten through 12th grade students, located in Bryn Mawr, PA. Through our commitment to educational excellence, we develop within each student a love of learning and a desire for compassionate participation in the world.