By Daisy Moriarty ’25
Ms. Dea, the Director of International Recruitment at The Frederick Gunn School, was recently interviewed for The Highlander Podcast. The student body has been following Ms. Dea’s travels through her “Where in the World is Ms. Dea?” videos that are often played at School Meeting. In this podcast episode, Ms. Dea provides more details of her travels, including what she does when she visits a country, how she finds international students to interview, and which is her favorite place she has recently visited.
Ms. Dea provides insight into her conversations with educational consultants, saying, “It’s really just letting them know what’s been happening…we opened our brand new Art Center …by the time they send students to us next fall we will have opened our brand new Science Center – The Lizzie… we still offer AP and honors courses, a lot of schools have gotten rid of those.” She also shares that international families and educational consultants are often interested to know how many students from their native country attend the Frederick Gunn School. Typically, parents do not want to send their children to an international school that has a lot of students who are from their native country, so that the international student will integrate with the American students and improve their English. At the same time, parents typically want the American school to have some students from their native country, so that international students can talk to each other in their native language.
Ms. Dea shares that she really enjoys getting to have dinner with current students’ families when she visits the cities they live in. She states, “I often get to get all of our families together from that particular city and take them out to dinner and just talk with them and find out their perspective on the school…and that’s really great information for me to be able to bring back to school.”
This interview is the third episode in season three of The Highlander Podcast, and is titled “Interview with Ms. Dea, Director of International Recruitment.” It is available now on Spotify, as well as on Apple Podcasts.
