Barrett has spent 11 years at VA. Originally from Greenwich, Connecticut, she came to Vermont after attending Williams College, where she studied English and art, followed by graduate work in arts education at Columbia University and a second master’s degree in English literature from Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College.

Her path toward education grew out of two lifelong interests: art and reading. “As a kid, I loved art, and I was a total dork about reading,” Barrett says.

At Williams, she began exploring the intersection of those interests. Her senior thesis involved drawing bird men, inspired in part by her love of magical realism. But during college, Barrett realized that she did not want art to exist solely as something she produced. “I didn't want to be a production artist,” she says. “I wanted to talk about ideas with people.”

Working at a summer camp helped solidify that realization. She discovered that she loved working with students and continued looking for ways to combine teaching, art, and literature. That combination has shaped the way she approaches her classroom today.

Barrett describes her teaching style as a balance between structure and independence. Her years teaching both art and English have influenced the way she designs learning experiences for students. “Structure is a tool for creativity,” she explains.

In art education, Barrett learned that creativity does not always mean starting with a completely blank page. Sometimes, creativity comes from having options, evaluating them, and making intentional choices.
She brings that philosophy into her English classroom and her work with the yearbook. Instead of asking students to simply create something from scratch, she might provide several examples and ask them to identify what they like and dislike about each one. From there, students can combine ideas, experiment with possibilities, and ultimately develop something of their own.

For Barrett, this approach is particularly valuable because it recognizes that students do not all begin from the same place. “I was always good enough at art that I could be told, ‘Surprise me,’” she says. “That was the thing I needed to learn as a teacher: what does the process look like if you don't have the background to understand it intuitively?”

Her classrooms often begin with a clear sense of direction. Barrett recalls a graduate school professor who started every class by explaining where the class had been, where it was going, and what question they would explore that day. She has carried that practice into her own teaching. “I want to know where we're coming from, and I also should know what we're accomplishing every single day,” she says. The result is a classroom built around both discussion and purpose: students have room to explore ideas, but they also know why they are exploring them.

When asked what she hopes students take away from their interactions with her, Barrett returns to a simple idea: perspective. “I hope they understand that there's more than one way to see things,” she says. “And I hope they choose empathy as the place that they start from when trying to understand things.” That philosophy also helps explain what Barrett values about Vermont Academy.

For Barrett, that willingness to embrace individuality is an important part of what makes VA feel like a community rather than a collection of people competing with one another. She remembers a particularly memorable example from a summer reading assignment. One student submitted a two-page account of everything she had done over the summer besides her summer reading. The list was unconventional, funny, and very different from what a typical summer-reading reflection might look like. But Barrett appreciated the honesty behind it.

Experiences like that remind her why it matters for students to encounter people who live differently from them. “You don't always get to see that different people do things different ways,” she says. “What people see is so narrow. We're not cookie-cutter.”

Barrett's connection to Vermont Academy extends well beyond her classroom. She has raised her children at VA, making the campus their primary home throughout their childhood. She describes the experience as both meaningful and, at times, “pretty hysterical.”

The lack of separation between school and daily life is one of the things she finds most distinctive about boarding-school education. “You get to see the kids in lots of different spaces, but you also get to see them in a lot of different spaces,” she says. “That builds relationships in a different way.”

For Barrett, those relationships can create a more organic understanding between students and faculty, while still requiring appropriate boundaries.

Outside of school, her life revolves around parenting, making art, and spending time outdoors. She makes pottery, particularly bowls, and enjoys the natural landscape surrounding VA. During the summer, she says, she swims in the river near her home almost every day. The landscape itself is another reason she feels connected to Vermont Academy. “We live in a beautiful, beautiful place,” she says. She values the close knit nature of the surrounding community as much as the physical setting.

Perhaps the clearest advice Barrett has for a new student is also the simplest: “Be yourself. That's all I want. We're not trying to change you.” That sentiment captures much of what Barrett values about her life at VA. She believes students should have the freedom to figure out who they are while learning to understand people who may approach life differently.

The thread connects Barrett's approach to teaching, her love of art and literature, and her commitment to Vermont Academy: the belief that people learn best when they have both the structure to grow and the freedom to be themselves. Whether she is discussing a novel, helping students design a yearbook page, making another bowl in her studio, or swimming in the river, Barrett continues to find meaning in the same place, among people, ideas, and a community that makes room for all three.