News

The Walker School has hired Andrew Fuller as the new Head of Middle School. Andrew, who was chosen from nearly 100 candidates in a nationwide search, brings with him a wealth of experience and a proven track record of leadership that will greatly benefit the Middle School and the Walker community.  

 

In conversations with faculty, students and parents during the Head of Middle School search process, it was clear that there was a desire for a committed leader who could make a lasting impact. Andrew is dedicated to long-term service and is passionate about creating positive change.

 

“I am honored to serve as your Head of Middle School,” Andrew said. “I look forward to bringing my experience and excitement for student success to the Walker community. One of the most important aspects of my role will be building strong relationships with students, staff, families and partners. 

 

“On a personal note, this opportunity means the world to me. My decisions will always be rooted in what is best for the students. Thank you for your support and trust as we start this next chapter. I look forward to meeting you soon.”

 

Andrew has a strong background in educational leadership, having served in principal and assistant principal roles within the Atlanta Public School System since 2015. He is currently the Principal of Atlanta’s Carver STEAM Academy, where he has made significant strides in student achievements and community engagement.

 

Andrew grew up in Oregon. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Portland State University. Andrew lives near Walker and said he has been interested in our school for several years, so he immediately applied when he saw the opening. He said he sees Walker as a place where his own children can thrive and is eager to make a meaningful contribution to our community. 

 

Andrew will begin his new role this summer.

Walker Junior Rayna Paramesh is committed to helping young people, especially through education, and she has quite a few projects in the works to do just that, including most recently giving a talk at TEDx Evans Youth in Augusta. 

Her talk was about “The Power of Case Studies” and focused on case study-based learning and changing the educational system. In case-based learning, students engage in discussion about specific scenarios that resemble or are real-world examples. They work together to analyze and address problems and resolve questions that have no single correct answer. The teacher’s role in case study-based learning is more of a facilitator.

“A lot of people have talked about it, but I don’t feel like it’s used enough in the elementary, middle school and upper school levels,” she said. “That was the whole heart of my argument was trying to get this method expanded more to common classrooms.”

She also is working with the Georgia State School Superintendent’s office to create opportunities for case-study-based learning to be used in Georgia public schools. 

“This is very exciting,” she said. “I knew that I wanted to identify a way to implement [case-study learning] and so I looked up [Richard Woods’] email. I didn’t think I would get a response if I’m being honest with you, but I did.”

Her email led to a meeting with Woods, and now Paramesh is working with a coordinator in Woods’ office to help provide educational resources that are more case-study-based learning. 

“I’m trying to really practice what I preach,” Paramesh said.“ I feel like so many people can go up there and talk about what they’re passionate about, but I really want to be the person who does something about it. I’ve been doing a lot with this.” 

She also has created a case-study based Google Classroom toxicology course for the National Institute of Environmental and Health Sciences that she has offered to Walker for both teachers and students to use. 

Paramesh has seen first-hand how powerful case-study-based learning can be both personally and through her work with students at Marietta’s Fair Oaks Elementary School. Walker students have been volunteering at the nearby public school in a variety of capacities for several years. 

She introduced the case-study-based concept to a group of Fair Oaks students of varying ages during a basic genetics session she taught while their parents attended classes elsewhere in the building. 

“The students were so intrigued to learn, and I love seeing them have that spark like I had when I was little. I was so glad I did this,” she said.

As for the TED talk, Paramesh said she has “been interested in doing a TED talk for a while.”

While looking at the TEDx site, she saw there was going to be a youth program in Augusta, so she signed up and was accepted.

“I definitely would advise people that if you’re trying to look for an opportunity like that to not be scared to do it because public speaking and engaging an audience is something that you will need for anything that you do in life, so I would recommend it,” she said. “I’m very excited I got to do it.”

Her speech was about seven minutes long, and she said two of her Walker teachers were instrumental in helping her prepare for the big day.  

“I sent it to Ms. Adams and Mr. Bradford because they’re teachers, so they know more about what I’m trying to talk about,” she said. “But mostly I talked to stuffed animals. I had them lined up, and I would just run it at least four times a day for at least two or three weeks before. So I was going very, very hard on the practice to make sure that I didn’t mess up when I went up there.”

 As for her future, Paramesh said: “My eventual goal is to become a doctor, but I feel more than that I want to start a non-profit at some point in my life because I’ve done a lot of service-based work.”

That includes working with students at an underprivileged school in India during a family trip. She was inspired by how passionate the students were about learning. 

“My parents bought me the very best education they could from a very young age, but these kids are doing so much with what they had. I was so impressed with them,” she said. 

She is staying in touch with the students, including starting a fund drive to buy school supplies for them. “Anything I can do to get those kids where they want to go, I would love that.”

Paramesh also had advice for students her age: “Go for opportunities! I know that there are people who are so cool in this world, and if I don’t go talk to them then I don’t feel like I’m going to reach what I’m trying to get in life.”

Senior Damien Davis began playing the cello in the seventh grade when he decided to join the beginning orchestra, and has only had instruction from Walker’s Director of Orchestras Dr. Kyna Elliott. 

Although he has never taken private cello lessons with other cellists, Damien has used Dr. Elliott’s guidance and practicing every spare moment (including during lunch and free periods) to develop into an accomplished cellist. He has become so skilled that he was the only student from Georgia selected this year for the High School Honors Performance Series Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in New York City. 

Damien performed in February with the Honors Film Music Orchestra. Participation in the Honors Ensembles is limited to the highest-rated young performers from across the world. The program was created to showcase accomplished individual student performers on an international level by allowing them to study under master conductors and perform in world-renowned venues.

“Being selected to the Honors Performance Series is something each Finalist should be extremely proud of accomplishing,” said Marion Gomez, Music Director for the Honors Performance Series. “We processed nearly 10,000 nominations this year and selected the most talented student performers from around the world. Working with these conductors and performing at these renowned music halls is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that these musicians will never forget.”

Damien said the experience was eye-opening and gave him a glimpse into what the life of a professional musician is like. 

“I was there for three days, and we practiced eight hours a day,” he said. “The first time the conductor came in, everyone immediately stopped talking, and it was so quiet. The orchestra was much larger than at Walker, and we all had to be very focused and precise.”

Dr. Elliott praised Damien for his determination and growth both personally and as a musician because of his commitment to take auditions for the experience and not allow setbacks to stop him from trying.

“What people need to understand about auditions is that no doesn’t mean failure, it means ‘not right now,’ so I was pleased when Damien said he wanted to audition for Carnegie again,” Dr. Elliott said. “It is highly unusual for someone who does not take private lessons to be accepted into the Carnegie program.” 

Dr. Elliott says she gives her students a glimpse of the expectations of professional musicians by the way she conducts her classes. “They think I’m too strict,” she said. “You’re not!” Damien quickly added, saying his time at Carnegie showed him what strict looked and felt like. 

Dr. Elliott has extensive experience as a performer, educator and speaker. She has performed on Broadway, in orchestras led by conductors from The Metropolitan Opera and La Scala and gives recitals across Europe and the United States. She has designed and served as the head of fine arts programs from middle, high, charter, independent schools, and universities in the United States and Europe. She has spoken globally about the power of arts for social change and how the arts can be used as a tool for recovery and resiliency for victims of trauma, and has been published in two university resource books for educators on trauma-informed leadership and trauma-informed arts.

Damien is the third Walker student under Elliott’s guidance to be selected to the Honors Performance Series. In the upcoming spring orchestra concert on April 23 at 7 p.m. in the Coca-Cola Family  Auditorium, Damien and another senior student Martin Yuan will step in as the conductor of the Upper School Orchestra portion.

 “It is extremely rare for a student to be given the opportunity to conduct an orchestra,” said Dr. Elliott, who will play the cello in the orchestra while they conduct. “But talking with the Upper School Orchestra, they were excited for students to get the chance to stand on the podium. Damien and Martin were nominated by the orchestra and asked for the opportunity, they selected the pieces and they are working very hard.”

Damien said he won’t pursue music in college, instead focusing on pre-med, but is looking at schools with good pre-med programs that also have orchestras or other groups where he can play. 

The Walker School welcomed back two alumni to campus this week who shared their experiences following their dreams through basketball and books. 

Dr. Jerry Logan, Walker Class of 2003, is Assistant Dean of Faculty Affairs for Brown University’s School of Public Health and an author who has written two basketball-themed books. Caroline Kunetz Tillman, Class of 2014, wanted to share her love of books with Marietta and now owns The Reading Attic on the Marietta Square with her mother. 

Logan co-wrote the books “The Cinderella Strategy: The Game Plan Behind Butler University’s Rise to Prominence” and “Unbracketed: Big-Time College Basketball Done the Right Way.” 

“These books are about what do you do when you’re the Cinderella story and all of a sudden everybody is looking at you and you’ve captured some magic and yet you know it's going to go flitting away next year when there’s another Cinderella team and everybody cares about them and nobody remembers you,” he said. 

Basketball has been the driving force in Logan’s life since he came to Walker in ninth grade, and he credits the sport with giving him lifelong skills, best friends and with meeting his wife. 

“If I look at my life, everything is because of basketball,” he said. “I ended up where I went to college because of basketball [four-year standout at Gordon College]; I met my wife there, met my best friends there. If I don’t play basketball, I go somewhere else and it’s fine, but I’m pretty happy with the way things are, and that wouldn’t have happened without basketball. 

“And if I had a bad experience [at Walker] my life surely would have gone in a different direction, so the fact that I had the basketball experience that I had here, too, I’m really proud of that. ” 

Logan said he appreciated his time at Walker because of the friendships he gained and because “I had coaches who would challenge me intellectually. [Basketball] is not just about what we do with our bodies, it’s what we do with our minds.”

Tillman said she didn’t always enjoy what she had to read in high school, but books grew on her, particularly in college. 

“Books were an outlet, they were a way to put yourself in a different area for a little bit and I loved them,” she said. “I love the imagination and being able to pretend you’re in a different world.”

When she moved back to Marietta, she said she found out that “I really loved Marietta and the community and felt like something was missing.”

She said bookstores are her go-to when traveling, and she wanted that for Marietta. The Reading Attic is a place for people who “want a different place to work from the normal coffee shops.” While Tillman said she is not a writer, it was also important to her to provide a place for local authors to showcase their work. 

“A lot of authors have written multiple books and have had only one picked up,” she said. “I wanted to be that catalyst, that support behind local and Indie authors and make dreams come true.”

Logan and Tillman both spoke to Upper School students about pursuing their dreams. 

“It’s one of those things where anything you love, you’ve got to hear a lot of nos often before you get a yes unless you’re a genius or super talented,” Logan said. “That was not me. That’s not most of us. What has worked for me is having a general sense of direction, and if I find a little path through the branches, I’ll take it.”

Tillman said “When you have a dream and you love something and you’re passionate about it, you will find a way to make it happen. It’s not always clean. It’s not always pretty, but it’s worth it.”

The Reading Attic is located at 21 W Park Square, Marietta, GA 30060

Congratulations to Gavin Johnson, who will be attending Texas A&M this fall on a full scholarship through the Posse Program, which believes “the key to a promising future for the United States rests in the ability of strong leaders from diverse backgrounds to develop consensus solutions to complex social problems.” 

Posse was founded in 1989 and is based on the premise that students are more likely to succeed on college campuses if they have a group of fellow students they know before coming to campus with them. 

When Gavin begins his studies at Texas A&M in the fall, he will be joined by nine other Posse students from the Atlanta area. Gavin said of his Posse group: “Meeting them for the first time we clicked. I feel like it’s going to be really cool to have people I already know on campus.”

Gavin chose Texas A&M over a group of colleges and said his top two choices within the Posse program were Texas A&M and College of Wooster. Gavin said he chose Texas A&M because of its size and its reputation as a top-10 engineering school. He is still trying to decide his major but is considering Civil Engineering, Urban Planning or Landscape Architecture. 

One of the reasons Gavin said he thinks he was selected for the Posse Scholarship is because “I can be a leader without taking the shine off everyone else. I feel like being a leader essentially boils down to people feeling comfortable to talk to you without you taking over the conversation.” 

He credits Walker with preparing him for leadership because in sports, clubs or in-class group assignments, students are given independence to “figure it out on our own while still having the safety net of teachers.” 

“Walker has taught me from a young age how to analyze situations, how to correctly approach them and how to resolve things,” Gavin said. He said he also has learned a lot during his job at Chick-fil-A. 

As part of the Posse Program, Gavin and his peers are participating in the organization’s Pre-Collegiate Training, which lasts throughout the summer. They will learn about team building, cross-cultural communication, leadership and becoming an active agent of change on campus and academic excellence. 

Gavin began at Walker in second grade. He went to public middle school because “I didn’t see a lot of people like me” but returned to Walker for high school because “it has an education that I clicked better with.” 

When Gavin returned to Walker, he said he was surprised by how diverse Walker had become. 

“It was actually really cool to see. I was really glad about that,” he said. “And while I do think there is always room for improvement, I’m very happy with how Walker has turned out.”

Gavin said he is grateful to his teachers, his peers, his parents and his sister (Kendal, ’27), whom he is very proud of.

“Her drive is insane,” he said. “Seeing this little girl grow up to see who she is today is really crazy.”

Asked why he would suggest Walker to other prospective families, Gavin said the sense of community: “Walker shows a togetherness that can’t be replicated easily at another school.”

The Walker Primary School kicked off its 43rd Annual Art Show this month. The tradition began in 1982 when then Assistant Kindergarten teacher Sherry Walker-Taylor, who had a background in art, was encouraged to “have a ‘little’ art show.” 

Walker-Taylor’s role at Walker expanded, and so did the Art Show. She oversaw the show for almost 30 years, and for the past 13 years, her daughter, Jessica Whittingham, the Primary School’s Art and Science teacher, has grown the exhibit. This year’s show, with the theme of “Wild World of Sports,” features almost 1,000 pieces of art from 94 students in Early Learners through Kindergarten. 

We asked Whittingham to tell us about the show, which runs through March 28, and is open to all Walker families.

Mrs. Whittingham: I typically begin brainstorming ideas during the summer and settle on a theme by the beginning of the school year. It is important that I find a theme that will allow for enough different types of projects and to be able to ulitize a wide variety of materials and artistic techniques. We typically have about 55-65 different projects, and I have not yet repeated an Art Show theme.

Mrs. Whittingham: With any kind of art, my main goal is to support and develop fine motor skills. The greatest thing about art is you can learn new skills and develop fine motor skills using pretty much any kind of project. I always have a list of media and techniques that I want each grade level to have exposure to and types of art I would like everyone to learn about. Once I have my theme and my curriculum goals, I begin figuring out ways to creatively connect them together. I am very purposeful with my planning and often weave aspects of our science curriculum, geography, social studies, and literature into our projects.  

Mrs. Whittingham: An Art Show is the best way to catalog what the children have been creating all year. We start these projects in September, and the Art Show takes place in February, so it represents months of what they have been working on in Art. It is often apparent what students are doing in terms of athletics or what academic milestones they are meeting, but it can sometimes be harder to see what is occurring within the Fine Arts. An Art Show is a time when students can be celebrated as artists and feel that their art is important and valued. It is also an opportunity for other members of the school community to visit the Primary School and appreciate the art work.  The students adore having other classes and teachers come over to see what they have created.

Mrs. Whittingham: We begin each new project with a brief presentation and introduction. We start with five fabulous facts about the topic, and then discuss how we are connecting our art project with the given theme. For our theme this year, sports, we learned about the specific sport, discovered where the sport is played, and discussed how the sport would influence our art project. Sports allowed us to learn a great deal about geography and how different parts of the world celebrate athleticism and competition in unique ways.

Mrs. Whittingham: I generally put up most of the entire exhibit over a single weekend. I begin creating larger displays the week prior and have many volunteers that come to help, but the vast majority of it is put up over the weekend. My favorite thing is when the students come to school on Monday morning and see the building fully transformed with every single space being filled with amazing artwork. It is fun for them to see what all of the other classes have been working on and to experience the exhibit as a whole. 

Mrs. Whittingham: In addition to creating the artwork, the students act as docents and tour their families around. We do tours beforehand to prepare them so they know where their artwork is located. The students love being in charge of their grown-ups and helping to show them each piece of art. 

Mrs. Whittingham: Each family receives an invitation inviting them to the opening reception. There is always a personalized guidebook that provides information about the exhibit and details the projects that the individual child worked on. This year each student received a set of sports trading cards with his/her own picture and a take-home swag bag with a water bottle, sweatband, trophy with their name, foam finger, and whistle. I interviewed each child to help compile information to be used as a bio on their sports trading cards and included their birthday and where they grew up. Children always love seeing their names on things, so having those personalized touches means a lot. 

Mrs. Whittingham: Students of all ages come back to the building and can remember very specific projects that they worked on for their Art Show and often have such fond memories of when their work was celebrated. I love speaking with families who have artwork from the Primary School framed and on display in their homes. It is a wonderful feeling to see a child’s artwork that I was able to help with still on display so many years later. The artwork they created when they were this age is able to live on. 

Bryce Brickhouse has been the coach of the Walker Varsity Boys Basketball team since 2012. This year, he won his second Coach of the Year Award (the first in 2016), and Moustapha Diop earned Player of the Year for GHSA AA Region 6. 

We spoke with Coach Brickhouse before the State Tournament about his time at Walker and this year’s team, which entered the Region Tournament as the #1 seed, after winning the regular-season Region Championship. Unfortunately, the Wolverines were eliminated from the State Championship Tournament on Saturday, after losing at Athens Academy in the Sweet Sixteen. While the loss stings, it doesn’t negate the Wolverines’ strong season. 

Coach Brickhouse: Coach of the Year means consistent hard work night in and night out, when people are watching, when people aren’t watching. But the acronym COY, I really do believe it’s Community of the Year because although the award falls under my name, without everyone doing their jobs from administrators to teachers to staff to players, parents, if everyone doesn’t do their job, you don’t get a Coach of the Year/ Community of the Year award. That’s what this community is, and I’m glad to be a part of it. 

What was your team like in 2016 when you first won the award? 

Coach Brickhouse: Four of the five starters are playing college basketball right now, so again, the community was great then, and the players were great then, so the bi-product was Coach of the Year. (Those playing in college from that team are: Burke Chebuhar – Lehigh University; Chandler Baker – Colgate University; Omar Cooper – McNeese State University and C.J. Newell – DePaul University). 

Coach Brickhouse: For a basketball coach it means everything because of all of the hard work and effort that you’re pouring into these young men. Many dream of playing Division I college basketball. That group of players, I get to watch them on TV right now. I get to see them on social media. We text back and forth, so there's a bit of satisfaction there to know that that’s what those guys wanted to do when they came through the community at Walker and were taught by teachers and high-fived with staff and people came to games. It means everything to watch them catch their dreams they had as young boys. 

Another one of our players is playing professionally. Robert Baker is playing for the College Park Skyhawks, a GLeague affiliate of the Atlanta Hawks. He played overseas for a number of years and left Japan in September. I got to watch him play a couple of weeks ago. Harvard grad. He said he’s got about two to three more years of professional basketball and then he’s going to try to get himself into the NBA front office, so that would be awesome. He’s a great young man. He was the beginning of my tenure here when I started in 2012. That group was good and they believed in what we were telling them and buying what we were selling – consistently do the right things over and over again. They built the foundation. We always talk about a house. The earlier groups laid the foundation, and these guys (2023-24 team)  are putting in the rooms and windows and attic. It’s awesome.

Coach Brickhouse: We talk about being good people, about being good citizens. The basketball part is important, but being a better person and a better citizen and loving your neighbor and whoever is around, that’s more important than dribbling a ball. But if you’re doing those things off the court, then dribbling the ball is going to come easy because you’ve got the talent you were born with. You put the hard work with the talent, and you’ve got some of our awesome athletes. We’re just trying to teach them to be young men, be responsible and be on time and that’s the consistent part that we are selling and that kids are buying and our administration is buying. 

The administration allows me to be who I am, and it’s easy for a group of young men to follow what we do because I don’t have to be fake about anything. As long as the administration and community allow me to do that, I expect our young men to keep growing and being consistent figures around the hallways and in the community. That’s how I was raised to be. All I can sell them is myself and what our program is about. People who come through the Primary School, Lower School and Middle School, they know what we’re about by the time they get to Upper School. And the people who hear about us and come from other schools, the people who are already here are the culture. The new people either want to be a part of it or they don’t. 

You have an impact far beyond the basketball court. Why do you think that is? (Note to readers: Coach Brickhouse is incredibly humble, so talking about himself is one of the last things he wants to do.) 

Coach Brickhouse: I talk about treating others like you would like to be treated. It doesn’t matter your position here at school or anywhere in the community. Everyone is a person. Everyone bleeds the same. Everyone breathes the same. That’s what I was taught. No one is bigger than the next person. It doesn't matter your position. We’re all human. 

Coach Brickhouse: There's no place in the Atlanta Metro like The Walker School, especially from a diversity piece, from a caring piece – substance – and that’s the part that’s different. (As he looks at the weight room from his office): We also have everything here that an athlete needs to get better and develop so that when it’s time to get seen, they’re ready for that opportunity. That’s exactly what our program is about. 

Coach Brickhouse: Moustapha (who is from Senegal) is a fascinating young man. His mom and his late father have raised an awesome, humble young man. We were alerted about Moustapha when he was in eighth grade from his travel coach who also coached Walker alums Robert and Chandler Baker. Coach G asked if we took students from overseas. He said “there’s a young man who’s really good at basketball and speaks four languages. Would you be interested?” I said first of all, he sounds like a good student and also a good athlete, sign us up. I brought it to Mrs. Harrison (Director of Admission) who has been ultra supportive of me and our program, and she said let’s look at it. Moustapha speaks French, Spanish and Wolof (predominant language in Senegal). English was his worst language. To start off, it was hard to coach him. The classroom was hard, so our foreign language teachers would translate things into Spanish and French so he could understand, and he’s learned English from our teachers and from music. That was his introduction to America. He’s a lot braver than me. 

His maturation has been a flash from the day he was dropped off to today – as a student, as a player, as a person. I think the community at Walker has done wonders for this young man and taken him in and supported him. And I think he’s done wonders for The Walker School with his humbleness and his willingness to want to be here. We talk about backup plans, and he wants to be a dentist after he plays in the NBA and send money back to his mom in Senegal. He’s being recruited by the biggest schools in the country. A lot of it is about relationships, and he is a relationship-oriented person. I assume wherever he goes, he will have a great relationship with the head coach, coaches and players. He’s done wonders. He’s the No. 1 player in the class of 2026 in the state of Georgia. He’s the No. 6 ranked player in the country in the Class of 2026, and he’s just a sophomore. 

We are blessed to have him, and I think he is blessed to have us

Coach Brickhouse: That I was someone they could talk to and that I was someone who would listen. If the players that played for me will come back and just say hi or come back and watch the younger generation play or say that I was fair, that would be the greatest thing they could do. I want to be known as fair. I want to be known as a person who actually cares about the person and not the ability of the person. If I were to die tomorrow I would hope whoever was doing the eulogy could say that I cared about people and forget the other stuff like Coach of the Year. I hope they can say he tried his darndest to be the best father, the best husband, the best co-worker, that’s what it’s about. I hope that’s the impact. That’s the reason why I’m here. 

After an extensive search, Walker is pleased to announce Andrew Tulowitzky as the next Athletics Director. Andrew brings a wealth of experience from his successful tenure at The Galloway School, where he has served as Athletics Director for the past five years and before that as Assistant Athletics Director for three years. In his role as Athletics Director at Galloway, Andrew played a pivotal role in elevating various athletic programs, including Volleyball, Basketball, Swimming, Track and Tennis. Andrew also served as the Boys’ Varsity Basketball coach for eight years and is the winningest coach in school history. Andrew attended Oglethorpe University and upon graduation was hired as an assistant coach where he worked for five years. Following that stint, Andrew spent two years as Director of Basketball Operations at Gardner-Webb University in North Carolina.

As a result of his tenure at Galloway, Andrew is very familiar with the Metro Atlanta independent school athletics landscape and is eager to help lead the next chapter of Walker’s Athletics program. 

“I am so thrilled to join the Walker community. I look forward to collaborating with the faculty, staff and coaches at Walker to give our student-athletes the best possible experience,” Andrew said. “This is an exciting time to be a Wolverine, and I can’t wait to help our athletics program reach its full potential.”

 

TJ Anderson, Head of Walker’s Football Program, was a member of the Athletics Director search committee: “I am very excited about the hire of Andrew. He brings a unique perspective having been a coach himself, and he is also an outside-the-box thinker who is going to elevate Walker’s Athletics programs. I look forward to working with him.”