School Spotlights

Viewpoint’s football team had the opportunity to learn from one of the game’s most accomplished players when former Super Bowl champion, University of Southern California standout, and Viewpoint parent Keyshawn Johnson visited campus to share his experiences, advice, and perspective with the Patriots.

During his visit on August 27, Johnson watched the final portion of the team’s practice before joining players in the Bradway Family Peak Performance Center for an extended conversation. Over nearly an hour, he reflected on his exhilarating career, the challenging life experiences that shaped his hard-working and resilient character, and the lessons he learned along the way that extend well beyond the game and into everyday life.

For Viewpoint’s scholar-athletes, the visit offered a rare opportunity to hear directly from someone who competed at the highest levels of the sport. Johnson was a unanimous first-team All-American at USC in 1995 before being selected No. 1 overall in the 1996 NFL Draft. During an 11-season NFL career, he earned three Pro Bowl selections and helped the Tampa Bay Buccaneers win Super Bowl XXXVII.

“Perseverance, grit, grind, and hustle. That’s just what I was built on,” Johnson said. “If somebody told me I couldn’t do something, that just motivated me even more to prove them wrong.”

The visit was made possible through the generosity of alumnus, current parent, and Trustee Chaney Sheffield ’98, who donated the live auction package he won at the 43rd Annual Benefit to our team to celebrate and inspire them as they began the fall season.

“We are incredibly blessed at Viewpoint to have such a talented community of students, faculty, coaches, and parents,” Sheffield said. “I want to thank Keyshawn for sharing his incredible journey and the life lessons he has learned with our football team. His message was highly motivating for our scholar-athletes and I hope they carry those lessons with them both on and off the field. Go Patriots!”

The opportunity came at the start of an exciting season for Viewpoint Football. The Patriots are currently 7-0, marking an impressive undefeated start to the year.

Viewpoint is grateful to Keyshawn Johnson for generously sharing his time and expertise with our scholar-athletes and to Chaney Sheffield for helping make this memorable experience possible through his commitment to Viewpoint Athletics.

For parents interested in helping create meaningful opportunities like this for our scholar-athletes and supporting the continued growth of Viewpoint Athletics, learn more about the launch of the Patriot Athletics Club (PAC) here or reach out to Joey Swett at joey.swett@viewpoint.org. 

When Nico Hern ’27 first arrived at Reach Academy four summers ago, he wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Encouraged by his family to participate the summer before Ninth Grade, he initially approached the experience with some hesitation. But by the end of that first summer, something had shifted.

“I challenged myself to open up and be vulnerable, which made my time there better,” Nico said. “Once you open up, you have a brotherhood, and you have people who are there for you and that you can count on.”

Reach Academy is a summer program focused on academic enrichment, leadership, mentorship, and community for young men. Nico spent his first two summers as a Reacher before progressing through the program’s leadership roles, first as a Navigator and, this past summer, as a Fellow. In that role, he mentored younger participants and became the kind of role model he had once looked to himself.

“He has traveled the full arc of Reach: from being a young man receiving mentorship and community to becoming a leader and mentor for younger boys himself,” said Reach Academy Founding Executive Director Nat Damon.

That growth was evident in the way Nico showed up for the Reach community. He was often among the first to volunteer for lunch duty, greeted students and families at carpool, helped during pickup, and led tours for Reach donors.

“He did those things not because someone was watching, but because he genuinely loves the community,” Damon said.

This summer, Nico’s journey came full circle when Reach Academy’s Senior Administrative Team selected him to serve as the graduation speaker. Drawing from his own experience, Nico encouraged younger Reachers who might still be hesitant to open up to embrace vulnerability and allow themselves to grow.

“I wanted to connect with everyone, not just the parents, but the Reachers who didn’t feel ready to be vulnerable, to show that it’s okay to express themselves,” Nico said.

Nico credits Reach with helping him grow as a student, leader, and person. He carries that growth with him into his senior year at Viewpoint. Through real-world learning, opportunities to step outside his comfort zone, and an emphasis on “being your brother’s keeper,” he has learned the importance of showing up for others.

“There is something about Nico that is harder to quantify but perhaps more important than anything else: he makes people feel seen,” Damon said. “He has a way of making younger boys, and really everyone around him, feel good about themselves.”

Four summers after first arriving at Reach, Nico is now helping younger students find the same sense of brotherhood and community he found there himself.

In a Primary School classroom, First and Second Grade students count in Mandarin, practice greetings, play games, sing songs and learn about Chinese traditions. During a recent lesson celebrating the Moon Festival, students spent several class periods creating their own light-up lanterns, picking up new vocabulary along the way.

For Upper School Mandarin Chinese Teacher Ming Hodgson, the lessons represent a milestone more than two decades in the making.

“I’ve been wanting to bring Chinese to our younger students for more than 20 years,” Hodgson said. “We finally made it happen.”

For the first time this year, Viewpoint is offering Chinese to students in First and Second Grade through a new pilot program led by Hodgson, who has spent more than two decades helping build the School’s Chinese program.

Hodgson was originally hired to create Viewpoint’s Chinese program, beginning with Chinese 1A for Seventh Grade students and Chinese 1 for Upper School students. From there, she added new levels as students progressed, eventually building a program that today spans Sixth Grade through AP Chinese, with 72 students studying Chinese across Viewpoint.

As the program grew, Hodgson said she wanted to give students the opportunity to begin much earlier.

“The earlier, the easier,” she said. “You acquire language more naturally at a younger age.”

That philosophy is shaping the new Primary School classes, where 13 students are learning Chinese through an approach designed specifically for younger learners.

Rather than focusing immediately on reading and writing, Hodgson introduces students to speaking, listening and Chinese culture. And while her Upper School classes run for 70 minutes, the Primary School classes are 30 minutes, requiring her to rethink how she structures each lesson.

“The key for me is to change activities,” Hodgson said. “The activities are different, but what we’re learning is the same. We’re just repeating it in different ways.”

Throughout a class period, students might practice greetings and counting before moving into a game, song, short video or hands-on activity. Hodgson also incorporates coloring, drawing, movement, stories, food and traditional games, giving students multiple ways to engage with the language and culture.

The classes also bring together students with varying levels of familiarity with Chinese. Some speak or hear the language at home, while others are encountering it for the first time.

“I’m going at their pace,” Hodgson said. “I’m learning what they enjoy and finding activities that keep them engaged.”

While the Primary School program is still in its first weeks, Hodgson is already thinking about what could come next. Her hope is to gradually expand Chinese into additional grade levels, creating a pathway that could eventually allow students to study the language continuously from Viewpoint’s earliest grades through Upper School.

“The most exciting thing would be to have Chinese from Transitional Kindergarten all the way through Twelfth Grade,” Hodgson said. “That’s my goal.”

Across Viewpoint, students, faculty, and staff are picking up paintbrushes and adding their own piece to a larger work of art.

This year’s All School Art Project is bringing the community together to create a large-scale collaborative installation centered on the idea that a community is made up of many individual voices, experiences, and perspectives.

During art classes, advisories, and department and team sessions, participants are using watercolor to create designs on paper plates that will ultimately be incorporated into the finished installation.

“Each participant will contribute a small piece of the larger artwork, and when those individual contributions come together, they will create something that no one person could have made alone,” said Visual Arts Department Chair Nell Yates.

The concept was inspired in large part by the Visual Arts team’s work with artist Hiep Nguyen. Through artist visits and a recent workshop in Chicago, members of the team had the opportunity to experience Nguyen’s approach to collaborative art-making firsthand.

That experience helped shape the direction of this year’s project.

“We wanted this year’s project to create an opportunity for our community to make art together without worrying about artistic ability, comparison, or having to create a ‘perfect’ finished product,” Yates said. “Instead, the focus is on participation, connection, and the collective experience of making something together.”

As individual plates accumulate, their different colors, patterns, and designs will eventually be assembled into a single installation.

For Yates, the project also builds on the sense of community created through The Art of the Poppy, Viewpoint’s first All School Art Project in 2024.

“I hope that participants experience how meaningful it can be to contribute to something larger than themselves,” Yates said. “I also hope they recognize that you do not have to consider yourself an ‘artist’ to make something meaningful. There is value in simply showing up, contributing, and trusting that your piece has a place within the larger whole of the community.”

The finished installation will reflect that same idea, bringing together different contributions, perspectives, and experiences from across the Viewpoint community.

Once complete, the All School Art Project will be installed in the Carlson Family Theater lobby, with an unveiling anticipated shortly after Thanksgiving break.