It Marked Me
May 27, 2026
By Colleen Worrell
Director of the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning
Colleen Worrell is the Director of the Burgess Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning at St. Mark’s School. Since 2015, she has led strategic initiatives focused on educator growth, student-centered learning, and innovative programming that supports the diverse needs and interests of students. Her work centers on fostering collaboration, continuous improvement, and human-centered change across the school community. In this reflection inspired by Reunion weekend, Worell considers the lasting ways St. Mark’s shapes students long after graduation, often through the everyday moments, relationships, and values that quietly leave their mark over time.
In the midst of wrapping up the school year, it is easy to become short-sighted and focus, out of necessity, on all the tasks and deadlines that come with reaching the finish line. But a few conversations with alumni who returned to campus for Reunion gave me pause. Listening to St. Markers from different decades reflect on their experiences made me think of a line from a letter that Ray Bradbury wrote in honor of a beloved high school English teacher: “It marked me.”
For context, here’s an excerpt from Bradbury’s letter:
She was always and forever the friendly teacher, not the nagging one, no, but the gentle inquirer who asked after your reading health. The list of authors she introduced me to is long and wondrous, including many fine women whose work very much influenced mine as the years passed. The first time I heard THE MONKEY'S PAW it was from her lips one morning in the autumn of 1935, in her Short Story Class. It marked me (Bradbury, 1979).
Throughout Reunion weekend, I heard story after story about the ways teachers and the broader St. Mark’s community had “marked” our alumni. One alum from the Class of 1971 spoke about a history teacher whose passion for interrogating and understanding the past shaped his own lifelong love of history and politics. Decades later, he could still recall not just what he learned, but how that teacher made him think and feel. Another alum from the Class of 1996 was genuinely shocked to discover that jeans and sneakers are now allowed under the dress code, even during weekly morning chapel. When I explained the evolution of the dress code and jokingly mentioned that sweatpants have become the new battleground, he stared at me in disbelief. Then he explained that, to this day, St. Mark’s still shapes how he dresses because, in his words, “how you show up matters.” Before hurrying off to change out of jeans and into more formal clothes for chapel, he laughingly admitted that habits die hard. His wife and children, he told me, had only recently managed to convince him to own a pair of joggers.
In another conversation, an alum whose grandparents established the Matthews Grant asked me to share stories about recent student projects. I found myself describing the remarkable range of opportunities students have pursued over the past decade and the ways those experiences have shaped their confidence, interests, and trajectories long after graduation. Both he and a fellow classmate were deeply moved by the impact these grants have had on students and quickly shifted from reflecting on the past to asking how they could help shape opportunities for current St. Markers through mentorship, connections, and future support. I returned to campus that Monday thinking about all the ways St. Mark’s leaves its mark on students, often in ways that are not immediately visible in the moment. Sometimes the impact comes through a classroom conversation that changes the way a student sees the world or their place in it. Sometimes it begins with a faculty member recognizing a talent or possibility in a student before they can fully see it in themselves. Sometimes it comes simply from being part of a community with shared values and expectations that leave a lasting imprint long after students leave our school.
Reunion weekend felt like an important reminder that the work happening every day at St. Mark’s matters in ways that extend far beyond a single year or even graduation. Long after students leave campus, they carry pieces of this place and the people who shaped them with them.
