As we celebrate our seniors on the boys soccer and girls volleyball teams this afternoon and evening, it is a reminder to us that we have passed the midway point of our first semester.  And, with our first quarter report cards coming out this week, we are also deeply immersed in the rhythm and flow of the academic year.

If this is your first year receiving a report card from SA, you might be struck by the level of engagement from our teachers. While this is really a progress report for our semester, we use standard grades to help identify where students stand in the class. Most importantly, our teachers take the time to provide substantive and thoughtful comments tailored to each individual student, addressing how they show up in the classroom, areas of strength, areas of growth, potential strategies that could help with challenges, and appreciations for their contributions to their classrooms and our community. A teacher might provide insight into specific things a student could focus on in the second quarter, or lay out goals they would like to see the student working toward. These comments are a “labor of love” that take a lot of time to produce. Please take the time to read through these and think about the thoughtful and supportive conversations that you want to have with your child.

Going beyond simple letter grades is one example of how we go beyond the standard college prep model. The time and effort that our teachers put into these comments demonstrates a deep commitment to seeing each student as an individual and to seeking ways to help each individual student recognize and grow in their capacities as an active and engaged learner. “Going beyond college prep” is one of the key initiatives of our new Strategic Plan, which you can read in full here. 

Our community gathered this past Wednesday to hear from a staffulty panel on the ways in which our academic program “goes beyond” the basics of a college preparatory education. The panel, moderated by our Assistant Head of School Rommel Loria, included classroom teachers Ramsey Musallam, Liza Zavieh, Drew Gloger, Maitane Elorza, and our Director of College Counseling Rolando Crisostomo and Associate Director of College Counseling Katie May. Our teachers spoke at length about the joy and inspiration they find in working with teenagers, their passion for teaching and the art of an engaged pedagogy, and about the ways in which they seek to prepare students for life beyond high school. You can view a recording of the evening here.

One teacher made a comment that I have thought of often since Wednesday — that she is not just working to give our kids a skill set, but she is helping them to cultivate a mindset that will allow them to approach real world problems with curiosity, critical thinking, and the confidence that they will be able to figure out how to take on challenges, even when they are starting something completely new. This gets at the heart of our “going beyond” philosophy. The skills and capacities that students use in the classroom are important to their academic success, both here and in college. But we don’t just want to educate well-prepared future college students; we want to foster the habits of mind and the character traits that make for well-prepared human beings and lifelong learners.

Here are just a few examples of this in action: how to research a topic you don’t know anything about, and how to investigate your sources. How to look for context and how to make connections across disciplines, and how to form theories about how and why these connections came to be. How to navigate tricky discussions with openness, empathy, and willingness to listen, and how to demonstrate respect and understanding even when there are differences of opinion. How to be a caring and compassionate community member with awareness of how your actions affect others. 

Our college counselors also spoke about the importance of really engaging with the present moment in high school instead of focusing too myopically on the future, and this is another part of our “going beyond” approach. We celebrate the transformative power of the teenage years and try to create a school where the teenage brain has the right conditions to reach its full potential. This is a time of awakening intellect, intense social connection, rapidly evolving identity, and profound growth. We believe that each of our students is capable of great things, both in the present and in the future, and we encourage them to take risks and engage with new ideas so that they might discover the passions and capacities that will be meaningful to them throughout their lives. 

After many years of working with teenagers, we know that along with deep learning, this is the kind of preparation that students need to be successful later on. In order to find real fulfillment and success after high school, they must also have a sense of who they are, what matters to them, and how they matter in the world.