How Intentional Community Building Adds Up to Academic Rigor

Like many GUS parents, I just finished the conferences with my daughters’ teachers in the lower school. Both in first and third, teachers addressed how my children were doing socially in the classroom. They told me who they sit with, who they work well with, and even who my children want to build relationships with. In addition to addressing skill development and concept knowledge, the teachers continued to weave in how the social part of school affects my children's academic growth. GUS is known as the “nice school.” We hear this all the time. What people might not realize is the academic value of our deliberate community work. Whether it’s learning morning meeting routines as part of Open Circle in lower school or taking part in clubs in upper school, the way students interact with each other has a significant impact on academic outcomes. 

Learning how to live and work together isn’t without its bumps. Just like learning your math facts or trying to speak in Spanish, mistakes will happen. These mistakes become important learning opportunities. At GUS, we handle these challenges head-on, investigating, exploring, and valuing every opportunity to know more and do more for our students. Working with teachers, meeting with administrators, advisors, or the counselor, there is a full team of people helping students navigate the difficulties that come with community living and learning. Maybe it’s a story during library about respecting differences or a talk from me about the power of an apology, together we work to address the social needs of our students with an understanding that the implications are also academic. 

For the last ten years, we’ve done an annual School Climate Survey in the upper school. The purpose of this anonymous survey is to determine how warm or how cold our school community truly is. We ask lots of questions and use the results to help us establish directives and initiatives that we address through intentional programming like advisory, homeroom, and x-blocks. We also get feedback on how students rate important values like kindness and respect, as reflected in the actions and behaviors of their peers. We also ask some direct questions like how comfortable students are asking questions. Last year, 100% of students surveyed responded that they were comfortable or very comfortable asking questions. As a school that values posing questions as part of our mission this information is affirming, and the academic consequences are clear. In a challenging classroom environment being able to ask a question to gain direction, reinforce understanding, or just to learn something you didn’t know before is essential to growth. 

A school that is safe for questioning isn’t something that happens by accident. This safety is created by deliberate community building, intentional expectation setting, and compassionate understanding when mistakes are made. In all grades, we invest the time to develop classroom environments that are conducive to learning. Raising your hand, taking that chance, isn’t always easy. Yet it is that act that takes GUS learning to a higher level. Our students move beyond the simple information retrieval questions and concept explanations to, as Bloom’s Taxonomy points out, challenging ideas, evaluating perspectives, and making connections. This higher order thinking is where we find real rigor. 

From PK to grade 8, our thematic curriculum is all about making connections, but that can’t be done unless a student is willing to raise their hand and offer a thought, an observation, or a question. In middle school, especially, that means putting yourself out there, being vulnerable, and maybe being wrong. At a school that values the process of learning, that understands how mistakes lead to growth, and where academic risks are celebrated, students have freedom and as a result, learning becomes a choose-your-own adventure, as the questions guide the learning, leading a student to deeper understanding. This is rigor. This is the place where challenge, dedication, personal investment, and high level thinking meet. This is GUS.

Trust and go forward,

Gretchen Forsyth
Interim Head of School