On August 24th, the Aspen Institute’s National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development published a case study featuring Capital City and our school’s whole child approach to education. The article discusses how we deliver a program that not only improves student achievement, but also helps children grow into compassionate, caring, and responsible young adults. Reporter Virginia Edwards spent the end of last school year observing classrooms and attending fieldwork to see this work in action. As 6th grade teacher Samantha Clark shared, "My job is to build them as people… I don’t see social and academic skills separately at all. I don’t think first about designing a lesson and then think next about how to develop students’ social-emotional skills. It’s all one." Read the full case study here.

This piece is the first of a four-part series that will examine challenges, opportunities, and key lessons for re-envisioning what success looks like in PreK-12 schools across the country. The series serves to help drive a greater conversation about how students learn and how to bring the best ideas and practices to all schools and students.