Strength to Strength

Wooster School’s strengths are derived from our commitment to human development and learning through interaction.  Our school is designed to promote interaction so that each day we can better understand what our students need in order to improve, and the extent to which they are progressing as learners and developing as good people. Equally important is the process of students building awareness of their own personal capabilities and potential.  Relationships of all kinds provide the vehicle for learning interactions, and as students learn through interaction they  build the skills, dispositions, and knowledge to be better learners, collaborators, creators, and problem solvers.  They also become better fellow humans.  

As we enter into the 2024-25 school year with interaction, learning, and human flourishing at the heart of our partnership, foundational questions continue to guide our own thinking and learning as educators.  How do we create an environment in which students are engaged and feel safe, and therefore can learn and flourish?  What skills, dispositions, and knowledge are most important to focus on in the limited time that we have?  How must we change in order to adjust to the ways in which the social, cultural, economic, and technological conditions of the world are evolving?  How might we fine tune existing programs while also developing and implementing new programs, methodologies, and policies while staying focused on our Purpose, Promise, and Beliefs?  

As you read Strength to Strength 2024-25,  you will see the threads of these framing  questions throughout.  As in the past, this report is not designed to be a comprehensive review of all things Wooster, but rather an overview of the programs, policies, and designs for learning which we are focusing on in particular as we enter into the new school year.

Before laying out the highlights of our ongoing work, a reminder about the outcomes that we seek for our graduates, both near term and farther into the future.  First is the likelihood that nearly all of our graduates aspire to attend a four-year college.  While the distant future might offer other equally promising life pathway choices, for now, college is the next step for most.  Our Upper School programs and designs for learning continue to evolve with this in mind.  Our strong belief is that students who are self-aware and have developed skills and dispositions to manage their time, work, and relationships in ways that produce both academic achievement and healthy well-being will enjoy the strongest outcomes in college and beyond.  This includes being a metacognitive learner who excels at making one's thinking visible, and a hard worker who can focus one’s attention on reading, reflection, discussion, studying, and problem-solving for extended periods of time.  Becoming skilled in striking a balance between attending to learning and allowing oneself the time to engage in the rest of life is also vitally important.  

In order for us to develop these skills, dispositions, and knowledge in students, we often must first disentangle the various elements of each and help students to build understanding, capacity, and confidence through doing, and then doing again, and again.  Our grades five through twelve curriculum is designed to support this continuum of learning, while also recognizing and responding positively to the reality of each student’s jaggedness when it comes to particular learning goals.  

The designs for learning, programs, and policies that will be highlighted in Strength to Strength 2024-25 have been developed, and will continue to evolve, with these core priorities in mind.  Creating the architecture for this learning journey, and finding adults with the requisite skills, dispositions, and knowledge to build each student into that excellent person and learner would be hard even were we operating in a vacuum.  But lately it feels like the future keeps getting here before we are ready.  So perhaps the greatest challenges that we face as educators, and indeed as parents, are the ubiquity of social media and internet-based information and entertainment platforms (if one can tell the difference), and the profound effect that they have on our children’s understanding of the world, their ability to focus and sustain attention and deeper thinking, and their capacity to develop and sustain healthy and lasting human relationships.  

While the challenges are daunting, we are grateful to be engaged with you as partners in this most important work.  Together we can continue to raise good people and teach them how to find and travel the pathways of personal success and wellness.  What follows is an update on how we are pursuing that aspiration.  Thank you for trusting and partnering with us in this work.