Preparing Students for the 21st Century CONTINUED And the Chief of Operations in the office of King County Executive Dow Constantine wrote, “I just rode up on the elevator with Claire Karch. What a great way to start the day! She is smart, confident, and well spoken. The other people on the elevator were blown away when I told them she was a high school student.”
PART IV : Why What We’re Doing Works In the light of the Gallup data, both the superior evaluations our seniors receive from internship supervisors and the job offers they get make sense. Day in and day out, in middle school and high school, Seattle Academy students experience five of the six components that, when present in the college experience (Gallup study), drive long-term success in work engagement and life well-being. The sixth component, the internship, occurs in the senior year.
Given our Mission of preparing young people for college and for life, both the college placement record and the performance of the seniors in their capstone Senior Project internships are important to us. But in terms of providing a counterpoint to the Gloom and Doom of the articles and the reports about What’s Not Working, it is the latter that draws attention. Spencer Laube’s (’15) Senior Project supervisor, the Chief Mechanical Engineer at the UW’s Sea Glider Fabrication Center observed, “We originally had busywork lined up for Spencer, but when we found out that he is an expert in the CAD program ‘Solidworks,’ we asked him to design a recovery cradle for our Deepglider robot. We thought it would take 6 weeks. Spencer did it in 4 days.”
In a Seattle Academy learning environment that includes all of Gallup’s six key components, students learn how to integrate productive skills, behaviors, and attitudes into habits of mind and habits of action; it is this broad, deep, and consistent exposure over time that gives living proof of the power of John Dryden’s famous line, “We first make our habits; then, our habits make us.” By the time our seniors begin their Senior Projects and then graduate into their futures, they have become their habits; and they are, therefore, well prepared—by anyone’s definition—for college and for life.
PART V : How What We’re Doing Works
And Blake Ange’s (’15) supervisor at Blue Sky Cleaners hired him the day the unpaid internship ended, saying, “I wish every employee I hire was like Blake.”
The foundation of the learning environment at Seattle Academy, The Culture of Performance, is the foundation of our entire community, and, I would argue, the answer to the question, “How can we best prepare our children for college and for Life?”
And Amit Perlin’s (’15) supervisor at the UW Aids Clinical Trials Unit said, “Amit is an independent and capable adult. He has been incredible.”
The Culture of Performance prepares young people for college and for Life because this way of teaching replicates Life.
24 BEST OF SAAS | 2015-2016