division heads reflect on the joys of discovery

DISCOVERY in the . . . DIVISION HEADS remark on the joys ofDISCOVERY this year

PRESCHOOL Netra Fitzgerald Head of Preschool

LOWER SCHOOL Michael Simpson Head of Lower School

The Preschool Balanced Approach to Learning involves play through wonder and discovery with a balance of direct instruction. Our annual theme suits Preschool perfectly because our program promotes and integrates learning through hands-on discovery each day. From discoveries in their environment, each other, and their community, our youngest students begin to understand individual differences in projects like paper doll art and sharing family traditions. They learn about biology and ecology in the world with units like Growing Things and trips to the Dallas World Aquarium and Dallas Arboretum. The MindUp curriculum has engaged the children in discovering core breathing to calm their bodies in the classrooms and during transition time. This year, we even have a new discovery on our playground! Junior Lane Herbert, for her Girl Scout Gold Award, has partnered with Preschool and the facility department to install a rainwater barrel and irrigation system using collected water to feed the beautiful butterfly garden on the Preschool playground. Thanks to Lane, all our preschoolers will further discover and understand the importance of harvesting rainwater and channeling water resources.

The joy we have as educators is in capitalizing on our students’ natural curiosity and providing the frameworks and experiences for them to begin to build an understanding of the world and themselves. For us, discovery is a concept that defines the experience of our children in terms of academics, growing self-knowledge, and development of social awareness. Children need time to play with ideas, explore, and create. It could be searching through an owl pellet in the second grade science lab. It might be learning about the design process and building prototypes with the expectation to discover what information failure can provide. Discovery happens when a math problem that seemed complicated can be systematically tackled — and that those problem-solving skills can be applied to other problems, too! Our fourth graders take a whole year to explore the concept of leadership and its many facets through reading, discussion, and experiences. Students have the opportunity to discover strengths, notice and address areas of challenge, and be exposed to new interests. A student in art class may say they are not good at drawing and then discover they have many other artistic capabilities. A student anxious about leading a Lower School assembly discovers that she can do it, and then ends up being a featured speaker at the Fourth Grade Farewell Ceremony. Perhaps most importantly, we want our children to develop a “growth mindset,” discovering that they can learn anything with effort, that their abilities are not fixed. We love working with students whose curiosity, earnestness, and innocence appears every day. This year’s chosen theme reinforces our passion for working with our youngest Hornets, and we are having a wonderful year of discovering the joy of viewing the world through a young child’s eyes.

MIDDLE SCHOOL

Susan Palmer Head of Middle School

What each teacher is truly hoping for is to foster an environment where our students can DISCOVER the world … the natural world, the historic world, the literary world, the world of languages, the world of the arts, the world of numbers, or how we move in the world. Our teachers present tools, strategies, and skills throughout the Middle School years so that our students can make discoveries of their own, moving away from, “just tell me what you want me to know” to “what new understanding can I find in my daily life at school?” Deeper, more lasting learning takes place when our students learn to ask why, to try multiple paths to discovery, and to be open to light bulb moments of understanding. A parallel path to discovery lies within each of us as we continually learn about ourselves. Middle School students are just embarking on this path. Identifying and owning their own identities, their own values, and their own strengths and weaknesses are insights that are all under construction at this age. We often speak about giving students “agency:” choices and decisions pertaining to their own lives here at school. Middle Schoolers crave this agency, but we provide both practice and scaffolding around these skills as they are emerging, and we don’t make assumptions that our students are completely ready to fly on their own. We hope that our everyday work with students will open them to discovering their internal powers. Maybe they’ll discover a way to right a wrong, to stand up for a friend, or to work in our community to make life better for folks. Maybe they’ll discover how to bounce back from a disappointment or one of the many ways to be a leader. Continually learning new things about themselves is a lifelong journey that can be energizing as well as fulfilling.

UPPER SCHOOL Trevor Worcester Head of Upper School

I hope that every student, in every grade, finds a way to enroll and engage in classes and activities that will spark their discovery. Students in our new ninth grade physics course are currently discovering the concept of velocity, and tenth grade students in our new United States History course are discovering the activism of Frederick Douglass and how that connects to the issue in our modern world. For juniors, maybe it’s the discovery of college curriculum in their first AP course, and for seniors, it’s the journey of self-reflection as they write personal essays for their college applications in the fall. Maybe it’s the arc of a character to portray, when our students in fall drama discovered the iconic and ill-fated romance of Romeo and Juliet. Maybe it’s the discovery of resilience in an individual athlete or the team they are on as they navigate the highs of winning and the lows of a stinging defeat. It is in Upper School when you see students discovering which causes to advocate for, which community interests to experience and share, and which areas of academics, arts, and athletics to continue when they leave Greenhill. Some of this may stem from a need for a resume to look stronger andmore robust, but I also hope there can continue to be room for the unexpected, for the unintentional. Perhaps you’ve experienced that discovery moment in your past – in high school, in college, or in the very recent past. Did it provide a path for what you are doing today? Reflect on that, have that story ready. Then at the next family meal, ask your student if they have had a discovery moment yet in Upper School. Was it a class? A teacher? An experience serving in the community? Working in the studio? Playing on the field or court? If it hasn’t happened yet, that’s okay. If it has, then I would encourage you to find ways to nurture it. We all want our students, our children, to find joy in their lives. I hope that as the year finishes, they find those moments of joy, and those moments of discovery, that propel them to the next steps on their journeys, inspired by the unique tapestry of our community.