Children Need More Than The Things We Can Measure

Posted by Sharon Lauer

When we become anxious about children’s achievement, our instinct is often to give them more of what we can measure. More math minutes. More reading instruction. More test preparation. More time devoted to the subjects most easily translated into scores, percentiles and benchmarks. The instinct is understandable. Parents and educators feel tremendous responsibility for preparing children for an increasingly competitive future. We worry about whether they are keeping pace, whether they will be ready for the next school, whether they will perform well on standardized tests and, eventually, whether they will gain admission to college.

But anxiety has a way of narrowing our thinking.

Perhaps the question is not, “What can we take away to give children more math?”

Perhaps the question is rather, “What are we unwilling to risk a child leaving school without having experienced?”

Too often, education is framed as a series of false choices: academics or the arts. Rigor or creativity. Achievement or joy. Preparation for the future or a rich childhood in the present.

Powerful schools realize that these are not mutually exclusive choices but rather essential partners in a meaningful education. At Unquowa, students have time for serious mathematics and serious art. They can pursue an accelerated academic path that allows them to complete Algebra I and Geometry before eighth grade graduation, with some students advancing even further, and they also sing, paint, perform, build, play and create. Breadth does not require sacrificing depth. Belief in this matters because often when schools face pressure to demonstrate academic gains, the arts can become particularly vulnerable because their value is more difficult to reduce to a number. There is no percentile rank for being moved by a piece of music. No standardized assessment captures what happens when a child stands on a stage, takes a creative risk and discovers that they can command a room. Creativity, interpretation, aesthetic judgment and original thought resist tidy measurement, but that does not make them less important.

In fact, we should be careful not to confuse what is easiest to measure with what matters most. I do not believe we need to defend music because it might make children better mathematicians. We do not need to justify theater because it may improve reading scores or visual art because creativity could someday make a student more employable. Those arguments inadvertently concede the very premise we should be questioning: that the arts earn their place only when they can demonstrate their usefulness to something deemed more important. Children deserve encounters with beauty, culture, expression, imagination and performance because these experiences are part of becoming fully educated human beings.

Of course, measurable academic achievement matters. We are preparing students for competitive secondary schools and colleges, and we take that responsibility seriously. But college itself is not the final destination of an education. Life is. The child sitting in an elementary classroom today will someday need to navigate work, relationships, disappointment, uncertainty and change. We hope that child becomes not merely accomplished, but thoughtful. Not merely employable, but purposeful. Not merely successful by someone else’s metric, but capable of building a life that is ethical, meaningful and personally fulfilling.

No single test can measure that future. So when higher expectations tempt us to narrow a child’s education, we should do the opposite and protect its breadth fiercely. Our response to a demanding future should not be to offer children fewer measurable options. It should be to build an education expansive enough to prepare them for more possibilities.

Why Small Classes Matter Most When Children Are Just Beginning

Posted by Faith Barbuto

In the earliest years of school, being known isn’t simply comforting. It’s an educational advantage

Faith Barbuto, Early Childhood Coordinator, Unquowa School

There is something interesting that happens in a small classroom: it becomes very difficult to disappear. A child can’t spend the morning quietly observing from the edges without a teacher noticing. A question doesn’t get lost because twenty other hands are raised. A misunderstanding can be caught before it becomes a habit. And when a child is ready for more, there is someone close enough to recognize that, too. In Early Childhood, that proximity matters enormously.

Four and five year olds arrive at school at remarkably different points in their development. Once may already be fascinated by letters while another is beginning to hear the sounds within words. One child may confidently enter a group while another is still learning how to join. Some need encouragement to slow down and persist. Others need the confidence to take a risk. None of this means lowering expectations. Quite the opposite. A teacher who knows children well can ask more of them because they know when the children are ready.

In a small classroom, instruction can respond to what is happening in real time. A teacher can extend the question for the child who has already grasped the concept, sit beside the student who needs another way into it, and recognize the moment when someone who usually hands back is ready to take the lead.

But perhaps the less obvious advantage of a small Early Childhood classroom is what happens between the children themselves. In a larger group, it can be relatively easy for a child to move away from a difficult social situation and find someone else to play with. Small communities work differently. Children see one another again and again. They have to negotiate whose idea to use. They have to wait. Share materials. Find words when they disagree. Repair friendships. Learn that the child who frustrated them yesterday may be their partner today.

Over time, a small classroom begins to function a little like a family. That doesn’t make the social experience smaller. In some ways, it makes it richer. Children cannot simply choose relationships that are easy. They learn how to be part of a community, including all the compromise, patience, empathy and resilience that requires. And the teacher is close enough to know when to step in and, just as importantly, when not to.

There is another relationship that becomes especially important in these early years: the relationship between teachers and parents. When classes are intentionally small, teachers don’t only have more opportunities to know their students. They have the opportunity to know their families, too. Conversations can go beyond reports about what happened during the school day. We can share the small things we are noticing, talk through a new behavior or developmental stage, celebrate progress that might otherwise go unseen, and offer perspective when a parent is wondering, Is this typical? Should I be concerned? How should I respond at home?

Those conversations matter because four- and five-year-olds are changing quickly, and parents are navigating those changes right alongside them. Sometimes a family needs information. Sometimes they need reassurance. Sometimes a teacher sees something at school that helps a parent understand what they are seeing at home, or a parent shares something that gives the teacher an entirely new understanding of what is happening in the classroom.

That kind of partnership gives us a fuller picture of the child. Teachers bring what they observe at school. Parents bring everything they know about their child beyond it. When those perspectives are shared openly, we can respond with greater consistency, challenge children more thoughtfully and help them develop increasing independence.

This is one of the great opportunities of Early Childhood education at Unquowa. We are not simply teaching children letters, numbers and how to sit at circle time. We are helping them develop their first understanding of themselves as learners and as members of a community, in partnership with the families who know them best.

Those beginnings deserve enormous attention.

At Unquowa, small Early Childhood classes are not small by accident. We believe these formative years benefit from classrooms where teachers can notice more, respond sooner, challenge thoughtfully, build strong partnerships with families and help children develop genuine independence.

Because in the years when children are learning what school is, being known well gives them more room to grow.

From Observation to Understanding: Why Science Belongs in the Field

Posted by Joshua Bartosiewicz

From Observation to Understanding: Why Science Belongs in the Field

By Joshua Bartosiewicz, Upper School Science Teacher

The best science learning often begins when students encounter something they did not expect.

A seed clings to a student’s clothing during a hike. A familiar vegetable looks entirely different growing in the soil. The shape of a plant raises a question about adaptation. Tracks along a trail offer evidence that an animal recently passed through.

These moments invite students to pause, observe and ask questions. They also reveal something important about science: it is not simply a collection of facts to be learned. It is a way of investigating and making sense of the world.

That is why field-based experiences are an essential part of science education at Unquowa.

To begin the year, our seventh graders traveled to Common Ground in New Haven, where they explored gardens, prepared food from their harvest, interacted with farm animals and hiked through West Rock Park. The day introduced students to scientific concepts we will study throughout the year, but its greater purpose was to help them begin thinking and behaving like scientists.

Creating a Reason to Ask Questions

In a classroom, students may read about seed dispersal, pollination, species relationships, geological formations and biomimicry. In the field, they can see evidence of those processes unfolding around them.

This changes the nature of learning.

Instead of beginning with a definition, students begin with an observation: Why are these seeds shaped differently? How does this plant attract pollinators? What created this rock formation? How can we tell which animals have traveled through this area?

The scientific vocabulary still matters, but students now have an experience to connect it to. The concept is no longer abstract. It helps explain something they have actually noticed.

Understanding Systems Through Direct Experience

Field experiences also allow students to recognize relationships that are difficult to capture on a page.

At Common Ground, students moved from garden to kitchen as they harvested vegetables and herbs and used them to prepare their own mini pizzas. Along the way, they considered what it takes to grow, harvest, clean and prepare food. They learned about sustainable agricultural practices and saw how soil, plants, animals, people and food systems are interconnected.

This experience reinforced Unquowa’s Farm to Fork philosophy while encouraging students to think more deeply about a familiar part of their lives. A meal is not an isolated product. It is the result of a complex system involving natural resources, scientific knowledge, human labor and intentional choices.

Meeting and caring for chickens, goats, sheep and ducks added another layer to that understanding. Students considered not only what farm animals provide for people, but also the roles animals play within agricultural and environmental systems.

Helping Students Remember What They Learn

Experience alone does not guarantee understanding. The role of the teacher is to help students slow down, notice details, connect observations to scientific ideas and return to those experiences as their knowledge grows.

Throughout the year, our seventh graders will revisit many of the ideas introduced during this trip. When we discuss ecological relationships, plant reproduction, geology or environmental sustainability, students will have more than notes to reference. They will be able to recall what they touched, tasted, questioned and observed.

Those memories become intellectual anchors. They give new information somewhere to attach.

Most importantly, experiences like this help students see that science is happening all around them. They do not need to wait for a laboratory activity or a teacher’s instructions to investigate the world. They can observe closely, look for evidence, recognize patterns and ask thoughtful questions wherever they are.

Our goal is not simply for students to know more science. It is for them to begin seeing themselves as scientists, capable of using curiosity and evidence to better understand the world they share.

High Expectations, Without the Assumptions

Posted by Karen Williamson

Understanding how children develop should expand what we believe they can become, not narrow it.

Faith Barbuto, Early Childhood Coordinator – Unquowa School

Spend enough time around children and patterns begin to emerge.

Young children need to move. They learn through experience. They need opportunities to build, explore, question, create and test ideas for themselves. There are developmental differences between children, and sometimes between boys and girls. Good educators understand those differences.

But understanding a difference is not the same as building an expectation around it.

We hear plenty about what boys need from school. They need movement. They need competition. They need to work with their hands. And many boys do thrive when they can run, build, investigate and turn an abstract idea into something tangible.

But that is only part of what they need.

A boy who loves competition also needs to learn collaboration. A child who would happily spend an afternoon building something needs to develop the patience to read deeply and write thoughtfully. The student who is comfortable taking physical risks may need encouragement to take an intellectual or creative one. And the child who rarely stops moving may surprise us with extraordinary focus when he discovers something that genuinely captures his attention.

The same is true for girls. Our assumptions about what children will enjoy, where they will excel or how they will learn can become surprisingly limiting if we allow them to shape the opportunities we put in front of them.

At Unquowa, we believe children deserve breadth.

They should encounter science and literature, athletics and art, mathematics and music, nature and technology. They should build things with their hands and wrestle with ideas in their minds. They should experience competition and cooperation, independence and responsibility, moments when they feel completely confident and others when they have to work at something that does not come easily.

And they should do all of this alongside classmates who bring different strengths, personalities and perspectives to the experience.

There is tremendous value in learning how to communicate and collaborate with people who are different from you. Children will eventually enter high schools, colleges, workplaces and communities filled with people of different backgrounds, genders, temperaments and ways of thinking. Learning how to navigate those relationships begins much earlier than adulthood.

Our responsibility as educators is not to ignore differences between children. It is to understand them without allowing them to become boundaries.

Because there is an important distinction between knowing who a child is today and deciding who that child will become tomorrow.

Understanding children well should help us challenge them more thoughtfully, not expect less from them.

So perhaps one of the questions families should ask when choosing a school is not simply:

Does this school understand a child like mine?

But something more ambitious:

What will this school believe my child is capable of becoming?

That is ultimately what high expectations should mean. Not asking every child to be the same, but refusing to let our assumptions determine how far any of them might go.

Are We Preparing Children, or Rushing Them?

Posted by Sharon Lauer

Why protecting childhood and pursuing academic excellence were never opposing ideas.

Third Graders on the Playground

There is a particular anxiety that seems to follow childhood now: the fear of falling behind. Is my child reading soon enough? Should we add another activity? Is this program rigorous enough? By middle school, the questions become more urgent: Are they taking the right math? Are they ready for high school? Underneath these questions is an understandable instinct. We want our children to be ready for the world they will inherit. But somewhere along the way, we have begun to confuse starting earlier with getting further.

After decades of working with children and families, I have come to believe that one of the most persistent misconceptions in education is that protecting childhood and pursuing academic excellence are opposing ideas. They are not. In fact, one makes the other possible. A child does not become an independent thinker because we have filled every available hour with instruction. Independence requires opportunities to make choices. Creativity requires the freedom to follow an idea somewhere unexpected. Confidence requires taking manageable risks. Judgment requires making decisions, occasionally making the wrong ones, and discovering what to do next.

Yet, in our desire to prepare children, we can be quick to replace those experiences with things that look more productive. We overschedule because an open afternoon can feel like wasted time. We become uneasy when children are simply playing, talking, wandering outside, building something without instructions, or announcing that they are bored. But those moments ask something important of a child: What will you do? What interests you? What happens when no adult has predetermined the next step?

The same is true in school. Movement, art, music, conversation, outdoor exploration and exposure to big ideas are sometimes described as additions to the academic program. They are not,

Upper School Life Worth Living Class

however, extras. They are part of the intellectual architecture of an excellent education. Scientists, mathematicians, writers and inventors do not make discoveries simply by following predetermined paths. They experiment. They imagine. They question assumptions. Children need opportunities to develop those habits long before we ask them to innovate as adults. Protecting childhood, then, does not mean protecting children from experience. Children need challenge, disappointment, responsibility, difficult questions and increasing independence. What we should protect is their opportunity to experience childhood itself.

At Unquowa, our eighth graders explore the idea of a “life worth living.” They wrestle with questions that do not have an answer key: What makes a life meaningful? What do we value? Who do we want to become? To me, this is elevated learning. It requires knowledge, but also judgment, independence and the ability to think deeply about ideas. That kind of thinking cannot suddenly be switched on in eighth grade. It is built over years. There is an old truth in education we sometimes try very hard to outsmart: you cannot go around development. You have to go through it. Our goal should not be to see how quickly we can move children toward adulthood. They will get there. Our responsibility is to make sure they arrive with the curiosity, independence, imagination and character to make something meaningful of it.

Wellness: An Essential Part of the Curriculum

Posted by Faith Barbuto

Student wellness should not be treated as a separate subject or something reserved for difficult moments, it should be woven into the fabric of the school day. Children cannot fully engage in learning until their basic needs are met, and emotional regulation is every bit as fundamental as physical safety or proper nutrition. When students feel emotionally secure, they are far more available for curiosity, collaboration and meaningful learning.

In my classroom, wellness isn’t confined to one lesson or activity. It begins during Morning Meeting with affirmations and continues through gratitude circles, conversations about emotions, opportunities for reflection and a daily mindfulness practice after lunch. Social-emotional learning becomes part of our literacy discussions, classroom routines and even our play. The goal is not simply to help children calm down in the moment, but to help them develop an awareness of themselves and the strategies that work best for them over time.

One of the most rewarding parts of this work is watching children begin to use these tools independently. At first, I model breathing techniques, mindfulness exercises and other regulation strategies for the entire class. Eventually, students begin recognizing when they need those tools on their own. Parents often tell me their children have asked to create “calm down corners” at home or have taught mindfulness strategies to siblings and family members. Those are the moments when you realize these skills are extending well beyond the classroom.

Developing emotional regulation at an early age also creates a foundation that students can build upon as academic expectations and life’s challenges become more complex. Mindfulness doesn’t eliminate stress; it helps children develop what educator Linda Lantieri describes as inner resilience, the ability to experience disappointment, frustration or uncertainty without becoming overwhelmed by it. That resilience is one of the greatest gifts we can give our students.

I also believe schools have an important responsibility to support educators in this work. Over the years, I have participated in a variety of mindfulness and social-emotional learning trainings, and I enjoy sharing those resources with colleagues. While the activities naturally evolve as children mature, the underlying goal remains the same: helping students better understand themselves so they can respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively.

As educators and parents, we often define success by grades, college admissions or future careers. Those milestones certainly matter, but they are not enough on their own. Academic achievement without emotional well-being is an incomplete measure of success. If we want children to become capable learners, compassionate citizens and resilient adults, we must recognize that wellness is not separate from learning, it is the foundation that makes learning possible.