 | Celebrating The Individual Child Girls are special at Wellington. So are boys. We love athletes, artists, academicians. We're fond of swimmers and painters and gamers. Our quest for each child is to help them identify their passions and then support them and provide opportunities to dive deeper into that subject area. We know that every child has his or her own unique spark, and it is our mission to help them develop it.
As Head of School Robert Brisk says: "Wellington's mission charges us to help every person to realize his or her unique potential. This has caused me to reflect on the Roman concept of genius. The Romans believed that inherent in every person was a guiding spirit whose small voice could, from time to time, be heard clearly as it guides each person through life’s decision points. I believe in this concept of genius. We at Wellington are here to help students discover that which is unique and to strengthen that genius that every student and every person possesses."
A commitment to developing the “whole child” is a critical aspect of the educational experience. A child-centered atmosphere of trust and caring encourages not only academic growth, but social and emotional growth as well. All teachers help students learn to be respectful, responsible and resilient as they embark on the energizing journey of lifelong learning and inquiry.
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Differentiated Instruction As Head of Lower School Jill Webb often says, gender is just one factor in the determination of a child's success in the classroom. Others include different background knowledge, readiness, language and preferences in learning and interests. To address all of these differences – including the differences between boys and girls – Wellington differentiates instruction in all classrooms. Teachers respond to student need and individual learning profiles rather than expecting students to modify themselves for the curriculum.
A differentiated classroom is a blend of whole-class, small group and individual instruction. For instance, in Lower School differentiation may take the form of a classroom teacher working with a small group of students to better understand a math concept, while at the same time a learning guide works with a couple of students to tackle that same concept in a very different way, and a third group will be with an extension teacher to enhance and deepen their knowledge of that or more advanced math concepts.
As Webb explains it: “Suppose we’re all going to Chicago. Some of us are going via airplane; some will take the train; and others are driving. Differentiated instruction means all of our students are moving toward true understanding of the same concepts, but they are learning it in the way that best suits their learning style.”
Differentiation to educate the whole child – girl or boy – continues into Middle School and Upper School. As students learn more about themselves and how they best learn, they can learn how to apply that to classroom experiences.
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Real-World Experiences Every classroom at The Wellington School, from the earliest pre-kindergarten class right through the Senior Focus Project, emphasizes real-world skills over textbook memorization. For instance, while 8th graders read about historians in Social Studies, they also become archaeologists. Eighth graders apply Social Studies lessons, Art and Math skills to the yearlong project that ends when student create a gridded dig site, then find, repair and classify buried items they made in Art class to discern the civilization to which they belong.
The real world includes men and women working side by side in virtually every professional endeavor. Research, again from Yale's Sternberg, found that single-sex education hides from the inequalities of society and over protects females. Coeducation confronts these inequalities allowing females to effectively battle and overcome them. Just as The Wellington School provides a platform for every student to practice in a safe environment their abilities with leadership, risk-taking, teamwork, resilience and a host of other skills necessary for the real world, practicing interaction between the sexes should start at the earliest ages.
The real world also includes stereotyping and other gender inequalities.
"Society sometimes still has different expectations of boys and girls," said Head of Middle School Erin Noviski. "We tackle that not by offering a different method of teaching for one gender or the other, but by building social awareness and self-esteem programming into our regular curriculum."
Wellington's two full-time counselors have created regular programming that allows formal and informal conversations among students about gender roles. Where appropriate, those groups are segregated by gender so that each group feels comfortable talking about "girl issues" or "boy issues" that might include bullying, sexual development, developing strong friendships or civility. Then, the boys and girls can come back together in their classrooms and deploy the skills they learned in their groups to better negotiate the real world and understand each other's point of view.
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Advanced Courses For All Research in favor of segregated education often point out that girls at single-sex schools were more likely to take non-traditional courses -- courses which run against gender stereotypes -- such as Advanced Math and Physics. At The Wellington School, every student takes advanced and college-level courses. In fact, 100 percent of the class of 2011 took at least one advanced course. In that same graduating class, seven female members who took advanced science and math courses also planned to major in those fields in college – one of them at Harvard.
"The Wellington School is a place where girls are not intimidated to take advanced courses," said Co-Head of Upper School Chris Robbins. "Girls don't see boys as their competition – or anyone as their competition – in a classroom. Our entire method allows each student to focus on him or herself."
Much research in defense of single-gender schools has been debunked when researchers control for small class sizes. Wellington offers student-teacher ratios of 8 to 1, which means every student enjoys individual attention and encouragement. A seminal study on coeducation by the American Association of University Women found that: "When elements of a good education are present—such as small classes and schools, equitable teaching practices, and focused academic curriculum—girls and boys succeed."
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Alternative Assessment Methods
"We have the differences between boys and girls covered in our assessment style," said Co-Head of Upper School Dr. Mark Nandor, "but we don't think of it as a gender thing. Wellington is mix of assessment styles and it reaches every student's style at some point along their educational trajectory."
Part of differentiated instruction means alternative testing methods. Alternative assessments use activities that reveal what students have learned, emphasizing their strengths instead of their weaknesses. Alternative assessments move beyond traditional paper-and-pencil tests to reveal what students have truly learned and internalized. Such assessments are often based on authentic tasks such as writing a play or building an engineering project. They also complement student-centered classrooms because they provide multiple ways for students to demonstrate their learning and to monitor their own progress during the evaluation process. We look to provide alternative ways that students show that they not only mastered a concept, but are able to apply their knowledge to a situation.
Because independent schools are not required to "teach to the test," every student will encounter non-traditional testing methods along the route of their education. Some students, finishing a passage of "The Odyssey" in an advanced Upper School English courses dedicated to the text, will focus their essay on the female roles played inside the male-dominated story. Another might take on the assignemtn to create "Odyssey-style" travel from Kansas to Ohio. A third might watch the the film "The Wizard of Oz" and create a piece to compare and contrast the film with "The Odyssey."
A Middle School assessment in Math class may have some students creating a video to show the difference between force and torque, while another student uses the SMART Board to show classmates how she worked out a force problem long-hand.
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Diversity Something unique about our school's 1982 founding is that we never were faced with the struggle for civil rights. As an institution, we have only known and whole-heartedly embraced diversity. At The Wellington School, celebration of diversity is part of our mission statement. We take it seriously.
Diversity takes many forms – race, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, gender identity, and more – but it also takes the form of what it means to be a boy and what it means to be a girl. Diversity is important in a learning community because children are exposed to many different lifestyles, beliefs and ways of approaching the world. Early exposure to these differences makes for an easier transition into modern society. We all understand each other better when we practice tolerance, which diminishes racism, bigotry, religious adversity, xenophobia and other strife sometimes engendered by the fear of "others."
In the case of boys and girls studying together, Yale University researcher Robert Sternberg has found that males and females can learn from each other by pooling their talents and intellect; and that coed learning communities – much like the real world – encourage females to compete with males and as a result perform better when challenged by the complete spectrum of talents and intellect in the world.
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Ready For Your Girl -- Or Boy -- To Shine? | | | Every Student Can Lead A Wellington girl isn't afraid to shine -- whether it is in the chemistry classroom, on the athletic field or out in the community showing her leadership skills. Confidence and poise and character are traits we help every child develop. |
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5 of 12 World Roboticists Are GirlsThe Wellington School Upper School Robotics team qualified for and participated in the World Championship in St. Louis in 2011 30, and of 130 teams competing, Wellington took 23rd place. Five of our young engineers were girls. |
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| 7 Female 2011 Grads Plan STEM Majors Wellington's women of the class of 2011 plan to major in fields including Allied Health Science, Chemical Engineering, Pre-Med and Cognitive Science. One woman will pursue math and science at Harvard University. |
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Invention Convention Winner Is GirlBrooklyn Becker '21 took first place in the Grades K-2 Division of the Central Ohio Regional Invention Convention at COSI in May. Her invention, the Laundry Basket Cover, keeps its laundry contents dry, clean and secure, even if the basket gets tipped upside down. Click here to view Brooklyn's interview on Good Day Columbus. |
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| Wellington Girls Are Recruited Three girls in 2011 and three girls in 2010 alone were recruited to play sports at their colleges -- three of those women are now Division I athletes. |
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