The Wellington Initiative
The Wellington Initiative
A New School of Thought
By empowering teachers with access to the best resources, techniques, and data, we can drive engagement and transform the future of education. This is The Wellington Initiative.
This is what innovation looks like.
The Engagement Index gathers student feedback six times throughout the year, for an autonomous alternative to testing.
From local speaking engagements to conferences across the country and a nationally recognized TED Talk, our founders seek to transform education—and they’re equally sought after.
Being educators ourselves, teaching comes first. The Wellington Initiative includes on-site consulting services as schools implement our cutting-edge processes and adjust to a new way of learning.
Interested in learning more about our program?
This is the new standard.
Students today are all being held to the same standards and measured by a universally standardized bar. But we believe there is no standard student. The Wellington Initiative was designed to engage students in an entirely new way. And it’s a change a century in the making.
Established by educators. Recognized as a revolution.
We’ve built a reputation. Innovative. Imaginative. Inclusive. Established within The Wellington School, we were founded by forward thinkers. Thought leaders. And the educators who witness the need to evolve our current approach to education every day.
Put to the test by over 50 learning institutions.
The proof is in our partnerships
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Education Beyond the Core
"The Wellington Engagement Index puts a valuable tool in the hands of students, aggregating and disaggregating data quickly in a way that gives classroom teachers and their supervisors' extraordinary guidance about where curriculum, teachers, and individual students are fulfilling or falling short of deep learning. The WEI is the first of its kind I have seen, and it deserves to catch fire fast.”
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The Hotchkiss School
"The Wellington Engagement Index is an invaluable tool for assessing teaching and learning at The Hotchkiss School; it is quick, easy to use, flexible, and has yielded outstanding insights about our school community fostering conversations among our faculty about how to continue to develop best practices for creating the most vibrate, inclusive, and effective learning community possible. It supports our motto of 'guided by each other, let us seek better paths’ by generating actionable data that leads to improved outcomes. Additionally, The Wellington Initiative support team is engaged, responsive, and constantly receiving feedback to improve the instrument and help schools serve their communities better."
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The EAST Initiative
"The student feedback provided by the Wellington Engagement Index has given our administrators and facilitators valuable opportunities for reflection as they challenge students in solving real community problems. As an elective program that crosses standard curricular lines, EAST focuses on individual student growth through service and technology without the pressure of high stakes testing. To the EAST Initiative, this tool provides invaluable, quantitative data that proves students can both love and be highly challenged by this nontraditional self-directed atmosphere which is the foundation to student growth."
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ARTHUR LOVINGTON ATWOOD HAMMOND HIGH SCHOOL
"We piloted the Wellington Engagement Index with a very small group of teachers and students…after the first collection of data, we met as a group and the conversations between faculty members from different disciplines was amazing."
See engagement in action on the Wellington Initiative Blog
What standardized tests should be measuring
We value what we measure, so what comes when we decide to measure love of learning or student engagement?
Watch full TedXMeet the Team
Rob had a distinguished career in schools for 45 years in three schools culminating in his headship at The Wellington School from 2007 to 2019. In 2019, at the behest of the school, Rob started The Wellington Initiative, a not-for-profit subsidiary of The Wellington School. Student autonomy and engagement have been at the center of his work throughout his career. Rob was educated at the Dwight-Englewood School, Princeton and Harvard. He lives with his wife, Monica, in Standish, Maine.
Brendan has been with The Wellington Initiative since 2017, where his diverse responsibilities include user training, technical support, data analysis, and more. Brendan earned his Bachelor’s degree at Notre Dame, and is a Master’s candidate at the Harvard Extension School. Brendan, his spouse Nicole, and his two cats, Milo and Charlie, live in southern Maine.
Sarah earned a B.A. in Psychology with a focus on Child Developmental Psychology from the University of Rochester and holds an M.Ed. in Learning and Technology from Western Governors University. With teaching experience across elementary, middle, and high school, she brings a broad perspective to curriculum and instructional development. As a seasoned academic leader, she has served as Director of Curriculum and Instruction and Dean of Studies, leading initiatives in curriculum mapping and review, student engagement, project-based learning, and teacher growth and development. She specializes in professional learning, strategic planning, academic innovation, and leveraging institutional research to drive student, faculty, and school growth.
Sarah has co-facilitated professional learning on data-informed leadership for the Center for Institutional Research in Independent Schools and has presented on strategic planning and data-driven education at conferences, including the Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools Annual Conference and the Association of Maryland Independent Schools’ Technology Conference. She has also presented nationally on project-based learning and hands-on, engaging instruction. She has won many prestigious education awards, including a Baltimore City Outstanding Teacher award, the 2016 Pearson CITE Excellence in K-12 Online Teaching, the 2017 ISTE Kay L. Bitter Vision Award, and a 2018 Fund for Teachers Fellow.