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Campus School

Teaching & Learning

At Campus School we focus intently on the intellectual and academic development of our students, bringing the latest and most effective instructional methods into their classrooms every day. But we are also devoted to helping young minds tap into the wonder of learning, and to shaping each child into a brave thinker, eager to explore, to create, and to understand—even in moments of uncertainty, challenge, and change.

What Is a Lab School?

Simply put, a lab school facilitates teaching excellence and best practices in teaching and learning.

Being a lab school adds tremendous value to the Campus School experience. First and foremost, our teachers attain the highest standards of professional excellence. Their work is infused by research conducted by the department of education, by dynamic curricular collaborations between professors and Campus School teachers, and by a constant focus on being a school of best practices.

Campus School also serves a vital role in helping prepare Smith College students for careers in education. Students do student teaching and make formal observations of the teaching and learning taking place at Campus School. This work is overseen by faculty in the department of education and carefully coordinated with the teachers of Campus School, who play essential roles as mentors to student teachers. Having mature, inspired, and accomplished Smith College students in our classrooms adds tremendous value, both from the infusion of new energy and ideas generated by the students and by having more adult role models for Campus School students to emulate and look up to. Our student teachers then go on to serve the community, in both public and independent school settings.

Explore Our Academics

Learning Goals

Learning goals express the most important educational objectives of our school. Collectively they unify and focus our K–6 curriculum while also providing a portrait of what our graduates will acquire from their Campus School experience. These are broad and overarching outcomes; specific knowledge, skills, and understandings are articulated in grade level and subject goals.

Collaboration
Students contribute and add value to shared learning experiences.

Communication
Students effectively convey their ideas and understandings in multiple formats.

Creative expression
Students gain facility with the creative process and confidence in self-expression.

Creative thinking
Students generate original and imaginative ideas that have purpose and value.

Critical thinking
Students use inquiry, analysis, and evaluation to come to insightful understandings.

Curiosity
Students actively engage in exploration and discovery.

Empathy
Students gain insight into the experiences and perspectives of others, leading to actions that are informed and compassionate.

Independence
Students take responsibility for and are increasingly self-directed in their own learning.

Metacognition
Students reflect on and improve their understanding of their own thinking and how they learn.

Open mindedness
Students welcome and productively contribute to the exchange of ideas, opinions, and perspectives.

Resilience
Students develop the flexibility, courage, and resourcefulness necessary to face challenges, solve problems, and cultivate their abilities.

Self-knowledge
Students increasingly understand how their thoughts and feelings influence their actions.

Transfer
Students apply information, understandings, and skills to new learning and experiences.

“I could take my child anywhere to develop his potential as a good math or English student. I want him here because these teachers know how to develop his full potential as a good person.”
A Campus School Parent
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A Focus on Community & Character

Celebrating Each Student

At Campus School, we begin by embracing the intricacy of each child—knowing our students well as individual learners and valuing their unique academic strengths and personal passions.

Then we quickly help our students settle into our compassionate school community, guiding each child into transformative relationships with educators, meaningful friendships with classmates, and supportive connections with peers across grade levels. Here, we empower young minds to ask intriguing questions, test new skills, and dare greater mastery.

By sustaining an atmosphere of genuine warmth and intentional welcome, Campus School creates a steady space in which our students can boldly engage new concepts and capacities, proudly be themselves, and genuinely accept and embrace others. The result is a community united in brave ambitions and mutual respect, where everyone is accepted and appreciated.

Melding Facts with Feeling

When Campus School students study the Montgomery Bus Boycott, they master historical facts and trace the timeline of events, learn the names of civil rights leaders, and read a biography of Rosa Parks. But, guided by our teachers, they also inhabit the emotional experience of confronting injustice and lodging protest, and consider how the hard-earned accomplishments of our past can lead us in the work still to be done.

As our students walk with schoolmates in a re-enactment of a protest march, they also take formative steps toward meaningful membership in a community that goes far beyond our campus borders or our close-knit school family—hitting their strides early as engaged citizens, change makers, and contributors. Most importantly, they learn to think and feel their way through issues of social justice at the same time—applying reason while also registering empathy, engaging the logical complexities of an issue while also weighing the ethical considerations of the situation. The result is an understanding that goes deeper than names, dates, or headlines.

Our approach to character development starts in the classroom—with how we speak and listen to one another, how we deal with emotional and intellectual disagreements, and how we study everything from history (and human experience) to science (and environmental stewardship). What begins here, however, sparks an empowered and active empathy, which prepares students to not only enter the world, but to engage and better it.