Helping Students Strengthen the Skills Behind Success
By: Michelle Branco | Senior Director of Curriculum & Instruction, Literacy
On a Wednesday morning at The Sycamore School, a group of students crowd around a whiteboard, debating the best way to design an experiment. Across the room, one student checks her planner to ensure her team is on track to meet their deadlines. Their teacher moves between tables, asking questions and offering encouragement rather than issuing instructions.
Scenes like this are typical at The Sycamore School, where learning looks a little different from what most people remember. The focus is not on memorizing facts or rushing to finish a test. Instead, students are learning to think, plan, collaborate, and stay organized, building the skills they will need for life after high school. Skills that lead to confidence and independence.
Executive functioning skills such as time management, goal-setting, and adaptability are essential to navigating the adult world, so we make sure they are an integral part of everything our students do. Instead of focusing on traditional grades, they work toward skill mastery by completing hands-on projects, leading discussions, and reflecting on their own progress. Teachers act as mentors and facilitators, helping students break down challenges and celebrate growth along the way. They explicitly identify the skills students will need for each task, model a variety of strategies to find the best fit for each student, and monitor student progress towards independence.
An example of this occurred when some of our middle school students investigated the influence of social media on teens. After reading an article about social media, the students spearheaded a project to investigate its effects on the school community. They worked together to define the project’s parameters, created a poll for the school community, and used Google Sheets to analyze the data. They eventually created a website that captured their findings and shared this information with the school. Throughout this process, students engaged in goal setting and collaborated with peers to produce a polished final product. This assignment allowed them to demonstrate mastery not only in academics, but in goal setting, time management, collaboration, and critical thinking, all skills they would need in the world outside of school.
At The Sycamore School, each student is also assigned a point person. They meet regularly with their point person, who helps them organize materials, set priorities, and track goals. The goal is for this person to be the student’s “go-to” person. They have conversations about what strategies are working for their classes, what help they might still need, and provide suggestions or guidance. Point people can talk openly about how the brain works, how focus, memory, and emotions affect learning, and how factors outside the classroom, like sleep and nutrition, affect these variables.
The Sycamore School blends structure with flexibility so students can learn in ways that make sense to them. Still, more importantly, we support the development of skills that can help them flourish after graduation. Some work in small groups, others independently or through creative projects. Over time, they develop a clear understanding of what works for them and the confidence to apply those skills well beyond the classroom.
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