Rocky Hill Country Day: Home of Transformative Education

I believe children are souls in bloom, and so at RHCD, we help fertilize, prune, and coax them into blossom with our holistic approach through athletics, social-emotional learning, co-curricular activities, and coursework. Moving to what I call a ‘post-content curriculum,’ in consideration of what students need to thrive in a rapidly changing world, we developed our Student Competencies: A Rocky Hill Country Day graduate will be a navigator, critical thinker, citizen, and communicator who is innovative, self-aware, ethical, and globally-minded. These Student Competencies truly embody our mission to educate the mind, body, and spirit of each child, and they drive our students’ experience, which emphasizes process over product. For our students, traditional content serves as a vehicle for developing the Competencies alongside their collaboration on the athletic field, their leadership opportunities in the arts, and the emphasis on self-discovery as part of the college admissions process.

Our expansive thinking led us to make some unusual and dynamic changes. We connected with a local entrepreneurial accelerator, which led to the development of our Embedded Entrepreneurs program (E2). This first in the nation program invites inventors to campus to share with faculty, staff, and students how they went from an idea to a product and encourages our students to follow a similar process. From preK-Grade 12, students develop an entrepreneurial mindset, learning first hand about the value of calculated risk-taking, failure, and iteration with actual international founders as their guides. Entrepreneurs also offer authentic gratitude to students for their insights and feedback, a real world experience that resonates deeply with students and adds a sense of legitimacy to the learning experience. We believe there is little that will better prepare students for a world which increasingly calls for adaptability than an appreciation for, and comfort with, these skills.

Our expansive, non-traditional thinking is woven into all we do, extending to the hiring of unlikely staff members, such as our Global Impact Adviser, who works remotely from another state, and leads a team of consultants also based remotely, some internationally. Her work, along with that of our Director of Innovation, has allowed us to say ‘yes’ to outside the box student ideas, such as hosting the first in the state student-led Hack for Global Good. This, along with a myriad of other student projects, have flipped the leadership model at RHCD to put students in charge of their own learning.

Similarly, our integrated mindfulness program teaches students lifelong tools for resilience. When lower school students practice yoga as a ‘brain break,’ middle school students continue to develop their body-spirit connection by recognizing when they need to ‘TAB out’ (take a break), and upper school students use breathing techniques and the ‘mindfulness room’ to manage stress, they develop habits and self-awareness that will lead to more fulfilling lives. Our motto, “Know Thyself,” comes to life in this transformative model of education.

Naturally, I have made course corrections along the way, and I embrace them. As our evolution continues, we model for our students the capacities we hope they develop through their time with us. As John Dewey noted in My Pedagogic Creed (1897), “to prepare [a student] for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities.” More than a century later, Dewey remains transformational, inspiring us to remain open to the sweeping possibilities revealed in our spectacular, historical, coastal campus.

I invite you to follow this blog, and to check out our website to witness how our, and our students’, transformation continues.