Beyond Academics

authored by Head of School Fran Bisselle

Hathaway Brown’s distinguished academic program trains our future’s finest minds and empowers girls to put knowledge in action. We know our students will create solutions to the most pressing problems our world is facing, and we want every single one of them to be ferociously successful. And yet to be truly successful, their education must touch not only their minds, but their hearts. They must have soft skills like empathy, authentic listening, and instinctual kindness; and they must care for their whole selves. History has taught us that we will be defined by how we love and how we use our hearts when we lead, and this guides our mission of learning not just for school but for life.

Over the summer, a team of administrators revisited and revised Beyond Academics, a document that serves as a framework for our faculty, parents, families and community to comprehend the complex trajectory of social-emotional development through a girl’s formative years. This new revision has also expanded to include information about our very youngest learners in the Infant & Toddler Center. Using these narratives, our educators and families can access information and resources for each grade level to best understand, teach and support our young women (and our boys in ITC and EC!). 

In education, we have a saying “backward by design.”  If we know where we want them to be at 18, what do we need to develop in them at the stages along the way?  How do we make sure they get the skills they need- intellectually, socially, organizationally, and strategically, to succeed beginning in early childhood and all the way through primary, middle, and upper school? That is the unique aspect of Hathaway Brown—that combination of distinguished academics and knowledge in action—that feeling of empowerment and belonging to a celebrated community.  Our girls actively and uniquely engage in the learning process—and that means not just the highest level of academics but also social and emotional, executive functioning skills and more. 

I am so thankful for HB’s extraordinary educators and supportive staff who care deeply about each child’s development-- holistically.  Enjoy this updated Beyond Academics resource as we support of students in learning for life!