The Lexington School Fosters Courageous, Curious Kids

How was school today?” This is the universal question all parents ask as their kids plop into the back seat and shut the car door after a full day at school.

The expected response is a single word, a banal adjective like “Good” or “Fine.”

Instead, imagine if your child answered with an exclamation like, “Today, I rocked it!” or “Today, I walked in the creek,” “I dissected a cow eyeball,” or “I read my story to the whole fourth grade!”

Carpool conversations are an important part of the day, and one of the goals of The Lexington School is to assure the answer from the back seat is more than just “Okay.”

The goal is for each day to provide something of great significance so each child brings home an excitement for learning that lasts far beyond a single day at school.

At The Lexington School, this excitement for learning is called Curiosity, one of six character traits (Mission Skills) the school nurtures.

“Children are naturally curious,” says Donna Hutton, Preschool Director at The Lexington School.

“If you give them consistent experiences that are active, creative and challenging, they will maintain their natural desire to learn.”

This commitment to developing curiosity requires teachers who build student-centered lessons that allow opportunities for risk-taking and reward.

“Each day should be about stretching in some way,” Headmaster Chuck Baldecchi says. “It might be trying out the zip line on the preschool playground or doing a peer evaluation for the first time.

“In either case, it is taking a risk, learning from it, and growing in confidence.”

“The proof is in the pudding” says Una MacCarthy, Head of Middle School.

“The Lexington School produces alumni who go on to high school, college and life with an inherent desire to learn more and do more, to get the most out of the next experience with the confidence to stretch and try something new.”

In celebration of all TLS students, each year’s Commencement speakers are accomplished alumni who come back to impart lessons to the graduating eighth graders.

Novelists, filmmakers, scientists, entrepreneurs, professional athletes and more, TLS alumni have something in common that they unanimously attribute to The Lexington School: They seek to learn and they embrace challenge.

They are adults now who not so long ago swung open the car door after school, plopped into the back seat and said, “Today, I rocked it!”