Sandia Prep - 532 Magazine - Winter / Spring 2019

Middle School DareDevil Design students brainstorm with
SPACE Director Dan deLeon in the school's makerspace.
We were among the nation's first
schools to join Harvard University's
"Making Caring Common" campaign.
The campaign encourages students
to build strong, inclusive communities
and prepares them to be caring,
constructive citizens.
Sandia Prep's SuRGe (Student
Relations Group) is on a mission to
create a positive presence around
campus. Through school-wide
campaigns like "Start with A Hello
Week," positive affirmations and notes
posted around campus -- plus regular
recognition of students, faculty, and
staff who make Prep a better place
- SuRGE is yet another reminder of
Prep's strong community.
MAKING
CARING COOL
Sundevil students, faculty and
staff work together to create a
culture of kindness.
Sandia Prep also is a proud member
of Kindness Club International,
Mr. Holtschulte and say, ‘Hey, let’s do
an independent study with me and
another kid,’ and he did,” says Connor
Friedman ’19.
Learning for Life
"Ever since the last recession,
educators have been seeing students
and their families struggle with
increased insecurity about the future,"
says Karen Lyall, Coordinator of Health
and Counseling. That manifests itself in
students feeling more pressure to get
into a good school, get a good job, and
make money, she explains.
“That’s the case even with middle
school students, who should be
enjoying themselves, learning to get
along,” Lyall says. “If students aren’t
fully present, if they’re having difficulty
managing stress, we need to meet their
needs so they can be successful.”
Social/Emotional Learning is vital
to enhancing students’ capacity “to
integrate skills, attitudes, and behaviors
to deal effectively and ethically with
daily tasks and challenges,” such as
stress, she explains.
The strong relationships that Prep
students form with their teachers
has always been one of its strengths,
she adds, and it enabled faculty to
identify the Social/Emotional Learning
components they believe make for an
ideal school community. Those include
helping students to create meaningful
friendships, providing opportunities for
community service, teaching life skills,
and nurturing a sense of wonder.
Each grade level will include Social/
Emotional Learning in its advisory time
on topics students helped choose.
Some ideas they asked to explore
include: how to be an upstander
when witnessing incidents of bullying
and harassment; respecting and
protecting yourself and others; and
in the upper grades, how to balance
emerging independence and increasing
responsibilities with a joy for living and
learning.
Such “character counts” education
is nothing new to Prep, Lyall adds,
but the latest iteration is “more
comprehensive and thoughtful.”
- Patricia Gabbett Snow
an organization whose
objective is to engage
and empower students
to see how they can
create positivity around
school, at home, and
in the world.
17