Reflections of Havergal: 1994-2019

was that given the school’s desire to provide a fulfilling experience for students, the girls, particularly the youngest, “sometimes seemed hurried into decisions without sufficient background understanding of the nature of choice and its consequences. It is essential to remember that they are young children and cannot and should not be making all the decisions about their future or their safety.” The objectives set out in the 1994 Strategic Plan led to vigorous and rich conversations about best practice— and about “the Havergal difference.” In the late 1990s, those discussions resulted in the articulation of a set of ideals and themes the school called its Curriculum Framework. The framework served as a lens through which to evaluate educational goals and practices, both traditional and new. It was, as Rosemary Corbett, Vice Principal, Curriculum, stated in an article in the Spring 2003 issue of Torch , “an expression of who we are rather than an alien model that we must attempt to fit into.” The ideals set out in the Curriculum Framework (and later reconceptualized in Havergal 2020: Our Vision is Limitless , the current Strategic Plan) underpin  the educational experience of the entire school, providing coherence and continuity between grade levels and connecting learning across the disciplines. The fact that our curriculum framework is based on the values or ideals expressed by the school community, and key themes that have been thoughtfully drawn from these ideals, is a distinguishing quality of the Havergal educational experience. In the year 2000, Seonaid Davis, then Head of the Science department, introduced an innovative approach to teaching and learning that meshed neatly but dynamically with the Curriculum Framework. The Teaching for Understanding learning model emerged from the research of American educators Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins, who concluded that there is a pressing need for transformation in the field of education:

Students working to solve a math problem, 2003.

came from questions about how well a discipline-driven curriculum serves students. Dividing knowledge into discrete courses like mathematics, English and modern languages provides opportunities for deep thinking, but it can also splinter students’ experiences. However, sustained, deep integration presents serious problems, not the least of which are logistical: in the Upper School, interdisciplinary classes are almost impossible to schedule due to the number of sections of any given course and student movement across grades. Some teachers did design cross-discipline lessons or units that were very successful. For example, one year Grade 10 students considered different perspectives on the biblical story of Job in a unit designed by teachers from the English, Social Sciences and Religious Education departments. However, such ad hoc efforts most often focused on special topics or themes, not on transferable concepts or skills. Another concern raised by the Lower School

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