Student Success

Student Success

Children are more than empty heads into which we pour information. They are fully independent and impressionable humans, who can be taught how to advocate for themselves, how to reach for their passions, and how to think critically in the world at large.

The Elementary Program: Second Step

Pillars of the Program

Short, fun, research based activities engage children in using and developing skills essential to learning and managing self effectively:

Listening and focusing attention
Remembering and using information
Managing and controlling impulses

Students learn the purpose of emotions, how to identify emotions in themselves and in others, and strategies for managing strong emotions in a healthy way. Emotion management skills support attention, motivation, academic, behavioral and social success.

The purpose of emotions
Building a feelings vocabulary
Understanding and respecting others’ perspectives
Calming strong emotions, self-regulation
Balancing emotion and logic

The ability to learn and understand what others are feeling, and to act with care and compassion to help support healthy relationships and social interactions. This creates a classroom and school environment for collaborative and cooperative learning, and one in which all students can feel safe, valued and empowered.

Recognizing contextual clues to how someone is feeling
Compassion: Empathy in action
Perspective-taking strategies

Students who are able to take a growth mindset, manage their emotions, communicate effectively, and empathize with others can use their skills to individually and collectively solve problems and resolve interpersonal conflicts.

Manage strong emotions to think clearly and solve problems
Understanding others’ perspectives to avoid blaming
Generate solutions that consider other perspectives
Evaluate outcomes of solutions
Cooperative problem solving

The Middle School Program: Strategies of Success

SoS Strategies of Success is a program developed specifically for the middle school years—a notoriously hard time for students. Navigating the changing relationships of this age group can be particularly challenging due to a lack of emotional intelligence. Combined with their bodies and minds changing rapidly, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. At AISK, we have seen students benefit immensely from an in-depth look at how the human mind and body work, leading to our Strategies of Success curriculum. By expressly teaching children about personal resourcefulness, empathy, and advocacy in addition to basic health and wellness, we find our students more likely to be confident in themselves, supportive of others, and openly communicative. In addition to helping the children navigate this stage’s changing relationships, the SoS program teaches study habits, mental and physical health, time management, prioritization, mindfulness, digital citizenship, and proper nutrition.

Pillars of the Program

Learning skills provide opportunities to practice strategies to learn and study effectively.

Organizational Skills
Study Skills
Note Taking
Digital Citizenship:Using digital devices to become more effective learners

Teachers facilitate learning in the digital age. Students will be able to identify how learning can change when technology is leveraged for authentic, purposeful activities and deeper, engaged learning. Coding skills are developed so that all students practice computational thinking.

Guided by the International Society for Technology Education (ISTE) standards for learning, students build their technology skills by integrating:

Personal data management
Effective Communication
Collaborative tools
Word processing
Problem solving
Computational thinking
Research skills
Multimedia presentations
Learning projects

A key component to SoS are empowered students who are engaged more fully in their education. By allowing students to make choices within a given context, we guide their learning while encouraging self-reliance.