100 Languages of Children:
SWS Blogs About the Intersections of Joy, Wonder, and Learning
SWS Gala & Auction: Back on Capitol Hill
The 19th Annual School Within School Gala & Auction is coming back to Capitol Hill! On March 5th, join our adults-only gala community event at St. Marks Church (301 A St, SE) with live music and an array of exciting silent and live auction items. This event raises important funds for [...]
Ms. Ochmanek, SWS Librarian: Building a community of readers and a love of reading
Ms. Barbara Ochmanek, who came to SWS the fall we moved to the Goding building, has been steadily building our school's library collection and programming to foster a love of reading and support literacy skills and classroom projects across the school. Starting with a small set of materials left at [...]
SWS Principal’s Corner: Community Meetings — Creating a Culture of Kindness
Our classroom and schoolwide community meetings are intentional ways of creating a community of kindness at SWS. For our schoolwide community meeting this month, students and staff are coming together around questions of equality and inclusion to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In January's Principal's Corner, Mr. Burst shares the value of [...]
Student-led dialogue: Thinking better together
In this post, Ms. Scofield describes the process she and Mr. Leavitt used to guide second graders in developing the provocation for the November schoolwide community meeting: "How can we take care of our world?" Early in November, Mr. Leavitt and I led a few brainstorming sessions with all second graders [...]
2nd grade Monarch Museum: Nuturing a sense of wonder
Each student at SWS visited a museum in December to learn about monarch butterflies, but they didn't head to the Smithsonian. They went to the second grade hallway! Ms. Scofield's second grade class created its own "Monarch Museum" and invited each SWS class to come through to visit the seven student-led [...]
SWS Winter Concert: A joyous community event
SWS held its first-ever all-school Winter Concert on December 16th, under the guidance of SWS Music Director James Castaneda. It was a huge success! All classes took part, from PreK3 through 4th grade. In addition to a variety of songs, the concert featured the debut of both the SWS Chorus and [...]