Recent studies surmise that families are looking for a schools’ ability to meet the physical, emotional, and social needs of their children. So, what should parents look for in a school?
SCHOOL COMMUNITY
Parents should look for a school with a community. Like Matryoshka Russian nesting dolls, communities should exist from the classroom, to the school, the school’s parents, children, and faculty, and even to the community at large. Through the common goal of seeing a child succeed, everyone works together and builds the relationships necessary to provide the support needed. These relationships between families and the school are very important to a student’s success and leave a lasting memory.
The memory of these relationships has led to the multiple generations who have attended Self Development and returned with their children or to work for SDA. It is amazing to see the lineage that abounds at Self Development Academies and Preschool. There are teachers at Self Development Academy (SDA) who began with the SDA family over 20 years ago as two-year-old’s at Self Development Preschool (SDP).
Additionally, once children at SDP, parents are bringing their own children back to SDP. Knowing Ms. Vernetta as the source of unconditional comfort and love for them, they now bring their own children for that very reason.
They are assured by their experiences that their children will have the greatest upbringing: they’ll be safe, they’ll be socially engaged, they’ll learn emotional coping skills, and yes, they are verifiably certain that their children’s curiosity and thinking will be challenged and nurtured.
The many branches to the family tree at SDA continue to grow and add leaves as each child returns as an adult with their own children. They return to a community of worry-free parents who see SDA as a community that is responsive, adaptive, and compassionate.
SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL LEARNING + PHYSICAL AND SAFETY NEEDS
Parents should look for a school that attends to all the needs of their children, from their physical and safety needs, their social and emotional learning needs, and the need for children to use curiosity, critical and creative thinking to discover answers and solutions.
Our leadership has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to the safety of children, predicting their safety needs before legislation, policy, or common practice finally catches up. Not surprisingly, parents have shared the security they feel even during the pandemic. This security is due to their trust knowing SDA is always doing everything possible to ensure all students are safe.
In addition to parents’ testimony that their children are safer here, we are building upon our current social emotional learning program, which teaches mindfulness, empathy, perspective-taking, amend-making, and cognitive behavioral changes. We are using the community of the classroom to reinforce positive behaviors. Still in its pilot program stage, classroom students complement each other for demonstrating coping skills, proper student behavior, and even inquiry-based, active thinking and engagement. The Self Development in Self Development Academy refers to the full developmental capacity of each student.
The self-developed.
This is a school that recognizes that students bring their emotional, social, and physical selves to school. And that they are growing in those areas as well as academically. An approach that addresses all selves has been repeatedly shown to be one that is more successful than one that attempts to syphon parts of the self.
ACADEMICS
We have found that bright minds are discovered by the most nurturing education specialists. That truly, as our tagline implies at our school, a child’s genius is unlimited. The selves and their needs attended to; each child is able to grapple with the rigor of our curriculum.
Ours is one of two complimentary aspects: a wide ranging curriculum of challenging, advanced courses taught
in a Socratic, philosophical method that asks not only what the answer is, but why it is so, why isn’t it a different answer, and what if we applied it to a different domain.
Our philosophy is of one of high expectations and horizontal leadership: multiple minds make for the mightiest. Nothing exemplifies the fact that our system of high expectations inside a nurturing environment, informed by the community, is an environment that fosters success.
SDA is a community where former students bring their children, former students return to become teachers, and former students teach former classmates’ children. The ability of SDA to educate and care for generations of families is our biggest success story.
Please join us at our upcoming informational workshops. “Kindergarten Readiness” is on Tuesday, March 22 at 6 p.m. and “Teaching Young Children to Write” on Tuesday, March 29 at 6 p.m. Both informational sessions will be held at our Mesa campus at 1709 N. Greenfield Road.
For more information about Self Development Academy and Self Development Preschool, please contact the Front Office at (480) 641-2640.