By Amber Celestin
When I was eight years old, my grandmother taught me to crochet, and through this hobby I’ve experienced the entire spectrum of the learning process. Clumsy at first but steadily gaining in skill, I dedicated countless hours to practicing and mastering the basics. As my abilities developed, I pushed myself to learn new stitches and attempt increasingly difficult patterns. I’ve taken on projects that were at times more than I thought I could handle, pushed through frustration, celebrated success, and continued to grow. Ultimately, I have found it fulfilling to start with a simple material, spend hours lost in the flow of the task, and end up with something beautiful and useful to show for my work.
These same elements of my evolution as a crocheter surface for me when I think of the concept of throughlines: here at Wichita Collegiate, we want to dedicate our time, energy, and passion to creating a transformative educational experience that is both beautiful and useful for our students. We want to provide opportunities that are filled with joy and challenge. We want students to experience and celebrate success while also embracing and pushing through struggle. We want every community member to strive to constantly evolve as a learner and as a human being. Beyond the projects they do, the books they read, the accolades they earn, and the cherished memories they make, we want our students to become fully realized individuals, contributing members of their communities, and the absolute best versions of themselves.
Educational throughlines are the foundational fibers tying together every learning experience we design for our students. These threads are incorporated across grade levels and subject areas so that each individual class or lesson becomes part of a more cohesive whole, like separate squares coming together to form a complete blanket.When the faculty began the task of identifying throughlines nearly three years ago, we centered our initial conversation around the book Creative Schools, where Sir Ken Robinson shares his belief that “the aims of education are to enable students to understand the world around them and the talents within them so that they can become fulfilled individuals and active, compassionate citizens.” We reflected on a Wichita Collegiate School education, highlighting the skills, traits, and experiences that we felt were key to helping our students deeply understand and fully explore themselves and the world. Through ongoing conversations and work together and in small groups, we have refined our collective thoughts into four throughlines that we believe are the key threads unifying this beautiful tapestry we’re weaving together for our students.
Thinking critically is an increasingly vital skill in a world where we are inundated with more information than ever before. We believe we should all be curious, open-minded learners who constantly examine and re-examine ideas in the pursuit of a better understanding of ourselves, each other, and the world.
To care about our community and each other, we must live ethically and with an awareness of the impact each individual can have in the world around them. We want to show up for one another as compassionate, collaborative community members.
Most things worth doing are difficult, and we grow the most when we persevere honorably through challenges. We chose the word “honorably” for perseverance because we wanted there to be a commitment to acting in the right way. We believe there is honor in carrying on when things are tough and in not looking for an easy way out or a means of shirking the challenge, but instead finding ways to learn and grow from every experience. We believe our school thrives when everyone embraces productive struggle, navigating whatever life throws at us with grit, integrity, and open hearts and minds.
Communicating Effectively has always been a hallmark of a Collegiate education. We want to develop our individual voices and the skills to confidently make those voices heard in meaningful ways while also building our active listening skills so we can learn from the voices of others. We will continue to provide opportunities to model and engage in civil discourse and the sharing of ideas and perspectives.
Next year, we’ll carry on with the work of highlighting our throughlines by intentionally intertwining them into all aspects of school life: we’ll display them in every classroom, infuse them into conversations with students, and develop written overviews of how each throughline comes to life in every division. And just as each new crochet stitch I learn opens up new possibilities in the kinds of projects I can tackle next, it is our hope that an intentional focus on these cross-curricular and cross-divisional throughlines will do the same for our students, helping them develop richer, more well-rounded perspectives and skill sets to prepare them for whatever challenges they want to take on next. I’m so excited to watch these threads strengthen around us every day, from Great Beginnings to senior year, as we continue weaving them into the fabric of our school and community, helping kids explore who they are and who they can become.