August 9, 2019
Looking Back to Look Forward
The A-ha Moment
Carrie Miller credits the support of the CA community and the leadership skills she developed during her time as a student with giving her the confidence she needed to strike out beyond her comfort zone to find the perfect college. “I knew I wanted to try something new, to explore a different part of the country, to try out an entirely different environment than what I was used to,” explains Miller.
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July 30, 2019
Year 4 Update
Below is our annual update on the school’s strategic plan. Earlier in the year, HOS Mike Ehrhardt shared an update with parents on the school’s strategic vision. You can check out that (rather long) video here. Goal 1: Institutional Flexibility Cary Academy will create institutional flexibility to facilitate innovative and dynamic learning experiences. Continued work […]
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May 30, 2019
Exciting service learning changes are coming to the Upper School
Cary Academy’s mission of being a learning community dedicated to discovery, innovation, and collaboration often drives us to look for ways to improve on our practices. Propelled by both our mission and our strategic plan to make students’ learning more personalized, flexible, and relevant, we are excited to share a new vision and structure for […]
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May 16, 2019
Summer Off or Summer On?
We typically think of teachers as being off during the summer, but several Cary Academy faculty each year choose to devote at least part of their well-deserved summer vacation time to professional growth activities. Cary Academy offers two major summer grant programs for teachers, the Friday Fellowship and the Innovative Curriculum Grant. The Friday Fellowship […]
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May 9, 2019
To our teachers: thank you!
How do you quantify the impact that a teacher makes on the lives of their students, let alone the cumulative effect of an entire community of educators on the larger Cary Academy community? Teaching is exhausting work, even though we too-often pretend it should be effortless.
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May 2, 2019
Community engagement spotlight: Triangle Debate League
Earlier this month, I welled with pride watching confident Southern High School students participate in an articulate, well-argued, impassioned Congressional debate on a bill raising the minimum wage. As their CA peer-mentors cross-examined them, both sides lighting up in delight from the equal intellectual exchange, I was struck by how far we have come and […]
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April 20, 2019
A New Formula for Science Learning
As with any innovation, it started with a question – or rather, a bunch of questions: How can we realize the strategic plan’s vision of creating learning opportunities that are personalized, flexible, and relevant? What would it look like if students could take courses that suit their interests in the order that they choose? What can […]
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April 18, 2019
Learning to Make a Difference
Members of the Community Engagement Class tend the community garden at Alliance Medical Ministry in Wake County. How do students at a private school understand and respond to the critical needs in their community? One way a group of us tried to break out of our CA “bubble” was in an innovative class that began […]
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April 11, 2019
One Weird Trick for Success in College
A preoccupation with lists and ranking? I’m guilty. In my defense, though, I’d like to say that I’m a product of my time. For me, as a kid growing up in Minnesota, I was hooked on Casey Kasem’s American Top 40—a window into a much hipper world on both coasts. I was a college freshman […]
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