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 […]

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 […]

Revolution is always justified.Inequality is inevitable.War brings progress. Provocative statements, certainly – and among those explored this spring in the seventh grade’s Great Debates. “The debates really help students see things from different perspectives,” explained history teacher Alicia Morris. “They don’t choose their topic or point of view, and they have to develop arguments in […]

What if 17-year-olds could perform surgical procedures on temporal bones? Go on the air with a local morning radio show? Design and sew their own shirts and ties? Or build 3-D models of homes? What if someone could do all of that – before they even graduated high school? Well, for starters, they’d be “co-creators […]