Gray Matters, October 2025

Connection and Community at Capitol Hill Day School

Happy October! It was wonderful to connect with many of you during our annual Back to School Nights. I enjoyed seeing adults in our community engaging with each other and educators articulating their passion for curriculum and pedagogy. From my perspective, moments like these reflect a deep appreciation within our community for our School.

Signs that our year is off to a fantastic start abound. I’ve adored watching our four and five-year-olds joyfully engage in imaginative play. On the sideyard, lantern bugs are a curiosity. Field trips are in full swing. From my office window last week, I saw Third Grade students queuing up for their navigation walk to the Capitol as part of their study of mapping and exploration. Passing through Farren’s Stable I caught parts of Upper Grade lessons: 7th Graders learning to annotate primary source text and an 8th Grade science class graphing the impact of force on an object.  

Once again witnessing the intentionality with which our educators work to structure the start of the year, I am reminded of research that I have shared in previous Gray Matters. 

“Psychologists increasingly appreciate the importance of social relationships for human functioning. Many scientists hypothesize that a portion of our brains evolved expressly to connect with others. This extra gray matter can pay big dividends in schools. Studies on thousands of students show that learners who are better socially connected to their teachers and classmates are significantly more engaged and achieve better than their less well-connected peers.” 
[Hunter Gehlbach] 

“Emotion is essential to learning, and should not be underestimated or misunderstood as a trend, or as merely the “E” in social-emotional learning. Emotion is where learning begins, or, as is often the case, where it ends. It is literally neurobiologically impossible to think deeply about things that you don’t care about. Even in academic subjects that are traditionally considered unemotional, such as physics, engineering or math, deep understanding depends on making emotional connections between concepts.”
[Mary Helen Immordino-Yang]

“Academic learning is integrally tied to both the social and emotional climate of the classroom and the social and emotional skills of students. When students feel safe to take learning risks and make mistakes, when their cultural identity is affirmed in the classroom, and when they are able to effectively collaborate with others in the learning process, they are better equipped to learn academic content more deeply.”
[Donna Orem, National Association of Independent Schools]

Through an intentional approach to curriculum development, a progressive pedagogy that emphasizes experiential learning, and a culture that strives to create a strong sense of belonging for each individual, Capitol Hill Day School truly embodies this research. Collectively, we are what makes this School special. The connections we forge and the relationships we cultivate form the very foundation of who we are.