Our Wildwood, Volume 54

FEATURE

A Story of Learning

How Narrative Assessments Cultivate Lifelong Learners at Wildwood

of a student’s learning journey. Each course narrative includes a thoughtfully written summary that synthesizes a student’s progress, and how it applies to a set of six class specific standards. Together, these elements paint a portrait—not just of what a student knows, but of how they are growing as a learner. “Rather than tracking learning minute to minute or assignment to assignment, Wildwood takes a long view,” said Jaimi Boehm, associate head of school. “Teachers look at the arc of learning across months and years, recognizing that learning is cumulative, developmental, and rarely linear.” ROOTED IN PROGRESSIVE THOUGHT Narrative assessments emerge directly from Wildwood’s progressive educational philosophy, based on the work of thinkers like John Dewey, where students are prepared for active participation in a democratic and global society. Learning is

For many of us, our memories of school look strikingly similar: desks in rows, teachers at the front of the room, grades recorded on a hundred point scale. Report cards arrived with familiar letters—A’s, B’s, C’s—that seemed to summarize learning in a single snapshot. At Wildwood, learning looks different by design. Twice a year, Wildwood teachers sit down with stacks of student work, pages of notes, and months of classroom moments in mind. They reread essays, review lab reports, recall discussions, and reflect deeply on how each student has grown—not just academically, but as a learner, collaborator, and community member. The result of this careful, time-intensive process is the narrative assessment: a cornerstone of Wildwood’s approach to teaching, learning, and assessment. Unlike traditional grading

systems that reduce student performance to a letter or

percentage, narrative assessments are designed to tell the full story

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