We are a school with no grades, and no report cards, so how do we measure success?  Traditional schooling measures success essentially by grades alone. Antioch school children are not limited by the extrinsic motivation of grades. Learning is allowed to happen by means of intrinsic motivation. The teachers here wholeheartedly trust that children will learn and grow if they are given the time, space and support to do so - we don’t need grades to know this either! 

There are countless opportunities to measure success here. At the Antioch School, success can be (but is not limited to):

Feeling happy 

Feeling fulfilled

Connecting with peers in meaningful ways 

Pursuing something you’re really excited about 

Deciding you want to get better at something, and doing the practice that will help with that goal 

Learning how to do an essential life skill 

Learning a new academic concept

Teaching someone how to do something 

Making friends 

Learning how to advocate for yourself and ask for help 

Getting to know yourself 

Learning to set boundaries when you’re uncomfortable 

Having a conflict and finding a resolution with someone

Learning to receive feedback and use it to improve 

Learning to share resources

Doing something with peers that would be impossible to do alone, learning the value of human cooperation

Developing empathy 

Learning to compromise

Accepting differences and flaws in others

Learning how to make choices about what to do when you’re bored

Planning something, following through, and seeing it work exactly how you imagined

Measures of success are unique to each child. I believe that part of the journey of growing up is deciding for yourself what being successful and happy looks like, and then deciding what your priorities need to be to achieve that vision for yourself. It takes time to decide. It’s an honor to be here with the children as they start this work, and I’m so grateful to our school for giving them the opportunity to see all these different measures of success.