Whole Learner Education In Action
By Heather Rieman
Van Ness Elementary School sits at the edge of Washington D.C.’s Navy Yard neighborhood, blocks from the Anacostia River and a short Metro ride to the U.S. Capitol.
Serving nearly 400 students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, the D.C. Public School’s whole child model was built in partnership with Transcend, an America Forward Coalition member and national leader in the design of innovative, equitable education approaches.
Earlier this month, I had the chance to visit Van Ness and see, firsthand, how the teachers, administrators, and staff are advancing whole learner approaches that foster safe, supportive learning environments and give every student the freedom and confidence to explore, navigate challenges, and learn in ways that work for them. The holistic nature of the school’s approach is reflected in its motto: “Compassionate Creative Constant Learners.”
Inside Van Ness, student health and wellbeing are prioritized alongside academic knowledge. From the moment students enter the school building, educators and staff are focused on making them feel seen, supported, and empowered. I saw this in the routines that students and teachers used to start their day — welcoming students intentionally, focusing on breathing and preparing to learn, and setting clear, student-directed goals for the day — as well as in the physical design of classrooms, which featured discrete spaces for reading and exploration, personalized artwork, and many green plants throughout the space.
This focus on making school both physically and emotionally welcoming is a key element of successful, holistic educational approaches. Science tells us that healthy learning and development is predicated on access to safe, supportive learning environments. By making students feel comfortable and seen in their classrooms, educators at Van Ness are laying the foundation for them to gain as much as possible from learning opportunities throughout the day.
And there is clear intention behind the learning experiences themselves, too. I visited a pre-k classroom where students started the day at one of several stations around the room where they were playing and interacting with a number of different materials and objectives, all organized around the theme of dinosaurs. The focus was clear (helping students learn about dinosaurs and engage in play based experiences), but the pathways students took and what exactly they chose to explore weren’t defined.
America Forward’s “Whole Learner Education: A Policy Roadmap to Student Success” highlights research that clearly shows healthy learning and development happen when students take part in learning experiences that are: meaningful — connecting new content or concepts to things they already know and understand; engaging — hands-on, minds-on opportunities that are absorbing and limit distraction; iterative — providing the chance to experiment, learn, and retry in a self-directed cycle; socially interactive — promoting learning through communication and understanding diverse perspectives; and joyful — creating a positive emotional response that elicits interest and motivation. The “dinosaur stations” are a perfect example of an experience that reflects all of these different elements.
These kinds of learning experiences — that create opportunities for exploration and discovery within a strong academic framework — don’t happen by accident, which is why professional development and support for educators and staff is such an important part of the Van Ness model. Just like students need intentional support to learn at their best, educators and staff need the resources and flexibility to design and implement holistic approaches that meet the needs of the students in their classrooms. Investing time and resources in professional development — including mentorship, peer learning opportunities, and more — is critical to making educators and staff feel valued, and empowering them to test new approaches, learn from colleagues, iterate, and implement strategies that lead to the greatest positive outcomes for their students.
Designing and implementing these experiences at Van Ness also required significant investment in R&D: the difficult but critical work of learning about best practices, envisioning new student experiences, building materials for teachers to use, trying those new experiences with students, then learning from how it goes and repeating the cycle over again. While other sectors of the economy like healthcare typically invest 20–25% of all spending in R&D, the equivalent figure in education is only 0.2%. If we want more schools to be able to build, spread, and adopt innovative learning experiences like the ones I saw at Van Ness, we need to invest in education R&D capacity, products, and networks to make them a reality.
I could go on about the many innovative and exciting things happening at Van Ness. Their model embodies a high-quality, whole learner approach to education that gives every student the opportunity to develop their cognitive, creative, social, emotional, and physical skills. And they are showing results. Since Van Ness re-opened in 2015, indicators of student and faculty wellbeing, academic success, and community engagement have improved. Van Ness is evidence of what can be achieved through partnership between schools and high-quality external partners, like Transcend. Transcend is now working with 16 elementary schools across DCPS, as well as other schools nationwide, to support the spread of the model through the Whole Child Collaborative. You can watch this process in action here. America Forward will keep working with Transcend, our other Coalition members, and partners to uplift examples like Van Ness and support the expansion of high-quality whole learner approaches in schools and communities across the country.
Heather Rieman is the Advocacy Director at America Forward.