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Meeting and exceeding goals — big or small, individual or collaborative — looks different for everyone, and success is reaching those goals in the studio or in classes and on stage."

We encourage students to make their own conjectures, and then test them and revise them. We love when our students look past the formulas and algorithms to ask: “why does this work?”

A successful student masters something new and stretches her mind. A student might obtain content and learn some facts, rules, or structures—this is mastering something new. Stretching her mind means she must also gain an understanding of complexity."

We define success in many ways, including when our students feel safe enough to speak up even when they are afraid they will make mistakes and when they want to spontaneously engage in conversation (in the target language) with each other and the teacher."

We find success when we help students to realize the power of the word yet. 'I don’t understand this' becomes 'I don’t understand this yet.'

In the arts, vigor equals passion, both in teaching the traditional and contemporary approaches to art-making, and in the kind of self-expression, dedication to craft, and focus on creativity that we try to inspire in our students."

When my students recognize that their voices and opinions are important in determining how we shape the world around us and come up with multiple solutions to problems that seem impossible, they have succeeded in learning what it is to be a future engineer and leader."

Collaboration and cooperation are hallmarks of Dana Hall culture, both in the classroom and in our broader community life. It's within a context of shared discovery, of learning with and from one another, that individual student growth and leadership are nurtured."