DTS Year in Review

By Sue Belcher

The end of the school year is always exciting. The weather is beautiful, students are engaged in hands-on learning through our grade-level intensives, and our next graduation ceremony is upon us. This is also a special time because it affords me the opportunity to reflect upon the year’s successes, as well as make goals for the coming year. As we round out our fifth year of operation, I am pleased to share an update on some of the exciting developments and goals of The Downtown School:

Student Life

We were very intentional about cultivating a strong sense of community this year. We began by clarifying a set of four guiding community values: Integrity, Curious Thinking, Caring for Community, and Compassionate Communication. In advisories and grade-level meetings, we engaged in a variety of activities to get students thinking about what these mean and what they look like in practice. We then made a practice of writing kudos for students in the Hub (our online learning management system) to celebrate student acts that uphold our community values; these notes went to students, their advisors, and their parents. 

In collaboration with an active Student Government and dedicated Parent-Guardian Association, we hosted a number of after-school events this year for the community, including two dances, movie nights, ice skating, roller skating, bowling, a casino night at school, several school-wide picnics, and a senior bonfire at Golden Gardens to celebrate the end of the high-school journey.

City as Lab

This year, students have participated in nearly 100 different City-as-Lab experiences with professionals, experts, nonprofit organizations, and businesses from around the Seattle area. This translates to over 2,200 student engagements with real-world learning experiences–each week, I have been delighted to share City-as-Lab updates, along with photos, in my weekly emails to current families. The city truly is a laboratory for learning. 

Classroom Experiences

As a feedback-oriented institution, The Downtown School solicits detailed input from students about their experiences within the classroom. Our expert teachers continue to be the school’s strongest asset. As the data below reveal, students overwhelmingly feel seen and heard by their teachers; they feel that learning experiences are meaningful and appropriate; and they feel that their classwork is cultivating our five core competencies of collaboration, communication, critical thinking, learning how to learn, and creative thinking. 

College and Post-Secondary Process

Thanks to the dedication of our Director of College Counseling, Christopher Obenchain, students and parents continue to receive focused, detailed, and personalized support in their planning and progress for their post-secondary experiences. Our students leave The Downtown School to embrace a myriad of exciting life experiences, from college to university to community college to military enlistment. Below is a list of all of the colleges and universities that have admitted our alumni, with those institutions’ names in bold representing where our students have chosen to enroll. No matter their post-secondary plans, we wish all of our alumni the best!

Admissions

We had an excellent admissions season for the 2023-2024 school year. In addition to the amazing applications we received from all over the Seattle area, we also hosted several successful, in-person admissions events, such as open houses, school visits, student shadow days, in-person applicant interviews, and a lively event for newly admitted students. We are so excited to be welcoming our sixth cohort to The Downtown School this fall. And a few spots still remain; so if you know a rising high-school student or current high-school student who is looking for a world-class education, be sure to spread the word!

Goals for Next Year

It is exciting to continue to evolve and plan for the future. Two of our main goals for the upcoming year are: To continue to assess our needs and develop our programming around diversity, equity, inclusion, and community engagement. While we currently have two teachers acting as DEI anchors to support existing initiatives and affinity groups, we are excited to welcome a new staff member, Jonathan Russell, Ph.D., who will take the helm of community engagement in order to best support our community’s efforts for inclusion and belonging. Second, we are in the process of examining our academic schedule for possibilities to adjust it such that we make more flexibility for even more City-as-Lab experiences, all the while allowing our teacher-administrators ample time and support to continue to provide excellent instruction as well as dedicated administration of all aspects of The Downtown School. 

Thank you so much for your support and interest in The Downtown School. We are honored to work with so many talented students and dedicated parents and guardians. And it is a highlight of my job to listen to feedback and think critically and creatively about how best to structure our school and support our community.