Press

“Lunch is still important, judging from the Bennett Day School, a new private elementary on West Grand Avenue.

‘It’s part of a dialogue between the students and teachers,’ said director of admissions Amanda McQuade, noting teachers eat with their students, teaching them how to converse and conduct themselves. Eating is carefully integrated into the curriculum; for instance, kindergartners eat in their room.”

“The atmosphere at Bennett Day is “unabashedly progressive,” Cicchelli said, both in its pedagogy and outlook. Under the Reggio Emilia approach, questioning and willingness to change are imperative. “In a new school, we constantly have to look at what we are doing and how it will lead to skill-building,” she said. “We have a set of developmental milestones, but we don’t have a fixed curriculum we repeat every year. It’s a lot of work because you are constantly reinventing but it means you are constantly responding to the people in the room.”

“Bennett Day school programmed the interior shell of a historic Chicago building to serve as their flagship school. The flagship campus building, formerly known as Chicago Commons, was built in 1900 as a settlement house. It now houses one of the most progressive educational environments in the city.”

“The partnership is led by SESP Prof. Michael Horn and Bennett Day School teacher Frances Judd, who are both part of TIDAL Lab, a group that researches innovative, technology-based education. Northwestern faculty and students work with children to teach them technology skills and test prototypes for educational devices, Horn said.”

“What happens when some of the brightest minds in the country sit down with elementary school students to problem solve? Sometimes, they learn something. At least, that’s the goal of Northwestern University’s new partnership with Chicago-based Bennett Day School, which Northwestern’s School of Education and Social Policy (SESP) posted an article about last week.”

“Parents shouldn’t expect school to be like it was when they were students. “What we’ve learned about the young brain in the past 20 years is amazing and has flipped the experience,” says Meg Fitzgerald, early childhood director at Bennett Day School in Chicago. “Good teaching is about learning processes, not just fact-based learning. And we know that real-world experiences are more beneficial than worksheets, because what’s personal to kids is what gets ingrained.”

“Bennett Day School founder and CEO Cameron Smith describes the school as the kind that families knew they wanted but it did not exist. “School is meant to be a community where students and teachers construct learning together,” Smith said.”

“There’s a school out there for every family,” Smith says. He notes, however, that “it is hard for a school to be all things to all people.” He recommends that families make a list of their own top five priorities and use that to guide their search. Finding a school that does those five things exceptionally well will be a better fit than a school that tries to do everything.

“Bennett Day School is growing very quickly, adding a grade a year through eighth grade. They’re currently in Fulton Market, but they’re converting a giant, beautiful old building on Grand Avenue into an awesome high-tech school.”

“It’s difficult to know exactly what the future will look like,” says Kate Cicchelli, principal at Bennett Day School in Chicago’s West Loop. “Tomorrow’s leaders will need to be nimble, adaptive and strong collaborators.”