Welcome to the Smith College Campus School. For over eighty years the Campus School has been providing students with a challenging academic program in the context of a vibrant learning environment. Our website will give you a glimpse of our educational program and a feel for the kind of learning community that surrounds and supports the work of our students.

Our program and community are both enhanced by our work as a laboratory school for the Department of Education and Child Study at Smith College. Mentoring future teachers and attending to new developments in education with a “critical eye” are intrinsic to our work as a lab school. The ongoing reflection and articulation of practice required of teachers to fulfill our lab school mission results in a vigilance and purposefulness about both the academic program and the kind of learning community we create. Teachers’ engagement with and thoughtful incorporation of new information and ideas encourages the evolution of ever more effective curriculum and instruction in which teachers, and therefore students, have a vested interest. A sensitivity and commitment to a school culture and classroom community that support the academic program is heightened as teachers welcome future teachers into their classrooms to learn their “craft.”

In all of the above ways the fact that we are a lab school focuses our attention more sharply on the habits of mind and heart that our students need to develop to their full potential. We are committed to creating a learning community where children actively engage with subject matter and where they feel not only free but encouraged to take intellectual risks that lead to deeper understandings and the ability and confidence to apply what they know. Students come to know themselves as learners, engage deeply with peers and adults, and come to experience themselves as an integral and contributing member of their classroom and larger school community. We invite you to read about the Campus School and take a first look into our classrooms on our website.

We welcome visitors. The vitality of the school and the investment of our teachers and students in the work they do together is best understood when you “see us in action.” If you are part of our current or extended Campus School community, I hope you enjoy the enduring Campus School traditions and experiences you will see represented on our site and also see how we have continued to grow.

Sincerely,

Cathy H. Reid

The character of a school is not a consequence of the buildings it is housed in but is rather shaped by the people, the children and adults who inhabit it. As viewed from this perspective, learning is an intellectual and social endeavor in which knowledge is co-constructed by teachers and students within the context of the curriculum and classroom. Children at the Campus School, like all children, arrive at school energetic, curious, and with a natural desire to learn about the world around them. Each in his or her own unique way wrestles with the intellectual, emotional, social, and physical challenges inherent in a growing and developing human being. Adults at the Campus School appreciate this developmental process and seek to nurture a sense of intellectual wonder in each child.

One of the many strengths of the Campus School lies specifically in the close relationships teachers develop with their students and their families. It is within and through these relationships that learning occurs. The respect, nurturing, and academic support that children receive from their teachers becomes a model of how they can interact with their peers. This focus on relationships emphasizes the importance of community and recognizes that, within each classroom as well as school-wide, we are a community of learners. This recognition implies that everybody, children and teachers, are actively engaged in curriculum. Within this context teachers continually reflect on their practice in order to create a rigorous and intellectually challenging curriculum that meets the needs of their students. Teachers understand that they are not just filling the heads of children with knowledge, but preparing them socially, emotionally, and intellectually to become adults in an ever more complex and connected world.

Sincerely,

Tim Lightman

ABOUT SCCS 

Welcome

from Cathy Reid, Director

from Tim Lightman, Principal

Lab School History

Mission / Philosophy / Program

Faculty and Staff

Facts at a Glance