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Aspiring, Iterating & Innovating: Our Vision for DA's Future

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Strategic Vision

Durham Academy's Strategic Vision came into focus over a three-year span from 2019 to 2021 — informed by conversations with students, faculty, staff, parents, trustees and alumni, and refined by a 2020 community-wide survey with more than 1,200 respondents. 

The pandemic both delayed and accelerated our strategic planning — stress-testing our ideas and throwing into high relief the urgency of bold, innovative action, and the will to make happen what may once have seemed impossible. 

GOAL 1

Prepare Our Students for Life.

We envision DA learning environments that more actively foster intrinsic motivation. Preparing our students for life means we are thinking beyond the next test, the next grade, and even beyond college. We are designing learning experiences that build real-world skills students will use to thrive in 21st century careers. We are taking down the walls of school, recognizing that learning happens everywhere, all the time. We are also redefining rigor — shifting from a focus on content volume and time-on-task to deeper and more vigorous learning that builds increasing expertise over time. 

Aiming to help students discover their purpose, we are incorporating more student choice across the grade levels. Our faculty are redesigning learning experiences around hands-on applications, real-world problem-solving and partnerships with local organizations. 

We know that these shifts in our academic program will increase academic excellence, but they can also facilitate shifts in our students’ ability to balance work, play and holistic wellness on and beyond our campuses. In every area of the school, we hope to apply the lessons learned from exceptional examples to build a more pervasive and coherent approach to deep, meaningful lifelong learning. 

GOAL 2

Meet The Needs of Our learners.

A truly diverse learning community means meeting students where they are, providing a relevant learning environment that allows them to bring their whole selves to school and challenging them to push beyond their personal and academic comfort zones. 

The pandemic led to a greater need for student learning support services at Durham Academy. The increased independence and executive function required by online and hybrid learning modes required new structures to ensure success for students with diagnosed learning and/or attention differences. Since 2020, the school has evaluated best practices in peer independent schools and developed a larger, more cohesive Pre-K through 12 infrastructure for learning support — all while maintaining the academic rigor that has been a hallmark of the DA experience since its founding.

In a rapidly changing, always-connected world, many of our students will continue to be liberated and empowered by digital tools such as generative AI, online learning platforms, remote collaboration opportunities and revised daily/weekly schedules. More choice and more student-authored projects make them more eager to learn and more able to push further than they had in the past. DA wants to continue to empower and support these learners — recognizing that every one of our students is nurtured by challenge.

GOAL 3

Innovate More Boldly.

We aim to preserve the agility developed in response to the pandemic and convert it to a pervasive innovator’s mindset that better prepares our students for an unscripted future. The school hopes to mirror this shift in all aspects of our community. From the Board of Trustees to the Business Office, from second grade to the speech and debate program, DA aspires to become a school where innovation is a fundamental part of the culture.

Innovation Journey Fund

We are embarking on a mountain-climbing journey — finding new solutions to our challenges in the foothills and peaks of innovative practice. The Durham Academy Innovation Journey Fund (IJF) supports discovery, design and implementation of innovative ways of teaching, learning and operating as a school. The fund was created as part of Goal 3, but projects have contributed to the success of each pillar of the Strategic Vision. Proposals, which can be pitched by any member of the faculty and staff or student body (with a faculty sponsor), are considered three times a year.

THE FOUNDATION

Broaden & Deepen Our Work with Diversity, Equity & Engagement.

We believe that diversity is an essential element of Durham Academy’s identity, and that this work is not ancillary but rather core to our mission of preparing each student to live a moral, happy and productive life. It is clear now more than ever that DEE is relevant to all our work and that this work is an iterative journey, a relentless quest rather than a destination definitively reached.

We believe that embracing diversity and inspiring empathy enlivens, improves and enriches the intellectual and social environment of our school community. Direct exposure to a multiplicity of voices and perspectives woven throughout the pre-k through 12 curriculum is essential to academic success.

We believe that an inclusive community that celebrates and respects each of its individual members and the value they add to the rich tapestry of families, faculty and staff at Durham Academy creates a welcoming environment for everyone to be successful.

We believe that when students feel safe, accepted, affirmed and that they belong, they can then be curious about the world around them in ways that foster understanding, learning about their own identity and those of others in order to succeed as global citizens.

Our DEE Action Plan is steering this work, which is foundational for the initiatives we are pursuing toward each of the three Strategic Vision goals. Learn more about Diversity, Equity & Engagement at DA.

 

View the DEE Action Plan
 

 

Feedback

As part of this more iterative and nimble approach than DA's strategic plans of the past, we want to give students, families, alumni, faculty, staff and community members the chance to provide input about their DA experiences and the opportunities ahead in grades Pre-k through 12. 

Please take a moment to complete our feedback form. We are so grateful for your feedback as we partner with you to build the future of our school!

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