Summer of Growth: Teachers Learning, Leading, and Innovating
October 1st, 2025
Summer at Charlotte Prep is not a quiet season. Alongside the busy construction completing our new lower school building, our campus hummed with the energy of teachers learning, questioning, and reimagining the year ahead. Twenty-one faculty members engaged in summer grants, some traveling to national conferences and professional workshops. Together, they pursued projects that deepen academic rigor, enrich student experience, and strengthen our program.
Some of the most significant work happened right here on campus. Teachers from each division collaborated to align the mathematics curriculum, mapping skills and identifying transfer goals for seamless student progression, creating, as Mrs. Ahern noted, “a greater sense of our Charlotte Prep math program.” Additionally, lower and middle school teachers reviewed the writing curriculum, ensuring foundational skills in early grades build naturally toward the complex writing expected in middle school.
Third and fourth-grade teachers, along with Mrs. Harris, refined literacy lessons with an eye toward student ownership and deeper engagement. Mrs. Crotty and Mrs. Tenev strengthened grammar and spelling instruction with new resources, while Mrs. O’Connell and Mrs. Suttles redesigned the middle school health curriculum to ensure consistent instruction across grades 5-8. Even the stage and athletic fields benefited: Mrs. Davis and Ms. Stefanini mastered new lighting and sound technologies for student performances, while Coach Suttles enhanced Prep athletics through Athletic Directors Training in Charlottesville, VA, focusing on planning and safety.
Beyond campus, faculty represented Charlotte Prep at regional and national conferences. Ms. Moscati honed band conducting and score study skills at the UNCC Conductor’s Symposium. Ms. Gasparro and Mrs. Klein brought back new strategies for active data collection and student engagement from the Get Your Teach On National Conference in Houston, TX. Ms. Nims and Ms. Shaefer participated in Authentic Education’s Leading Curricular Changeworkshop in San Francisco, CA. As Ms. Nims reflected, “Creating a culture of trust, collaboration, and feedback is essential to student learning”—an insight that echoes research showing that potential is unlocked not in isolation, but within communities that stretch and support one another.
This work is practical—refined lesson structures, aligned skills, improved grading practices—and it is aspirational, envisioning classrooms where students grow more confident and independent, carrying with them deep, transferable learning and the assurance that they are known for who they are. Already in the first few weeks of school, what our teachers began this summer is coming to life across campus, and it will continue to shape our students’ experience throughout the year and for years to come.
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Apr16Hot off the Press: First-Grade NewsFrom interviewing campus staff to doing deep research, students in Mrs. Gilmartin and Mr. Stedman’s classes are hard at work on their monthly newspapers.
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Apr9Testing at Charlotte PrepIn our classrooms, we do not “teach to the test” or hang the threat of end-of-grade exams over students’ heads as motivation to participate in learning. Engagement and participation are driven by relationships, meaningful learning experiences, and students’ interests, strengths, and curiosity.
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Mar13Cultivating Your Child’s Inner VoiceAs parents, we are the primary architects of our children’s internal landscapes. While we do not create their inner dialogue entirely, we are the most significant contributors to how they speak to themselves.
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Feb19Second Graders Host an Outside-the-Box Lesson in Black HistoryOur second graders recently served lunch to Charlotte community members along with sides of information about the lives of more than 40 remarkable African Americans for Black History Month.
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