Highland School in partnership with Kiwanis International is sponsoring a K-Kids Club at Highland School. The K-Kids Club is a student-led service organization for elementary school students dedicated to school and community service. Students in grades one and two who are interested in community service and are of good character are eligible to participate. Kiwanis International is a worldwide service organization whose clubs serve children and develop youth leadership. Highland K-Kids club meets once a month after school in our cafeteria. Community service projects include collecting coins for Red Cross, fundraising for the Wallingford Town Fire Works and collecting supplies for the Wallingford Animal Shelter.

Through the generosity of the Highland-Yalesville PTO, cultural arts events and activities are held during the school year to enrich our curriculum, provide cultural awareness, and entertain our students and staff. In a typical year, Highland will have storytellers, puppeteers, authors, musicians and various other performance artists bringing their world to the eyes and ears of our students. Anticipation for these events is high among our student body and leave lasting impressions at their conclusion.

Beginning this school year we implemented Responsive Classroom. Responsive Classroom is a researcher based approach that emphasizes social, emotional and academic growth in a strong and safe school community. In the past, Highland School’s character program focused on the 6 pillars of character. While you will not specifically hear the 6 character traits as in the past, they are embedded within the Responsive Classroom model. Under the Responsive Classroom model, the Acronym Cares-cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy and self-control are emphasized. This year we began our RC journey by starting each day with a morning meeting. There are 4 components of the morning meeting: greeting, sharing, group activity and morning message. Morning meeting usually begins with students greeting each other by name, this is followed by a sharing activity in which students share information about important events in their lives and listeners offer comments, Next is a group activity and the last component is news or announcements. This takes approximately 15 minutes and is how each day begins at Highland School.