Engaging the Heart and Mind at Seven Hills
November 4, 2025
What do you remember when you think of your favorite school teacher?
I would guess that what comes to mind first is not the academic material that particular teacher covered. Rather, what sustained us as children and shaped us into adults were our relationships with both teachers and classmates, our sense of being part of a community, and the values that we developed during our time in school.
We remember the teachers and experiences that, to channel the words of Seven Hills’ mission statement, engaged both our minds and our hearts.
Here are a few hallmarks of the engaged teaching and learning that we find at Seven Hills:
Learning From and With Others
Great teaching and learning taps into young people’s inherently social nature. As they move from the parallel-play stage of toddlers to cooperating with partners and groups, children develop so many important values through interacting with their peers.
Whether you observe kindergarteners building with blocks or high schoolers completing a chemistry lab, you’ll find that the same interpersonal skills come into play: actively listening to others, compromising, sharing the work and the credit, and more.
By learning in community and delving into meaningful endeavors together, young people develop not just strong academic skills, but deep values that they will draw on long after their formal education has ended.
Following One’s Interests
At every stage of a child’s development, teachers and parents have an opportunity to provide them with choices that allow their emerging interests to guide their learning. For example, letting a young person choose books about a topic they love — say, dinosaurs — means they will be intrinsically motivated to develop their reading skills.
A great academic program will allow students to make meaningful choices on a regular basis, so that they are actively engaged with their learning, rather than “doing school.” This concept of choice can be seen in everything from thoughtfully constructed projects and assignments, in which students can connect their own interests to academic material, to elective courses and clubs that students opt into out of a sense of enthusiasm and engagement.
By making choices and following their interests, young people develop autonomy, mastery, and purpose — the values that research suggests are critical to living a fulfilling adult life.
Real World Learning
Do you remember when you were a student ever thinking (or even asking aloud) the question: “When will we use this in real life?”
In schools today, that question comes up far less frequently, because teachers deliberately connect academic material to “real life.”
One of the ways to do this is to partner with the broader community. At Seven Hills, guest speakers frequently speak to classes or a whole division, and we deepen our curriculum by taking students to local world class institutions such as the Cincinnati Zoo, the Freedom Center, or the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company.
These kinds of real-world connections contextualize and inform everything that our young people are studying in class. By exposing students to interesting careers, important social issues, and real-world challenges and opportunities, we help them to see their connection to the broader community and the role they can play in contributing to it.
Education and Life
“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.”
John Dewey
The great educator John Dewey said, “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” By engaging both the mind and the heart, we can prepare young people to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, both in school and as they move into adulthood.
A version of this article appeared in Hyde Park Living this fall.
