“Is this cheating?” my 7th-grade daughter recently asked me. She was working on an essay for her ELA class on the topic “What we can learn from other generations.” Like many 12-year-olds, she sees herself as the hero of her own story and chose to write about teaching her sister to ride a bike. As the deadline loomed, she felt overwhelmed trying to finalize the essay by the next day.

In 2018, morning entry at New Britain High School had become a serious challenge. Students entered the school through any of its 510 exterior doors and had no designated place to go before the first bell. Teachers arrived early, only to find loud, unsupervised students roaming the hallways. Administrators and security staff were stretched thin, responding to frequent conflicts, fights, and general disorder.

Before becoming the assistant principal of Sokolowski Elementary School, Demetrius Fuller worked for two decades as an art teacher. It was during this time that he developed the HOMies framework (“Habits of Mind”) to help his students become better risk-takers, creative thinkers, and engaged learners. This innovative approach, rooted in building relationships and fostering student reflection, laid the groundwork for a culture shift within the school, empowered students, and fostered collective efficacy among teachers.

Summit School is a therapeutic environment for students from kindergarten through 9th grade, many of whom have faced significant challenges in traditional school settings. These challenges — ranging from behavioral struggles to disconnection from peers and adults — often create a cycle of exclusion, pushing students further from the support they need.

This summer, we visited family in Sweden, and I asked our cousins, “Does it matter which neighborhood or town you live in? Are schools better in some places than others?” The immediate and emphatic answer was, "Absolutely not." In Sweden, schools are regarded as equally good, regardless of where a child is born or the family’s socioeconomic background. There was a palpable belief in the room that, “Our schools and teachers are beyond reproach.”