How We Tell the Story of Your Child's Year

Walk through Higher Elevations and you come across portfolios, one for each child. Each one holds the story of who a child is and how they are growing over the year.

Our approach to assessment starts with the child. A teacher gathers a child's work, their projects, and their words, and builds them into a record that grows all year. One favorite is the self-portrait. Children draw themselves, sometimes on butcher paper big enough for their whole body. They come back to it again and again through the year. Line those portraits up and you can watch a child grow.

Portfolios hold home, too. Children bring in pictures of their families and tell the story of their life outside our doors, like building a storybook of their own. Sharing it helps a child feel that who they are at home belongs here as well.

A child keeps the same portfolio from their first day with us straight through their years here. By the time they move on, it holds the whole arc of how they grew.

A portfolio shows a child how they see themselves and holds their growth in their own words. Your child shares theirs with a friend, a teacher, or a grandparent, and in doing so tells their own story. At Higher Elevations, that story belongs to them.