Upper school students participated in the Challenge Success survey conducted by the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. The survey was part of a national study focusing on the experience of being a high school student both at school and at home.

Administrators said that data from the survey can later be used to decide whether the school needs to implement changes regarding students’ stress.

“Because the Challenge Success survey is actually national data, and we have some agency in figuring out what the questions are, we can then compare and see what is happening at other schools,” Chair of the Upper School Deans Beth Slattery said.

The survey took up approximately 30 minutes of each grade’s respective class meeting and consisted of questions dealing with where students find both stress and joy at school and at home, along with how students think that their overall well-being can be improved.

“[The survey] allows us to get more aggregate information about the student experience so that potentially we can make policies based on it if we discover something,” Slattery said.

Students said the survey also caused them to reflect on their time at the school as a whole and engage in conversations about their experience.

“The survey made me think about how much the teachers really do contribute to the positive feeling of the school,” Ashtin Wang ’20 said.

According to Slattery, students were able to gain insight from the survey if they were willing to take it seriously.

“I would hope that for some students it caused them to consider their satisfaction with their experience and the areas they think we could improve,” Slattery said.