Winston Innovation Lab

About the Lab

Winston Innovation Lab Research Connects Our Campuses and Families

The Innovation Lab is an integral part of every Winston Prep campus. The ideas and innovations that emanate from this work that includes everyone’s input from teachers, staff, strategic partners, parents to students, comes alive and takes shape at every campus, every classroom and at every Focus Program space.
The Winston Innovation Lab is not a building where we come to meet, but a living concept and a set of ideas and projects that are injected into the collaboration and work of our teachers, staff, strategic partners, students and families as part of every campus.

The Winston Innovation Lab continues to develop and expand projects and programs to advance the Professional Development, Teacher Excellence, Leadership Development, Qualities of a Sustainable and Independent Learner (QSIL), Lives Over Time and Promoting Wellness Among Middle and High School Students. The Lab is deeply connected to the campuses, and serves as an intellectual meeting place for the field of learning disabilities and Winston Prep leaders and teachers. It is a place where Winston Prep school leaders can come with their questions, curiosities and ideas to further stimulate collaboration and research. 

Winston Innovation Lab

Principles
  • School design should be informed by an in-depth and scientific understanding of how each individual learns.
  • This understanding should include and address a student’s strengths and weaknesses and is always based on an evolving understanding of cognition and learning.
  • In keeping with the Continuous Feedback Process of Winston Prep, the Winston Innovation Lab seeks to help our schools (and the field) become even more responsive to the ever-changing needs of each individual student.
  • The Winston Innovation Lab seeks to foster independence and wellness through the development of the Qualities of a Sustainable and Independent Learner. This means we seek to develop ways to improve students’ resilience, communication/social skills, self-advocacy, self-regulation, self-reflection, problem-solving, social responsibility and management and organization, in addition to academic skills.
  • Winston Innovation Lab believes in the power of the increased refinement of educationally related assessment and diagnosis, and seeks to do work to increasingly differentiate different types of learners from each other.
  • Winston Innovation Lab believes in the power of partnerships with like-minded organizations, such as Child Mind Institute, NVLD Project, Landmark College, NAIS, NYSAIS and NEASC.
Initiatives

List of 4 items.

  • Image of a group of student athletes at Winston Preparatory School. | Winston Prep

    Fostering Wellness

    Fostering Wellness began as a project focusing on Middle and High School Students project in 2015 in a joint collaboration with Winston Prep, the National Association for Independent Schools (NAIS), and the National School Climate Center (NSCC).
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  • Image of a student hard at work. | Winston Preparatory School

    Winston Essential Skills Survey (WESS)

    Winston Prep had been using its Quality of Sustainable and Independent Learner (QSIL) scale to assess the socio-emotional progress of students for over a decade but formalized this project in 2012.  In 2022 the scale’s title was revised in order to highlight the scale as an assessment tool of the specific social-emotional skills included in the QSIL framework. This assessment tool is now known as the Winston Essential Skills Survey (WESS).
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  • Image of a teacher working with a student at Winston Preparatory School. | Winston Prep

    Lives Over Time

    This study began in 2013, and explores the experiences of individuals with learning disabilities over the period after they graduated high school in order to understand what helps them to be successful.
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  • Image of a teacher working with a student at Winston Preparatory School. | Winston Prep

    Ongoing and Intentionally Designed Professional Learning

    Having a faculty of expert learning specialists who deeply understand our students is an integral component of how we successfully fulfill our mission. The Winston Innovation Lab supports campus leadership in developing this expertise amongst faculty in a myriad of ways.
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Strategic Partners

Our Professional Community
Winston Preparatory School is a leading school for students with learning disabilities, including dyslexia, executive functioning difficulties (ADHD), and non-verbal learning disorders (NVLD).

WPS does not discriminate against applicants and students on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin. The Winston Preparatory School provides programs and services and equal opportunity in the administration of its educational and admissions policies, financial aid programs, employment, and the selection of its governing board without regard to gender, race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, disability status, or any status recognized by federal, state and local civil rights and non-discrimination laws.