Casady School - Education - MetroFamily Magazine
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Casady School

9500 N Pennsylvania Ave,
Oklahoma City, OK 73120

Category

Cities

Description

An Episcopal Day School dedicated to educating the whole child, intellectually, physically and spiritually

Over its 76-year history Casady School has instilled in its graduates the educational and social skills that allow them to use their potential to make a difference in their community and beyond. Casady School’s Portrait of a Graduate represents the Casady student’s journey, which helps students thrive with a life of balance, purpose and joy. They find their balance learning the value of working together inside and outside the classroom.
They find their own personal purpose that gives them joy they share with the world.

In 1947, Casady School’s founders envisioned a school focused on children’s intellectual growth, physical health and spiritual formation. Small classes and personal attention from faculty cultivate the students’ intellectual life, a healthy sense of competition improves their physical prowess and religious instruction deepens their understanding of spiritual reality.

Today, in the same educational tradition as its founders, the school follows the Strategic Academic Plan that drives its pedagogy, which focuses on:

  • Student Wellness
  • Student Engagement
  • Durable Learning
  • Skills and Knowledge
  • Community Engagement

All programming is based on these pillars and through the lens of the School’s Portrait of a Graduate:

  • I Honor
  • I Learn
  • I Engage
  • I Innovate
  • I Service
  • I Thrive

Casady School strives to present an affordable education for highly motivated students throughout the Oklahoma City area, while recognizing that the financial investment may be a significant expense for many families. Thanks to robust scholarships, payment plans and need-based financial aid, qualified students should not be deterred from applying to Casady for financial reasons. Annually, the school awards more than $1.5 million in financial aid to approximately 20 percent of the student population.

For 76 years, the mission of Casady School has held firm: We prepare the citizens of tomorrow to succeed, think for themselves, act with compassion and live lives of balance, purpose and joy.

After having been away for several years, our family returned to Oklahoma City in 2011 with three young children. We started our trip around the Lake in Primary and Lower Division and now, 11 years later, those same children have grown into a graduate and two Upper Division students. Casady has been an integral part of the growth and maturation of our students into young adults preparing for life’s journey. We could not have found a better home for our family 11 years ago.
Laura and John Hart, Tyler ’20, Avery ’23, Landon ’25

2021 Family Favorites Finalist - Private Schools, Preschool 

2021 & 2022 Family Favorites Finalist - Private Schools, Elementary 

2021 & 2023 Family Favorites Finalist - Private Schools, Secondary

 

 

 


Get to know Nathan L. Sheldon, Head of School
What is your background and how long have you been Head of School at Casady?
My background is in business and finance. Until I came into K-12 education, I would not have guessed this would be the place I would love. However, in my second year at the school, our headmaster at the time asked me to teach a section of Algebra I, coach Middle Division soccer and tennis and be an Upper Division student advisor. Before the year was over, I realized my calling was to help kids become their very best selves. I am currently in my 19th year at Casady School, with this being my eighth year as head of school. I couldn’t think of a better place to be or better colleagues to work alongside.
What is your educational philosophy and how does that impact the students at your school? 

The hallmark of an excellent education is creating opportunities for students to develop durable skills. I firmly believe that hiring outstanding faculty who understand that student learning should be durable, engaging, authentic, relevant and customized provides the best opportunity for students to be ready and confident for whatever path life takes them down.

What has changed in education the most since you started? What are the current trends and where is education going?

It is an inspiring time to be in education. For example, considerable advancements in medical technology allow us to better understand a child’s brain and how it responds best so that we can continue to refine and review our teaching pedagogy. Additionally, social-emotional awareness in a child is paramount. I believe that with social media and the immediacy of information, we need to focus more on students’ social-emotional health. Academics are important, but at the same time, we must pay attention to the social-emotional health of a child. We know that children are responding well when the teacher has high rigor coupled with high engagement. When these two come together, you will find confident, well-rounded and all-around healthy students.
What makes your school stand out among all the education choices parents have?
The way students learn has evolved, and their school must meet them where they are today. That mindset inspired Casady School to embark on an evolutionary journey to create a Strategic Academic Plan that focuses on five priorities: student wellness, student engagement, durable learning, community involvement and skills and knowledge. We focus on durable learning with “peak moments” that are collaborative, authentic, relevant, engaging, interdisciplinary and customized. Ultimately we created a Portrait of a Graduate, those values we hope to see in every Casady graduate that bring them a life of balance, purpose and joy. Tell us about your STEM programs. In our Upper Division, we are in the midst of developing a robust computer science program that will complete our strong vertical alignment of a computer science curriculum that stems from our youngest Cyclones up through our seniors. I’d like to share an example of an Upper Division project. In our machine learning course, students have just finished creating a computer model which can take information about a patient such as age, resting blood pressure, cholesterol, fasting blood sugar and maximum heart rate to predict if that patient has heart disease. While the initial creation of the model is a relatively simple task, the students will now be working on how to tune the model to produce increasingly accurate results. This is just one example of the many applications of machine learning and AI which the students explore in the Thinking Machines course at Casady.