As ninth graders embark on their high school journey, they are now equipped with a course designed to sharpen essential academic skills.

For the second year, CORE—a program led by Director of Academic Services Karen Bernanke—aims to help students discover their unique learning styles, fostering self-advocacy and long-term success.

Collaborating with Upper School Head Joshua Neudel, Bernanke developed the course to help incoming high-schoolers recognize their individual learning approaches, emphasizing that understanding how they learn is key to achieving academic success.

“I think it’s really important to know what kind of learner you are, so that number one, you can advocate for yourself and so you can find the most efficient strategies for you,” Bernanke said. “Whereas your peers may have a strategy that works for them, but you need to know who you are as you grow into adulthood because you need to find activities and jobs that you like to do and that you’re good at, but also build strengths and skills.”  

Other independent schools in New England combine teaching academic skills with wellness, including at Miss Hall’s School, Andover High School, and Buckingham Browne & Nichols School, according to Bernanke. But such courses include less focus on individual learning styles and combine lessons on health and wellness.

Here, Wellness and CORE are taught separately—and both are required for ninth grade students.  

“[T]he past three ninth graders, ninth grades before 2024, 2025, have almost had 50 percent new students,” Dean of Students Paul Murray said. “Students coming from different educational backgrounds that may not have had—again, that, for lack of a better word—core skills that we would hope students may be coming through our Brimmer Middle School have.” 

Ava Bruel ’28 says the topics she learned during CORE helped her succeed. 

“They’ve actually helped a lot, because also she [Bernanke] helped us learn our own learning styles, like if we prefer auditorial, or if we prefer to write down. Those have helped us a lot in the classes.”

In contrast, Jordyn Karp ’27 felt the CORE program tools did not benefit her.

“I feel like I didn’t really like it because we were supposed to learn life skills,” Karp said. ”[The class] was really only directed for a specific type of person who liked taking notes and if you did it differently, you just couldn’t apply these skills.” 

Bernanke remains confident, however, that the tools that she teaches helps students make a successful transition into high school.

“I do think that the topics we’re learning are helping students succeed because I’m providing time for students to reflect and pause and think about how they’re going to approach curriculum,” Bernake said. “I’m not telling them necessarily what to do, but to analyze how they do it.”   

Editors’ note: This is the first of a new ongoing series, Inside the Classroom, which aims to highlight what’s happening inside the classroom.