Guided by our Strategic Plan, MUS has embarked on a journey with Project Zero out of Harvard University. Our staff has been, and continues to be, extensively trained in the tenets of Visible Thinking. With the support of the Montecito Education Foundation, we’ve had the fortune to send our staff to Harvard University to better understand how to help our students think and understand. Visible Thinking is a flexible and systematic research-based approach to integrating the development of students' thinking with content learning across subject matters. An extensive and adaptable collection of practices, Visible Thinking has a double goal: on the one hand, to cultivate students' thinking skills and dispositions, and, on the other, to deepen content learning. By thinking dispositions, we mean curiosity, concern for truth and understanding, a creative mindset, not just being skilled but also alert to thinking and learning opportunities and eager to take them on. When you walk into any of our classrooms, expect to see students being asked: Why? What makes you say that? Tell me more? Students are regularly asked to provide evidence for their answers, to engage in dialogue with each other, to connect to each other’s thinking, and to apply their understanding to novel situations. Students are taught thinking routines and curriculum maps and throughlines help students make connections from facts, details and formulas to patterns, trends and ideas. We firmly believe that teaching students to think will empower them both on high-stakes tests as well as in their future studies and careers.