Making Space to Feel 

After the 8th graders settled into their seats, Sankalp Khanna opened his Navigating Self: Leadership Class with a prompt: What are the ingredients of a core memory you have formed? He explained the memories could be linked to relationships with family, friends, teachers, or anyone else.

One student mentioned “food” because it connects people. “Yes, it’s about culture, sharing, and conversation,” Sankalp said as he jotted “food” on the whiteboard. Another offered that deep emotions anchor memories. “Depending on the emotion, the memory can provide a lot of energy or it can feel depleting, right?” Sankalp added. One chimed in that being “open-minded,” without judgment or rigid expectations, creates fertile ground for meaningful memories to form. 

These are the kinds of reflective practices that Sankalp, the first Middle School Dean of Students, builds into his leadership course. His classes, added to the health curriculum in the 2024-25 school year, are taught once a week to all seventh and eighth grade students.

Before joining GDS, Sankalp taught math and designed social-emotional learning courses, first at schools in his native India and more recently at The Barrie School in Silver Spring. He brought with him this extensive experience and a commitment to help students navigate their individual and shared challenges.

“I try to teach kids that leadership is not about titles or positions,” Sankalp said. “It’s about being conscious of the factors that influence their decisions when they need to make tough choices. … They need to recognize that they have agency in deciding how they respond, and the choices they make shape the memories and stories they carry forward.”

Naming What We Feel 

The memory exercise might have fallen flat if not for previous lessons that helped students build their emotional vocabulary. One of the activities in his first leadership class had students map aspects of themselves onto a tree drawing, with the trunk symbolizing their skills and abilities. This visual metaphor is designed to encourage them to see themselves as a set of living interdependent systems and decode their individual parts. 

Another lesson introduced students to the Mood Meter, a tool from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence that groups emotions into four quadrants, such as yellow (high-energy/pleasant) and blue (low-energy/unpleasant). Sankalp explained that a similar experience can land in different quadrants for different people. The emotions can show up physically, which is why he encouraged students to notice what anxiety, joy, or tension feels like in their bodies. The body, he says, can signal emotions before the mind registers them.

“Middle Schoolers often think in binaries, which is why they give vague responses like ‘good’ or ‘sad’ when asked how they’re doing,” Sankalp said. “It’s important for them to recognize that life isn’t always lived in the ‘yellow’ happy, positive zone and that emotions like ‘sad’ can have many different layers: exhaustion, discouragement, apathy.” 

Every emotion, across all four quadrants, has value and provides important information about a person’s needs, he said. Even emotions within the same quadrant can signal different needs. For example, loneliness might signal a need for connection, while feeling disheartened could indicate a need for hope or encouragement.

“Students learn to check in with themselves, name what they’re feeling, and reflect on the need underneath,” he said. “I then help them explore what strategies they’re using to meet that need, and whether those strategies are helping or getting in the way.”

Different but the Same, Everywhere 

After a recent class, Ella Jeffress '29 said the course offers a rare opportunity. “We normally don’t get a lot of time to stop and think about our emotions because we’re busy with a lot of stuff, even when we’re outside of school,” Ella said. “This is a designated time in our day to slow down and think about how we’re feeling and why we’re feeling it.”

For instance, during the core memories exercise, Ella started wondering why her older brother figures so prominently into her memories of late. “He’s in college now, and it made me realize how much I miss him,” Ella said. “Certain memories that were kind of distant, I now remember them a lot.”

Lawson Friedman ʼ29 said he appreciates the open discussions in class. “You get to hear everyone’s point of view,” Lawson said. “It’s a sign that even though we’re not all the same, a lot of time, we’re dealing with the same stuff.”

Sankalp was drawn to this work while teaching in Delhi, India, especially in 2014 when a right-wing party’s rise and its promotion of Hindu nationalism began influencing education. The shift unsettled him, having grown up in a secular society. In response, he and a colleague (now his wife) researched and co-authored a curriculum that helped students in their high school unpack their socialization using several themes, including inter-faith dialogue and ethics formation.

His experience with students across different continents has deepened his understanding of a universal truth: no matter where they are in the world, middle schoolers share a need for belonging. This need arises during a period of rapid growth and transition. Their brains are developing, their academic demands increasing, and their emotional and social challenges intensifying. Missteps are both inevitable and essential to their development. While many adults assume that belonging comes from harmony, Sankalp explains that it’s actually built by learning to navigate conflict—not by avoiding it.

“It’s about knowing how to show up when things don’t go as planned; how to take responsibility, repair relationships, and reconnect after things have gone off track,” he added. “…In a world that often prioritizes comfort and ease, giving students the space and tools to work through discomfort is one of the most meaningful ways to prepare them for adulthood.”