Academics

The Theoretical Basis for the Curriculum at High Meadow School

As you view the curriculum grids for each grade level, keep in mind that Progressive Education puts an emphasis on these core principles:

1) Students’ Ownership over Learning: At High Meadow School, this means that while there is a clear curricular agenda for each grade level, there are built-in opportunities for student input, initiative and innovation.  In the lower school, students manage play and choice times, work in stations and choose projects. At the upper school level, students participate in creating rubrics for assessing student work, design projects and participate in student government from which they initiate school-wide projects and policies.

2) Developmentally-based and Theoretically Balanced Practices: Continually investigating what is new in the world of neuroscience, behavioral science and teaching and learning helps us to keep the stresses that students experience at an age-appropriate level. The process of developing is stressful but also rewarding: too little stress indicates a lack of challenge, too much stress indicates a lack of readiness for what the child is facing. In each case, the teacher seeks to calibrate the educational and social experience for each child so that they are experiencing an appropriate balance of stress and reward in their work.

Remaining committed to age-appropriate practice is not easy in this time of high-pressure, high-stakes education. We believe that the short-term gains made in these settings ensure long-term loss as many of the essential skills built through play, discovery and project-based learning are compromised. Play, discovery and project-based learning have been features of education for a reason: they build visual and locomotor acuity, social and ethical efficacy, and the organizational, language and spatial skills necessary to navigate an increasingly interdependent world in need of thinking and creative individuals.

We also resist the theoretical polarities of the educational world.  We do not, for example, choose phonics over whole language but mesh them into a student-centered language arts curriculum that serves both visual and auditory learners. We do not choose arithmetic over problem-solving based programs but teach both in tandem, supporting the problem-solvers with arithmetic drill, while cultivating higher-level thinking in all students building rigorous problem-solving strategies.

3) Deeper not More: Students love to be the experts. Exploring fewer topics more deeply allows for the development of critical skills and strategies such as research, debate, reasoning, negotiation, organization and presentation.

4) Teacher as Researcher: Teachers spend a great deal of time researching and building their curricula at High Meadow School.

• Content is developed around critical questions and built on current research in the disciplines.
• Integration of various disciplines allows teachers to build strengths through the content areas as well in the skill-based areas, thus all areas of the curriculum reinforce each other.
• The particular needs and interests of the students in class each year, help the teacher to shape the pace, the focal points and the kinds of work the students do within the curriculum.