Upper School Curriculum
We understand that curriculum permeates everything we do, all the decisions we make in our interactions with our girls. Our students see their lives and their interests reflected in the stories they read, the problems they solve, and the projects they complete. At Laurel, our girls know their own strengths, and they also know how to appreciate the strengths of others. They learn through academics, athletics, and arts; they learn during advisory, during study halls, at their lockers, and in the lunchroom. They learn as they take in the artwork their classmates have produced that dot the walls throughout the school, and as spectators supporting their classmates at sporting events and drama productions. They crave strong communities, opportunities to work collaboratively as well as independently. Girls are compassionate learners who care about their fellow students as deeply as they care about the dilemmas of fictional characters, the struggles of historical figures, and the real-life problems that our global community is currently trying to solve with technology, math, science, politics, and communication. Laurel students blossom in an environment that nurtures girls.
Curriculum at Laurel School promotes learning that is endurable and transferable. Teachers and families work collaboratively to help each student
find her own path to knowledge, and for her part the student enters the classroom with an open mind, ready to be a partner in her own learning. We all play a role in finding the best way to reach each student, giving multiple opportunities for our girls to connect with the material and recognize its
usefulness. With this as our guide and the phrase "endurable and transferable" as an overarching tenet, other pedagogical pieces follow naturally: skills or content taught without the context of application will not promote endurance, and impermeable disciplinary borders will not encourage transfer. Process and content must have an appropriate curricular balance to make each learning experience as rich as possible.
Building community, becoming a fierce promoter of social justice, learning both figuratively and literally to speak the languages of others, reading about women in textbooks and fiction, immersing herself in discussions where everyone has a voice, taking responsibility for learning through reflection on process, solving complex math and science problems with an eye to the holistic rather than the compartmentalized, each girl is inspired in her own way to fulfill her promise and to better the world.
