Coming September 2024
Slate Upper School
Slate School’s exceptional, curiosity-driven education is growing. Our Upper School opens for Grade 7 students in Fall 2024! We will add one grade per year until we reach our capacity of 160 students in Fall 2029. We've been thoughtfully designing the school over the past two years and developing amazing interdisciplinary courses. Now, our Upper School is being constructed before our eyes!
Join our diverse community of innovative, collaborative, compassionate thinkers world changers.
A Slate School student is empowered and excited to make positive impact through purpose-driven innovation.
As a student at Slate School, you will turn your interests into action, and apply your ideas and experiences to making a difference.
At Slate School, the culture of creativity, ingenuity, and the commitment to lifelong learning is clearly in evidence as you move to grade 7 and beyond. Student-led learning continues with personal projects and greater access to mentors both local and global to move your ideas through to fruition. Classrooms are learning laboratories for building skills to support problem solving, and the work that follows is collaborative as you work to develop ideas in partnership with other students and as part of a cohort. The ideas of Friends, For Others, Forgiveness, and Gratitude are lived through service to the community and to your fellow students. Whether you are working to help in the gardens and greenhouse, mentoring younger students, clearing invasives from the wetlands, or engaging in solving a problem that you identify, you will be invested in making the world a better place.
Two centerpieces of the Upper School are an Idea Lab filled with tools for creating and building, and a stunning library of books to grow your dreams and learn from amazing minds, past and present. It is perhaps even more significant that those resources find their home in The Alma, a space created for conversation, contemplation, music, art, plays, and presentations of all kinds.
The classrooms themselves are entirely flexible, with spaces for big project work, listening and learning from each other, and plenty of natural light for reading and creating. As an Upper School student, you will also have your choice of warm and welcoming reading rooms tucked next to the Alma where individuals and small groups curate books and materials for further study. There are also opportunities on both floors of the Upper School to find fresh air and remarkable experiences in nature. Directly adjacent to the 7-8 wing is a deck for observing the wetlands, working on a project, reading, or even engaging in some yoga or meditation. On the upper level, there is a patio for a broader view of the landscape during the day, and stargazing after dark.
Can you see yourself at Slate School?
We Reimagine Education
Why Slate Upper School
Let us work beside you on your journey to discover how you will make the world a better place.
At Slate Upper School, we deeply respect who you are and what only you can bring to conversations that matter. Every learner brings their unique point of view to each collaboration. Together, we build bold skills, bringing new understandings to the world. We challenge norms and propose vitally-needed solutions to the most complex issues of the day.
Curious
Our students explore widely, dive deeply, research, investigate, and collaborate. Their journey is guided by faculty and advisors who are creative thinkers who transcend typical rote approaches to teaching. While attentive to benchmarks and a robust established curriculum, faculty are flexible to allow course direction to be learner-centered and therefore driven by the students’ own work and ideas. All students also put learning into action by engaging daily in their original research project. The project selection is completed in trimester approaches, with the possibility of multiple trimesters to be stringed together into a year-long project, if desired.
Committed
Our learning community is committed to reflecting on their learning, increasing their knowledge, and developing solutions for a complex world. Learners across all grades at Slate School identify goals and craft wise commitments to action to bring their goals to fruition. Cohorts support each other in their pursuits both academically and socially. The greatest growth comes when students refine and retool their commitments to help themselves make the most progress. This is a skill that is transferrable and critical to all future learning.
Imaginative
Dreaming and imagination are the foundation of great ideas. At Slate School, inspiration and imagination are given the respect that they deserve. Imagination is the tool that allows us to see beyond what is presented. We use it to refine ideas and solutions, to avoid unintended consequences, and to see our own paths to success Imagination provides the relevance for hard work by bringing a picture of success to mind.
Experiential
We nurture and support our students to love to learn deeply and explore widely. Our 40-acre picturesque campus is their laboratory, the classrooms are incubators, and the collaborations and discoveries are limitless. Additionally, Slate Upper School provides ample opportunities for bringing ideas to life in the Idea Lab. There, students build and refine using tools and technology. Slate Upper School also employs a robust mentorship and internship program where students can begin to hone skills learned in the classroom in the workplace.
Innovative
Our students enjoy challenges, take risks, learn from mistakes, and reflect. They have confidence to be creative, critical thinkers. Learning is interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and integrated. And purpose-driven innovation abounds. The culture of our community is to listen first. At Slate Upper School, we know that understanding what is truly needed is the most vital step in crafting innovative solutions. When we understand, we boldly collaborate to achieve the goal. We challenge norms and propose vitally-needed solutions to the most complex issues of the day.
Reflective
Our students soar well past conventional ideas about academic rigor. Modeled on unique undergraduate and graduate programs as inspiration, our students and mentors collaborate to complete portfolio reviews, comprised of narrative evaluations, essays and projects, reflective retrospectives, and other meaningful artifacts.
We evaluate and assess deeply, and our students engage directly in reflection, too. We use the narrative evaluation as a teaching tool. We know that a grade of an A or B can be subjective, arbitrary, and relatively meaningless, as it doesn’t share what a student has done well, or might have done better. When the focus is on a grade, students tend to have a ceiling, seeking to do what seems necessary to receive a desirable grade. We push our students beyond typical expectations, and our authentic assessment nurtures instead of hinders the learning process.