Upper School Curriculum (9-12)

We are intentionally sized and scaled to nurture connections and ensure individualized learning in a caring culture where students are known, encouraged, and challenged. Fully established, Hyla school will welcome approximately 280 students total, with ~35 students per grade at the middle school level and ~40 students per grade at the upper school level. An increased student body at the upper school level ensures access for students who didn't attend Hyla Middle School. Staffing will scale accordingly to ensure low student-teacher ratios and strong connections with classmates and teachers. Our student body is made up of students who continue on from Hyla Middle School and transfer students new to Hyla, creating a diverse student body with new and familiar faces.

Our program for grades 9-12 is intentionally built as a “deeper learning” model, something that is new to the Bainbridge educational landscape. Deeper learning is a pedagogical approach that threads through all aspects of our program, including mold-breaking core academic classes, Electives, co-curriculars like Clubs and Advisory, and signature programs like Panoramas. Our upper school program is based in a fundamental optimism for the possibilities and potential for the upper school years to shape a lifetime.

Our deeper learning program:

• Creates purpose in the lives of upper schoolers by bringing their identity to the center of learning so that they connect what they are doing to how they think of themselves (doing science vs being a scientific thinker, a citizen scientist, etc.).
• Emphasizes meaning and choice, cultivates community, and provides students with ongoing opportunities for apprenticeship.
• Redefines rigor not as “workload” but as sustained powerful learning that is also joyful, personalized, and meaningful.
• Creates an iterative cycle of inquiry to continually ask students what they need, think, and see.  (We believe that students are, in the words of Jal Mehta, “penetrating ethnographers of their settings,” capable of astute insights that articulate their school experience – as long as we ask and listen.)

The habits and practices of deeper learning models from around the world are summarized in the book, "In Search for Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School," written by Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

 Community at Hyla is a self-sustaining practice: it generates tremendous energy between students, inspires creative ideas, and creates new possibilities. It begins within our campus walls where students build authentic connection with each other and with teachers. This established trust propels academic courage, engagement, and accomplishment.  Beyond our walls, students regularly engage with the surrounding community in an ongoing cycle of classroom learning and off-campus immersive experiences. As an academic method, community is a pathway to depth and critical thinking that provides students with access to diverse voices, experiences, and expertise to enhance their learning and expand their own perspectives. Hyla’s partnerships with a network of community organizations facilitate fieldwork, service, and co-curricular coursework so that students can engage with people already making a difference in the areas they care about.