High School

A rapidly changing world calls for flexible, creative thinking, social collaboration, and ecological awareness. At Emerson Waldorf School, curiosity and a passion for learning are nurtured in an environment that values social responsibility, environmental stewardship, and spiritual striving. Our graduates are prepared to fulfill their unique individual goals and impart meaning to their lives through development of mind, body, and spirit. They approach questions with empathy and creativity and strive for a future that embraces global peace, justice, and deep kinship with the natural world.

9th Grade

Learning Observational Thinking

Faculty ask “what?” to help students develop their powers of observation. The 9th Grade curriculum asks students to observe, question, and imagine alternatives. 9th Grade students are poised for analytical thought and academic rigor, yet often, they see the world in black and white. Therefore, the coursework in 9th Grade explores polarities and contrasts, mirroring the physical and emotional changes that occur at this stage of adolescence and laying the foundation of nuanced and abstract thinking.

HIGH SCHOOL CURRICULUM

10th Grade

Learning Comparative Thinking

Faculty ask “how?” to help students develop their powers of comparison. The 10th Grade curriculum emphasizes patterns and relationships, comparisons, and cause-and-effect phenomena. 10th Grade students want to know how things work and they seek to understand processes, growth, and transformation, as they experience it in the outside world - and within themselves.

HIGH SCHOOL CURRICULUM

11th Grade

Learning Analytical Thinking

Faculty ask “why?” to help students develop their powers of analysis. The 11th Grade curriculum confronts unseen worlds (the atomic, the cellular, the electrical, the infinite), allowing students to deconstruct the physical world with their thinking capacities and discover new lawful relationships. 11th Grade students have a growing capacity for self-reflection. Literature and humanities courses delve into the works of great artists, convictions of great leaders, and the pursuit of one’s destiny in an ever-changing world. Eleventh grade students also have a deepening capacity for analytical thinking and perception beyond that which can be directly experienced.

HIGH SCHOOL CURRICULUM

12th Grade

Learning Synthetic Thinking

Teachers ask “who?” to help students develop their powers of synthesis. The 12th Grade curriculum encourages students emerging abilities to assess multiple viewpoints, find common elements, and identify creative solutions. 12th Grade students reach new heights of analytical and imaginative thinking. They seek to synthesize knowledge and experience, as they begin to see their emerging place in the world. They develop a global consciousness and are challenged with questions of freedom, individualism, knowledge, and self in Transcendentalism. They explore the interrelationship between the living and non-living worlds in Biochemistry.

HIGH SCHOOL CURRICULUM