Academics - Princeton Friends School

Pre-K & Kindergarten Elementary | Grades 1 & 2 Elementary | Grades 3-5 Middle School | Grades 6-8 Learning Support Program Beyond PFS

CURRICULUM

The Princeton Friends School curriculum reflects our school’s deeply held commitment to honoring individual voice and engaging every mind. It speaks to an emerging consensus among educational theorists that in today’s world, successful schools graduate students with a host of intellectual and personal capabilities.

As part of every child’s experience at Princeton Friends School, there is dedicated and compassionate faculty and staff, working to teach and instill in students the following:

a strong and positive sense of who they are as learners and as social beings;
a deep understanding of and competence within the traditional academic disciplines;
skills in abstract critical thinking and synthesizing ideas across disciplines;
creativity and innovative thinking;
the ability to communicate effectively and persuasively;
the ability and inclination to collaborate and to contribute to the broader community;
a global understanding, appreciation, and perspective;
comfort with and commitment to ongoing learning;
a clear ethical sense informed by Quaker values and testimonies.

HOW WE LEARN AND TEACH

We believe that children (and adults!) naturally want to learn, if offered the right environment. As expressed in our school’s core value of Lifelong Learning, we hold that the search for knowledge, understanding, and truth is an experiential, constructivist, collaborative, and transformative enterprise.

HOW WE ASSESS

At Princeton Friends School, we believe learning is a nonlinear, cyclical process. As students progress through the grades in the various disciplines, they encounter similar concepts, content, and skills at ever-increasing levels of sophistication and depth. It is our aim to meet students from “where they are” in a given discipline. Then, through classroom instruction, open-ended assignments, and individual coaching, we carry every one of them as far forward as possible in the acquisition of appropriate subject area concepts, content, and skills.

“The point is not merely to challenge students - after all, harder is not necessarily better - but to invite them to think deeply about issues that matter and help them understand ideas from the inside out."
- Alfie Kohn, "Progressive Education:
Why It's Hard to Beat but Also Hard to Find"