Enrollment

At the Kurt Hahn School, it is our mission to challenge, engage, and empower young people so that they become informed, skilled, and courageous leaders.

OUR SCHOOL MODEL & EDUCATIONAL APPROACH

Like all NYC Outward Bound schools, we implement the nationally recognized EL Education model rooted in Outward Bound. This model features rigorous learning experiences in and out of the classroom and is built upon a high-achievement culture and mutual support. Our school uses hands-on learning that has real-world applications. At our school, leadership, active citizenship, and character development go hand-in-hand with academic rigor and challenge. By valuing community and character alongside rigorous academics, we foster a school culture that instills in students the desire to take ownership of their own learning and care for their community. Students understand what they have learned and why.

INTENSIVES/EXPLORE WEEK

Twice a year, regular classes are suspended for a full week and students have the opportunity to explore a topic of their choice in-depth with visits from experts and fieldwork in the city and around the country. In the past, intensives have included topics such as the Marine Ecosystems, The Hero’s Journey: Dramatic Writing and Analysis!, Food Photography, Great Civilizations, College: The Black and Brown Experience, Arthur Miller Play Study, and Stories of Resistance.  

CREW

Crews are teams of 12-16 students led by an adult Crew Advisor, often a teacher. Each Crews team focus on building essential character and academic skills through a combination of team building, student-centered academic support, conflict resolution, and adventure.

Crews meet multiple times per week, and a Crew will stay intact for several years.

STUDENT LED CONFERENCES

Twice a year students present their strengths, growth areas, and goals to an audience of their peers, teachers, and families.  These Student-Led Conferences take the place of traditional parent-teacher conferences and keep students accountable for their own academic performance and allow students to take the lead in their own learning.  They can speak to their own strengths, struggles, goals, and processes of learning, and they are prepared for college success. 

COLLEGE NOW & AP COURSES

We have partnered with Brooklyn College and Kingsborough Community College to offer College Now Courses.  Students take courses at our school or at the college campus.  Our course offerings include Modern Humanities: Art and Ideas,  Introduction to Business, Behavioral and Social Science: The Individual and His/Her World, and Introduction to College/Career and Life Planning.

Through the AP for All initiative, we have recently introduced: 

  • AP Literature: A Call to Action: Understanding Your Rights using authors including but not limited to Adiche, Hawthorne, and Whitehead.

  • AP Seminar/Statistics using a Neuroscience and Statistics lens as the foundational source of evidence to analyze key topics.

  • AP Human Geography to explore how humans have understood, used, and changed the surface of the earth.

GRADUATION ASSESSMENTS

Performance Based Assessment Tasks (PBATs) replace traditional Regents Exams. Assessments include:

  • Analytic Essays on Literature

  • Social Studies Research Papers

  • An original Science Experiment & Paper

  • Problem Solving & Writing on Mathematics

  • Graduation-level PBATs are evaluated by external assessors using Consortium rubrics for both writing and oral presentations.

A series of interim assessments, roundtables, oral argumentation based on content and evidence, analytic as well as creative and first-person writing, teacher- and student-initiated assignments, independent and assigned reading, and hands-on projects all prepare students for their graduation-level performance-based assessment tasks, known as PBATs.

ROUNDTABLES AND PASSAGES

Beyond Student-Led Conferences, students present their work and learning to a variety of audiences.  During Roundtables, pairs of students present and reflect on their work and growth to two evaluators.  At the end of 10th grade, students collect evidence and share reflections to prove their readiness for the upper grades in a Passages presentation to a panel of 11th and 12th grade students and teachers.

PARTNERSHIPS

Our partnerships include New York City Outward Bound Schools, the New York Performance Standards Consortium, AP for All, College Access for All, Brooklyn College Now, Kingsborough College Now, Counseling in Schools, Opening Act, and Community Schools. 

COVID IMPACT and OUR APPROACH TO ONLINE LEARNING

Our online capabilities have grown by leaps and bounds since the start of this pandemic. We have leaned into our roots in Project Based, Interdisciplinary Learning by sharpening our curriculum, our socio-emotional support for young people, and our use of technology to engage students in active, live instruction even if they have decided to learn from home.

All of our students and teachers are provided with the technology needed to continue to pursue challenging and empowering curricula, despite the limitations brought to us by the pandemic. We remain committed to offering our full range of advanced coursework, performance assessments, and content that is meaningful and relevant to our young people today.

ENROLLMENT CRITERIA

At the Kurt Hahn School, we seek young people who are independent thinkers, experimenters, debaters, and problem solvers. We ask open-ended questions and look to young people to find new and creative ideas to solve persistent dilemmas in pursuit of a more beautiful world. If you are looking to go beyond prep and test and want to explore topics in depth in order to form your own opinions about the world you are experiencing and creating, we are the right school for you.

The Kurt Hahn School is an Education Opportunity School. If you select our school, there is a good likelihood that you will be matched to our school, depending on the number of applicants we receive. Please reach out to our enrollment team at enrollment@kurthahnschool.org if you have questions about Ed Opt or if you want to learn more about our educational philosophy and approach to learning.

Prefer to call?  Feel free to call us at 718-629-1204!