Like the medical, manufacturing, and technological systems, the education system should aim to evolve. It must in order to accomplish its goal: to prepare students to succeed in the real world. Luckily for GCDS students, our upper school’s avenues for education are adaptive by design. 

When GCDS first created the high school in 2019, they aimed to make it a place where students could hone the skills that would ultimately aid in accomplishing their most creative and ambitious goals, while creating a positive impact as a part of a greater community. The traditional education system encourages students to become encyclopedias: sponges to their environment, taking in information and regurgitating it as a means of demonstrating their understanding, intelligence, or ability. GCDS seized this opportunity to create the ideal learning environment in a world where education is so knowledge-based instead of application-based. 

While many education systems remain rooted in traditional lecture-style learning, colleges and employers have shifted their focus. It’s become clear that students who are curious, passionate, and reflective about what they are learning (and how they are learning it) are the kinds of individuals who have an easier time adapting to college environments, as well as beginning their careers. GCDS’ innovative learning environment fostered from pre-elementary to ninth grade, as well as the high school opening in 2019, allows for a unique opportunity to create such a curriculum.

For the 2021-2022 school year, the GCDS Upper School is offering approximately thirty  Humanities and Social Sciences courses to juniors and seniors. These electives will mostly function in both semester and full-year courses in  History and English. Many courses, specifically those offered by the English faculty, will be geographically and method-focused, and offer rich courses such as American Literature, African-American Literature, Russian Literature, and British Literature, as well as advanced literature courses that specialize in fields such as contemporary global, literary theory, contemporary plays and playwriting, and nature and environment studies.

History and Social Science courses, on the other hand, will follow a related path with a focus on major connections to the global world and major fields of practice. These connections will be made through courses such as Constitutional Law, International Relations, Economics, Criminal Justice, The History of the Middle East, Modern Europe, Histories of Religion and Empires, Film History, Post Colonial Studies, History of Borders, and Mass Media.  

Math and Science will also offer new courses to further develop curiosity, passion, and self-reflection. Some of the science courses will include Advanced Environmental Science Research, studies in Marine Science, Astrophysics, Physics of Music, and even an Intro to Medical Science course. The math department will also expand into courses that offer the Mathematics of Public Policy, Mathematics of Sustainability, Mathematics of Finance, and the Mathematics of science. The specialized Diploma Programs will also expand to offer focuses in engineering, and in the visual and performing arts.

The Upper School’s curriculum appears to have found the perfect balance between creating courses that bring fundamental skills and knowledge to the forefront while allowing students to expand in their specific paths of learning. These courses demonstrate how the Upper School seeks to blend tradition and innovation.. While grades and college admissions are certainly important, a twenty-first-century education also has to prepare students for their engagement with the broader world.  Dr. Ruoss, the Upper School’s Academic Dean, summed this up clearly stating that “… a large part of our goal is to prepare students to attend the college of their choice, as well as to prepare them to take advantage of the most ambitious opportunities once they get there.” His statement, of course, applies to opportunities beyond college as well.  These new course additions, as well as the continuation of the learning environment already fostered at GCDS, will surely produce more adaptive, passionate, curious, and resourceful students of the world who will go on to see these skills manifest in college and careers which will require just as much learning, reflection, and adapting. These results will likely be shown as soon as current juniors are in their first year of college, and surely within the next ten years when alumni have branched out on their endeavors after college.  Ultimately, the objectives of this curriculum will have been met if students are successfully equipped to pursue their ambitions. 

Photo credit: https://thevarsity.ca/2018/07/10/ready-or-not-here-comes-course-selection/