Academic Philosophy
At Esperanza, our vision of academic excellence is, “High challenge, high support, high joy.” Our academic program is fully student- centered. It supports, challenges, and inspires each child. We honor and embrace students’ identities and learning needs.
Our students' interests and identities as girls of color really determine our work. As an independent school, we are free to center their strengths. While we use Common Core and other national standards as guides to ensure our students are building critical skills, especially in reading and writing, we can teach and learn however best serves our students. In particular, many of our kids are incredible at debating, performing, creating metaphors, imagining stories, and questioning the entrenched social structures around us. So, we're constantly building a program that allows them to lean into these strengths and use them to develop new ones. For a few examples, our students love comedic skits, so for technology, they wrote hilarious ones about the safe use of social media. The 7th grade had a debate about the Bill of Rights, and the 6th grade wrote stories imagining the lives of people in dynastic China. Students of all ages lead their own discussions in English. The curriculum content as well reflects our students, their critical lens on the world, and working to bring positive change. Our English team has built a set of core texts that explore different aspects of our students' identities. Our social studies curriculum is designed for students to develop tools to question and evaluate the systems and structure of power and narrative across time and place. In science, students constantly practice the scientific and engineering processes to build self-efficacy, and focus on problems like climate change and curing sickle-cell anemia. Our math program is currently in the process of shifting to a project-based approach that develops students' natural problem solving abilities and curiosity, while pushing back on negative stereotypes of women and people of color in math.
Using principles of Universal Design for Learning and Culturally Responsive Teaching, we provide a wide variety of options and scaffolding to reach each student, which enhances the experience for everyone.
English teacher, Kristina Dolce, talks about the ways that literature can help close the imagination gap in her students. By selecting books that feature powerful female characters, she is able to help her students see themselves in roles that perhaps they never thought possible.
Art teacher, Lilli Leggio, leads the students in an improvisational art exercise as part of the study of artist, Jean Michel Basquiat.
Interested in an Esperanza education for your daughter?
Please visit our admissions page for an application to our admissions lottery.