Bobcat Stories

Dear Bosque Community,

 

Happy New Year! It is hard to believe that February is almost upon us. Before we know it, we will be shifting toward spring break, immersives, and summer! 

 

At this moment of increasing polarity and uncertainty in our country, Bosque’s commitment to cultivating community and creating a safe and inclusive home for all of our students, staffulty, alumni, and families has never been more important. It is our highest responsibility as a school to ensure our students feel supported and that they are welcomed, celebrated, and experience a sense of belonging on our campus. We recognize the level of confusion and fear that many of our students (and staffulty) are carrying with them to school each morning, and our mission “to create transformative learning experiences that empower a diverse community of students to lead lives of intellectual curiosity, personal integrity, and compassionate contribution to a more just world” will continue to be our north star in all of our endeavors forward. 

 

And forward we march, centering our students and our commitment to Challenging Education and Challenging Access. We are already deep in the process of planning for next year. Some exciting things to share:

• Re-enrollment for the 25/26 academic year opens on Friday, January 31, 2025, with contracts due on Friday, February 14, 2025. All details can be found here. To aid in our planning for contracting our staffulty and new admissions, please make sure to abide by this date and reach out to the enrollment team if you need any support. 
• Our admissions season has been so energizing with prospective families visiting us for info nights, preview nights (a new initiative launched this year where prospective families get to experience four mini classes with our brilliant staffulty), and buddy days. We have seen really positive growth in our admissions interest, and early decision applications increased by almost 20%. Regular decision season is currently in full swing. If you know a prospective family who might be interested in learning more about Bosque School, please connect them to our amazing team. 
• In honor of our 30th anniversary, we have set our largest-ever Bosque Fund goal of $1.5 million.  We are thrilled to report that we are almost 60% of the way to our goal, having already raised $877,328 in gifts and pledges. We are hoping that 100% of our community will stand in support of our school at this point in time and help us close the gap! We have some very exciting leadership-level giving opportunities that you can review here. Whether you can contribute at a leadership level or at a $3, $30, $300, or $3 million level (our gym is still looking for a name!), your tax-deductible contributions make an immediate impact on our current and prospective students and how those students will use their brilliance to strengthen New Mexico. Don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions about giving opportunities. You can make an online gift (information about other ways to give is available here). THANK YOU, in advance, for your partnership in supporting Bosque in its continued excellence in Challenging Education and Challenging Access!
• On January 23, you received an email that shared all of the details of our 30th anniversary celebration, to be held May 15-17. This will be such a joyful celebration of Bosque School’s past, present, and future, bringing together our three decades of community. Make sure your calendar is blocked for the party of the year, our UnGala, to be held for all adults on Saturday, May 17, from 6:00-10:30 pm on campus! Registration will open in March. For questions about the events, or if you would like to get involved as a volunteer, please contact our philanthropy team at philanthropy@bosqueschool.org or (505) 898-6388. 
• In our continual commitment to our core value of inspiring academic integrity, we are very excited to share the 2025/2026 Curriculum Guide. We are debuting nine new or significantly updated courses for next year, including: 

• New STEMM courses:  Biomedical Engineering, Robotics II, Advanced STEAMM
• New humanities special topics courses: History of Piracy, Creative Writing, World Literature: Fairy Tales Then & Now, and Journalism
• New physical education/WELLBEING course: Fitness for Life
• New WELLBEING course: An independent study option focused on community engagement

• This year, we successfully launched a middle school interdisciplinary Art & Innovation curriculum to develop STEAMM skills across the middle school. Our sixth graders focused on stop-motion animation, our seventh graders designed and programmed small robots, and our eighth graders learned HTML coding and created websites to display their art portfolios. This shift has been exciting for the teachers involved, has successfully engaged students in meaningful ways, and provided an effective foundation of STEAMM skills in preparation for success in our upper school advanced electives. We continue to explore opportunities to reinforce skills in ninth and tenth grade. 
• At the middle school level, we will continue to build out our outdoor education programming. This year, we piloted a successful eighth-grade backpacking trip in the Pecos Wilderness and will add more outdoor leadership trips to complement the core experiences for middle school students, such as sixth-grade day hikes and the seventh-grade camping trip to the Jemez Mountains. These experiences will be designed with accessibility in mind. 
• The growth and development of our WELLBEING department continue as we refine how students progress through the program from sixth through twelfth grade. Our middle school curriculum scaffolds learning objectives that include executive functioning, Equity, Community, & Culture (ECC), and leadership skills as we prepare students for high school. We have debuted new upper school WELLBEING electives that increase student choice and include courses on outdoor leadership, community engagement and leadership, and gender studies. 
• Our 2025 Immersive catalog just launched! This year, we are offering several new immersive courses that connect students with community partners through deep learning. New offerings include App Creators, Story of a Thousand Steps, Arte Cultura y Culinaria, and Hip-Hop/DJ 101. Many of these new offerings demonstrate Bosque’s commitment to STEMM and interdisciplinary learning. For example, App Creators will allow middle-school students to identify a real-world problem and then design an app to help solve that problem. Hip-Hop/DJ 101, led by Roscoe Floyd, will introduce kids to the art of DJ-ing while also giving them a comprehensive social and cultural history of Hip-Hop in the U.S. and beyond. Looking to the future, at the upper school level, we are actively working with community partners to develop an internship program as part of future Immersive programs. These internships will provide our students with valuable experiences and connections to New Mexico’s key economic growth areas. If you are interested in being a part of this future initiative and hosting a Bosque senior intern, please reach out to Scott Crago, Academic Dean. 
• Our board of trustees and leadership team are actively working to update the school’s strategic plan, the roadmap for our focus, and priorities for the years to come. We can’t wait to share this with you later this spring! 

 

As you can see, in the midst of our 30th year, Bosque School is truly thriving—building from the strong foundation of our history to leverage our future and further amplify Bosque’s influence to transform lives and meaningfully contribute to our community and state. 

 

Thank you for sharing this magical and important community with us. It is my greatest honor to serve our students and mission each and every day! 

 

All my best,

 

Jessie Barrie, Ph.D.

Head of School

 

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