Bosque School Welcome from Head of School

A Message from the Head of School

Thank you for taking this first step to learn more about Bosque School. On behalf of our entire community, I want to offer you a very warm welcome and invite you to join us in Challenging Education.

Bosque is a unique and very special school. We do things a bit differently here and those differences set us apart from other schools. These differences lead to outstanding academic results and preparation along with personal connections, deep support, and warmth and magic in our community that will transform your child’s educational journey.

Mark Twain is frequently quoted as having stated, “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” At Bosque, we are challenging the structures that can lead to this kind of sentiment. Our longest standing (and founding) faculty member Dan Shaw’s philosophy that originally drew him to Bosque was the feeling that “education should be a grand adventure in learning.” We all agree. We want our students to be excited, inspired, challenged, and impassioned by their education. These emotions are what lead to learning being a joy, an identification of intrinsic motivation to learn, deep learning, and outstanding results.

Over the years, Bosque’s students—artists, actors, musicians, scholars, service leaders, researchers, engineers, linguists, poets, and athletes—have earned numerous state, district, and metro area titles and honors. Our graduating classes are earning more than $8 million in merit scholarships to colleges and universities worldwide. Our “different way” of doing things works and is yielding deeply impressive students and results.

Since our founding in 1994, Bosque School has grown from an idea around a dining room table to a beautiful 45-acre campus abuzz with community members who believe strongly in our core values of scholarship, community, and integrity. We work hard to create a nurturing and welcoming community that creates a safe space for students to explore their passions, find their voice, gain support in their struggle, and make lifelong connections to classmates and adults who genuinely know and care for them. This happens through our daily morning meetings, through our multi-year adviser relationships, through our small class sizes and the deep bonds created between peers and adults. These connections persist when students graduate and join our robust alumni network. Our graduates take the lessons learned at Bosque forward as they matriculate to outstanding colleges and universities and into meaningful work and life experiences. Being part of such a special school creates a bond that forever connects the Bosque family.

As a school, we strive to model the growth mindset that we instill in our students. Our impassioned and dedicated faculty commit significant time to professional growth and development and over 75% of our faculty have advanced degrees in their chosen discipline. Our commitment to challenging education means that we are always evaluating how our programs can better serve our students and families and how we can more meaningfully contribute to the well-being and strength of New Mexico. As a Bosque family, your opinion and input matter to us, and we want you to be deeply involved in your child’s educational journey and success.

Providing your child with an independent school education is the most meaningful gift you can offer, and yes, it is a significant investment. We are committed to making Bosque as inclusive and accessible as possible, with 63% of current students receiving financial aid. It is important to us that Bosque is reflective of Albuquerque, the community in which we live and learn. It is also important that all of our community members feel included and welcomed. We work hard to lean into challenging conversations and provide training and tools that help our students and faculty contribute to creating a more equitable and just society.

At Bosque, we also feel a responsibility to give back to the larger community. We host a full range of community engagement programs in which staffulty, students, and alumni are involved as scholars, citizen scientists, leaders, and mentors. These programs include a deeply integrated Service Learning curriculum, the Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program (BEMP), the Sofia Center for Professional Development, Horizons Albuquerque, and Bosque Summer. We truly are a private school with a public purpose.

As you can tell, Bosque is a very special and unique school. Words don’t do us justice. To truly understand Bosque you must visit to feel it. I now challenge you to experience Bosque for yourself by booking an admissions visit for your family. I look forward to sharing the magic of Bosque with you in person very soon.

All the best,

Jessie Barrie, PhD
Head of School

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When we speak of Challenging Education we are referring to two ideals...

1. Providing our students with daily learning opportunities that challenge them to grow as learners, leaders, and as conscientious, contributing citizens of our school, New Mexico, and the world. We ask our students to move far past rote memorization and regurgitation of content. At Bosque, depth is valued over breadth. Through an inquiry-based approach, students identify not only the answers but also the questions. This results in deeper learning and more meaningful personal engagement with that learning.

2. Challenging the traditional model of education that has defined most schools since the Industrial Revolution. Throughout history, humans have learned by doing. It was only over the past century that learning shifted from a very experiential and engaged process to a very passive one. It is amazing how much our world has changed since the Industrial Revolution and shocking how slow schools have been to adapt. At Bosque, we are incorporating the most relevant research into teaching and learning to redesign what a challenging education means for today’s students and today’s world. Rigor may look different at Bosque, but this rigor is what today’s students need to thrive as collaborators, creators, communicators, critical thinkers, and innovators. This is what college and the world is currently demanding and how Bosque students are thriving.