Academics
Academic Overview
Challenging Education: Our Academic Mission
At Bosque School, we design learning experiences that inspire students to explore challenging concepts and ideas and to be daring in their pursuit of deep understanding. Our academic program is grounded in inquiry and prizes curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking. Decisions of content and pedagogy reflect the diverse and changing world in which we live and offer a pathway to discovering individual passions and how to live ethically in the world.
Inquiry Learning
Bosque's 6-12 grade inquiry curriculum develops skills while nurturing student interest. In a developmentally appropriate sequence, students learn:
Each grade level has its own project, with the eighth-grade capstone inquiry project offering a ritual of transition as students prepare to advance from Middle School to Upper School coursework.
to understand and value research ethics;
to locate and evaluate secondary sources;
to locate and interpret primary sources;
to design and conduct fieldwork;
to evaluate fieldwork data;
to present their research results to peers, teachers, and public audiences.
Each grade level has its own project, with the eighth-grade capstone inquiry project offering a ritual of transition as students prepare to advance from Middle School to Upper School coursework.
Senior Thesis and Colloquium is the culmination of the seven-year program. Each Bosque senior undertakes a year-long independent research project and delivers his or her findings in a twenty-page research essay as well as in the public presentation at Colloquium. Student projects may involve interpretation of new primary source material, or reading sources in the original Spanish or Latin, or ethnographic fieldwork, or scientific demonstrations or experiments, to name a few of the options.
Over the course of the year, students will submit a formal prospectus, conduct text-based research and fieldwork, and test their arguments at a formal viva or defense. Though the project is supported with a skills curriculum, students exercise considerable independence in planning and conducting their own work. Each student is advised by a committee of faculty members who help them to develop the interpersonal or "soft" skills that are as important for lifelong success as the easier-to define "hard" skills of interdisciplinary research. Colloquium, which takes place over two evenings the week before graduation is a celebratory event honoring the student's whole Bosque career.
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