The young people of Hopkins School are encouraged to develop the habits of mind of scholars. To that end, Hopkins offers a broad, rich and challenging curriculum. Academic offerings are traditional in structure, with strong departments in the arts, English, history, classical and modern language, computer science, mathematics, and science. The curriculum promotes a strong foundation in the academic disciplines, a broad exposure to the liberal arts, and selective opportunities to pursue individual interests. As students progress through the grades, the program becomes increasingly flexible and offers a wide array of electives beyond the core curriculum.

Teachers provide stimulating, challenging classroom experiences designed to instill curiosity and breadth of interest, enthusiasm, joy, and aesthetic sensibility, as students develop academic maturity. Classes are small, encouraging students to participate actively in classroom discussion, to engage in creative problem solving activities, to communicate their own ideas effectively, and to learn from each other.

The Hopkins program can be demanding, but the culture of the school is also compassionate and supportive. Here students build close personal relationships with their teachers. The atmosphere is that of cooperation and a shared endeavor in the pursuit of learning and growth. Hopkins teachers recognize the individuality of students and frequently provide extra help outside of the classroom. We believe that students learn best when they can trust in their teachers' kindness and understanding and when the classroom is a safe haven for all questions and ideas.

To that end, as we live the life of scholars together, we share the experience of and establish the foundation for a lifetime love of learning.

The Academic Plan

What to teach and how to teach are the two most important decisions a faculty makes. Although Hopkins has always viewed program evaluation as an important ongoing activity, the school has not yet had a formally articulated academic plan. Curriculum revision has always been orchestrated by departments or by individual teachers. The recent NEASC re-accreditation process required us to describe and assess our curriculum by answering a series of standard questions. Although useful in some ways, our work was somewhat restricted by the types of questions asked by the NEASC self-study guide. A true academic plan is a school’s blueprint for how it will implement its mission. It should distill, systematically assess and define the essence of a Hopkins education. If done well, it should illuminate the meaning and purpose of all that we do and establish a framework to follow for ongoing, systematic curriculum work.

The Academic Plan Steering Committee, a committee comprised of nine faculty members and chaired by the Dean of Academics, views the academic plan as having three stages:

• Identifying what Hopkins does well, but also why and how we do it well.
  
• Identifying ways that Hopkins might want to grow or improve.
  
• As a vision for the future – anticipating and planning for the identified needs and changes that are decided upon by the faculty and the Head of School so that our curriculum remains current, relevant and representative of what we believe are the essential components of a Hopkins education.
  

As a first step in this process, the school completed a curriculum map last winter. Curricular mapping is a procedure for collecting data about our curriculum in a particular format that allows teachers to present an overview of their students’ actual learning experiences. Four types of data were collected: content (including textbooks), skills covered, classroom activities used, and the nature of the assessments. The analysis of this map continues and involves looking at it through two lenses: a zoom lens into the curriculum for a particular year and a wide-angle lens to see the progression through grades 7 – 12. Concurrently, we are gathering data from recent Hopkins graduates, surveying college admissions offices, and investigating programs at our feeder schools to help us evaluate how best we can serve our students.

It is our intention that the process of developing an academic plan will encourage valuable and healthy discussion. It is vital that the academic plan, though under the stewardship of the steering committee, be a community effort – a process that requires everyone to work together in much the same way as we did for our NEASC self-evaluation. We have an ambitious agenda and timetable, but the Steering Committee is committed to doing a thorough and exemplary job with their charge. We believe that designing an academic plan, although never easy, is exciting and invigorating work that, if done well, will result in better teaching and learning.