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Executive Director’s Update

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2023-2024 School Year Recap

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Social Justice Education

All K-12 HCS students engaged in multiple experiences centered around social justice thus enhancing students’ academic skills while they developed a greater sense of identity; an appreciation for diversity; and a lens for justice and equity all while experiencing a call to action and service.

  • Our lower school students explored the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) with each grade focusing on a specific area of focus (i.e., right to food security, education, housing and health care). Meaningful local and global nonprofit partnerships were forged, and students engaged in acts of service to further support access to these rights.

  • Middle and upper school students explored all their coursework with critical lenses around race, ethnicity, socioeconomic privilege and gender and found social justice connections across all disciplines whether they were scaling Barbies to life size to investigate both ratios and unrealistic body images in Math to  examining in English Language Arts and Social Studies how outdated language in texts can perpetuate harm toward groups of people to analyzing in Science environmental impacts of policies on various global communities.  Many of these academic projects inspired students to initiate social action and service work

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Service-Learning

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Learner-Centered Education

  • Learning at HCS is collaborative, personalized, project-based and experiential (what we call learner-centered) preparing students for a changing world. Our students experienced this in their differentiated coursework across all disciplines and in frequent opportunities for students to bring who they are to their coursework.

    • Some of this was evidenced in lower school published writing pieces such as the Wax Museum presentations where 3rd grade students researched a changemaker of interest and came to life for museum goers or in their Writing for Change essays advocating for change to administrators or governmental figures.

    • 5-12 students chose from a variety of mixed grade Electives and Labs such as STEM Showcase, Murals and Public Art, Craftivism, Forensics, Audio Production, Podcasting Activism and Immigration Law. Find a list of course offerings this year below.

  • Social-emotional learning is essential to our work to teach the whole child. All students engaged in work around having a growth mindset, mindfulness, gratitude, self-regulation and conflict resolution. Our 5-12 students engaged in middle and upper school four-year advisory programs focused on the students’ social, emotional and academic well-being.

  • Learning was extended beyond the four walls of our classrooms with coursework reinforcing field trips to over twenty-five (25) locations including Hudson River Estuary,  NJ State House, Carnegie Hall, Waterloo Village, Reeves Reed Arboretum, Ellis Island, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. See below for a more comprehensive list.

  • Upper school students participated in our dual enrollment programs through which twenty-one (21) of our students earned college credits for completing schoolwork offered via Fairleigh Dickinson University and Hudson County Community College  at HCS during the school day. Courses ranged from College Composition, African American Literature, Intro to Probability and Statistics, Computer Science, Psychology and Intro to Business and Art.

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Interage Experiences

Accolades

 

We also have lots to celebrate!

 

Thank you for a wonderful 2023-2024!

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Best,

Deirdra

Details

 

Middle and Upper School Mixed Grade Electives and Mission Lab Courses

  • Artists on a Mission

  • The Great Displacement

  • Decoding Disney

  • Technology Applications

  • Theater Design

  • Art Journaling

  • Ukulele and Guitar

  • Muralists

  • Swiftly Speaking

  • Don’t Be Clueless

  • STEM Showcase

  • Lego Land

  • Animal Activists

  • Magazine Making

  • Project Runway

  • Modern Band

  • Hamilton

  • Environmental Justice

  • Podcasting Activism

  • Current Events and Social Issues

  • Children’s Books as Activism

  • Advocacy Journalism

  • Murals and Public Art

  • Radical textiles 

  • Craftivism

  • Forensics

  • Audio Production

  • Careers in Sports

  • SAT prep

  • Writing and Reflection through Journaling

  • Immigration Law

  • Theater as Activism

  • ACLU: Know Your Rights

  • Activist Poetry

Interage Experiences

Field Trips

Student Honors and Recognitions

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