Harbour School Still Has Openings

Harbour School has expanded massively in the five years it has been operating.

They started with just 7 students and now have an enrollment of some 160. Based out of Kennedy Town, Harbour School still has openings at the following grade levels:

PreKK (4 years old) - 2 on the waiting list
Kindergarten (5 years old) - 5 on the waiting list
Grade 1 (6 years old) - 3 on waiting list
Grade 2 (7 years old) - 3 on waiting list
Grade 3 (8 years old) - 3 placements available
Grade 4 (9 years old) - 5 placements available
Grade 5 (10 years old) - 3 placements available
Grade 6 (11 years old) - 5 placements available
Grade 7/8 (12-13 years old) - 1 placement available

Harbour School offers one Pre-K and K combined class, one Kindergarten class, two classes for each of Grades 1-5, one Grade 6 class and one Grade 7/8 combined class spread over three locations in Kennedy Town (all locations are within walking distance).

With an average teacher:student ratio of 1:7, all students will get the attention they deserve in order to succeed.

Certainly worth looking into if you're having trouble securing school positions.

Harbour School Basic Principles (as per their website!)


1. At The Harbour School, we believe that kindness, caring and respect are
essential characteristics in the continuing creation of a better world. These
attributes are reflected in the attitudes and behaviors of teachers towards
students, students towards teachers, the school towards the community, and
peers towards each other.


2. At The Harbour School, we believe that every person has individual strengths
and weaknesses in cognitive, academic, social, behavioral, physical and
artistic functioning. We make every attempt to recognize, value, build and
celebrate our strengths while strongly addressing our areas of weakness.
3. At The Harbour School, we believe that the fundamental skills of civilized
cultures, including most importantly reading, written expression, and
mathematics, are the building blocks of further knowledge. These skills are
taught through systematic, intensive, and measurable curricula.


4. At The Harbour School, we also believe in the importance of an international
cultural literacy reflecting the acquisition of a body of knowledge in the areas
of history, geography, science, the arts and technology that are or should be
common to all educated persons. We work with a well-developed framework
that encompasses these areas of cultural literacy so that knowledge builds on
past learning and prepares students to emerge with a comprehensive sense of
their own identities as global citizens with historical perspectives.


5. At The Harbour School, we believe that social skills and social development
are essential to both a healthy lifestyle and professional success. Social,
ethical and psychological skills and understanding are explicitly taught so that
students develop the confidence and skills necessary to creating a strong social
support network, developing and maintaining friendships, resolving conflicts,
negotiating business and personal interactions, and operating as part of a team.


6. At The Harbour School, we believe that children learn many things best by
being actively engaged. Hands-on activities, in which students actively
participate in the acquisition of knowledge, are a basic part of our curriculum.
Field trips are considered to be fundamental, not to be “extra” to the process of
learning.


7. At The Harbour School, we believe that education should be customized as
much as possible to fit the individual abilities, skills, interests, personalities
and goals of the students. We attempt to do this by maintaining very small
class sizes, a balance of abilities within classrooms, a high teacher:student
ratio, individual and small group pull-out programs, online programming, or
other programs appropriate for the students.


8. At The Harbour School, we believe that every individual has an evolving set
of circumstances that may result in different requirements in order to best
facilitate learning. We make every attempt to approach situations and
individuals with flexibility, respect and kindness, basing our decisions upon
the values of our school and the individual circumstances at hand.

So after reading this as well as the information on their website, I'm still not sure which curriculum they teach. Any idea?

Originally Posted by anotherone

So after reading this as well as the information on their website, I'm still not sure which curriculum they teach. Any idea?

According to Dr. Blurton, Headmistress at Harbour School:

The Harbour School offers an international curriculum that is consistent with both American and British standards. We have adopted a Flexible Best Practice curriculum that incorporates the best qualities of a number of different educational approaches while avoiding the pitfalls of some of these curricula.

In the history of education, there have been many very laudable movements towards educational improvement. Three that have become popular in the past fifty years are Montessori, the International Baccalaureate Programme, and the Core Knowledge Curriculum. However, while each of these programs has some significant strengths, each also has some drawbacks or may not be suitable for certain children. Many children do not thrive in the relatively undirected environment of Montessori or have difficulty transitioning to more directive schools. Similarly, many children have difficulty with the relatively unstructured IB/PYP units of inquiry, particularly as related to the learning of basic skills such as reading, writing and math. The Core Knowledge Curriculum, while an excellent effort to codify the content knowledge that is essential to cultural literacy, has an American base not appropriate for global education and does not address educational process.

Rather than a slavish acceptance of only one type of program, THS has adopted aspects of the Montessori philosophy, uses units of inquiry as does the IB/PYP programme for appropriate subject areas, and has constructed a Global Core Knowledge Curriculum suitable for international students. It has also maintained a very conservative, structured approach to reading, writing and math and added significant emphasis on rhetoric – the ability to explain or persuade in oral or written words. The use of technology as a pervasive tool throughout the curriculum, with a one to one laptop program beginning in Third Grade and utilizing our own state of the art “Tools Not Toys” initiative also allows us to utilize Flexible Best Practice as new programs emerge, introducing and using such things as flipped classrooms, blogging, online coursework (for example through the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth) and other relevant curricula. This combination of methodologies allows all students to thrive and the school to evolve as we approach 21^st Century thinking and learning.