Academic Program

Upper School

Philosophy

Student curiosity is a driving force of the Upper School curriculum that is focused on investigating the world with a confident and discerning scholarly lens. Our outstanding teachers work with students to cultivate a rich environment for exploration, taking advantage of their self-knowledge and developmental progression to make way for more autonomy and more agency in their academic journey. 
Students discover the beauty of each discipline, master its essential content, and most of all, develop resilient, flexible, and efficient problem-solving skills. We see our students at their most empowered walking toward challenges. We see them apply their knowledge to novel problems, and find the human and the personal in whatever is initially unfamiliar. We see them learning how to integrate, how to combine, and how to synthesize. We see our students become not only consumers of knowledge, but also producers of knowledge.

Our curriculum is designed to include a variety of voices that open up the classroom to a larger world so that our students can find themselves, and see their race, ethnicity, and culture reflected in what they study. A Spence education is an intellectual journey that is engaging, powerful, and purposeful.

—Rachael Flores, Head of Upper School

Explore Our Curriculum

Sarah

“We ask, we wonder, we hypothesize, we imagine, we process information, we fail and try again and we ask further. I’ve also started to ask why not as I push my own learning by taking measured risks in seeking new knowledge.” 

Adventurous Learning for Life

Curriculum Highlights

Explore Spence

267

US Students

8 Competitive Academic Teams

List of 4 items.

  • Computing Team | Debate

  • Math Team | Mock Trial

  • Model Congress | Robotics

  • Model UN | Science Team

14

Athletics Teams

4 Fellowships

List of 4 items.

  • 33

    Science Research Fellows

  • 23

    Eco Fellows

  • 13

    History Research Fellows

  • 12

    Art Scholars

Middle & Upper School

22 East 91st Street
New York, NY 10128

Lower School

56 East 93rd Street
New York, NY 10128

Athletic & Educational Facility

412 East 90th Street
New York, NY 10128
A K-12 independent school in New York City, The Spence School prepares a diverse community of girls and young women for the demands of academic excellence and responsible citizenship.

212-289-5940


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