Preparation for College and Beyond

By Matt Delaney, Director of Academic Design & Integration

During a Q&A panel at a recent open house, a parent commented, “EPS is more than college prep, it’s life prep.” Built on the platform of our mission and vision statements, the EPS student experience is intentionally designed as preparation for college and beyond.

For many years, Dr. Macaluso has commented, “Our fifth graders and twelfth graders are on the same schedule, yet their experiences need to be distinct from each other,” and questioned, “Aside from more advanced coursework, what elements should distinguish the eleventh and twelfth grades as the culmination of the EPS experience?” The collegiate-oriented seminar and independent study programs that comprise the school’s independent curriculum are a start toward answering that question.

After designing, constructing, and opening two new physical spaces (the TMAC and TALI buildings) in five years, and completing the school’s re-accreditation, our focus turned to the eleventh and twelfth grade experience. During the 2019-20 school year, members of the school’s leadership team worked with Dr. David Ferrero, an educational consultant who previously directed research and evaluation for education programs at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr. Ferrero was retained to provide an outsider’s perspective on the EPS experience. He helped us imagine what adjustments might be made to our program to ensure that students’ final two years at EPS are deeply reflective of the school’s mission and vision: preparing them for college and life beyond college.

Over the course of the year, Dr. Ferrero conducted a cultural ethnography, interviewing faculty, staff, students, alumni, and the school’s leadership. Not surprisingly, his interviews with EPS alumni provided the richest insights on how the EPS program prepared students for life after graduation. Additionally, Dr. Ferrero researched programs and offerings at other high schools and bridge programs that are offered by some colleges. Finally, he asked questions about whether some current EPS offerings might be re-sequenced or clustered within the junior and senior years.

From hours of research and dialogue four main student needs emerged:

1. Students need exposure to multiple adult narratives which represent that life paths are typically non-linear, with turning points and connections that are hard to predict and plan for.
2. Students need to understand how the ever-accelerating modern world works, and how an individual might construct and adapt a personal stance in that world.
3. Students need exposure to a myriad of models and ways of thinking used in different disciplines and domains, as they move toward larger-scale enterprises at EPS, in college, and in the professional world that awaits them beyond college.
4. Students need an introduction to the concept of incremental decision-making and life planning, to be better equipped to make sense of where they are, who they are, and what they want as they encounter new contexts and realities in their lives.

The manifestation of these guiding principles is four new prototypes that have been launched this year: three new Upper School seminars, and a speaker series for eleventh and twelfth grade students. The first seminar, Worldviews, Truths and Consequences concluded last week, and to date we have hosted three speakers from our faculty community and two speakers from the EPS parent community.

Reflections from the students while debriefing the Worldviews seminar provided an indication that our new offerings are on the right track. Some explained that they had never thought about the concept of a worldview before; many indicated that they were not previously aware of the complex worldviews of philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Sartre, and the Israeli historian Yuval Harari; and others expressed that they were excited to have the beginnings of their own worldviews which they plan to adapt and update as they move through their lives.

As we progress through this year, we are excited to continue testing and evolving our new approaches to preparing EPS students for college and beyond.

*Full seminar descriptions can be found below.