The Upper School offers an intellectually challenging program that balances academic rigor with attention to individual interests and talents. Mastering the skills of critical interpretation, mathematical thinking, and scientific reasoning, Park students work in a climate of intellectual debate and discussion with encouragement always to question, to challenge, to assert. With every effort to make learning active, the faculty focuses on what students do with new information and how they use it to solve problems. Park, in fact, redefines "basic skills" to include analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and application.
The curriculum includes requirements and wide-ranging electives in literature, writing, history, mathematics, science, foreign language, performing and visual arts, and physical education. Research papers, debates, and literary analyses push the students' thinking, requiring more than rote recitation of facts. Essay tests and writing assignments, rather than multiple-choice or short answer formats, require the student to organize, synthesize, and articulate complex causal arguments into a coherent whole. In addition to individual reflection and interpretation, one typically finds students and teachers engaged in discussions of ideas and issues in the student commons, the library, and in the hallways. Intellectual engagement is central to a student's academic experience.
As Upper School students work towards a mastery of learning skills, they become involved in comprehensive research projects. Students learn to go beyond the obvious and easily accessible sources and ferret out information from a range of resources. They also learn to discriminate between relevant and irrelevant information.
Nearly all Park students exceed graduation requirements, choosing course loads to take full advantage of the opportunities the school offers to grow and mature intellectually and socially. Advanced courses and independent study are offered in all subjects.
The culmination of Park's emphasis on choice and responsibility for one's own learning comes at the end of senior year with the selection of a senior project. A defining experience in many seniors' careers, the off-campus internship allows students to pursue special interests outside the curriculum in a professional setting. In formal presentations following the projects, students share their experiences with Upper School students, faculty, and parents. Recent projects have included internships in computer programming at The Hubble Space Telescope, environmental education at the Living Classroom Foundation, emergency room medicine at Sinai Hospital, and sports journalism at the Baltimore Sun. Other students have selected projects in architecture, landscaping, film production, immigration services, public relations, and politics.
Upper School students shape the life of the Park community. They lead assembly discussions, attend leadership conferences, chaperone field trips for younger students, build for Habitat for Humanity, serve as mentors and tutors, and work to raise the awareness of the school community about a range of social issues. Other aspects of student life include student government, Postscript, the school newspaper, theater and musical productions, and foreign exchange programs. The interscholastic athletics program offers junior varsity and varsity competition in soccer, basketball, lacrosse, tennis, cross-country, field hockey, softball, baseball, and golf.
Park students are admitted to a wide array of strong colleges. Students consistently report being well-equipped for a higher level of study. What they find most useful is how they were taught to think and analyze and question at Park. What they most often report missing from their college experience are the close relationships they had with their teachers at Park.
After college, many Park graduates earn professional degrees in medicine and law or doctoral degrees in a range of fields from information systems and engineering, to architecture, psychology and education. Park alumni manage large corporations or they own small businesses. They work in higher education and health services; they are professional artists and authors, economists and biologists, social workers and marketing specialists; they serve as community leaders and volunteers. Their pursuits validate the daily efforts of the faculty to ensure that their students leave Park not only with specific skills and knowledge, but with an enduring interest in the life of the mind.
