What is an “integrated curriculum”?

The Healdsburg School offers an exciting integrated curriculum that encourages children to think, explore, and make connections between varied disciplines in ways that deepen their understanding of every subject. In the early grades, this integration is thematic—that is, multiple subjects are united by carefully chosen themes and interwoven throughout the day. For example, a theme on the American Civil War would have students reading autobiography, fiction and nonfiction literature, making a quilt using geometry and art, playing and recording the music of the time, writing journal entries from different historical perspectives, exploring physical science by building a working model of a cotton gin, or researching and debating slavery in a mock Congress. This approach provides a depth of understanding unheard of in textbook-driven classrooms.

For middle school, our approach to curricular integration is slightly different. Literature, history, the Arts and drama are combined into a coherent whole, as are science, math, economics, music and technology. What this means is that your middle school student will spend most of the day with just two extraordinarily gifted core teachers—teachers who are expert at taking the two great spheres of human knowledge (humanities and science) and presenting them in ways that are engaging, exciting and memorable to middle school students.

The Healdsburg School is devoted to the understanding that meaningful learning is an active, joyful process of discovery. Our skilled teachers use a “discovery-based” approach, engaging students through exploration, inquiry and collaboration—methods designed to spark the intellect, build self-confidence and fire children’s curiosity about the world.

An integrated education challenges children to explore, question, debate, discover and then apply the results of their discoveries to ever more sophisticated questions and fields of study. Teachers use a variety of methods, including Socratic dialogue and project-based learning, where key concepts are introduced through large, well-thought-out, hands-on projects. This method of active discovery is also at the heart of the creative process and gives children the tools and confidence they need to develop their creative gifts to the fullest.