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Future Forward

no limit

To Better

Our students learn to balance deep in-the-moment focus with consideration for reaching and exceeding their long-term goals. 

And as a School, we are committed to advancing our programs, facilities, and support system when needed.

Every way you look at it, we’re moving forward…
As far as the mind can see.

We are thinking about the students’ experience from the moment they step onto campus in the morning to the time they leave at the end of the day. We are constantly adapting and designing curriculum and spaces that ignite learning, spark innovation, and foster joy.Carrie Dilmore
Assistant Head of Upper School

Finding a Future that Fits

COLLEGE COUNSELING

Excellence across the board propels our students to attend some of the most highly-ranked universities in the world.

Our college counseling office offers a wide array of resources to help each student find the college where they’ll thrive. 

Meet College Counseling

Enriching the Educational Experience

EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY

The purposeful and age-appropriate use of technology supports deep learning and empowers our students to thrive in an interconnected world. 

Explore Technology at Parker

Advancing the School as Far as the Mind Can See

GIVING AT PARKER

Annual giving helps us continually improve our curriculum, programming, and facilities while supporting professional development for our faculty and staff.

Learn About Our Culture of Philanthropy

On the Leading Edge

Out of Classroom Learning Strengthens Academic Experience

Continuing learning outside the classroom strengthens the academic experience for Parker students. Field Trips and longer retreats provide students with the hands-on experiences necessary to put their learning into practice, leading to deeper understanding and higher engagement.  

Shared experiences also support the lifelong friendships so many of our alumni cherish about their time at Parker. These deep connections between students often lead to greater collaboration in the classroom, enhancing both academic and social-emotional growth. 

Trips and retreats in Lower and Middle School are often class-wide with smaller course-specific experiences occurring in Upper School. Here are just a few of the field trips and retreats our students have enjoyed during this school year.

LOWER SCHOOL

GRADE 3 FIELD TRIP TO THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM 

Parker Grade 3 students traveled to the San Diego Natural History Museum in October. During the trip, they learned about the ecological regions of San Diego County, including the coast, chaparral, mountains, and desert. Students attended a workshop to learn about how the plants and animals of each habitat have adapted to survive in that ecosystem, including facing natural disasters such as wildfires and flash floods. Students also explored the Coast to Cactus exhibit, completing a scavenger hunt to highlight examples of unique landforms and/or native plant and animal species in each habitat.

“The exhibit was fun to explore and find all the different animals in each habitat. There were some I’d never heard of and some I’ve seen in my own backyard,” said one Grade 3 student.

GRADE 2 FIELD TRIP TO OLIVEWOOD GARDENS

Grade 2 Lancers headed to Olivewood Gardens Learning Center to gain firsthand experience with outdoor gardening and kitchen skills. Students participated in science-based environmental education lessons and hands-on gardening and cooking activities to promote sustainable agriculture, healthy eating, and healthy living.

The instructors showed Grade 2 students how to clean vegetables and properly handle kitchen utensils while the group cooked a fun, garden-centric recipe. “It’s important for us to eat rainbow food to keep our bodies healthy and strong,” said one Grade 2 student about what they learned during the trip.

MIDDLE SCHOOL

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GRADE 6 ASTRO CAMP

As per Parker tradition, Grade 6 students traveled to the San Jacinto Mountains near Idyllwild, CA, for a few days of fun, learning, and bonding as a class. The Class of 2030 hiked, zip-lined, did ropes courses, and played numerous team-building games to kick off their years in Middle School. The program also included several hands-on STEM activities, where Grade 6 students learned about everything from the atmosphere and gases to lights and lasers.

GRADE 7 CAMP AT THE CATALINE ISLAND MARINE INSTITUTE

Grade 7 Lancers traveled up the California coast and took a ferry to Catalina Island to spend a few days at the Catalina Island Marine Institue. Students learned about marine organisms in their natural habitats through hands-on activities like snorkeling, swimming, and kayaking. Team building activities and games brought the class closer together, creating unforgettable memories with their Parker peers.

UPPER SCHOOL

ASB LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE

Upper School Associated Student Body (ASB) students traveled to Anaheim, CA, for the Disney Imagination Leadership and Innovation Workshop. Students learned about the importance of creating a positive first impression, nurturing strong relationships within the ASB team, and creating thoughtful events for all to enjoy. ASB team members brought what they learned back to the Linda Vista Campus to create and run student events that are impactful and enjoyable by all students.

SOCIAL JUSTICE CLASS JACUMBA LEADERSHIP RETREAT

The Upper School Social Justice Class studies immigration and border issues during the first trimester and visits the border region to gain a better understanding of the complexity of the Tijuana/San Diego region. Students spent the night in Jacumba and worked with organizations that help bring relief to migrants seeking political asylum. The group also toured the region with US Border Patrol to understand the law enforcement side of immigration. Combined with class studies and guest speakers, this trip helps students determine how to best navigate the immigration issue through a social justice lens.

GRADE 12 HONORS ENGLISH FIELD TRIP TO MOUNT LAGUNA

In the fall, Grade 12 Honors English students traveled to Mount Laguna to support their studies during the class’s Nature, Writing, and Solitude unit. After reading essays written by people inspired by wilderness, students spent the day at the Laguna Meadow, expanding the classroom and turning their creative attention to the natural world. Students explored, hiked, and connected with nature to aid in the creation of short films, research projects, poems, non-fiction writing, photography, and art about their experiences.

Many more field trips and even global travel await our students in the spring. Each of these opportunities increases engagement and deep learning among our students and are an established part of the Parker experience.

Check back later in 2024 for highlights from spring trips and travel.

read about Out of Classroom Learning Strengthens Academic Experience
Lancers And Literacy: How Each Division Grows And Strengthens Student Literacy Skills

Literacy is one of the most important skills a young student can learn and one of the most important skills to grow and strengthen as students progress through the Lower School and into Middle and Upper School. 

While English and Social Studies courses may be the foundation for literacy skills, every subject matter and classroom experience requires literacy skills in some capacity. Similarly, developing strong literacy skills from an early age prepares students for success at both the college and career level.

Dr. Robert Gillingham Head of Lower School Heather Gray, Assistant Head of School for Strategic Direction and Head of Middle School Dan Lang, and Head of Upper School Ben Temple weighed in on the instructional methods, student learning outcomes, and philosophical guiding principles behind Parker’s literacy instruction. 



HEATHER GRAY
DR. ROBERT GILLINGHAM HEAD OF LOWER SCHOOL

Our Lower School literacy instruction comprehensively teaches students to become powerful readers and writers. In the early grades, children develop strong decoding, phonemic awareness, and word recognition skills, which are the foundation for fluent reading and high-level comprehension.

Fundations, our phonics program for JK-Grade 2 students, is informed by the science of reading. This program allows us to monitor students’ decoding, word recognition, and phonemic awareness skills. These skills support children in their spelling development by providing a solid foundation in spelling patterns while also introducing trickier words that do not follow typical spelling rules.

At the same time, we guide our earliest learners in JK-Grade 2 to develop identities as readers—helping them build vocabulary, background knowledge, and thinking muscles so that when they begin to read more complicated books, they can better comprehend the text. We read rich, increasingly sophisticated literature aloud to students and create time to explore and talk about books and poems from a variety of genres as a classroom community, in small groups, and in partnerships. Every grade level integrates literacy into several social studies units where students can apply their reading and writing skills in a project setting. Projects include the animal research reports in Grade 1, the National Parks project in Grade 2, and environmental studies in Grade 5. 

In Grades 3 through 5, students become even more independent as readers and writers. They read in book clubs, write literary essays about character transformations, and deepen their ability to think, talk, and write about texts. Students learn to craft strong sentences and paragraphs in narrative, informational, and persuasive writing units and frequently share their stories and essays with their peers, parents, and teachers in the form of “publishing parties.” Students also learn how to write research-based paragraphs and essays by analyzing historical documents and synthesizing their learning using academic vocabulary and historical concepts.

Our classroom environments also support children’s literacy levels through well-stocked classroom libraries. Teachers and our culturally responsive literacy instructor Rebecca Bellingham ensure that these libraries provide both windows and mirrors: windows into worlds that differ from their own, as well as mirrors that honor their own lived experiences.


Along with teaching students how to read with powerful comprehension and write skillfully,  we help students develop “bookjoy,” a term coined by poet and children’s writer Pat Mora. One way you can support your children as they become powerful readers and writers, all the while nurturing their bookjoy, is by reading to them and with them at home.  Modeling a love of reading is also essential, and do not forget that our oldest elementary students still love being read to and benefit greatly from a daily read-aloud ritual.



DAN LANG
ASSISTANT HEAD OF SCHOOL FOR STRATEGIC DIRECTION AND HEAD OF MIDDLE SCHOOL

The Middle School years are a wonderful transition between the foundation laid during the Lower School years and the Upper School learning experience.

Middle School students arrive in Grade 6 having made the elementary transition from learning to read to reading to learn. Skills that were introduced in the elementary years are further developed and deepened. For example, many families will recognize the phrase, “Always read with a pencil in your hand,” as Grade 6 humanities courses focus on continued development and deepened competency in the skill of annotation.


Grade 7 and Grade 8 teachers depend on each successive year of annotation development to push students beyond merely reading and into deriving meaning through active interaction with the text. As students develop and explore their own life experiences, they find that the process of annotation and deep thinking about a text leads to an understanding that is unique to each student. 

Students will use this skill for the rest of their lives. For example, if you have returned to a well-loved text at different points in your own life, you might notice that the text now means something new to you. At Parker, students learn that it’s not the text that changes, rather, it is the human that is reading the text that changes. The skills we practice in Grades 6, 7, and 8 prepare them for a lifetime of academic achievement and human growth.


While Middle School students learn that meaning-making is their own, they also learn that it’s not an “everything is correct” environment. Analytical reading and writing require that students make meaning that is supported by the text. Knowing a text well, drawing evidence from the text, and presenting an argument are all skills taught and developed in Middle School.

To build students’ tool kit, each of the Grade 6, 7, and 8 English courses begins with a short story unit focused on the acquisition of understanding around the author’s craft and the literary tools the author might choose to create their art. Students apply their understanding of the author’s tools to their own argument about a specific piece of literature. 

As the year progresses, each grade level moves to larger, more complex work to grow the students’ capacity to sustain analyses over time. Parker students are known for their poise and public speaking; in fact, this is one of the key reasons that we ask students to lead our prospective family tours. That poise, confidence, and comfort with public speaking flows from the rigor of humanities curriculum that asks students to think logically and commit to careful communication of their ideas through well-crafted sentences, paragraphs, and papers. Writing, after all, is formalized communication of thought, and Parker produces excellent thinkers.



BEN TEMPLE
HEAD OF UPPER SCHOOL

Literacy in the Upper School is foundational to student work across all disciplines. While each course and department builds upon the skills of literacy in ways relevant to student learning, courses in Social Studies and English are especially focused on the skills and habits of mind fostered by literacy.

English courses focus on the elemental structure of literature, including grammar, vocabulary, style, and making meaningful connections with the text. Through these skills, students begin to engage in a conversation with the text, both inside and outside of the classroom. Parker faculty select texts that provide a wide representation of age-appropriate poetry, fiction, drama, and nonfiction. Texts present differing perspectives, and students are invited into self-examination as they find their voices in classroom discussions, essays, presentations, and projects. 

Courses intentionally sequence resources by increasing complexity throughout the arc of the student experience. Examples include reflective or formative assignments, such as journaling and discussion questions. Textual analysis, creative writing, imitative writing, comparative writing, descriptive analysis, synthesis, and research are all components of the student experience in English courses at Parker. An example of these dynamics at work is Poetry Week. This year, the goal was for students to develop their voices as poets by reading poetry and composing and sharing their work with peers and beyond. 

Social Studies courses follow a similar approach of introducing sources of increasing complexity throughout the student’s time in the Upper School. Literacy skills are applied during projects, Harkness discussions, presentations, elevator pitches, research papers, discussions, and simulations. One outcome is increased social and emotional literacy, which allows students to better understand themselves and the world around them. Notable assignments are rooted in the history toolkit, which is a framework for students to build skills and understandings as historians. For example, in Grade 10, students explore the world before 1800 through a detailed examination of a commodity, oral history projects, and close investigations of the lives of people who significantly impacted history. 


When it comes time for a Parker student to walk across the commencement stage and enter into the next chapter of their educational journey, their literacy skills are honed and ready for college-level coursework. Often, Parker alumni emphasize that they felt well prepared for higher level academics after so many years of thorough, comprehensive coursework, allowing them to excel during their undergraduate classes.  

Reading, writing, comprehension, and other literacy-related skills help our alumni succeed in their future careers as well—lawyers must accurately communicate while developing a deposition, engineers must read and understand complicated manuals and datasets, artists must write thought-provoking descriptions of their work for galleries. Every career held by Parker alums is bolstered by the strong literacy skills they developed as a Lancer. 

To continue to set our students up for success at the college level and beyond, literacy remains a core academic focus here at Parker.

read about Lancers And Literacy: How Each Division Grows And Strengthens Student Literacy Skills