Academics

FPO

Nueva students learn by doing. They construct knowledge through hands-on engagement. As experts in project-based learning, teachers guide authentic and purposeful investigations that enable discovery while building the skills students need to be successful.

At Nueva, learning is authentic, complex, and intellectually rigorous. Students do real work as authors, artists, inventors, explorers, athletes, and mathematicians. Giving students choice, autonomy, and high expectations for growth, we harness intrinsic motivation as the engine for academic excellence.

Through an interdisciplinary and inquiry-based program, students discover and master foundational skills in traditional academic disciplines while learning to grapple with the unknown, embrace multiple perspectives, and create novel solutions.

Lower School

Grades PreK–4

Our lower school is a haven for young gifted learners. Our intellectually engaging and creative program incorporates the powerful and joyful elements of early education: deep investigation, inquiry, play, kindness, friendship, community, and essential connections to the outdoors.

Middle School

Grades 5–8

The middle school years are a time of excitement, in which students find their voice and discover how they can make an impact on the world. Teachers use projects, trips, and activities and clubs to make the middle school experience rich with academic and elective experiences.

Upper School

Grades 9–12

At the upper school, the students’ experience is at the center of everything we do. We nourish their love of learning by providing each student unparalleled opportunity to chart their own pathway through high school. 

Nueva's hallmark programs feature:

  • Project-based learning
  • Social-emotional learning
  • Design thinking and engineeering
  • Global citizenship
  • Differentiated curricula

Nueva's culture honors and embraces:

  • Spirit of inquiry
  • Integrity
  • Diversity of perspectives
  • Community and connectedness
  • Creativity and innovation
  • Social justice, equity, and inclusion

Learn More About Our Campuses

Lower, Middle, & Upper School News

Catching Up with . . . Diana Friedman

We sat down with kindergarten teacher Diana Friedman for a discussion about what makes Nueva a special place to teach, Diana’s memories of her own kindergarten teacher, and what is happening in our kindergarten classrooms.

How to Care for an Adolescent in the Year 2021

In Amber Carpenter’s upper school creative writing class, students have been exploring flash storytelling. They wrote three vignettes or fragments that provided instructions on how to care for an adolescent in the year 2021.

Catching Up with . . . Molly Hasegawa

Molly Hasegawa is in her third year as a member of our middle school math team. We recently sat down with Molly to discuss a little bit about her love of math and the role community plays in her life and teaching practice, and to learn more about some work currently being done by our middle school math students.

Watermelons and Slinkies and Eggs, Oh My: Sixth Graders Explore Newton’s Laws by Dropping Items Over a Six-meter Balcony

Ask many Nueva students who have completed the sixth grade what a highlight of that year was for them, and you can expect to hear them talk about the Egg Drop in their physics class. Considered by some as a Nueva middle school science “rite of passage,” the Egg Drop is a culmination of weeks of learning, brainstorming, prototyping, iterating, and testing in which students apply Newton’s Laws of Motion.

Learning to Care for Living Creatures

We have all learned over the past year that while virtual learning can be done well, it can never replace the experience of being on campus. Lower school students have been back on campus since late October, and this spring they have been learning to care for silkworms and chickens, an experience that could not be replicated during virtual learning.