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

Dispatch from the Field: Reflections from 8th Grade Homestays
Dispatch from the Field: Reflections from 8th Grade Homestays

This year marked the return of a milestone Nueva Middle School experience: the eighth-grade trips around the world included language-based homestays.

Our Japanese, Spanish, and Mandarin students each spent a week living with a host student and their family, practicing their conversation skills and taking in daily life as a teenager in a different country and culture.

Read about their experiences and see photos from their daytime activities with their classmates.

Snapshots: Lower School Trips
Snapshots: Lower School Trips

Students in first through fourth grade had exciting overnight adventures with their classmates and teachers! From nature journaling to hiking, pitching a tent and cleaning up after a camping meal, Lower School students took their learning and community building outdoors.

Dispatch from the Field: Reflections from Middle School Trips
Dispatch from the Field: Reflections from Middle School Trips

It’s May, which means it’s trips season at Nueva! School trips at Nueva, from nearby California wilderness to countries around the world, offer some of the most memorable immersive and inspiring learning experiences for our students.

This week, the Middle School students have set off to Monterey (5th grade), Washington, D.C. (6th grade), Los Angeles (7th grade) domestically, and Spain, Japan, and Singapore (8th grade) internationally. Read these travel dispatches from a few fifth, sixth, and seventh graders, and keep an eye out for next week’s dispatch, where eighth graders will share a little bit of their homestay experiences.

Fifth Graders Discover the Wonders of the Bay Area
Fifth Graders Discover the Wonders of the Bay Area

Now in its third year, the Bay Area Wonders project, created by science teacher Cristina Veresan and former writing teacher Cliff Burke, is a published student-created anthology of nature essays, accompanied by illustrations. The project exemplifies interdisciplinary learning: students explore their selected species in their science, writing, and art clases. 

Snapshots: Lower School
Snapshots: Lower School

On a rainy Tuesday afternoon, the Lower School halls were alive with the sounds of music and laughter. As part of Spirit Week, students dressed in their coziest pajamas and carried beloved stuffed animals. Throughout the Hillsborough campus, Lower School students could be found doing acrobatic movements, creating innovative LED art, getting lost in the world of books, and more. Join us on a walk through the Lower School!