Key Features


[click the image above to see a slide show of key feaures]

  • Excellence in Teaching
  • Rigorous Academics/College Prep
  • Inquiry-based learning around real world challenges
  • Enhanced Literacy and Math instruction
  • After School programming supporting new media literacy and citizenship
  • Integrated Wellness curriculum
  • Culture of Kindness and Respect
  • 1-1 Laptop program
  • Daily Home Base advisory periods
  • Professional Trajectories
  • Internships
  • Early College Program
  • Students can earn college credits while in school
  • College Visits

Core components of the school’s design include:
Organization of Knowledge
At the center of Quest to Learn is an innovative approach to pedagogy that connects design and systems thinking within a content rich curriculum aligned to state standards. This pedagogy includes a reworking of traditional disciplines to reflect on the organization of knowledge in the 21st century—integrated, networked, mathematically rich, and systems-oriented. Quest to Learn supports students in developing a way of thinking about global dynamics, for example: how world economic, political, technological, environmental and social systems work and are interdependent across nations and regions. High levels of student engagement and ownership in the learning process are valued, as students participate in a rigorous process of research, theory-building, hypothesis testing, evaluation, and critique, followed by a public defense of results.

Dynamic Learning
Quest to Learn students engage in “ways of knowing and doing,” using models and simulations to study the science of weather, learning mathematical reasoning by designing codes using an Enigma machine, and creating a role-playing game about the American Revolution where players rewrite the Constitution to reflect an alternate set of values. This approach offers an engaging and motivating platform on which to build the technological, artistic, cognitive, social, and linguistic skills students need to graduate from high school prepared for college. Students not only develop these capacities within the curricular experiences of the school but also are equally supported through internships, community service, service learning opportunities, and capstone research projects.

One Node within a Learning Network
Quest to Learn learning takes into account the experiences, communities, and contexts, in which students are engaged, both in and outside of “school.” Rather than defining school as a separate place in time and space from the concerns and communities of children’s lives, Quest to Learn reaches out into the home, into local and global communities to which students belong. This does not mean that students are expected to be “at school” 24/7; it does mean that all experiences are leveraged as potential contexts for learning, building on nascent interest-driven participation motivating student engagement.

Student Identity Formation
Quest to Learn pedagogy focuses on learning to “be” rather than learning “about.” Students take on identities of mathematicians, scientists, writers, historians, and designers as they work through a 21st century curriculum that challenges them to demonstrably connect ideas, information, and experiences. Immersion within richly defined problem spaces requires students to gain the ability to find and use resources on demand, with intelligence, judgment, and sophistication. Peer education is an important part of the curriculum: students exchanging interests and expertise with one another.

Embedded Assessment
Assessment at Quest to Learn is integrally connected to learning. This means understanding the needs of all students, defining explicit tools for assessment, creating opportunities for feedback and revision, and exposing students to data that can inform their own decision-making. Students and teachers use data as powerful tools to support each student’s ongoing potential for future learning. Longitudinal data on student development will be captured within multiple, overlapping systems, including an online social network space and annual portfolios.

Q2L Glossary
Being Me: a school-based social network site where students can communicate, post work, collaborate, and reflect.
Being, Space and Place: a class connecting social studies with reading and writing fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and comics.
Boss Level: two-week “intensive” where students apply knowledge and skills to date to propose solutions to complex problems.
Codeworlds: a class where math meets ELA and language rules the day.
Home Base: 10 kids + one very interested adult = student advisories that meet twice a day.
Missions: 10-week units that give students a complex problem they must solve.
Mission Lab: Q2L’s game design and curriculum development studio.
Mobo Studio: Afterschool program
Q2L: Quest to Learn
Quests: challenge-based lessons that make up Missions.
SEL: socio-emotional learning; an approach to teaching the whole child.
SMALLab: mixed reality environment focused on embodied learning.
Smartool: a “tool to think with” created by students as part of their class work.
Sports for the Mind: a class focused on digital media, game design, and mental acrobatics.
State Standards: Standards are pieces of information or skills that the state of New York has determined every student should know.
The Annex: an extended Mission prep period to hone literacy and math skills.
The Institute of Play: the founding partner.
The Way Things Work: a cool science and math class where students learn how to take all kinds of systems apart and put them back together again.
Wellness: a class designed to get students moving and thinking about ways to be healthy, from nutrition, to sports, to mental and emotional health.