NPES teachers integrate our local community and intentional places beyond Chicago into our curriculum. Our place-based approach includes civic engagement with local service-learning partners; frequent field studies across the city; local business partnerships; Chicago neighborhood explorations; design-thinking projects aimed at addressing community challenges; and purposeful educational travel, including day and overnight trips like our civil rights tour of Georgia and Alabama and trips to Washington, D.C., Springfield, Illinois, outdoor education in Wisconsin, and an optional excursion to a Spanish-speaking nation in the Americas, recently to the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica.

Research shows that travel and other place-based experiences “foster a sense of belonging, increase student learning, improve student academic persistence, and narrow equity gaps (Johnson et al. 2020).” Furthermore, according to the University of Nebraska, students report positive feelings regarding outdoor field experiences while also perceiving the experience as increasing their understanding of the course content (Boyle et al. 2007). Instructors report higher student engagement with place-based learning than with traditional classroom lectures (Goodlad and Leonard 2018). All place-based learning programs at NPES except the optional international trip are included in our tuition because it is an integral, unique, and powerful aspect of our curriculum. To learn more, visit our Placed-Based Learning page HERE.

NPES students are known in their families, local communities, high schools, and colleges for their exceptional communication skills. All preschool through fifth grade students engage joyfully in a year-long drama class that includes frequent improv games, with rich after-school opportunities for students to perform in middle school. Design thinking courses and club programming in the Innovation Lab, service learning, student council, model united nations, classroom greeters, student tour guides, the important role our students play in hiring new faculty, safety patrol, summer camp junior counselors, Shark Week, and a collaborative classroom pedagogy in which students communicate daily with peers as they construct learning together (and often share their learning with others beyond their classroom via NPES’ i-Visits, presentations, original videos, podcasts, and more) reflect our school’s unique investment in building written, spoken, non-verbal, and other creative communication skills. NPES students think and feel deeply, and often have something to say. And we love that.

Play in early childhood is the authentic and beautiful means through which children develop social-emotional and academic skills, so play with purpose is the foundation of our engaging and joyful Early Childhood program. Our expert early childhood teachers provide gross motor play on the playlot and in the small gym, developing the large muscle groups including a child's core, back, legs, and arms. Outdoor time on the playlot results in greater concentration, more independent self-regulation, resilience, and stamina, as well increased curiosity, imagination, frontal-lobe executive functioning, active participation in learning, and the development of key social-emotional skills. Inside NPES’ purpose-built early childhood suite, students meet daily for a nurturing and communal morning meeting where they practice essential school readiness skills like sitting, active listening, speaking with relevance, practicing body awareness in a smaller shared space, and being supportive members of a group. 

We curate a variety of free-choice activities at classroom centers where curiosity generates exploration, experimentation, creative tinkering and making, transitioning, patience, sharing, conflict resolution, and time-management. Embedded throughout the day are appealing opportunities to grow literacy, math, and science skills, with the healthy naming and processing of feelings integrated into all we do. Purposeful play is how enduring, useful, and fun learning takes place. With NPES’ Reggio-inspired approach to building skills-rich “studies” (units) rooted in how the children have been playing (where their interests lie), all learning becomes more tangible, relevant, and meaningful to early childhood students. And they understand from the beginning that learning is supposed to be fun. To learn more, visit our Early Childhood page HERE.

The advantages students enjoy in small independent schools like NPES are well-documented in research. Among the compelling findings is the higher levels of academic achievement, engagement, belonging, and happiness students experience. Graduates of small schools develop the academic readiness, confidence, initiative, and social skills not only to thrive in even the largest secondary and postsecondary institutions, but to lead those communities (this is what NPES alumni are known for in some of the best public and private high schools across the city). Our challenging and engaging inquiry-based approach, our decidedly human scale, and the personal attention students receive from our community of educators, peers, and families who truly know and appreciate them, sets our small school with a big impact apart.

We strive daily to live the research that shows “Belonging is experienced when students are present, invited, welcomed, known, accepted, involved, supported, heard, befriended, and needed (Biggs & Carter, 2017, and Brock et al, 2020). NPES takes several specific and intentional steps to nurture and sustain a genuine culture of inclusion, belonging, and well-being that ensure students experience these essential aspects of belonging, many of which are outlined on our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging page HERE. 

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