High School Curriculum

Emerson Waldorf High School provides a curriculum that intentionally addresses the developmental stages of adolescents in each grade, while balancing academic rigor with artistic discernment, ecological thinking, and practical skills. Specifically, both the instructional approach and the curriculum assist students in developing their ability to engage with complexity and interconnectedness in the world around them and to create meaning and change in their environment.  

Our academic calendar includes rotating main lesson blocks as well as year-long or semester-long track classes. Main lesson blocks, such as Thermal Physics or Transcendentalism, allow students to work immersively in a single subject area daily over the course of a month, through discussion, careful observation, hands-on investigation, and the use of primary text and classical or modern source readings.  Academic track classes, such as Math, English, History, or Spanish allow students to build skills and comprehension through consistent engagement with course content throughout a semester or academic year. In addition to these academic classes, all students participate in fine arts, choral or instrumental music, visual and practical arts, and movement.

In the Waldorf high school curriculum, subjects that are traditionally taught in a single year, such as Biology in 9th grade or Chemistry in 10th grade, are distributed throughout all four grades. This allows students to consistently encounter those subjects as they move through the high school curriculum and to expand upon the previous years’ material with newly developed thinking capacities. In addition to this vertical progression, the curriculum also features horizontal integration within a particular grade, so that students can make connections across subjects through their own experiences in each class. 

  • Main Lesson Blocks

    Comedy and Tragedy

    Study of Art

    Colonial History

    Probability

    Descriptive Geometry

    Human Biology I

    Thermal Physics

    Organic Chemistry

    Academic Track Courses

    English I

    Math I

    US History I

    Spanish I

    Geology

    Climatology

  • Main Lesson Blocks

    The Odyssey

    Poetry

    Sophomore Class Play

    Ancient China

    Trigonometry and Surveying

    Conics

    Human Biology II & Embryology

    Mechanics

    Academic Track Courses

    English II

    Math II

    Spanish II

    US Government

    Inorganic Chemistry

  • Main Lesson Blocks

    Dante

    World History

    History through Music

    Projective Geometry

    Botany

    Cell Biology

    Electricity and Magnetism

    Atomic Chemistry

    Academic Track Courses

    English III

    Math III

    Spanish III

    US History II

    Astronomy

    Junior Internships

  • Main Lesson Blocks

    Transcendentalism

    Senior Class Play

    History through Architecture

    Zoology

    Visual Physics

    Ecology

    Spirituality and the Senses

    Academic Track Courses

    English IV

    Calculus

    World History

    Biochemistry

    Environmental Justice

  • Photography

    Collage

    Robotics

    World cultures

    Poetry

    Metalsmithing

    and more

  • The study of a language is not just the study of words to communicate; it is the study of culture—including people, places, foods, literature and poetry, traditions, art, music, and songs. Foreign language learning not only exposes students to other peoples’ ways of thinking and feeling, but it also cultivates an inner sense of tolerance and openness to other cultures helping them to become globally attuned.

  • Human development shows that musical engagement is an important complement to academic work, leading students into the flow state immersed in the beauty and creativity of tone. Practice of musical instruments is therapeutic and activates dexterity in the fingers, subtlety and power in breathing. Music both calms the nervous system and invigorates the nervous system, allowing for more informational learning to be ‘digested’ more deeply. As most students are commonly listening to recorded music at home, it is vital that they engage music as a creative experience at school, and so we require all students to participate at varying levels of skill in our program.

  • Every high school student participates in a sequence of Visual Arts classes designed to develop skills and gain insight into their own creative capacities.  By refining their technical skills, intellectual understanding of material and forms, and becoming acquainted with history and practice, students develop a strong relationship to their own creative process and experience themselves as artistically capable in a variety of media. Drawing, painting, sculpture and a variety of crafts rooted in local tradition facilitate student dialogue with materials that also align with particular developmental stages.

  • Accompanied by two faculty sponsors, each class travels as a group on a week-long curriculum trip in the month of May. These trips correlate with both a main lesson block and the theme of the class year. Ninth graders participate in a week long service learning experience at communities such as Innisfree Village in Virginia or Camp Hill in Pennsylvania, the tenth grade class heads to the coast to go sailing in conjunction with their Odyssey block and 11th graders work with bees at Spikenard Farms to complement their botany block.  12th grade students bookend their year with two week long trips; the fall trip has a zoology focus and the spring trip is typically service oriented.

  • Each school year begins with a three-day retreat, during which the students participate in a visioning process for the school year.

  • High school clubs are student-led and organized. Clubs that have been created include the Student Service Club, Robotics Club, Sustainability Club, Music Club, Punk and Junk, Poetry Club, and Cheese Church.

A classroom filled with students sitting at desks, smiling, taking notes, and engaging in a lesson. The room has large windows and bookshelves in the background.
A man with a beard and gray hair, wearing a blue shirt, is speaking and gesturing with his right hand in a classroom. There are students in the background holding papers or booklets, and the classroom has large windows and wooden shelves.
A young woman with braids, wearing a white sweatshirt and gray leggings, standing in a forest next to a sign for the Cat Gap Loop trail at Pisgah National Forest. The sign indicates the trail to the right and shows a map of the area.
A group of young people playing musical instruments outdoors, including a violin, banjo, and double bass, with a man conducting.
A woman and a young man posing in front of a colorful abstract painting at an art gallery.
Four young women are kneeling on the ground outdoors, engaged in an activity involving sticks and wood pieces, surrounded by fallen leaves. The setting appears to be a wooded area near a residential building with outdoor furniture.
Group of young people sitting and kneeling inside a small cave or rock shelter with a mossy rocky ceiling.

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