The Upper School

In a community where students and faculty love to learn and teach, the Hackley Upper School works together from breakfast until dinner. Its members openly express admiration for each other’s achievements and lives its belief that effort and motivation equal achievement.

With 375 students, the Upper School is large enough to have a varied program but small enough to be personalized. Typically, no member of the senior class ever has the same schedule as another senior. And, because of an advisor system that utilizes mixed grade advisee groups and a faculty advisor that can remain the same for all four years, no student gets lost in the Upper School.

While only a small component of the school takes part in the five-day boarding program, the boarding element of the school permeates the entire community. Faculty schedule meetings with students over breakfast, and the halls are constantly filled with conversation and groups of students working together. Hackley becomes the center of Upper School students’ lives and the central meeting place for students who live in varied locations away the School. Photo, art, and music students frequently work on weekends while students and faculty utilize the Athletic Center.

Because many faculty members live on campus, both boarding and day students have the opportunity to engage with their teachers’ family lives. Young children with their parents and caretakers sit down for lunch daily with the Upper School students, and families eat dinner together in the evening. The stack of high chairs and booster seats in the Upper School dining room attest to the daily presence of family among the high school diners.

The Upper School is a community of learners united in demonstrating the character that is built on camaraderie, service, effort, optimism and good will.