Academics

Signature Programs

Creating doers, thinkers and explorers begins in our classrooms with our dedicated faculty. The real-world experiences and unique spaces offered at Norfolk Collegiate shape excited learners and engaged community members. We believe those experiences, coupled with expert teaching, prepare our students for college, meaningful careers and lives of purpose.

So, you ask, “What makes Norfolk Collegiate different from other schools?”

Our experienced teachers challenge students to think beyond themselves and to examine the local community and global economy.

Our unique spaces provide our students with the places to let their creativity soar and talents thrive.

Our community partners allow us to provide real-world, tangible experiences in the community.

The signature programs below are some of the unique programs and spaces that extend our classroom lessons into the real world and provide students with an even better experience.

List of 7 items.

AP Capstone™ Program

Norfolk Collegiate was one of the first schools in Virginia to offer the AP Capstone™ program. For the last 4 years, we have been joined by over 200 schools nationwide offering this rigorous, research-based program that builds on the extensive catalog of discipline-specific Advanced Placement courses. AP Capstone™ is from the College Board and engages students in inquiry-based independent research, collaboration, and oral and written communication skills as they investigate contemporary issues and problems from multiple perspectives.

Based on two foundational courses—AP Seminar and AP Research—the AP Capstone™ program offers highly qualified students the opportunity to earn either the AP Seminar and Research Certificate™ or the AP Capstone Diploma™.

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Arts & Innovation

Arts & Innovation at Norfolk Collegiate is a blend of creative education, technology integration and a hands-on approach to teaching that many schools haven't seen before.

Here our faculty are focused on sparking student joy and bringing learning to life in new and meaningful ways. Whether it's being in the school musical for the first time or deciding to learn how to make pottery, taking a coding class or discovering a love of problem-solving through a Design Thinking class, the arts and innovation program at Collegiate challenges students to find real-world issues and develop their own projects to solve them. The classroom becomes a hub of activity—students work on everything from engineering simple catapults to designing 3D-printed robots. It’s not just about learning concepts; it’s about applying them in creative, tangible ways.

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Design Thinking & Computing

Norfolk Collegiate’s Design Thinking & Computing curriculum is a Kindergarten through Grade 12 journey that prepares our students to thrive in an increasingly complex, global information environment.

Design Thinking & Computing is designed to help students grow into creative, insightful communicators using a wide range of media in the exploration of 21st-century forms of expression. Distinguished by its emphasis on oral, written, visual and digital forms of communication, the program provides such experiential learning opportunities as the production of student publications and the creation of video and multimedia projects that are shared with real audiences.

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Learning to Elevate Action Program (LEAP)

The Learning to Elevate Action Program, also known as LEAP, provides robust and meaningful experiential learning opportunities for Norfolk Collegiate’s Grade 9-12 students and permeates upper school student life. Through LEAP, advisors work in partnership with Experience Institute and its award-winning Leap Map to guide students in self-reflective exercises and activities to ignite individual project focuses. Students in turn design a project each year to drive their learning based on personal interests, passions and skills discovered from the Leap Map.

The experience includes LEAP Term, a week dedicated solely to project development, immersive workshops from local experts and industry professionals, internships and off-campus service opportunities, and domestic and international travel opportunities. During LEAP Term, students are provided with programming from city and regional community partners to provide students with unmatched opportunities to experience Hampton Roads as the classroom beyond our campus.

By their senior year, students have a strong sense of self, confidence in the future academic and personal paths, and a curiosity and deep appreciation of learning for learning’s sake.

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Outdoor Learning Lab

Norfolk Collegiate's Outdoor Learning Lab is a living, breathing and ever-changing outdoor lab. Opened in the spring of 2016, the outdoor learning lab offers lower school teachers a place to extend classroom lessons, as well as provide a space for students to get their hands dirty in Collegiate’s own farm-to-table initiatives.

The outdoor lab has four raised vegetable beds, a greenhouse, a chicken coop with Silkie hens and an educational koi pond. The one-of-a kind outdoor space provides students the opportunity to learn by doing in a non-traditional environment. Students are naturally curious. At Norfolk Collegiate, we believe in the power of curiosity and fueling those passions. Our Oaks off all ages participate in meaningful experiences in the outdoor lab, including planting, maintaining and harvesting the bounty of the beds and eggs. The fruits of their labor are donated to the FoodBank of South Hampton Roads and the Eastern Shore, as well as donated to the students.

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Makerlabs

Norfolk Collegiate’s three MakerLabs invigorate students, while also propelling our innovative curriculum to higher heights. Each division hosts a MakerLab, and provide teachers a place to engage today’s dynamic learners, and also provide a space for Collegiate students and their families to bring their ideas to life.
Upper school students have a plethora of tools available to ignite their passions in the MakerLabs, including a laser cutter, Makey Makey® and coding to create physical models of bacterial plasmid transformations to building set models using Sphero robots for “Macbeth.”

These community hubs of innovation hosts age-appropriate items including pipe cleaners and paints to Osmos, a gaming accessory for the iPad that includes coding and tangram, and Ozobot, a small, smart toy robot that empowers students to code and connect the physical and digital worlds at the lower school. Middle school labs include Makey Makey®, an invention kit that allows them to combine art and engineering with the Internet and basic power tools (used under adult supervision) while the upper school’s lab boasts more elaborate technologies, such as a CNC Router, 3-D printers, laser cutters, hand-powered tools, computers and more.

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Summer Internship Program

Norfolk Collegiate's Summer Internship Program provides current juniors and seniors, as well as recent college graduates with hands-on, real-world experience at a unique point in their lives. Some will be entering their senior year of high school and others will be starting their college careers. With an internship under their belts, they will have an experience that sets them apart from many of their peers.

More importantly, they will be one step closer to understanding what kind of work environment they do or do not want to be in or what field they might want to pursue as they enter the workforce in college and beyond. This self-awareness so early on in their lives is invaluable and another way in which we provide our students a great experience.

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