With New York City as our classroom and laboratory, CITYterm brings together six residential faculty and 30 intellectually adventuresome juniors and seniors in high school for a semester of intensive, experience-based learning. CITYterm challenges its students to think, question, speak up and grow.  Together in a closely knit community of students and teachers CITYterm explores, wonders, watches, and learns on the streets of New York City. Students spend every other day linking their classroom work to the endless array of opportunities available in the greatest city in the world.

Our mission is to encourage students to engage fully in learning and thinking for themselves, about themselves and about who and what is beyond themselves. Our goal is for students to leave CITYterm with the intellectual tools they need to understand and express the complexity of New York City and the emotional and social tools to participate constructively in their community.

At CITYterm we believe that the most profound learning takes place when it is rooted in experience. Our students recognize that learning can happen on any city block, and that the best instruction does not culminate in an exam but with a seminar featuring a novelist or a poet, a meeting with an architectural historian, a dinner with a homeless person, an afternoon giving a neighborhood walking tour, or a night at the theater. The academic projects built around these experiences push students to develop a wide range of skills from reading and writing to active inquiry, critical thinking and team leadership. The collaborative environment encourages students to embrace dialogue, listen, question, and try out their ideas.