The Philadelphia School
The Philadelphia School (TPS) is a nonsectarian, progressive independent school in Center City Philadelphia whose mission is to “educate children for a future that is impossible to know but not impossible to shape.”
At TPS, our progressive educational approach to learning and teaching has deep thinking, innovation, and agency as its guiding values. We encourage children to explore and push the boundaries of possibility in order to fulfill their intellectual, social, and civic potential. We approach learning through inquiry, projects, and community. Core values and new research inform our program and pedagogical practices, and our interdisciplinary, theme-based approach prepares students to build a stronger and more inclusive school, community, and society.
As an urban, preschool–8th grade school, we address specifically how young students develop intellectually, creatively, emotionally, socially, and physically. Through our commitment to diversity, we seek to nurture each student’s moral compass, sense of personal integrity, and respect for individuality. Learning in the city, country, and classroom affirms our founders’ goal of educating children to become responsible and active stewards of the urban and natural environments.
Programmatic Highlights:
The Philadelphia School uses a thematic approach to teaching and learning, enabling students to experience the interrelatedness of disciplines and to see how these disciplines apply to their world, thus creating lifelong learners.
Environmental education has been integral to The Philadelphia School since its founding in 1972. Our students begin their scientific education by focusing on what is familiar – animals, plants, soil, and weather – in order to develop the confidence to grapple with increasingly more abstract and complex concepts.
We work to instill in our students a sense of responsibility for themselves, as well as for the school community, the city in which they live, and the natural world.
Our Preschool – Grade 8 setting fosters leadership opportunities for adolescents, as well as an intimate environment for our youngest learners.
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