Dear Upper School Parents,
Norfolk Collegiate School is a strong, healthy school community that values and celebrates the endeavors of each individual member. It is a school that feels like home to students and graduates alike, rooted with deep traditions, lasting friendships, and opportunities for leadership in a wide variety of classes, clubs, and activities. The artists, musicians, scholars, athletes and writers that make up our student body are young men and women of character.
Academically, our ninth graders continue to outperform the national average for 10th graders on the PSAT. The same is true of our sophomore class that bested the national average for 11th graders. The Battle of the Brains team traveled to CBS studios in Richmond on four separate occasions to challenge and defeat academic teams from other schools around the state. Norfolk Collegiate student diplomats debated the problems of the world, earning medals for their solutions in Model United Nations conferences at The College of William and Mary and Old Dominion University. The military awareness club put together another incredible Veterans’ Day program complete with a slide show featuring NCS community members who have served or are currently serving in the armed forces. Student government leaders organized a Day of Service where all upper school students left campus to participate in community service projects around the Hampton Roads Area. Our goal is to mentor each individual student so that they will leave us having found and pursued a passion for something whether academic, personal, or in service to the community.
At NCS we encourage our teachers to reach beyond traditional teaching practices to include learning experiences that supplement what they do in the classroom. Marine Biology students continued to work with the Chesapeake Bay Project in growing and planting oysters in the Elizabeth River. All tenth graders saw a wonderful Virginia Stage Company performance of “Julius Caesar,” and Chemistry students took part in the annual “physics fest” at Jefferson Labs. Art students learned from master practitioners at the Chrysler Museum, D ‘Art Center, and at the National Galleries in Washington, DC. Groups of Norfolk Collegiate students traveled to the Butterfly Sanctuary in Mexico to observe the migratory patterns of the monarch butterfly, while others lived aboard a catamaran for part of a week in the Galapagos Islands studying evolution and biodiversity. Still others spent time in Belize National Park participating in wildlife conservation projects. Norfolk Collegiate students took every opportunity to apply what they learn in class to real-world applications.
We hope to spend this year building on and celebrating our students’ many successes.
Best regards,
Jason Mundy
Associate Headmaster and Head of the Upper School