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Bay Ridge Preparatory School is dedicated to enriching intellectual curiosity, creativity, and emotional intelligence through an inclusive, student-centered community that values the talents and interests of each person.
We provide students with tools of inquiry that will promote their success in life. In addition to learning important facts and concepts, students identify and solve problems, analyze and evaluate information, and synthesize and apply their conclusions to new situations. In this context, teachers become facilitators of learning. We seek to help students attain a deeper understanding of concepts and issues that are pervasive and enduring.
We recognize that motivation to learn increases when students are confident about their abilities, advocate for their educational pursuits, and identify connections between what they are learning and their own lives. Teachers strengthen the self-efficacy of their students by organizing instruction around the variety of ways students learn, and by engaging students in integrative learning experiences that capitalize on their skills and abilities.
We value the importance of emotional intelligence in helping students create lives that are professionally satisfying and personally fulfilling. Toward that end, we create a school community that emphasizes empathy in social interactions and academic content. School-wide practices and traditions also serve to develop self-awareness and encourage social responsibility.
We believe that individuals have a greater impact on the world when they are exposed to issues that challenge their beliefs, values, and actions, and to experiences that celebrate differences among themselves and others. We believe that diversity leads to innovation. Through active involvement in building community consciousness within the immediate school environment, students’ horizons are broadened to include issues of social justice. Students develop an understanding of the responsibilities of being citizens of local, national, and global communities.
Students are taught to value each individual and celebrate and explore the different abilities and perspectives of our diverse community. We explicitly teach skills that build emotional and social intelligence which help students create healthy and satisfying relationships in and outside of school.
Since 2011 Bay Ridge Prep has partnered with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence to implement their integrated social/emotional intelligence approach called RULER. Studies show that children with greater emotional awareness have more satisfying relationships, better focus, healthier habits, increased creativity, and perform better on academic tasks. By using tools such as a classroom charter, mood meter, meta-moment, and conflict blueprint teachers help children to recognize their emotions and the emotions of others, understand the causes and consequences of emotions, label and express these emotions effectively, and regulate them to create more compassionate and confident citizens.
Passionate about their areas of expertise and devoted to each individual student, our faculty and staff come from diverse and impressive backgrounds. Approximately 95% of our teachers hold advanced degrees and our entire staff is committed to creating a positive and meaningful experience for each student.
Whether it’s a small liberal arts college, the Ivy Leagues, studying on a different continent or at a big state university, our alumni are everywhere. College acceptances over the last five years include Boston College, Brandeis University, Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Fordham University, Goucher College, Grinnell College, Haverford College, New York University, Savannah College of Art and Design, University of Delaware, University of Edinburgh, Wake Forest University, Syracuse University, Williams College, Villanova University and so many more.
We emphasize innovation, creativity and practical application over acquiring rote knowledge that can be easily accessed on any digital device. Upper School students have 25 advanced and elective math, science and social science courses available to them. As soon as Middle School, students can participate in Constellation Learning, a group of globally connected independent schools that offer blended and online courses.
Eight full time faculty members are devoted to an enriching K-12 arts program offering a wide variety of classes and extra-curricular activities in both visual and performing arts. Lower School students will experience 12 year-long art and music courses over six years. Middle and Upper School students have an impressive array of arts electives available each year including chamber music, dance, ceramics, wood working, graphic design, theater, music composition, jazz ensemble, band, chorus, studio art, and stage/set design.
Home to over a dozen championships in the last decade, the Bay Ridge Prep Tigers are a source of great pride for our entire school community. More importantly, student-athletes at Bay Ridge Prep are real leaders, serving as role models in the classroom and in the community. Win or lose, the Tigers are known for their sportsmanship, determination and community-minded spirit. Athletic teams include baseball, softball, basketball, volleyball, tennis, cross country, track & field, and soccer.
Children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) find it particularly difficult to concentrate on tasks, to pay attention, follow directions, modulate their energy, and control impulsive behavior. Some children only exhibit inattentive behaviors that make success at school difficult, while others also struggle with hyperactivity and impulse control. ADHD presents differently as children mature.
At Bay Ridge Prep we coach children every step of the way to utilize strategies to help them regulate attention and meet their goals.
Bay Ridge Prep helps children with attention difficulties by:
Dyslexia is a language-based learning-disability officially referred to as a “specific learning disorder in reading”. Children diagnosed with dyslexia have difficulty learning to read and can also struggle to organize written and spoken language, reading quickly enough to comprehend longer sentences and sections of text, spelling, and even memorizing number facts.
In classrooms where teachers lack training in effective reading instruction and knowledge about how students with dyslexia learn best, children can become discouraged, anxious, and unmotivated. Bay Ridge Prep’s teachers are highly trained in research-based approaches to help students overcome dyslexia and become more confident, engaged, and independent readers.
Children with reading challenges at Bay Ridge Prep receive:
We explicitly teach skills that build emotional and social intelligence which help students create healthy and constructive relationships in and outside of school.
We provide students the freedom and responsibility to pursue their interests through open ended projects, course selections and student-initiated clubs.
We emphasize innovation, creativity and practical application over acquiring rote knowledge that can be easily accessed on any digital device.
We build social responsibility through school-wide, student selected community service initiatives and projects.
We offer a full array of arts programs and dynamic electives including ceramics, graphic design, theater arts, music composition, band, chorus and studio art.
We value all athletes and celebrate team spirit and positive role-modeling in our championship athletic program.
We value all athletes and celebrate team spirit and positive role-modeling in our championship athletic program.
Students come to Bay Ridge Prep with a complex array of strengths and weaknesses, multiple intelligences, and a vast set of interests and passions. When designing schedules, we look at each student as an unique and evolving individual. There is no static track for children in our support programs.
Our dynamic scheduling includes:
It is very common for children diagnosed with ADHD to have executive functioning issues, but children without ADHD can struggle with weak executive functioning also. The simplest way to explain executive functioning difficulties is to look at how they impact a child’s day. For the most part, a child who has weak executive functions has difficulty with multitasking, taking notes while listening or reading, initiating activities, and /or moving from one step to another. Some children can also have trouble thinking flexibly. These children often overgeneralize new skills, have trouble thinking differently about new concepts, taking the perspective of others, correcting errors, and making course corrections when new information is introduced academically or socially.
Organizing time and materials can also be a challenge for children with weak executive functions. Forgetting books, losing assignments, and procrastinating when assignments require many steps or effort can also be commonplace.
Starting in the earliest grades we help students develop strategies and systems to manage time, attention, and materials that they can take with them into adulthood including:
The success of Bay Ridge Prep students starts with our passionate leadership and faculty. They are experts in their respective fields and animated by the school’s fresh approach to education. Their extensive training to support children with different learning needs both inside and outside of the classroom creates a culture where everyone belongs and everyone learns.
While it isn’t unusual to occasionally feel stress and worry at some point during their time in school, for some students typical school activities like making and keeping friends, public-speaking, managing assignments and test taking can become a source of great discomfort and anxiety.
To support students who experience higher levels of anxiety Bay Ridge Prep:
Writing is one of the most complex tasks students undertake on a daily basis in school. They need to juggle ideas, the content, genre, the perspective of the reader, the rules of grammar and spelling, and motor skills (forming letters or keyboarding). Students that have dyslexia, executive function and/or attention difficulties can find the writing process all the more burdensome.
To help students gain confidence, master skills, and maintain motivation when faced with a writing task Bay Ridge Prep provides intensive writing supports including:
Dyscalculia is a learning disability officially referred to as a “specific learning disability with impairment in mathematics”. Students diagnosed with dyscalculia have difficulty learning, understanding, and performing math tasks. Dyscalculia does not affect a child’s performance in other subjects like English or History. Some children who struggle with reading, executive functions, attention, and anxiety also have difficulty learning mathematics.
To increase student confidence and mastery in mathematics our school provides: