Spring Intensives
Beyond the regular curriculum, our two-week-long Spring Intensives provide Upper School students a choice of interdisciplinary courses and travel programs to explore interests beyond the scope of traditional courses. They offer students the opportunity to study one subject in great depth, emphasizing thoughtful comprehension over content coverage.
2023 Spring Intensives included: [All] For the Birds: Connecting to Nature and One Another Through Birding; Neighborhoods in Transition: Gentrification in Brooklyn; Narrative Podcast Production; Cooking 101: Nourishing Community; Finding Joy through Music and Movement; Cannibalism 101; Reclaiming Wellness; Robotics; The NYC Immigrant; NYC Chinatowns: Past, Present, & Moving Forward; The Evolution of Hip Hop; Sacred Jewelry and Relics: Discover Them, Create Them; Investigating Museums and Alternative Exhibition Spaces; and Introduction to Basketry.
Additionally, our six global academic travel programs are linked to their own dedicated Spring Intensives — providing students with even more time for deep and rigorous preparation.
A passion for learning is at the heart of Berkeley Carroll, and the Spring Intensives program allows both students and faculty to indulge this love of learning. For faculty, it is an opportunity to teach differently, to learn from colleagues in other disciplines, and to take on topics that don’t always fit in the traditional classroom, while our students come to see that learning can happen in different ways than the usual school day provides. The program emphasizes sustained, in-depth, and authentic learning experiences, often using our city—and our world—as our classroom. In other words, the Spring Intensives program is the embodiment of the school’s mission: to engage students in civic life and prepare them for the greater endeavor, a life of critical, ethical, and global thinking.