Fourth Form - Program Description

The Quest – Coming of age

The goals of South Kent School's Fourth Form program are to build and reinforce strong academic skills and to develop and nurture students' self-confidence and self-esteem, while also stressing personal integrity and character. We strive to create motivated, inquisitive, and successful students who are equipped to be life-long learners and good citizens. In pursuit of these goals, we engage in a variety of experiences both on and off campus. On campus, these include: participating in team-building exercises, re-creating famous trials from the past, acting out portions of one of Shakespeare's plays, creating medieval-inspired armor, staging debates among Enlightenment philosophies, and negotiating a new peace treaty to end World War I. Off- campus, we explore the Clark Art Museum, the Williams College Rare Book Collection, and Mystic Seaport.

The teachers working to implement the Fourth Form Program are a six-person team representing the disciplines of history, English, science, learning skills, and foreign language. The team utilizes an inquiry, or problem based, approach to learning and encourages our students to become independent thinkers and able writers across the disciplines. The team meets regularly to discuss curriculum, teaching strategies, and each boy's personal and academic progress. Members of the team work with the boys in all aspects of their life at South Kent. Members of the team also advise, dorm parent, and coach fourth formers. The boys also interact with other faculty members of our community, particularly in language and math courses and in sports, but the boys work closest with those members of the form team.

In The Fourth Form you will:

Develop self awareness.
Meet challenging academics to begin the process of self-discovery.
Be encouraged academically, physically and emotionally to see potential as forces for positive change.