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College Counseling

Harley’s Approach to College Counseling is highly individualized and student-centered. Students have direct access to college counselors throughout their Upper School experience, but really, each student is part of a team including faculty, administration, and staff. It’s our job to support each student and we want nothing more than to send students on to the next step of their journey at a right fit school for them. The student centered and driven process is wrapped in care, expertise, and professionalism.

We host college reps during times students are available (no need to miss a class) so they can make connections and learn more about potential schools. We also arrange campus visits for classes as field trips, host an alumni college day (where recent Upper School graduates return to share advice and answer questions), and help connect students with our international alumni network. In fact, representatives from schools all over the world actively seek opportunities to come to Harley and meet with our students!

Our college counselors are accredited and are part of national/global conversations on admission trends. They also attend and present at conferences across the country.

Beginning with our Grade 11 parent night, we offer informational sessions for parents, including one devoted just to financial aid. Our partnership with families is critical, as the college admissions world changes very quickly and having an expert to guide students and families through the process is essential.

View the downloadable College Counseling Guide

Clubs

“Club Rush” is an afternoon every fall in the Upper School when students have the chance to sign up for clubs for the year, and each year it is very different because new clubs are created based on student initiative and enthusiasm.

A few of this year’s choices: Sports Media, Social Action Club, Journalism Club, Feminism Club, Student of Color & Allies (SOCA), Gay-Straight Alliance, Tri M (music honor society), E-Sports Club, Euchre, Key Club (service), Animation Club, Dungeons & Dragons, Sustainability Club, Jewish Cultural Club, Astronomy Club, Biomimicry, and Beyond Soup (social justice/service).

Athletics

​Each and every year, students at The Harley School participate in HAC Athletics, and their success continues to be impressive, both as students and athletes. Our athletic program is an integral part of Harley, teaching student-athletes invaluable lessons about teamwork, time management, persistence, and competition.  Our program allows them to develop physically, mentally, socially, and emotionally as they represent their school on and off the field. They grow, mature, and work hard to be the best teammate they can, while creating lifelong memories with teammates who often remain friends for life. 

Helping our athletes to reach their potential are some of HAC’s best assets: our coaches. More often than not, they are drawn from the ranks of our faculty and  have a deep understanding of the personalities and abilities of the student-athletes on their teams.  

We strive to find the right balance of academics, exercise, and personal growth for everyone.  By offering a variety of sports at many different levels, all student-athletes find a sport they can be successful in. It is with great pride and pleasure that my team and I work to enrich the athletic lives of all our HAC student-athletes. Go Wolves! 

To learn more check out our athletics page.

Student Leadership

Our Upper School is filled with formal and informal opportunities for students to take on leadership roles. Whether following passions or learning new skills, student-driven opportunities take many shapes.

– Independent study: one trimester, full year, and multi-year projects have included automating our solar chimneys, coding handmade musical instruments, or developing a class on financial literacy for underserved high school students.

– Serving on student council

– STEM: Climate curriculum program, biomimicry program, NASA Hunch program

Clubs

“Club Rush” is an afternoon every fall in the Upper School when students have the chance to sign up for clubs for the year, and each year it is very different because new clubs are created based on student initiative and enthusiasm.

A few of this year’s choices: Sports Media, Social Action Club, Journalism Club, Feminism Club, Student of Color & Allies (SOCA), Gay-Straight Alliance, Tri M (music honor society), E-Sports Club, Euchre, Key Club (service), Animation Club, Dungeons & Dragons, Sustainability Club, Jewish Cultural Club, Astronomy Club, Biomimicry, and Beyond Soup (social justice/service).

Hospice

Unlike this class, death is not an elective. Although it is one of two universal human experiences, our culture often ignores, denies, or misconstrues the true nature of death and dying. What happens when we bear witness to this natural process in the cycle of life and develop our ability to be fully present with others when they need us more than ever? It has the potential to change us deeply and fundamentally while shining a brilliant light on the path of our own lives.

With the support of their classmates, teacher, and comfort care home communities, senior students are offered the chance to care for others who truly need their purposeful, non-judgmental attention. In the home-like setting of a comfort care home, opportunities for learning extend beyond a traditional classroom rubric and conventional methods of evaluation. In this course, students will certainly find tangible “learning outcomes” by studying the medical/physical processes associated with dying and the basic nursing assistant skills of comfort care. The ultimate goal, however, will always be rooted in true relationships and connection, which occurs only through empathy and compassion.

Learn more about the Hospice Program at Harley HERE.

Capstone/Independent Studies

This program utilizes environmentally-focused approaches to education and hands-on learning in order to foster the next generation of leaders through a lens of sustainability and problem-solving.

Food & Farm: These year-long and trimester-long classes are held outside as much as possible, allowing students to become leaders in our various growing spaces. They cover environmental justice issues as well as hands-on work such as planning and overseeing planting, harvesting, and preparation of the gardens.

Past year-long focus projects have included: Creating a native plant shade garden in the Wild Wood area, redesigning our hydroponic system, overhauling Harley’s high tunnel, and improving the irrigation system for the MicroFarm.

Culinary Arts: These classes have a two-fold purpose: to give students practical skills in cooking and the science behind different techniques in the kitchen, learning about food justice, food sourcing, labor topics, and sustainability.

Past topics have included: Examining a plant-based diet, looking at the carbon footprint of different meals and food preparation methods, proposing a low carbon footprint menu to the dining hall, links between food labeling and environmental issues of food production.

Beekeeping: This one trimester class provides hands-on training in beekeeping, how to be a beekeeper, and safety and other techniques for working with bees. Once trained students help with all aspects of Harley beekeeping such as hive inspections, honey collection and extraction, and teaching students in Lower School about our hives.

Students pick a research topic addressing honeybee health and the larger environmental picture.

Social Justice

At Harley, our students learn how to evaluate social systems in order to identify complex problems in society through a lens of social justice. They take a hands-on approach to working for a fair, equitable society by researching, exploring and evaluating different perspectives, and offering solutions—both theoretical and practical.

Our faculty integrate social justice into our broader curriculum to assist students in gaining a foundational knowledge about what makes a democracy function. By gaining skills in ideating supportive pathways they become more exposed and experienced to how communities can undergo healing and restorative actions.

 

Capstone/Independent Studies

Students may create independent studies with supervising teachers throughout their Upper School experience or, during Grade 12, they can design Capstone projects—intensive collaborations with Harley faculty and off-campus mentors—involving rigorous academic study and culminating in public presentations. They are empowered to create their own curriculum, set goals, and work on time management skills in order to accomplish their objectives.

Independent Studies run the gamut from The Psychology of Sports to Furniture Design to The Neuroimaging of Alzheimer’s Disease. Capstones, meanwhile, are as diverse as the students who pursue them: Fictional Rochester, Autobiographical Art, Biomimicry Education, Organic Fuel, and Rochester Refugees. 

Indicative of Upper School curiosity and creativity, pursuits such as these distinguish our graduates in college. Through deep dives of this sort, Harley students master more than speaking, writing, and computing: they learn to communicate, advocate, collaborate, organize, listen, and empathize. 

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FALL 2022

FEATURES

Climate Crisis Curriculum: Holistic Student Education

The Harley School has been awarded a $96,225 grant from the Edward E. Ford Foundation to advance our climate change curriculum, enhance our sustainability plan, and help us disseminate educational resources to schools across the country. Because this is a matching grant, Harley has successfully raised the matching funds from our community to secure the grant. Work has begun on a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary curriculum for students in Grades 9 to 12 within our school.

Seth O’Bryan, grant coordinator, and Dr. Betsy Vinton, curriculum manager and developer, provide a look into the work accomplished so far and the goals ahead.

The Edward E. Ford Foundation seeks to improve secondary education by supporting U.S. independent schools and encouraging promising practices.

 

by Seth O’Bryan, Grant Coordinator;

Dr. Betsy Vinton, Curriculum Developer

July 13, 2022

The climate crisis is present in our lives today and will continue to become more urgent and more complex. Research has shown when students have a meaningful solutions-focused educational experience around climate change, not only do they better understand the scope of the problem, but they tend to be more optimistic about their role in addressing it, and make climate-friendly choices throughout their lives. 

These outcomes provided the core motivation behind the grant application and the inspiration for faculty to develop a new climate change curriculum. This year, Dr. Vinton (DV) has met individually with each Upper School faculty member to discuss their interests and concerns around climate change and ways they can seamlessly integrate it into their existing curricula. Examples of this intersection between climate and coursework include data analysis and statistics, justice and equity, language and indigenous cultural practices, and the scientific underpinnings of climate change. Based on these conversations, DV and Seth are offering professional development opportunities as part of the Climate Change Summer Institute at Harley that will be held virtually and in person during late June. Speakers will include curriculum specialist Michael Occhino, and former Harley teacher, Dr. Karen Berger, both from the University of Rochester. Additionally, the Harley team is working to develop a “Freshman Experience” curriculum that consists of the basic tenets of climate change, including causes, mitigation, and adaptation strategies. They will discuss climate anxiety as well and what Grade 9 students can expect over the course of their time in our Upper School.

The goal of this curriculum is that every student graduates from Harley with a solid understanding of the interdisciplinary and systems- thinking approach to climate change education with a sense of at least one way they could make a difference. At the same time, we believe students need to see Harley as a role model for addressing sustainability issues as part of its institutional priorities, and to visibly demonstrate this is much more than just a classroom topic. In other words, it is not simply enough for Harley to talk the climate-change talk, we must also be willing to walk the walk. The sustainability committee has been working on a school-wide sustainability plan with three major themes: reducing our carbon footprint, improving our ecological output, and strengthening our sustainable food practices. An ambitious and timely project, it includes a diverse team of stakeholders and educators. 

The grant work will result in a powerful curriculum that can be shared with other schools and communities locally and beyond to expand climate change education across the country.

The goal of this curriculum is that every student graduates from Harley with a solid understanding of the interdisciplinary and systems- thinking approach to climate change education with a sense of at least one way they could make a difference.

At the same time, we believe students need to see Harley as a role model for addressing sustainability issues as part of its institutional priorities, and to visibly demonstrate this is much more than just a classroom topic. In other words, it is not simply enough for Harley to talk the climate-change talk, we must also be willing to walk the walk. The sustainability committee has been working on a school-wide sustainability plan with three major themes: reducing our carbon footprint, improving our ecological output, and strengthening our sustainable food practices. An ambitious and timely project, it includes a diverse team of stakeholders and educators.

The grant work will result in a powerful curriculum that can be shared with other schools and communities locally and beyond to expand climate change education across the country.

Betsy Vinton, PhD—a nationally recognized climate change educator and 20-year leader of the Harley faculty—is our academic point person for the development of our new Climate Change Curriculum. Betsy is spending half of her teaching time this year and next working with Upper School colleagues to re-engineer parts of their curricula to form that program.

 

Seth O’Bryan is the co-director of the Commons, a facility with programs devoted to exploring sustainability and student leadership. Seth is the co-chair of the sustainability committee which is working on the school-wide sustainability plan.

The Edward E. Ford Foundation seeks to improve secondary education by supporting U.S. independent schools and encouraging promising practices.