Untitled Document

The New York City Museum School

At The New York City Museum School (NYCMS), students come into contact with the passion of scholarship and the richness of primary resources in the sciences, history, literature and the arts. Museum collections offer evidence, illustrate ideas, stimulate curiosity, provoke questions, and suggest new ways of presenting knowledge. Classroom instruction is reinforced with museum-based projects that are developmentally appropriate and are geared to state and local curricular mandates. In these studies, students explore, apply and create knowledge in the context of individual and group learning. NYCMS is committed to providing a gifted education to a heterogeneous group of students who represent a diverse community and a range of academic experiences. The extraordinary faculty includes licensed teachers and museum professionals who collaborate to design these projects to support the intellectual, social, and emotional needs of the adolescent.

NYCMS High provides the opportunity for all students to participate in a rigorous Regents level academic program, regardless of their history on standardized tests. All students take New York State Regents exams for graduation credit. In addition, students are responsible for perfecting the Museum Learning Process (MLP) developed at NYCMS. MLP requires students to show evidence of meeting standards by engaging in extended observation, questioning, research, synthesis and analysis, presentation, and reflection. Students apply the knowledge they acquire in their subject-based Regents classes to interdisciplinary studies jointly designed by subject teachers and museum educators. These studies, or museum module projects , put students in direct contact with the passion of scholarship and the richness of authentic resources found in the museums' collections. At the conclusion of these module studies, students present their findings to an audience of peers, faculty, and families.

All academic courses at NYCMS are college preparatory. Students qualify for a New York City High School Diploma when they:

Successfully complete forty-four academic credits
Successfully take five NYS Regents Exams

Students qualify for the NYCMS Scholar Diploma when they:

successfully complete fifty-one academic credits
complete their Junior-year Internship

The Internship occurs off-site two afternoons a week for sixteen weeks and requires students to write papers pertaining to their field work, as well as to present their experiences to peers, parents, and faculty. Students learn from professionals what is expected of them in the workforce.

provide evidence of reading at least twenty-five books per year
provide evidence of mastering The Museum Learning Process
satisfy their community service requirement complete Senior Institute

Students, working with a faculty advisor, develop and present a senior thesis. To complete their thesis, students review the work they completed in their first three years, ask pertinent questions based on new coursework and experiences, extend their research, synthesize and analyze the old information with new findings, record their process and conclusions, and present their revised work to teachers, museum professionals, and family members.