Georgetown Day School (GDS)

Georgetown Day School honors the integrity and worth of each individual within a diverse School community. Gds is dedicated to providing a supportive educational atmosphere in which teachers challenge the intellectual, reative, and physical abilities of our students and foster strength of character and concern for others. From the earliest grades, we encourage our students to wonder, to inquire, and to be self-reliant, laying the foundation for a lifelong love of learning. Georgetown Day School opened its doors in 1945 as the first integrated School in a segregated city. We were founded by seven families who sought to create a School committed to academic excellence, educational innovation, and social justice. Our founders intuited what new research now proves-diverse learning environments are academically superior and allow students to enter the world with a rich appreciation of and respect for others. Today, a gds education is one that prepares students for an uncertain future because we live our founding mission every Day. While we would be hard-pressed to predict the details of life nearly two decades hence, we can with a fair degree of accuracy anticipate the skills and capacities that our children will need to have a meaningful impact in this changed world. These same skills lie at the heart of a gds education. Our curriculum ensures that our students have the opportunity to learn, practice, and ultimately, master these skills during their time at gds.we don't offer courses that focus explicitly on risk-taking or solving complex problems, and yet these and our other "a gds student will..." capacities are taught and reinforced continually. We teach these skills through a challenging physics lab or a hard-fought soccer game, when building a city out of blocks or exploring constitutional issues on capitol hill, when sitting in the hallway discussing an assignment or designing a set for our latest theater production. What is essential is that throughout our program, these skills are identified, nurtured, and assessed with intention. These skills, as we have defined them, will foster in our students both the will and capacity to change the world in ways that each generation is called to do.