High School Program
Learning at Sequoyah’s high school is a joyful journey beyond academics, encouraging students to embrace challenges and step out of comfort zones. The curriculum fosters engagement, creativity, and meaning, allowing students to explore passions, find their voice, and feel valued and connected. They develop responsibility, learn to care for others, and gain strength through curiosity and confidence, all while experiencing the joy of a vibrant, supportive community.
Balanced Learning
The high school program emphasizes student engagement and well-being by balancing required coursework with a choice of many electives and academic options. Beginning in ninth grade, students can select up to five electives and have options for how to demonstrate learning on class projects. Through the Social Innovation Program, students choose a local issue to explore in the community; and they investigate a personally interesting big idea for Talking Leaves presentations.
Balancing a student’s schedule is also critically important to have a more focused, and less stressful experience. Students take only three core classes at a time, allowing deeper learning while reducing stress. Longer daily 80-minute class periods provide in-depth time for labs, field trips, debates, and simulations, and midyear class changes offer a refreshing shift in their daily experience.
Deeper Learning
We value both what and how students learn. To foster true curiosity, students need time to explore relevant ideas and apply learning meaningfully. At advanced levels, students can choose Sequoyah Advanced Studies (SAS) courses, which emphasize understanding of key concepts rather than covering extensive textbook content to meet AP or IB requirements.
Deeper learning also involves students actively in assessment. They discuss their progress on six Learning Outcomes with teachers, focusing on key concepts and skills. Instead of passively receiving grades, students analyze their progress and identify growth steps.
Real-World Learning
Learning isn’t just about books. We at Sequoyah see the world as a classroom, full of potential for discovery about oneself, others, and the larger community. Students are challenged to go beyond their comfort zones: from hiking remote paths in the high Sierra to interviewing community leaders in neighborhoods in Los Angeles, the high school program provides rich experiences that help students understand the world around them, and, in turn, understand themselves.
Learn More Today
We’re excited about your interest in Sequoyah School! Visit our Admissions page to learn about open houses, information sessions, and application requirements.
Sequoyah’s Curriculum Guide showcases the exemplary academic and elective offerings we provide.
Curriculum
Mathematics
Mathematics is not just a body of abstract knowledge or a static language for describing the guardrails of physical reality. At Sequoyah, math is an active practice of exploration, guesswork, failure, discovery, and creative breakthrough. Our core curriculum in algebra and geometry provides a sandbox for students to experience both the joy and rigor of real mathematical inquiry. Our pedagogy is project-based, collaborative, analogical, occasionally emergent, and always attuned to the needs of individual learners. With advanced coursework in everything from calculus to combinatorics to computation theory, Sequoyah students can start to see whether their deepest interests lie in pure math, symbolic systems, engineering, economics, or elsewhere. Humanists may be surprised to find that we don’t believe in a bright line between STEM and subjects like philosophy, art, or language.
Science
Our science program cultivates a rigorous, inquiry-based understanding of the natural world, beginning with foundational physics and progressing to intricate biological systems. Students engage in project-based learning that emphasizes forming and testing hypotheses and critically examining global issues such as climate change, public health, and ecological sustainability. Students investigate questions such as “how do the environments around us change over time?”, “how do we measure and support the health of our communities?”, and “how do we identify and implement effective climate action?”. They are equipped with skills in scientific research through primary literature analysis, hands-on experimental design, data interpretation, and scientific communication, preparing them to tackle complex, real-world problems that will challenge the next generation of scientific leaders.
Humanities
World Languages
As students acquire a higher level of proficiency across all language skills, they gain perspectives about the diversity and complexity of Spanish-speaking communities at home and abroad. They understand that speaking Spanish provides a portal into literal and figurative worlds, and consider how, with their communication and cultural competency skills, they can be bridges and changemakers locally and wherever they go.
In addition to the required Spanish language curriculum, students may also elect to learn additional languages. Japanese and Arabic are offered through Global Online Academy.
Visual Arts
Visual Arts courses at Sequoyah offer strong foundations in the theory and technical skills that equip students to express themselves authentically and creatively. More than just measures of discipline level achievement, however, these skills and their associated understandings drive students to develop more focused, efficient work habits, precision in critique, and the ability to incorporate feedback into revision and confidence when presenting evidence of understanding in front of an audience, regardless of content area.
Performing Arts
Our Performing Arts program fosters creativity and technical proficiency across a wide array of disciplines, including theater, dance, music, and visual arts. In the process, we also emphasize authentic expression and collaborative learning, encouraging students to develop confidence and skill in their artistic endeavors.
Advisory
Each student is a member of an Advisory group of roughly twelve students for their time in the high school. Their Advisor serves as a mentor who gets to know them well as a scholar and person during that time. In addition to having fun and getting to know each other, Advisory time provides students opportunities to engage in our Health & Wellness and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice curricula, providing regular opportunities for students to learn about and be in discussion with peers about topics that are central to the experience of being a teenager today.
Signature Programs
Social Innovation Program
To prepare graduates for a highly interconnected world facing complex social and environmental challenges, students are required to complete a four year Social Innovation Program (SIP) designed to not only cultivate students’ empathy, and passion for doing good, but the foundational skills of social entrepreneurs.
Field Studies
In Sequoyah School’s distinctive Field Studies program, all of our students are presented with real-world situations and challenges. They learn that what is important is not just what they know, but what they can do with that knowledge.
Talking Leaves
Talking Leaves honors our namesake, Sequoyah, who developed the Cherokee system of written language for his own people.
Twice each year, students present an essay and oral presentation modeled after a thesis defense to their peers, a faculty committee, parents, and other invited guests. Students explore and analyze a chosen topic based on a meaningful intellectual experience and reflect on its role in their growth as scholars.
Beyond the Classroom
Athletics
The high school’s athletic program offers students valuable life lessons outside the classroom. Through sports, students develop self-discipline, teamwork, and sportsmanship, which fosters good citizenship. They experience both victories and defeats, learning essential lessons from each, while building self-worth, confidence, and decision-making skills.
Competing with peers from diverse backgrounds broadens students’ perspectives. Our program emphasizes continuous improvement, encouraging athletes to become 1% better every day. This focus on consistent effort and a growth mindset leads to long-term success both on and off the field.
dFab
The Design & Fabrication (dFab) Hub is an inclusive, creative space that promotes bold ideas, teamwork, and interdisciplinary learning focused on justice, accessibility, and positive community impact.
Equipped with 3D printers, laser cutters, sewing machines, and various tools, the dFab Hub empowers students to merge art, design, and technology. Here, they experiment, prototype, and bring ideas to life, building skills in creativity, problem-solving, and technical knowledge. This collaborative environment helps students tackle real-world challenges and shape an inclusive, innovative future.
Extracurriculars and Clubs
From Gryphon Media Company’s breaking news and satirical publications to creative computing (coding and engineering) to debate and improv comedy, students are encouraged to and supported in building interest and confidence with new activities, while developing a range of skills and just having fun.
Sequoyah Alums
College Acceptances
Sequoyah School’s high school curriculum is designed to prepare students to become experienced, confident, and resourceful problem-solvers who apply their knowledge and passion using strategies that can make a difference for their communities and in their own lives. Sequoyah School students are challenged to think critically and creatively, learn how to work in diverse teams, and communicate ideas successfully.
Meet our Faculty!
We are subject experts who design courses and learning experiences alive with inquiry, discourse, collaboration, and independent reflection.
