Welcome to this remarkable school.
Welcome to The Peck School and welcome to our website. While nothing can replace the on-campus experience of a tour or visit, our website provides a great lens into the Peck experience. Watch the videos, read the blogs, learn about our remarkable faculty and staff, preview our curriculum, including information about our character education program, and, after that, be sure to give us a call. We’d love to host you on campus for a tour.
There’s so much I love about Peck, but, especially in this day and age of unfiltered information and an overall tendency to allow kids to grow up too quickly, I believe our intentional focus on “childhood honored” sets us apart as a leading K-8 school.
As you explore private schools for your child, you will notice those that tout academic excellence, rigor, and structure, as Peck does. And you have every right to expect excellence from us—from the faculty who teach your children, from the administration who runs the school, and from me, as its head.
But should we really expect “excellence” from our students? As a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school, we serve children ages five to 14. Can a kindergartner who is experiencing the expectations of a classroom environment for the first time show up and be excellent? Can a 14-year-old who is navigating massive personal change and weighing secondary school prospects truly be at their best? In some ways, the concept of “childhood excellence” is an oxymoron. It just doesn’t make sense.
As a school, we are purposeful in setting a high bar for our students—anything less is selling them short. And, as a school, we will always encourage our students to stretch outside their comfort zones, but we’d be forever disappointed if we expected that those risks would never result in failure.
At Peck, our goal—our promise—is to surround our students with excellence and to hold them to high standards in and out of the classroom. But we know that we can’t prepare them for success if we expect them to immediately grasp all of the lessons we’re teaching. We know that elementary school and middle school is the time to make mistakes, to push boundaries, to fail and try again, and learn that actions have consequences—especially since, as a K-8 school, we are right there to help them learn from those consequences. We know our students are developing into who they are and how they think, and honoring this process is how we honor childhood.
Peck’s carefully crafted K-8 program enriches your child’s experience with time-tested methods and time-honored traditions. Our students compete in a decades-old bridge-breaking competition, represent their team on field day in classic events like sack races and tug-of-war, and learn through innovative methods that focus on teaching students how to learn, not just what to learn. And through it all, we create an authentic culture of belonging, a culture that celebrates each student while giving them a shared sense of community and purpose.
So how do you help your child strive for excellence? When great teachers and great parents partner together, we create a powerful team in helping our kids learn, develop, and actualize their full selves.
I invite you to learn more about how your child can grow into their potential without growing up too soon at The Peck School. Our admissions office is here to help you explore the possibility of a Peck education.
We look forward to meeting you soon!
Warmly,
Andy Delinsky