Why Peck?

The Peck School honors the simple joys and customs of a gentler age—and provides a haven where your child can be a child just a little longer. Our carefully crafted, intentionally modeled, K-8 program enriches your child’s experience with both time tested methods and time honored traditions. Your child finds a place in a community where school culture still trumps pop culture, and where they can grow into their full potential without growing up too soon.

The Peck curriculum nourishes curiousity by posing essential questions at every grade level. We start by helping your child lay a stable scholarly foundation in an academic atmosphere that values focus, self discipline, commitment and reflection. We also infuse your child’s studies with fresh energy, engagement and excitement.  Immersed in active learning and thought-provoking projects, your child develops the creativity and optimism to find their place in a changing world.

The world is co-ed, and school should be too. The power of a co-educational experience is well-documented and benefits include greater confidence in academic abilities, empowerment for both girls and boys, enhanced collaboration skills, increased respect and empathy, improved leadership opportunities, and the development of higher emotional intelligence. Dr. Julie O’Rourke and Ashley Tabor, school psychologists at Peck point to the key benefits of the coeducational experience in their downloadable guide, Partnership Empowered.

At Peck, we teach composure and conscientiousness – not because polite behavior is an end in itself, but because it is one way we express our deep and genuine regard for others. Day by day as our students learn to extend and expect care and consideration, they develop trust in our consistently kind community. Our Kindergarten Buddy Program, Reach Across Activities, Kairos Days, World Cultures Nights, and events throughout the year nurture a dynamic empathy that stretches well past Peck and fosters great depth of character.

Families who happen to share the same family school coalesce into a true school family. We maintain our family-style dining tradition because it gives students a seat at the table with the adults and peers who share their school lives—and makes them feel seen, heard, and loved by peers and teachers across all grade levels. Around a Peck dining table, schoolmates become lifelong friends, and warm memories are forged to bind your child to her sound foundations forever.

By the time your child reaches eighth grade, they have grown into a buddy, a leader, a helper, and an advocate for themselves and others. Our intimate, carefully interlaced K-8 program provides children with role-models worth following—and equips them over time with the strength to lead. From the earliest opportunities to perform and read publicly in Kindergarten, through public speaking classes in sixth grade, and the milestone Capstone Project in eighth grade, students build self-confidence and a comportment that will serve them well for life.

At Peck, your child benefits from the cultural literacy and creative empowerment that accompanies early immersion in both a strong, traditional arts program, as well as an opportunity to explore the wider art of making. Students are welcomed into a community of artists, actors, and musicians, where the arts are valued and celebrated as children reap the innate emotional and intellectual benefits of self-expression. While your child works through real-world problems, they craft concrete solutions and build tangible answers--bringing facts, theories, and principles to vivid life.

Our K-8 sports and physical education program is rooted in the concepts of character, teamwork, and sportsmanship. From the third grade on, your child participates in team sports (with interscholastic competition beginning in the fifth grade), while at the same time developing individual discipline and personal perseverance. Your child embraces the importance of collaboration, of winning humbly and losing gracefully, and they extend support and camaraderie not just to their own teammates and coaches, but to every opponent they face.  

Your child can go anywhere from The Peck School. To the most prestigious area day schools or to nationally recognized boarding schools. To the most selective colleges and universities. Into rewarding and meaningful careers, and, ultimately to a deeply-fulfilled, vibrantly-lived, consequential life. Our dedicated secondary school counselor will work individually with each family to ensure your child matriculates to their best-fit secondary school. Our graduate placement outcomes are a testament to our students' successes: 90% of Peck graduates are accepted at and matriculate to their first choice secondary school.  See our most recent 5-year study on high school and college matriculation.