Academics
A CSW Education

Place Based Learning

Experiential Learning in Context

Fieldwork, Connection, and Global Discovery

Through regular applied study, community engagement in Greater Boston, and immersive travel abroad, our students explore real-world questions in real-world contexts. 

Thanks to the flexibility of our Mod System, students can spend up to five weeks abroad during the school year — an uncommon and powerful opportunity in high school. These extended travel experiences, along with shorter spring break programs to destinations like Japan or the Netherlands, allow students to deeply immerse themselves in culture, language, and civic inquiry. This kind of place-based learning fosters independence, empathy, and global perspective. 

Marine Biology

Students in the 'Marine Biology' class at CSW live and work off-campus on Hurricane Island, off the coast of Maine, where they are involved in a variety of new and ongoing projects. They observe the structure of intertidal communities, study lobster biology and the historic management of the fishery, study organisms that recruit on docks and in the intertidal of Penobscot Bay, and consider the role of invasive species and climate change in affecting biodiversity, among other projects.

The Mod Abroad

CSW currently offers three biannual Mod Abroad experiences, during which students spend six immersive weeks living and learning within a foreign culture. 

Neotropics of Latin America

This course is a cooperative effort between the language and science departments. Students travel to the neotropics of Latin America — typically, Panama — for a program of immersion in tropical ecosystems and in Spanish language and culture. In the science component, students travel to various tropical ecosystems and conduct field experiments and projects. The language program consists of homestays with local families, organized field trips and everyday conversational Spanish. Students maintain both science and Spanish journals as they travel.

Off Campus to France

Students travel to France for a program of total immersion in French language, history, and culture. During their stay in France, students live with host families carefully selected in order to accommodate them. While traveling, students keep a journal and fulfill other requirements adapted to their language and/or art background. Upon their return, students prepare mandatory projects, including a research paper on their on-site findings, to earn full credit.

Off Campus to Taiwan

In the "Off-Campus to Taiwan" course students travel to Taiwan to strengthen their Mandarin Chinese speaking, writing, and comprehension through an immersive program. They will also learn about the history, geography, culture, life, arts, and people of Taiwan. Students will attend classes and stay in homestays while in Taiwan and keep personal journals, contribute to a group blog, and complete a research project.

  • Garrett Jancourtz '25, Taiwan Mod Abroad

    Our host families were eager to share their cultures with us; they were always ready and willing to teach us about what we didn't know, they were extremely accommodating.

  • Lachlan DeAtley '24, Kakehashi Project Trip to Japan

    In the U.S. and Europe, we tend to focus heritage sites around buildings and things that people built rather than the places that surround them. All of the UNESCO World Heritage sites in Okinawa were focused around nature.

  • Nadia Helsinger '24, Neotropics of Latin America

    Now that I'm home, I can appreciate the progress I made, feeling comfortable speaking Spanish and talking to new people."
45 Georgian Road, Weston, MA 02493
Phone: (781) 642-8600
CSW—a gender-inclusive day and boarding school for grades 9-12—is a national leader in progressive education. We live out our values of inquiry-based learning, student agency, and embracing diverse perspectives in every aspect of our student experience. Young people come to CSW to learn how to learn and then put what they learn into action—essential skills they carry into their futures as doers, makers, innovators, leaders, and exceptional humans who do meaningful work in the world.