CITYterm

About CITYterm at the Masters School:

CITYterm is a semester program founded in 1996 for 11th and 12th graders in high school. CITYterm students engage in an interdisciplinary and experience-based curriculum that focuses on New York City. In addition to math, language and/or science, all CITYterm students participate in the Urban Core, an honors level curriculum that focuses exclusively on New York City. CITYterm faculty members work to collaboratively design and teach the Urban Core as a three-credit, interdisciplinary course that blends history, literature and the urban environment. CITYterm is a residential program located in Dobbs Ferry, New York (just 30 minutes north of New York City). Students engage in Urban Core studies six-days a week. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays students are typically in Dobbs Ferry engaged in seminar-style classes and on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays students use New York City as their classroom.

• Experience-based: At CITYterm we believe that the most profound learning takes place when it is rooted in experience. Students spend every other day in New York City linking their classroom work to the endless array of opportunities available.
• Interdisciplinary: With a shared text of New York City, CITYterm's three-credit Urban Core curriculum is fully interdisciplinary. CITYterm's faculty works together to teach the Urban Core as a unified whole, creating an interconnectedness between literature, history and urban environments.
• Authentic: Learning at CITYterm is based on authentic experience and assessment. Whether a presentation of housing plans to New York architects, or a round table discussion with an author, final assessments put students in real life settings. Students experience the authentic success of hard work coupled with a deeper understanding of the limitations of solutions to issues in the real world.
• Student-centered: CITYterm is student-centered, as our students are empowered to see themselves as the authors of their own learning experiences. Through regular feedback from both faculty and peers, our curriculum moves towards increased academic independence, ultimately affording students more and more opportunities to design their own learning processes and products.