Great Hearts Arlington Upper School Program

In preparation for your scholar potentially joining our campus, we wanted to share some information about our upper school with you.

• Linked is our family handbook. We encourage parents to read this thoroughly as it will detail both our philosophy and our policies as a school. We will highlight a few things for you below as well.
• Great Hearts Arlington is a classical, public, charter school. Our curriculum is rooted in the western tradition, and we minimize the use of technology in the classroom in favor of a dialectical. We believe a humane education is one that cultivates a love for learning for its own sake, develops moral virtue, and helps scholars pursue the great transcendentals — truth, goodness, and beauty. These three transcendentals are not relative but universal, and to flourish as a human being, we believe we must seek these things with all our hearts, minds, souls, and bodies. Therefore, the end of education is not primarily practical (good job, college admittance, etc.), but a life oriented towards these things. This is what we hope to form in your scholar.
• We have a universal curriculum that is rigorous and accelerated. It is a curriculum that challenges our scholars, prepares them for college and beyond, and has the potential to change their lives. We believe that all scholars — no matter their current ability — have the capacity to receive this sort of education. Therefore, we don’t track our scholars; they are all (unless their IEP states otherwise) given the same transformative curriculum that honors their humanity and pushes them to grow so that they can flourish as human beings.
• A scholar should expect to have around 75 minutes of homework a night. Also, our families are expected to provide the grade level Classics-to-Keep books for their scholar’s Literature and Composition class. The habit of homework completion and the reading of these books, along with all that we do in our hallways and classrooms, help form both the moral and intellectual virtue of our scholars.
• We provide a robust athletic program that will continue to grow each year. In the Spring, we will be offering soccer and track.
• We have high behavioral expectations for our scholars. We believe that education is not meant to be fun or entertaining but filled with joy. Joy can be found in the richness of our curriculum and in the community of our classrooms when order is present, for order provides space for thoughtful engagement and meaningful conversation about the true, good, and beautiful in our midst.

There is much more we could share, but we encourage you to read the linked handbook above and peruse our website, so you can learn more about who we are. Please also review our detailed curriculum pages, available here.

If you have any questions about our school, please let us know! Feel free to reach out to our administrative team via email at ArlingtonInfo@greatheartstxschools.org.