Global Engagement

Students study human rights, civil rights, and social justice. Language study begins in Kindergarten with Spanish, and girls rotate Spanish with French and Mandarin in Class IV. Lower School trips and community engagement around New York City lend a greater appreciation of the blend of cultures in our city. Students organize food drives and volunteer as lunch servers at a nearby community meal program, which encourages them to be active and productive participants in creating a better world for themselves and their respective communities.

Community engagement centers around engaging with those who learn differently, including working with children with autism and adults with Alzheimer’s. An ongoing study of civil rights culminates in a Class VIII trip to Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia. While they continue studying a modern language, Middle School students each learn Latin beginning in Class VI. Latin skills help with comprehension of modern languages and draw connections between ancient cultures and the modern world. As part of the Middle School Field Studies program, students may travel to Costa Rica, Iceland, or the Grand Canyon to study the science of ecosystems and geology first hand.

Each year Class IX students travel to London as a class, bringing their academic work to life with oral presentations in museums, and experiencing the thrill of the house of Tudor first hand. This trip is built around experiential learning and serves as the foundation of their studies for the fall, as well as an inspiration for further global studies during their four years in the Upper School. Students in Class X and Class XI are encouraged to apply to spend a semester or year in another country or another part of the United States; popular programs are in Switzerland, Maine, Washington, D.C., South Africa, and Australia. Every student at Nightingale who studies a modern language will have the opportunity to travel to a country where that language is spoken and to experience life there. Within the blue doors, Class IX participates in a semester-long seminar focusing on social justice and community engagement. In Classes X-XII, each student chooses an organization where she must volunteer at least four times a year.

A partnership with Round Square connects Nightingale to more than 200 schools in 50 countries across six continents. Middle and Upper school students can travel internationally to participate in conferences where they can meet and network with other students. The focus of Round Square participation lies in the acronym IDEALS: Internationalism, Democracy, Environmental Sustainability, Adventure, Leadership, and Service. Recently, Nightingale students organized a Zoom conference with other students to discuss their experiences during the global COVID-19 pandemic, and how quarantine had affected their lives. Another student from the Global Planning Committee organized an online forum to discuss the history of global immigration with three renowned experts in the field in front of hundreds of students and teachers from Round Square schools. While participating in a pilot project of collaborating with students from Round Square’s Craighouse School in Santiago, Chile, students shared coming of age experiences from the US, from Bat Mitzvahs to a first driver's license, to the traditions surrounding puberty among girls from the Lakota tribe at Nightingale’s sister school, the Pine Ridge Girls School in South Dakota. Learning about the lives of others, whether through study abroad or a virtual exchange, prepares our students to lead with empathy and courage.