The New School 38 York Street, Kennebunk, ME 04043

"An amazing alternative high school. I've taught photography classes here and have attended many events. Amazing place!"

"As a junior at TNS, I have been incredibly fortunate to receive such a hands on, interactive, and in-depth education. Transferring out of public school and into The New School was the best decision I have made yet!"

"It's hard to quantify the transformational effect that The New School had on my educational (and later professional) trajectory. Before attending the New School, I was student at a nearby public high school in Maine and had become totally disillusioned with education. I was aimless with no sense of what I wanted to be doing with my life or what motivated me. My apathy actually reached the extent that I began skipping school and eventually asked my parents to let me drop out entirely. They offered a compromise: a transfer to The New School, which up until that point I had never heard of. My first semester at the New School I took a course with a wonderful teacher titled something like “How Good People Make Tough Choices." And that was, to that point in my educational career, the most exciting and thought-provoking course that I had ever taken. The discussions we had in that class rivaled some of the best ones I had in college. The invigorating and challenging nature of those discussions heavily influenced my own decision to attend Sarah Lawrence College – which like The New School has small classes and is primarily seminar based. For my Senior Project (all students create a Senior Project at TNS), another student and I independently planned a four month trip to Peru to volunteer and learn Spanish. That experience – living in an entirely foreign culture, navigating a new city using an unfamiliar language – completely transformed my idea of what I could do and who I could be. It ignited a passion for travel and exploration that I still have to this day. And volunteering in orphanages with children whose lives I perceived as unimaginably bleak, I was exposed to the crushing devastation wrought by extreme poverty and inequality. Those experiences drove me to major in college in international development and have heavily influenced my choice of career: today I work at an international educational exchange nonprofit. That is a very small sample of the effects that the New School has had on me. Both of my younger sisters attended the New School and while their experience here was completely different, it was no less powerful or transformative. And I think that’s the wonderful thing about the New School – no matter who you are or where you are coming from – The New School will welcome and embrace you and empower you to discover your own passion and potential."

"The New School supports self-directed learning and with two out of three children so far I am amazed at how the talented faculty bring out the individual in every child"