Catlin Gabel School

Catlin Gabel is Portland's nationally recognized progressive independent day school where teachers build transforming relationships with each student, honoring each child's innate capacities, encouraging exploration, welcoming questions, and always presenting new intellectual and creative challenges to our young scientists, storytellers, artists, and athletes.

Catlin Gabel supports inspired learning leading to responsible action through dedicated teaching, caring relationships, a challenging curriculum, and community service. We value each person's effort, imagination, and positive contributions to the community. We celebrate being inclusive and the partnership between family and school.

Children who are eager to understand the world around them and master new skills. Enthusiastic teachers who know and value every student. Engaged parents who share educational goals and want to participate. A community that values healthy relationships and personal integrity. Every child deserves to learn and grow in a school like this, which is what we have created here at Catlin Gabel.

The world around us is more complex and challenging than ever. At Catlin Gabel, we prepare children with the knowledge and character that colleges seek and the world needs. Students here are on a transformational journey inspired at every grade level by meaningful work, high academic standards, and leadership opportunities. They learn how to think critically and creatively and exercise good judgment. They learn how to relate to all kinds of people with interest and respect. They learn the value of being curious and resilient.

As a result, Catlin Gabel alumni are a diverse group of successful and talented citizens. They are applying innovative and disciplined thinking to achieve their goals and to improve their college, professional, and local communities. They are the adults we hope our children will become.

We are a progressive school by history and philosophy. That means that we understand the children in our classrooms: their strengths, interests, and experiences. We believe that children learn by doing, so we challenge them to apply what they are learning to answer real and relevant questions. We engage their intellect and their emotional, social and physical selves in the learning process. We foster a climate of open inquiry, in which students from a wide range of backgrounds speak up and take risks. Our progressive approach inspires and motivates children to believe in themselves and to understand what they have to offer.

Catlin Gabel supports inspired learning leading to responsible action through dedicated teaching, caring relationships, a challenging curriculum, and community service. We value each person's effort, imagination, and positive contributions to the community. We celebrate being inclusive and the partnership between family and school.

Good teaching and learning hinge on the quality of the relationships in the classroom. Students learn in a social context that colors their experience and directly affects their learning. Teachers understand that relationships provide fertile ground for learning, and strive to create the kind of classroom in which students are free to discuss, disagree, formulate ideas, and wonder. When teachers and students form healthy bonds, there are few limits to the learning that can take place.

Our approach supports students' open inquiry, independent thinking, and respect for diverse views. This spirit of inquiry lies at the very heart of a well-educated person. Educator John Dewey asserted that the purpose of a good education is more education. We agree. We leave room for student questions, and we foster curiosity, openness to differing perspectives, and the desire to keep learning—lasting benefits of a good education.

Children and young adults learn to become competent, caring, and contributing people in a place that is a community as well as a school. There is room for the experiences and perspectives of all students to be included. Students learn how to work together as part of a larger whole, and to be good citizens. Feeling connected to teachers and to one another helps them become good people and good learners at the same time.

We believe a diverse community is integral to maintaining a relevant, future-focused school. A community of diverse learners with different perspectives and life experiences is essential for deep learning and real-world preparation. We foster an environment in which students and adults are curious and supportive, and strive to recognize each person for their unique contributions.

Our teaching aims to help students use their minds well, to be independent thinkers accustomed to thinking critically and deeply. Creativity is expressed in many different realms and is essential in contemporary society. We want to create conditions that support students to know the power of their own ideas, develop new-to-them ways of doing things, be able to think inventively, and reason well and critically assess ideas and events.

We value experiential education, the idea that people learn by doing, not simply by being told. This means that students learn through real and direct exposure to places, events, and people. Hands-on lab experiments, outdoor education, field trips, lab work in science, creating music, and directing a one-act play—these are all expressions of our belief that experiential education makes learning come alive.