Germantown Academy

Germantown Academy, a non-sectarian, independent, coeducational college preparatory school educating students from PreK to Grade 12 in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1759, GA boasts more than 255 years of history and tradition.

At GA we inspire our students each day to live our school’s mission: to become independent, confident, compassionate, collaborative, and honorable individuals who will make a difference in our world. Our young scholars blossom in a community of caring adults who know them as people first. We teach them to seek genuine understanding, to treat others as they wish to be treated, and to be guided by their hearts as they pursue a life of the mind. As much as we challenge them with compelling and rigorous academics, we also challenge them to embody goodness, to embrace character, and to give of themselves generously so that they may become knowledgeable, ethical leaders who advocate for themselves, for what is right, for each other, and for others.

For more than 250 years, we have strived to bring out the best in our students, and our proud alumni/ae, leaders in their own right around the world, are living proof that our mission works. With an ideal mix of independent school excellence and creative, innovative thinking and practice, GA opens doors to new interests and opportunities, lifelong relationships, and a stellar education. In the end, however, we teach our students to find and open their own doors, to stride through them confidently, to hold them wide open for others. Around every corner of our school you will see children in the process of becoming, exploring, questioning, wondering, and growing in deep, meaningful ways – often in directions you may never have predicted had they not immersed themselves in the experiences awaiting them in our classrooms and outdoor learning spaces, on our fields and our stages. Our 126 acre campus affords us the resources necessary to help students become their best selves.

There is no better way to get to know the real GA than to stroll our buzzing hallways, engage in a captivating conversation with a student, and observe one of our passionate master teachers in the classroom. We enthusiastically invite you to see and feel it for yourself, to experience GA, and to give us the chance to get to know your family so that, together, we can discover how our school community might best enable your child to truly thrive.

A leadership mindset begins with each student having the independence of thought necessary to seek and find the truth in all that he or she reads, sees, and hears. We educate GA students to be curious, to ask questions, and to listen to and evaluate the viewpoints of others. Our faculty and staff are the guides and coaches for these explorations of ideas, theories, and processes.

Independent thinkers become self-confident individuals. Teachers and staff members hear expressed time and time again by prospective parents how confidently GA students comport themselves. Our writing, speaking, and performing arts curricula aims to instill confidence in all of our students. Alumni visits around the country remind us that the core of confidence built during GA years holds firm throughout adulthood.

While Germantown Academy teachers have engaged our students for over 255 years, our motivations and methods for seeking engagement have evolved dramatically since our founding. Teachers and students now have equal, instant access to facts and content. While faculty are no longer in sole possession of the keys necessary to unlock the world of knowledge, gifted ones are still indispensable in drawing our children toward that world. The faculty demonstrate a genuine love of learning with and from their charges. This is 21st century engagement.

In a century that clearly prizes innovation, an entrepreneurial spirit, creativity, and invention, engaging students is undoubtedly urgent work not just as a means to a future, successful end; in fact, it creates instant advantages in the lives of our students. The data at GA and across an impressive range of American schools reveals that genuinely engaged students are also healthier, happier human beings.

GA is not on the engagement bandwagon; our teachers are leading the way. We are engagement trailblazers. By encouraging our students to pursue their passions and to express their voices in what they want - or better yet need - to learn, we seek to create a generation of learners who will strive to do what they love because they love what they do.

Together, our students and faculty actively defined the critical components of engagement which appear to the right. Inspiring this thriving community of engaged learners is how we will best fulfill our lofty mission. We will prepare our students to engage in the world around them, and, best of all, to lead happy, healthy lives where they are the authors of their own, genuine, self-determined success.