Senior High (10-12th grade)
Building upon the advanced studies and hands-on learning of the Junior High program, our Senior High program actively cultivates unique learning opportunities for each Senior High student based on their individualized goals. Supported by the close guidance of CCHS instructors, our students are connected through mentorships, internships, and community connections as well as the opportunity to graduate with a college degree from SUNY Sullivan.
The CCHS and SUNY Sullivan Collaboration
Beginning in 10th grade, students are able to attend classes at neighboring SUNY Sullivan. Students benefit from the close guidance and supportive community provided by the Homestead campus while having a new world of opportunities open up to them at the SUNY campus.
CCHS gives students the opportunity to graduate high school with an Associate Degree. Students can transfer those credits to a four year college if they desire. The entrepreneurial and world-changing spirit cultivated at the Homestead School propels students into the exploration of fields that they are passionate about and affords them the opportunity for more expansive and in-depth studies.
Why Choose Montessori Senior High School?
Foundational to the Senior High Program is the creation of learning pathways that meet each individual student at the cusp of their potential, challenging and inspiring them to grow into fully actualized, engaged adults. Our students are fully supported in graduating with a full Associate Degree from a school that is recognized for its innovation and commitment to providing the educational experience essential to thriving in the 21st century.
A Homestead education is not just an investment in your child’s future, but an investment in all of our futures. With a focus on regenerative and life affirming studies and acquisition of skills, along with course offerings that are grounded in the development of personal and interpersonal understanding, we graduate students who are ready to address the challenges of our times.
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The Formula
Educate the Whole Human
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Provide innovative curriculum and real world opportunities resonant with the most pressing of societal, humanitarian, and environmental challenges
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Students who have met their hearts calling and have the skill, confidence, and support to follow it into a better world
“Culture and education have no bounds or limits; now the person is in a phase in which she must decide for herself how far she can proceed in the culture that belongs to the whole of humanity.”
The Senior High Curriculum
A Unique Educational Opportunity
The Homestead experience offers an unparalleled Montessori-based education grounded in the values of environmental stewardship, humanitarian education, and commitment to service. CCHS focuses on the development of the whole person through a curriculum that engages students in clustered core courses, mentorships, overnight trips, real-world experiences, and individualized college counseling. This experience is extended through our SUNY Sullivan partnership, offering the depth, expertise, and facilities of a college campus where students are fully supported in pursuing a College Certificate with 32 credits or an Associate Degree with 65 credits.
Key Elements of our Senior High Curriculum include:
Clustered Core Courses
Credentialed Homestead instructors offer the core senior high courses, many of which are offered for college credit including a number of Literature, History, and Science courses, Composition I & II, Spanish Language and Culture I, II, & III, Entrepreneurship, Psychology, Civic Discourse, and Intercultural Communications. Each semester these courses are thematically clustered to provide the opportunities for cross-disciplinary connections and deepening of the learning experience. In this way student projects, field studies, literature selections, and seminars provide opportunities for the transfer and synthesis of concepts and skills encountered across these core courses.
College and Careers
Credentialed Homestead instructors offer the core senior high courses, many of which are offered for college credit including a number of Literature, History, and Science courses, Composition I & II, Spanish Language and Culture I, II, & III, Entrepreneurship, Psychology, Civic Discourse, and Intercultural Communications. Each semester these courses are thematically clustered to provide the opportunities for cross-disciplinary connections and deepening of the learning experience. In this way student projects, field studies, literature selections, and seminars provide opportunities for the transfer and synthesis of concepts and skills encountered across these core courses.
College Electives
To date, our Senior High students have taken more than 70 different college courses, many of them electives chosen to explore personal interests and potential career paths. From the sciences to the arts, from business to social sciences, students have the freedom to pursue subjects that spark curiosity and deepen their sense of purpose. This breadth of experience not only strengthens their academic profiles but also helps them make more informed decisions about their post-secondary pathways.
Business Program
After exploring the fundamentals of entrepreneurship through real world application in Junior High, students advance to this Senior High course, which focuses on the equally important question: What to do with money once you’ve earned it? In Personal Finance, students learn practical strategies for budgeting, saving, borrowing, investing, and protecting their money with the goal of building long-term financial independence and security. Through simulations, real-world applications, and guided practice, they develop the knowledge and habits necessary to make wise financial decisions throughout life. Each week students also have the opportunity to further expand their micro-economy work with the operations of the school. Senior High students have often become the expert in their micro-economy enterprise and often play a mentorship role as our Junior High students apprentice with them.
Mastery Projects
Senior High students continue the deep and impactful explorations of Mastery Projects. The team-guided, project-based learning for many senior high students begins to evolve into longer term projects that culminate a year-long Senior Legacy Project. With their deepening understanding and refined skills senior high students begin to focus more intently on advanced competencies and Mastery Credits as they work to both round out their skill set and to focus on developing their unique areas of passion and talent. Evidence of these holistic competencies are recorded by the students in their Mastery Transcript.
Socratic Seminars
In the senior high program, seminars become a central space for student-led inquiry and advanced dialogue. Students are expected not only to prepare closely but also to develop the guiding questions that shape the conversation, demonstrating an increasing capacity to connect course themes with their own intellectual curiosities. Rather than rotating across subjects, senior high seminars sustain deeper, cross-disciplinary conversations, mirroring the demands of seminar-style courses students will soon encounter at four-year colleges owing to the fact that they will have already completed two years of introductory college courses. Students are prepared to grapple with complex texts, problems, and works of art in ways that highlight both individual voice and collective meaning-making. Seminars provide practice in framing questions, defending interpretations, and engaging peers in thoughtful dialogue. The emphasis is on conversation as a shared inquiry—open-ended, rigorous, and attuned to the interplay of self, community, and world. In this setting, students refine their abilities in respectful dialogue, active listening, and the critical use of credible sources, skills that will serve them throughout higher education and beyond.
Mastery Transcript
At Collaborative College High School (CCHS), student growth is captured through the Mastery Transcript (MTC), an internationally recognized framework for documenting learning. Instead of a traditional list of grades, the transcript highlights progress across academic, personal, and real-world competencies, offering a more complete picture of each learner. Every credit-bearing experience—whether a course, project, internship, or college class—adds to this holistic record of achievement, designed to reflect 21st-century skills and meet the expectations of innovative colleges and universities. Each student develops a unique credit profile tying each competency to a record of evidence. In this way a unique interactive learning record centers the student as an individual and learner, showcasing multidimensional evidence of holistic skills over the traditional flat transcript that lists grades and courses.
