High School

Island School’s high school offers a rigorous college-preparatory program that prides itself on both its comprehensive curriculum and individualized instruction. Our faculty continuously provides thought-provoking, critical challenges, and regularly adapt their lesson plans to the needs of their students on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis.

While attending Island School, students are required to perform 20 hours of community service per year and take college-preparatory classes in all of the following: language arts, mathematics, science, history, foreign language, visual and performing arts, computer science, Hawaiian history, and physical education.

Students are challenged to test their intellectual boundaries through honors and AP level courses. Approximately half of all graduating seniors have taken at least one AP course.

As sophomores, students are required to complete a three-part Sophomore Project that begins with a thesis in American Literature, continues with a position paper in U.S. History, and culminates in a round-table discussion facilitated by the entire humanities faculty. This comprehensive project illuminates and combines many universal themes found in both American Literature and History and is a testament to the type of team-teaching and collaboration that occurs amongst dedicated faculty. As seniors, students complete an independent senior research project in an area they are most passionate about.

From inception through completion, the seniors are responsible for designing, researching, and presenting a thesis, experiment, or problem/solution model. Meeting at regular intervals with faculty members and community mentors, students become experts in their chosen fields and verify their expertise in a teacher-led interview. All seniors must then present their findings to the community in a thirty-minute presentation. Only after a successful interview and presentation may an Island School student earn his/her high school diploma.