Providence Day: At A Glance

At Providence Day, students buzz in answers to teachers' questions using Senteo technology or edit wikis about novels in English class. The school uses technology to enhance its curriculum, but there is still plenty of traditional teaching going on at this forty-five-acre south Charlotte campus, where students of all ages mingle in the same buildings.

In a kindergarten classroom, students survey each other about whether they prefer pepperoni or cheese pizza, then mark the answers on a clipboard. Down the hall, a tutor helps a teenage girl with her Spanish pronunciation skills. In the next building, an upper-school teacher excitedly explains one math problem after another as he bounces along a dry-erase board covered with calculations.

Girls wearing fleece pullovers and Ugg boots and boys in polo shirts and jeans walk from the main classroom building to the technology center, while others sit outside doing homework, snacking on chips, or chatting with friends. Piles of North Face backpacks wait dutifully outside buildings and classrooms, and there are no locks on lockers—two results of the school's honor code.

In one building, cans are stacked up high for a middle school food drive, one of many service projects under way. On one fall day, teachers wear pink shirts and jeans in honor of a breast cancer awareness event being put on by the senior girls.

One hallway wall is covered with photos from a science teacher's tornado-chasing trip. Other unique development opportunities have included an English teacher who immersed himself in the Walden Pond experience and then created the school's Transcendentalist Club, and a science teacher who traveled to the Galapagos Islands to study natural selection.