Crossroads School (Santa Monica, California)

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Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences
Address
1714 21st Street
Santa Monica, California
Information
Founder Dr. Paul Cummins and Dr. Rhoda Makoff
Headmaster Roger Weaver
Students 1,130
Grades K-12
Fight song Burn Up the Road
Newspaper Crossfire
Opened 1971
Homepage http://www.xrds.org/

Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences is a private K-12 school in Santa Monica, California, United States.

Contents

[edit] Overview

The school is known for its artistic curricula such as music and film, as well as its upper school newspaper, Crossfire, consistently ranked among the top 10 high school newspapers in the country. Crossroads' academic curriculum is considered competitive with those of America's top private schools. Admissions into Crossroads School is highly selective. Upper school education at the school costs around $22,000 a year.[1]

[edit] History

The school was founded in 1971 by Dr. Paul Cummins (an educator) and Dr. Rhoda Makoff (a biochemist) as an effort in progressive private education. Dr. Cummins, dissatisfied with the direction the school had taken, went on to found New Roads School in Santa Monica, California. Although the founders, and many of the school's original students, came from the former St. Augustine By-the-Sea Episcopal Day School in Santa Monica, Crossroads School has always been a secular institution. Crossroads started with three rooms in a Baptist church offering grades seven and eight, and an initial enrollment of just over 30 students.[1]

[edit] Curriculum and philosophy

Human Development is a fundamental part of the Crossroads curriculum, holding equal weight with conventional departments such as Math and History. It is meant to teach students maturity, tolerance, and confidence, important aspects of life that are often neglected in a public school education. Advanced Placement (AP) classes were recently excluded from the curriculum, as the faculty felt the required topics for certain AP classes were too narrow, and taught students to merely pass a test rather than truly understand the subject. Students address teachers by their first names. Some question this untraditional approach, but many at Crossroads insist that this practice fosters friendship and trust between the authority figure and the pupil. Classrooms also have names, not numbers, and are dedicated to important figures in history: Einstein, Mead, Frost, Chavez, and Neruda are examples.

[edit] Summer at Crossroads

The school provides academic programs for all grades, which are open to the public and allow students to engage with the school during summer. Programs range from sports and swimming to chemistry and Spanish. Unaffiliated organizations, such as Kids on Stage and Planet Bravo, also provide programs. The 6-12 programs are managed as skill development courses, and the K-5 programs divided into morning and afternoon sessions, allowing a transition in between to summer school to summer camp. Students can attend either session.

[edit] In the media

The 2004 book Hollywood Interrupted by Andrew Breitbart and Mark Ebner (ISBN 0-471-45051-0), dedicated a large section to Crossroads; it depicted the school (and the celebrities who send their children there) in a negative light. The article focused mainly on a handful of high-profile parents and "drug problems" stemming from the 1980s.[1] The school was also featured in a May 2005 issue of Vanity Fair; like Breitbart's book, it also focused on the school's celebrity clientele.[1]

[edit] Notable alumni

[edit] Crossroads Fight Song

The Crossroads Fight Song, "Burn Up the Road," was selected to be the school's official fight song after an open contest in the fall of 2007. It was written by student Jeremy Fassler, in collaboration with composer Scott Hiltzik, and premiered at the Crossroads Sports Extravaganza on January 11th, 2008.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l DiGiacomo, Frank. "School for Cool", Vanity Fair, 1 March 2005. Retrieved on 2008-02-15. 

[edit] External links