Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School Home

The mission of WHEELS is to collaborate with families to prepare each pre-K through twelfth-grade student academically, emotionally, intellectually, and socially to succeed in a post-secondary institution of their choice and beyond. 

“Crew” comes from the phrase, “We are crew, not passengers,” and means that we are active learners and agents of change within and beyond our school community. The idea of Crew embodies both who we are as individuals, who we are as a collective, and how we use our individual skills and talents to contribute to the collective success of our school community and beyond. Crew is the name for our advisory time for students in PreK-12, but it represents this larger ethos.

 

We are a member school of the NYC Outward Bound Schools NetworkOpens in a new browser tab, a network of 14 schools across the city that remain committed to student-centered learning and equitable outcomes for all. From NYC Outward Bound, we embrace the ethos of Kurt Hahn, the founder of Outward Bound: “There is more in us than we know.  If we could be made to see it, perhaps for the rest of our lives we will be unwilling to settle for less.”

 

As part of NYC Outward Bound Schools, we implement the EL Education model, which includes how we do school culture, curriculum, instruction, assessment, leadership, as well as our English literacy curriculum for K-8. The fundamental idea of EL is a focus on character and high-quality work along with mastery of knowledge and skillsOpens in a new browser tab, and these three “dimensions” of student achievement permeate throughout our school.