Charleston Collegiate School’s mission is to inspire students to become passionate, lifelong learners by empowering them with knowledge, creativity, curiosity, and confidence to mindfully embrace the opportunities of tomorrow.

Charleston Collegiate School's mission guides decision-making, allocation of resources, and the building of community. Our educational philosophy rests on our Four Pillars of Education: Project-based Learning, Creativity and the Arts, Leadership through Outdoor Education, and Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship. Our philosophy for educating well-rounded citizens is to place the students in the center of the learning experience as we prepare them for successfully facing tomorrow's opportunities.

Curriculum and Academics Guide

THE FOUR PILLARS OF A CCS EDUCATION

PROJECT-BASED LEARNING

Learning through Projects

Learning through Projects

On a normal day at Charleston Collegiate School, students explore real-world problems and challenges using creative thinking, non-routine problem-solving skills, and teamwork.

From a second grade student writing a business proposal for selling garden produce at the local farmers' market to a sophomore student tackling the "essential question" of how a Langston Hughes poem connects to his or her own life and perspective of the world.

Previous project highlights:

building a chess set based on events and characters from World War II (11th grade)
building and cultivating a greenhouse out of upcycled materials (9th grade)
writing a poetry book based on Greek mythology and constellations (6th grade)
creating a "world tour" plan for a fictional band, complete with destination coordinates, currency conversions, and historical venues (5th grade)
sewing cell representations (4th grade)
researching chicken care, writing a grant for chickens and a coup, and raising chickens (3rd grade)
researching diaper need, diaper brands, and collecting diaper donations (2nd grade)

Our students are creating a deeper and more meaningful understanding of the subject matter and the world around them.

FINANCIAL LITERACY AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

Charleston Collegiate prepares students to enter the "real world" with an entrepreneurial spirit of problem-solving, creating solutions to problems in all areas of life.

Third graders are calculating expense sheets for their classroom pet and brainstorming how to create income to pay those fees. Sixth grade math students run a bakery and sell their products as a way to practice fractions. In Upper School, our business courses teach students the facts they need to understand how to create, analyze, market, present, and budget for a business while exposing them to the collaborative environment and corporate structure of life outside our campus.

Knowing that they can take the content from their classroom directly to their everyday lives piques our students' interest in every other area of study - and that spark is at the heart of success.

LEADERSHIP THROUGH OUTDOOR EDUCATION

Outdoor Leadership

Outdoor Leadership

The beautiful 30-acre campus includes an Outdoor Leadership and Education Center with nature trails, a kayak program, a tidal swamp with dock, plus low ropes and high ropes courses with team-building elements that are unique to our campus and curriculum.

The kayaking component allows students in 4th grade and beyond to study a history and science-based curriculum focusing on South Carolina's rich history and its marsh, river, and harbor ecology.

Students in Preschool play "I Spy" around campus, identifying the different types of trees and birds. Third grade students observe the school's chickens, reporting their findings and teaching other classes about the chickens' roles in the ecosystem. Ninth graders are often seen on the low ropes elements working on their communication skills in their leadership course. Twelfth graders are learning survival skills and developing unique leadership skills that are grown through challenges.

The Outdoor Education program provides students with hands-on opportunities to learn risk management concepts, effective communication skills, group dynamics, and survival skills in an outdoor classroom setting. These experiences break down barriers and social cliques, freeing students from any sense of entitlement that can be associated with an educations at CCS.

CREATIVITY AND THE ARTS

Fine Arts Program

Fine Arts Program

Our Fine Arts Program ties all of our academic courses together using the ‘cross-curricular learning’ approach to deepen comprehension.

Students are able to write a script and act out the water cycle in science class, create an artistic representation of a character from the novel they are studying in English class, create artwork based on the time period being studied in history, and film their own commercials for selling the app they created in S.T.E.M. class. Starting in second grade, students write, direct, and act in their own plays.

As they grow and focus their appreciation and understanding of the arts, they progress into Upper School students using our state-of-the-art filmmaking and editing equipment, producing videos for international corporations or competing in photography competitions around the country.

Our Fine Arts Department’s mission is to give our students a creative outlet as well as a competitive edge in today’s world.

In This Section

MISSION