EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING
At The Field School of Hvar, our island is the classroom.
Education is often framed as a trade-off between skills and well-being: recess versus readiness. At The Field School of Hvar, we believe that children learn best when all of their capabilities are activated. For many children, that is a setting which is hands-on, in nature, and largely child-led.
Learning starts with direct academic instruction in groups of three or less. This tutorial format allows students and teachers to move quickly through material, nurturing each learner’s personal aptitudes. Instead of worksheets, our students practice what they know in the real world: through service, outdoor challenges, and everyday tasks. Writing, sketching, and reading complete the cycle, providing a space for learners to internalize and connect ideas.
In the Mediterranean, every herb has a story. Every rock has lived a hundred lives. By approaching the world as a classroom, our students unlock a lifetime appreciation for the wonderous intellectual content of life itself, from a walk in the woods to a meal shared with friends.
Academics
Tutorial
Interspersed throughout the day, academic tutorials in small groups provide the critical context for deep inquiry, and ensure that students have superb fundamentals in literacy, math, history, and the sciences.
The Field School of Hvar takes a classical liberal arts approach to formal learning. Children read primary texts from Aristotle to Alexievich to build strong habits of mind. A notebook is a constant companion, as students digest concepts and experiences through writing, sketching, and calculations. Our tutorial format allows children to learn in a variety of ways - visual, conceptual, or procedural - and at different speeds and depth.
The curriculum broadly follows a four-year arc, which begins again at ages two, six, ten, and fourteen.
Math Numbers, shapes, data, and logic. The four year sequence moves through these themes in an age-appropriate fashion, from basic number sense and arithmetic, through algebra and geometry, and onto calculus, statistics, data science, and computer science. All students are expected to attain mastery in foundational math and, at a minimum, familiarity with its advanced and applied branches.
Science Biology, chemistry, earth science, and physics. The science curriculum bridges the math curriculum with experiential practica, such as gardening, natural dyes, rock climbing, and sailing. For students with an affinity for science, this study will culminate in secondary school with student-led, multi-year research projects related to biology, carbon sequestration, and conservation. Mentored by professional researchers, practitioners, and real world stakeholders, young engineers and scientists develop tangible portfolio projects and pre-professional skills (see Capstone below).
History Ancient, Medieval, Modern, Contemporary. In the story of humankind, sequence matters. Students explore history chronologically, amplified by the millennia of tradition, legend, and material culture which surround them on Hvar and in the Mediterranean. Secondary students with a propensity for the social sciences can immerse in economics, policy, finance, and statecraft through simulations and projects (Model UN, debate, student publications), as well as Capstone projects in climate policy research and advocacy.
Foreign Languages The Field School of Hvar is taught in English. Conversational Croatian will be required to empower cross-cultural friendships and because its syntax offers a valuable contrast to English. Tutors in French, German, Italian and other languages can be found within the island community.
Literature &
the Arts
The glue for our interdisciplinary approach, The Field School’s program in culture follows the same sequence as our history curriculum, while amplifying scientific exploration of craft and the outdoors. For example, reading The Odyssey knits together the study of the ancient world with a kayaking expedition to research coastal ecosystems.
Theater Students stage frequent plays: younger children perform seasonal pageants and older students put on works of Shakespeare. Pre-teens and adolescents have ample agency to analyze, direct, stage, and perform their own productions - an invitation to leadership and self-expression which they relish.
Music All children sing in school celebrations and daily rituals. Students encounter the fundamentals of music theory through science and math, and encounter the progression of Western music through history class and listening to works during quiet moments such as craft period. Private tutors for instruments, composition, and dance can be found on the island.
Visual Art Sketching and diagramming are a daily practice within our science program. Other crafts, such as weaving, pigments, candle-making, and ceramics, are expressed in our artisanship and shared work program.
Library An inviting library of beautifully illustrated children’s books, novels, poetry, and plays for children provides an essential space for pleasure and discovery.
Outdoor Education
Encircled by the Dinaric Alps and the purest beaches in the Mediterranean, Hvar is a an ideal landscape for young people to cultivate and deepen a reciprocal relationship with the natural world.
Sailing, rock climbing, kayaking, hiking, and camping. Our students fall in love with pastimes that strengthen every aspect of their physical and mental well-being long after schooldays are behind them.
We begin with skills to feel at home on the sea and in the wild. Our youngest students splash on beaches and play in olive groves. Children as young as four paddle in our mini-kayaks and practice camping in tents. From age seven onward, students learn to sail and hike like pros, and our older teens venture forth on multi-day capstone boating and mountaineering trips through the Dalmatian archipelago or across the rugged peaks of Albania and Bosnia.
Knowledge in action. The challenges and controlled risks of outdoor exploration call our students to put tutorial learning into practice. Students catch, identify, and clean fish based on their knowledge of marine biology. They use physics to improve their sailing technique. And the trail is a living classroom, where students build intimate knowledge of native ecosystems, traces of previous civilizations, weather patterns, and more.
Every fifth week will consist of a multi-day outdoor adventure, often with overnight camping.
Shared Work & Artisanship
Gardening and preparing food. Learning how things work and how to fix them. Making useful, beautiful objects from natural materials. With the right mentorship, practical life is an unmatched classroom for honing the intellect and cultivating the art of living well.
Through our Shared Work Program, all students, parents, and faculty participate in the communal responsibility of care necessary to sustain the school and to keep us warm, nourished, clean, and safe.
Food is the beginning. Both immediate and dazzlingly complex, food ties us to layers of natural and human systems. In four year cycles, students progress from regenerative gardening, to harvest and preservation, to meal preparation, and finally to food as a product that is bought and sold.
Every object is an invitation. Textiles, furniture, dishes, soap, buildings, and transportation. Every artifact around us is an implicit expression of our collective values and culture. Our students reinvent conventional solutions from the ground up through crafts such as wild ceramics, natural dye, candlemaking, and carpentry - all packed with academic content.
The shared work of care. What does it mean to take care of a place? For The Field School of Hvar, care is not a chore to be outsourced to others or foisted upon those who have no choice. It is a common invocation that unites us to meet our most primal needs. Shared work and artisanship is a block of every regular school day. Parents contribute to shared work for a few hours each week.
Service Learning
Regenerative climate action is the thematic throughline for education and impact at The Field School of Hvar.
Profound ecological change has arrived and will shape our children’s lives in ways we cannot predict. Everything students do at Field— every lesson, every debate, every sketch, hike, or song — is meant to help them discover their agency in this era so that they can confront an uncertain future with reasoned hope and resilience.
Our emphasis is in the optimism of regenerative design - solutions to climate change which sequester carbon, enhance biodiversity, and advance human thriving. Regeneration aims to reverse the damages of history for a better, and not merely inhabitable, world.
Service is both a dedicated activity within this vision and a thread in many other aspects of the curriculum: a language class that includes weekly conversation at the nursing home; citizen science to save a neighbor’s orchard from disease; policy research to accelerate green energy adoption.
Parents are valued partners in modelling charity and stewardship.
Capstone Older teens inspire our entire community by embarking upon projects which define their secondary school career and prepare them to enter adulthood. Capstones usually begin with a purpose-testing series of apprenticeships, then progress to student-led research, social entrepreneurship, or policy work. With mentorship and resources, youth are capable of great things. We expect no less.
