Lakeside School - Global Service Learning

Global Service Learning

Established in the summer of 2005, the school's Global Service Learning Program aims at helping students gain a broader view of the world while helping the underprivileged around the world. In 2005, students visited India, Peru, and China; in the summer of 2006 students travelled to Peru, China, Morocco, and the Dominican Republic. In the summer of 2007, 86 Upper School students traveled to Peru, China, Morocco, India, and the Dominican Republic. This list grew to include Senegal as an option for the 2009 summer trips and Ecuador for the 2013 summer trips. The Middle School opened its first Global Service Learning Program for seventh graders with trips to the Makah Indian Reservation on Neah Bay in the summer of 2006; it has sent an eighth grade trip to Costa Rica every summer since 2007. It also began a trip for sixth graders to Broetje Orchards in the summer of 2010.

The Global Service Learning Program is one piece of a broad change in curriculum and administrative policies aimed at increasing diversity . The school has focused on, in recent years, its role as an elite prep school and its desire for diverse viewpoints and backgrounds of its curriculum, faculty, and students.

Lakeside students have the opportunity to study abroad during their junior year of high school through schools called School Year Abroad, the Mountain School, the Rocky Mountain Semester, the Maine Coast Semester, and CityTerm. Students may apply in the winter of their sophomore year to spend part of their junior year at one of these schools.

Lakeside has a long tradition in engaging students in global affairs. In 1984, Lakeside students competed against students at Moscow School #20 in a chess match relayed by Telex. The event was one of the first of its kind. A yearly exchange program with Moscow School #20 began in 1986, the first such regular American-Soviet school exchange in the country. Since 1984, the schools have been sister schools.