This is the question we are often asked, and one of the ones we most love answering. Knox students leave knowing who they are and how they learn, at an age when both are still taking shape. That turns out to matter more than where they land.
Portrait of a Knox Graduate
A Knox graduate can tell you how they learn best, what they need in order to work at their highest level, and what to ask for when they are challenged or uncertain. They can hold and defend a position, explain their thinking clearly, and change their mind in the face of better evidence. They are comfortable being the person in the room who does not understand yet, which is the precondition for learning anything hard. And they have spent several years in a school where the purpose was to find things out for themselves, with adults working alongside them.
We work closely with every learner so that they leave with the one thing that travels everywhere: a clear sense of who they are.
How that happens
We believe that our learners develop and grow through the combination of a peer group where being deeply interested in something is ordinary, years with teachers who know a student well enough to say out loud what they are seeing, and enough genuine challenge that work and effort become a familiar part of learning.
Students learn about themselves every time we share a noticing.
You often think out loud. You may need to talk it through before you write.
I notice you go quiet when you are thinking deeply, not when you are lost.
A child who hears that often enough stops guessing about themselves and starts knowing exactly what they need. That is the habit that carries them far beyond Knox.
The schools they go on to
Knox graduates have gone on to high school at a combination of Santa Barbara’s public schools and independent and boarding schools here and elsewhere in the state and country.
Public — Dos Pueblos High School · San Marcos High School · Santa Barbara High School
Independent and parochial — Cate School · Dunn · Laguna Blanca · Bishop Garcia Diego · Midland
College — UCLA · Northeastern · Purdue · Bates College
Over the past decade a number of our graduates have also gone into the Santa Barbara public school academies, including the Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy and AAPLE at San Marcos High School.
We do not publish placement rates. With a graduating class this size, a percentage would tell you more about one year than about the school. What we will say is that our graduates have tended to do well wherever they land, and they are usually clear about why. They learned to advocate for themselves, to ask the right questions, and to work well both with other people and on their own.
After high school
We’ve been hearing from them these past few years, and they tell us about the university course that opened up potential they never knew they had, the major no one predicted, and the work and passions they have gone on to pursue. The through line is not a particular school’s name so much as the fact that they kept learning with purpose, long after anyone was assigning it.
What a small school can offer is time and connection. Our classrooms loop and past teachers continue to check in, so the same teachers know your child for more than a single year — and a child known that well for that long leaves Knox knowing themselves. So far, that has carried Knox graduates a long way.
In their own words
— Knox graduate
“I will never forget my visit day at Knox, and what you said to me. You said, ‘Not what you see every day, hmm?’ with such an amazing look in your eye. That was the moment I realized that Knox was the perfect fit.”
— Knox graduate
“I learned so much about project-based learning and life lessons at Knox. I firmly believe that everything I acquired there will help me progress through high school and beyond.”
— Knox graduate
“I know I’ve made life-long friends at Knox. We’ve all graduated and are going to high school in different states, and we keep in regular contact and meet up, and it always feels as if no time has passed at all.”
This is where it leads. Come see where it starts.
A morning in a Knox classroom is the shortest route to understanding how an eight-year-old becomes a confident and self-possessed fourteen-year-old.
Stories from inside the school
A window into daily school life. What our students are working on, musings about the joys of teaching our learners, and exciting happenings within the school and community.
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