The Crest of the Learning Curve

The Scholars Program elevates students with a thirst for knowledge. It’s designed for high-flyers who want to go higher while motivating participating faculty to teach in ways that go beyond the classroom model and into “The Lyceum.” 

It’s Wednesday morning…early. Early enough for school to not have started. Early enough for it to still be dark on this November morning. However, it’s not early when you’re in CM’s elite academic offering, the Scholars Program. 

In the performance studio in the Yawkey Center, Dr. Vin Bradley is explaining to a dozen or so eighth and ninth graders the correlation or unrelatedness between presidential elections and the performance of presidents. It’s 7:30 a.m. Bradley is asking his students to evaluate the evidence based on presidents’ actions, their ability to change the Office of the President or to pass or not pass laws etc. Through surveys and primary sources, CM’s History Chair is showing the young scholars how to arrive at the truth, even though in history information is always fluid and open to change. Part of the Scholars Program asks students for academic papers on certain topics and in doing so conduct research that must be referenced. Bradley’s presentation Nail Bitters or Landslides challenges students to understand the resources at their disposal, how to use them, how to dissect primary source information and how to ask good questions. Heady stuff when you think about the 13- to 15-year-olds taking all this in. But that’s the Scholars Program in a nutshell: taking the best and brightest and stretching their intellectual curiosity as well as their academic proficiency.

On the surface, it would be easy to assume that the Scholars Program is an extension of the classroom. Far from it. Think of the Aristotelian model, where active engagement is encouraged through dialogue and asking questions; critical thinking through analysis and discussion; cooperative research or group learning; and the logical formation of an argument. “It’s a very driven group of kids who want to be there and do the work,” says Latin teacher and Director of the Scholars Program Brian Clark. English teacher, Leslye Porter notes there is more to these students than simply brain power. “They’re more of a fighter. The ones who tend to succeed also have sports or co-curriculars just like every other student, but the difference is they battle it all. They can pivot, juggle and compartmentalize and get everything done. These are the kind of kids who don’t readily drop out of anything.”


Porter along with Bradley are two of the original members of the program which began in 2016. Its aim was to give certain students who needed more rigor exactly that. “We had a hunger for preparing students for college, so they could go in on the first day and hit the ground running,” explains Porter. Clark is now in his fifth year as director and credits the program’s “good bones” which have allowed him to make certain tweaks that give his scholars more choice in what they write about and to have more intellectual discussion as opposed to listening to a teacher stand and deliver. “We believe in embracing quality and depth over breadth,” he says. Some of what Clark and Porter are trying to capture when characterizing a prototypical Scholars student could be summed up in another presentation given by math teacher Erin Tucker. Tucker’s morning talk Is Grit the Goal? begs the attending 27 sophomores and juniors to explore this claim by unearthing the hidden paradoxes contained within this statement while mining for other underlying truths. Is there a correct answer? Tucker’s open-ended questions prompt the boys to raise their hands, ask more questions that lead to other hands going up to agree or disagree and so it goes. The big question, however, is whether grit is the determinator for success and whether this is what these boys all share in common.  

Overall, the program is divided into three groups: eighth and ninth graders, tenth and eleventh graders, and finally seniors, who meet separately from the other two groups, once a month, and who have a year-long capstone project on top of the actual seminars and associated work. The groups are divided in this way simply from pedagogical design and not because the content being taught is any different. It is a two-semester format. The first semester is the faculty-led seminars and bi-weekly essays. The second is a research project that will be presented by the author at a peer review or colloquium. “Here at CM, we’re big on speech and debate and those kinds of presentation skills,” notes Clark. “I view the kids at their best when they’re diving in and finding the knowledge themselves.” Oftentimes, the research project goes onto become a focal point for what Scholars will eventually study at college.

Graham Horowitz ‘25 joined the program as a sophomore. “When I was offered a spot, I was hesitant because Scholars was not an insignificant amount of work on top of what I was already doing in regular class. But I wanted the challenge.” For many Scholars, the program offers something else: the chance to see the people who teach them day in, and day out reveal a different side through their presentations. “I wanted a space where I could hear teachers like Dr. Corso speak on the Lord of the Rings and Ms. Porter when she talked about Quiet Quitting and the psychology behind it,” says Horowitz. “The chance to hear this [Quiet Quitting] and then write an essay that went deeper was an opportunity I wanted to be a part of.” To hear from educators not as teachers but as learned people is for some the most potent aspect about the Scholars experience. These teachers don’t just prompt the age-old question of “Who am I?” but can tease out a more relevant and contemporary ask of “What do I want to be?” In Horowitz’s case, Porter’s presentation has made him examine his academic path. “It’s the one presentation that stuck out and really took root,” he says. “It introduced me to the field of psychology and led me to reflect on my own experiences when, post COVID, I found myself in my own version of quiet quitting.” Horowitz thankfully didn’t quit. Instead, he has received an acceptance to Duke University in the fall to study psychology. 


For students invited to join this group, Scholars not only comes with a number of upsides, but as with real life, there are risks and doubts. Namely, “Can I handle the volume and level of rigor required to pass?” Clark notes that the students who are invited have already gone under an informal vetting process with faculty colleagues reporting to him on who in their classes has what it takes. “It is fun for me,” says Clark. “I keep eyes on certain people and continue to encourage them, especially in my subject, Latin, because you see promise.” And for anyone in Scholars, making the cut has as much to do with ability as it has resiliency. “They’re here at 7:30 in the morning,” he adds. “If you can still shine that early with less sleep, you’re going to be impressive.” The Scholars Program receives a grade. It goes on students’ transcripts so that colleges can see it and it receives the same honors, and weighted grade bump as an AP course. But the rigor is there for a reason, and it is to challenge those who are capable and who thrive in elevated states of pressure and reward. Despite this, the program is very popular and has grown to the point where its size keeps the intimacy with which it was designed while accommodating the increase in demand.

As Dr. Bradley stated in his early morning session that for source information to be true, it must be supported by evidence. This type of research rigor and verification and cross-referencing of information are the academic tools that help the Scholars students level-up their academic skill sets which becomes evident in their regular, school-day classes. “My AP Latin students, mostly seniors, have analytical essays to write on the content that we work on and those in Scholars really do stand out,” notes Clark. “Their arguments flow. They’re able to churn out material at a higher level, and their level of confidence is very apparent.” To eighth grader Andrew Heavey’s way of thinking, Scholars has given him a leg up over fellow students not in the program. He’s seen the change in the type of student he’s become. “I used to do my work, let the teacher see my work and then give me a grade,” says Heavey. “Now I want to share what I think. The Scholars Program is a lot different than just handing in your assignment and getting the grade. But when you discuss it as a group, the way we do, you learn what everyone’s thinking. It’s also taught me to be respectful of other people’s opinions because you can’t completely shut someone down who thinks differently. You have to make an argument.”

The honing of the brightest in this manner seems to be unique to CM’s approach to teaching. And in part, much of it is thanks to teachers taking on an additional component to their daily duties. Alongside Clark and Porter is a handful of teachers who are in the core group of Scholars faculty. They present as well as grade papers. Then there is another cadre of teachers who take it upon themselves to help by attending presentations and facilitate group discussions. And for all this effort, the outcomes beyond improved academic ability, a broadening of the mind, and a new perspective from students regarding their teachers, there is the metric that shows the program’s value beyond CM. Of the seniors who were in the Scholars Program over the last three years, their matriculation speaks volumes: Harvard (2); Boston College (6); University of Miami (2); Providence College (3); Vanderbilt; Cornell; Boston University; Villanova; UVA; Purdue; McGill; Duke as well as many other top flight institutions.

For Porter, today’s Scholars students are no different to those she taught when the program first began. “I believe that certain students still want extra work and still want to work hard. It’s very popular in education right now to say students have short attention spans and they don’t want to do the work, but what I see is that they still gain great satisfaction from a challenge such as this.” And contrary to the thinking that doing “extra” is in some way taxing, Clark goes as far as to say, “Even though you’re up early in the morning, it’s so energizing to see the kids having a heated debate. It reminds me, ‘Wow, this is what I signed up for. I signed up to throw different crazy ideas at these students and see what they can make of it. I signed up to be around people who want to do the work, who want to do the reading, who come prepared, who are choosing to use their free time to broaden the way they think.’ Scholars is something that really sets us apart from our peer schools, and it sets the boys apart too as they go on throughout the rest of the world having had this purely unique academic experience.”