Duke School
Preschool in Durham, NC 27705
Duke School was established in 1947 as a lab school for the benefit of students in the departments of psychology and education at Duke University.
It became independent of Duke in 1984 when a group of parents made it a nonprofit organization with the support and assistance of Terry Sanford, then president of Duke and the previous governor of North Carolina.
Duke School teaches preschool through 8th grade.
We are committed to engaging in the continuing public dialogue to improve education for all young people.
Duke School was one of only a handful of schools around the country to be featured in the 1999 HBO production Goodnight Moon and Other Sleepytime Tales. Duke School was also featured in the PBS series “Raising Young Children” and was chosen by the state of North Carolina as a model preschool.
Duke School today is nationally renowned.
It serves as a leading educational institution both within the Triangle and wider educational community; its teaching methods continue as a model for both public and other independent schools, and its unique child-centered, project-based integrated curriculum continues to adapt to serve a variety of learning styles.
The school has made a particular contribution to the Durham community by producing outstanding students who are independent learners, thinkers, and decision makers helping to create a better future both for Durham and communities beyond Durham.
The school has also helped raise consciousness about education in the Durham community and provided the expertise of its extraordinary teachers for other local schools.
With its outstanding faculty and staff, Duke School continues to move forward in the new millennium.
- Child Ages:
- 3 years - 14 years
- Licenses & Accreditations:
- North Carolina Division of Child Development and Early Education
- Preschool:
- Yes
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Our goal was to have one school, on one campus, where curriculum seamlessly connects from grade to grade and stage to stage, and philosophy and practice benefit hugely from interaction among teachers, parents, and students.
We are proud to have invested in the best and the brightest in school design as we’ve charted this course. We enlisted the help of an outstanding team to help design and build our new school. Fielding Nair Architects, our primary design consultants, coordinated with local architectural firm DTW and landscape architects Coulter, Jewel and Thames. Fielding Nair, world renowned at designing project-based, child-centered environments, was shocked upon introduction to Duke Schoolfirst, in a good way, at the incredible caliber of our program but equally so at the degree to which our facilities did not measure up to program standards.
Our architects fully believed, and we agree, that our facilities should themselves become an extension of our program philosophy that our school can be a place that fosters a sense of discovery within and beyond the classroom and accommodates the various ways children explore their worlds as individuals and in groups. Well-lit open areas connect with niches for study and social interaction. Spaces were designed and scaled for project-based learning, unlike the traditional same-sized classrooms that are counter to interdisciplinary, exploratory, and collaborative learning. Learning takes place indoors and outdoors; the school itself becomes the living textbook, and our children are educated in a place living its values instead of preaching them. Even the buildings themselves reflect those valuesthey don’t stand as imposing monuments to self-aggrandizement. They are child-appropriate, low dwelling communities that intertwine with one another and are integrated with the land on which they sit, to welcome parents, teachers and, most importantly, children into a community of learning and respect.
The buildings were deliberately and carefully designed to harmonize with the Duke School program and philosophy. They were also structured to accommodate our growing technology needs surrounding curriculum and administrative functions. We were committed to following sustainability and green building best practices; what better way to walk our philosophical talk than to let our buildings themselves stand as a testament to our environmental principles.
