Academics
Signature Programs
Ninth-Grade Curriculum
The Ninth-Grade Experience
From the moment ninth graders arrive to the Ransom Campus, they are welcomed and supported. The ninth-grade curriculum at Ransom Everglades is designed to ease the transition to high school, and it provides first-year upper schoolers a range of resources, services and experiences just for them. Ninth graders are surrounded by adults who are concerned about their academic, social and physical development, and they are provided special opportunities to grow and learn together.
Ninth graders benefit from the advisory program and have access to two dedicated class deans. Every first year gets out on Biscayne Bay as part of the school's physical education requirement; they learn to sail, canoe, paddleboard and navigate with a compass. In the winter, ninth graders travel together to the Everglades, where they spend five days and four nights, camping, bonding and exploring. This year is truly an exciting time at Ransom Everglades.
Albert Adatto, former Dean of the Ninth Grade
"The transition to the upper school, as exciting as it is, also holds its challenges. Classes are more rigorous, higher critical and analytical thinking levels are expected, and students must have more ownership and responsibility in their learning ... We are here to help guide your children through this experience."
RE Explores
Components
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Freshman Advisory Program
All freshmen are placed with faculty advisors who remain with them throughout their high school journey. Advisory meetings take place daily; during the freshman year, those meetings are focused on social and emotional wellness, study skills and citizenship activities informed by the High Resolves program. -
Dean of the Freshman Class
Faculty member Karen Thompson is available to help freshmen with questions about their course load, classes, grades, course selection or other matters. -
Freshman Curriculum
The freshman curriculum includes a year-long physical education course in bay studies, which exposes ninth graders to sailing, paddling, water safety and navigating with a compass. Freshmen also take World Civilizations, Forms of Literature and biology, and they participate in an active advisory program. -
Outward Bound Program
For more than 30 years, freshmen at Ransom Everglades have journeyed into the Ten Thousand Islands in the Everglades for a five-day, four-night adventure that helps them bond as a class while learning useful life skills. Students leave their smartphones behind, traveling by canoe, cooking their own meals and spending nights in tents. They forever remember this special time as a class. -
Health Information Project (HIP)
Trained juniors and seniors meet with freshmen monthly to discuss issues related to health and wellness. The sessions, coordinated by the Health Information Project (HIP), are designed to promote open, frank discussion about important health issues. HIP, a Miami-based health education non-profit organization, was created in 2009 as both a substitute for and complement to the traditional health education curriculum in public and private high schools. The HIP model is preventive, not reactive. HIP, which has partnered with more than 85 schools across the state of Florida, has taught over 260,000 students since its founding.
Recent News
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Ninth graders return from Everglades trips with Outward Bound
Read MoreRE's ninth graders have completed their annual treks to the Everglades, the five-day, four-night adventures with Outward Bound that are a 40-year tradition at RE. Departing in three waves, ninth graders traveled in January to the Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge, where they set off from different locations in small groups, tasked with finding their way back to base camp. They used compasses and maps to navigate canoes through mangrove tunnels, stormy weather and high winds. RE physical education teacher Tim McAllister oversaw the adventures, and ensured that students prepared during their PE classes.
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Ninth graders enjoy annual Everglades Experience
RE's ninth graders have returned from five-day, four-night treks through the Ten Thousand Islands as part of the annual Everglades Experience. Departing in four waves from January to early March of 2023, the students paddled canoes through the Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge, relying on compasses and peers traveling with them to find their way from various locations to base camp. They faced difficult paddles through mangrove tunnels, spent nights sleeping on "boarded-up" canoes, endured rain and wind, and enjoyed opportunities to watch the sun rise. Photo GalleryRead More -
Juniors and seniors launch the Health Information Project
More than four dozen juniors and seniors visited classrooms of ninth-grade students on Oct. 20 to share the first unit of an extensive health and wellness curriculum that covers topics ranging from anxiety to substance use. The students wore white T-shirts emblazoned with HIP – Health Information Project – as they launched the peer-to-peer program, in its seventh year at Ransom Everglades.Read More -
Freshmen travel in four waves to Ten Thousand Islands
After a one-year pause because of the pandemic, freshmen returned to the Ten Thousand Islands in the Everglades this winter, resuming the experiential learning tradition at Ransom Everglades that dates more than 30 years. In deference to COVID-19, freshmen traveled in four waves instead of two and each student was required to submit to a rapid COVID-19 test the morning of departure.Read More
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Spoken-word poets tutor RE's freshmen
Los Angeles-based spoken-word poets Giddy Perez and Kane Smego led dynamic virtual masterclasses in composition and analysis for Ransom Everglades freshmen from November 1-5. Students worked closely with Perez and Smego to explore different forms of metaphoric thinking and craft original poems, which were shared in small and large groups. The week-long poetry immersion with Perez and Smego, in its sixth year at RE, is designed to help freshmen express difficult emotions through poetry and grow more comfortable speaking in front of their peers.Read More -
Student-led health program begins
Ransom Everglades juniors and seniors met with freshmen in small groups during the mid-day break on October 22, launching a series of student-led health-and-wellness sessions that make up the Health Information Project (HIP) program. In its sixth year at Ransom Everglades, the program equips junior and senior students to lead frank discussions with ninth graders while providing accurate and important information about drugs, alcohol, anxiety and other matters related to health and wellness.Read More -
Poets in Residence to RE students: Write!
Ransom Everglades' longtime Poets in Residence, Kane Smego and Giddy Perez, offered their usual blend of spoken-word instruction, entertainment and encouragement during a number of poetry workshops during the week of April 20. They addressed all upper school students at a virtual assembly, visited classes and held an all-school after-school poetry workshop.Read More -
Class of 2023 completes trip to Everglades
The Class of 2023 traveled to the Everglades in two waves in January, keeping alive a 30-plus-year-old tradition and surviving what is an annual rite of passage for freshmen at Ransom Everglades. The first group of freshmen traveled through the Ten Thousand Islands on Jan. 13-17 and enjoyed balmy, sunny South Florida weather. The second wave (Jan. 21-25) was met with unseasonably cold weather and high winds upon arrival, but pleasant conditions thereafter.Read More
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Middle School
2045 South Bayshore Drive, Coconut Grove, FL 33133Phone: 305 250 6850
Upper School
3575 Main Highway, Coconut Grove, FL 33133Phone: 305 460 8800
Founded in 1903, Ransom Everglades School is a coeducational, college preparatory day school for grades 6 - 12 located on two campuses in Coconut Grove, Florida. Ransom Everglades School produces graduates who "believe that they are in the world not so much for what they can get out of it as for what they can put into it." The school provides rigorous college preparation that promotes the student's sense of identity, community, personal integrity and values for a productive and satisfying life, and prepares the student to lead and to contribute to society.