CROSSROADS SCHOOL (SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA)

:''For other schools of the same name, see Crossroads School
'Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences' is a private K-12 school in Santa Monica, California.
The school was founded in 1971 by Dr. Paul Cummins (an educator) and Dr. Rhoda Makoff (a biochemist) as an effort in progressive private education. Dr. Cummins, displeased with the direction that the school took, went on to found New Roads School in Santa Monica, California. Although the founders, and many of the school's original students, came from the former St. Augustine By-the-Sea Episcopal Day School in Santa Monica, Crossroads School has always been a secular institution. The school is known for its artistic curricula such as music and film, as well as its upper school newspaper, ''Crossfire]]'', consistently ranked among the top 20 high school newspapers in the country. Crossroads' academic curriculum is considered competitive with those of America's top private schools. Admissions into Crossroads School is highly selective.
Human Development is a fundamental part of the Crossroads curriculum, holding equal weight with conventional departments such as Math and History. It is meant to teach students maturity, tolerance, and confidence, important aspects of life that are often neglected in a public school education. Advanced Placement (AP) classes were recently excluded from the curriculum, as the faculty felt the required topics for certain AP classes were too narrow, and taught students to merely pass a test rather than truly understand the subject. Students address teachers by their first names. Some question this untraditional approach, but many at Crossroads insist that this practice fosters friendship and trust between the authority figure and the pupil. Classrooms also have names, not numbers, and are dedicated to important figures in history: Einstein, Mead, Frost, Chavez, and Neruda are examples.
The 2004 book ''Hollywood Interrupted'' by Andrew Breitbart and Mark Ebner (ISBN 0-471-45051-0), dedicated a large section to Crossroads; it depicted the school (and the celebrities who send their children there) in a negative light. The article focused mainly on a handful of high-profile parents and "drug problems" stemming from the 1980s. The school was also featured in a May 2005 issue of Vanity Fair; like Breitbart's book, it also focused on the school's celebrity clientele.
The school was also mentioned in The New York Post's Page Six. The article says: "March 8, 2007 -- CROSSROADS School in Santa Monica - where Hollywood's elite send their kids - has ruffled the feathers of its A-list parents. Sources told Page Six a teacher at the self-proclaimed "progressive" K-12 school was fired recently when he was caught having an affair with one of his female students in the senior class. "This is not the first time this has happened," said our tipster. Crossroads, which had no comment, claims Jack Black and Kate Hudson among its alumni and has taught the children of Dustin Hoffman, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and David Lynch."[1]

Contents

Notable alumni

External links

Notable alumni

★ J. A. Adande

★ Sean Astin

★ Michael Bay

★ Hahn-Bin

★ Jack Black

★ George Michael Bluth

★ Max Brooks

★ Jake Busey

★ Gary Coleman

★ Austin Croshere

★ Baron Davis

★ Emily Deschanel

★ Zooey Deschanel

★ Zack Fleishman

★ Tanya Haden

★ Jonah Hill

★ Alpin Hong

★ Kate Hudson

★ Oliver Hudson

★ Alex Kurtzman

★ Alexandra Kyle

★ Roberto Orci

★ Gwyneth Paltrow

★ Amy Pascal

★ Maya Rudolph

★ Blake Schwarzenbach

★ Natasha Gregson Wagner

★ Gillian Welch

★ Joss Whedon

★ Evan Smith

★ Rachel Bilson

External links

★ http://www.xrds.org/