Mission and Guiding Principles

Too often, students are disengaged and feel their schools do little to help them gain relevant skills and experience to build fulfilling careers and lives. Not at Quest Forward High School.

We know that young people live in a rapidly changing world that requires them to learn in every situation, grow from every challenge, and tackle unsolved problems with courage and creativity. That’s why we provide our students with a strong foundation in academic excellence, career preparation, and community involvement that ensures they graduate with the skills, and a plan, to succeed.

Our Mission

Quest Forward High School empowers every student to chart their own path to a successful future through excellence in learning, personal growth, and community service.

Guiding Principles

Our school community is united around a core set of beliefs about learning:

1. Learning Requires Action

We believe that to learn, we must be active and engaged, driving the process of discovery, the process of building understanding, and the practice of skills. We learn by asking questions about the world and seeking answers, by testing potential solutions to problems, by making things, and by iterative trial and error. Being a mere observer does not lead to capability; only active engagement with people and the world around us does.

2. Learning Improves with Practice

While knowledge can accumulate through discovery, skill-building requires dedicated, persevering practice. As lifelong learners, we identify skills we can improve, and then practice them over days, months, and years to refine and advance the impact and outcomes of our work.

3. We Learn Better Together

It is impossible to gain skills and real insights without connecting to and receiving feedback from others. Peers, mentors, family members, and subject-matter experts all drive learning and personal growth. Collaborating with others inspires creativity and innovative thinking. Similarly, sharing our discoveries and successes is an important impetus for learning.

4. Learning Happens Everywhere, and Always

This is evident from watching small children — they learn constantly, wherever they go, and without formal instruction, classrooms, or learning materials. This pattern holds for all ages: We can learn wherever we are, but only if we possess the skills to seize those opportunities.

5. Learning Drives Personal Growth

Learning is a personal process that changes how we understand ourselves, the world around us, and our place in it. As we grow personally, we begin to define ourselves as life long learners, able to embrace and master new challenges and opportunities with curiosity, creativity, and determination