Upper School · Grades 7–12
At a big public high school, a serious student can disappear. The NOCA Upper School is another option — small, intellectually demanding, tuition-free, and deeply classical. Your ninth grader reads Homer. Your junior writes a research essay on Douglass. Your senior stands in front of faculty and family and defends a thesis they actually wrote.
For families considering ninth grade
Ninth grade is a real decision point. Families looking for something beyond the large public high school often assume their only alternative is a tuition-charging private school. NOCA is a third path. Smaller. More rigorous. No tuition.
Our Upper School students spend four years with the same small cohort, a humanities-forward schedule, and a faculty who expect them to argue, revise, and try again. The goal is not just college — it is a graduate who can read anything, write anything, and carry themselves as an adult in a room full of adults.
The four-year sequence
The sequence below reflects a classical K–12 humanities program as implemented at NOCA. Specific titles and offerings may vary by year; a current-year course catalog is available on request.
NOCA Athletics · Go Spartans
Upper School at NOCA is not a book club. Our students compete interscholastically across three seasons — they travel, they train, and they represent the school. A good classical education and a serious athletic life are not in tension; we take both seriously, and a student who forms their body forms their mind.
Seventh and eighth grade · the bridge
Seventh and eighth grade are the bridge years at NOCA. Subject specialists take over from homeroom teachers, formal Latin begins, annotation becomes a habit, and students learn the discipline of an Upper School classroom — discussion-driven seminars, a real reading load, careful writing. None of it counts toward a transcript yet. By the time a NOCA student walks into ninth grade, the way they work is already settled.
From 9th grade on, Upper School classes are discussion-driven. Your student is expected to have read the book, annotated it, and be ready to argue about it — respectfully, in complete sentences, with evidence.
Every Upper School class produces serious writing. By junior year a NOCA student writes arguments, not just summaries. The Senior Thesis is the capstone: a substantial researched argument, defended orally.
NOCA requires three years of Upper School Latin, and offers Latin all four years for students who want to keep going. It trains a student's ear for English grammar, builds vocabulary in English and the Romance languages, and — frankly — does more for college admissions writing than any test-prep course.
Advisory, mentorship, and honest conversations about what a good life looks like are woven through the day. Our students learn the classical virtues without being asked to affirm a faith.
The next step
Our favorite way to introduce families to the Upper School is to put you in the back of a Sophomore Humanities seminar for 45 minutes. You'll see Socratic discussion in action, meet a faculty member, and get specific answers on scheduling, athletics, and what a NOCA graduate's transcript looks like to colleges.
