Learning Lived

At Spartanburg Day School, our model is intentional and independent, designed by our expert educators to get more out of the most formative learning years of children’s lives. As SDS learners develop, we ensure they have increasingly immersive, challenging experiences to help them grow in purpose, confidence, and discernment. We know that engaged, excited learners—who are empowered to explore their own interests and encouraged to dive deeply into new concepts and questions—learn best. And we have built both our core curriculum and our Learning Lived offerings on that bedrock truth.

Learning Lived principles are at work across all grade levels and age ranges, including Preschool and Lower School, while signature programming for middle and upper schoolers includes Special Studies Week, as well as a rich array of service opportunities, exciting outdoor education, visiting speakers and experts, and regional, national, and international travel. When we live out our learning, we invite our students to consider what a life well lived means—measuring their answers against both their inner lives and the world beyond them.

And Learning Lived challenges our students and calls them beyond their comfort zones, cultivating agency and leadership while also welcoming them into more meaningful and supportive relationships with educators and peers. When we share extraordinary experiences and encounter new people, places, and ideas together, we form a community of trust that prepares students to take risks, learn from missteps, and seize opportunities.

IB in Action - Nicaragua

In 2015, Middle School Spanish Teacher, Danielle Frías, and students at Spartanburg Day School started a pen pal program with children at a school in Palacagüina, Nicaragua. Our students learned that many children were dropping out of school because they could not afford the required school uniforms and materials. What’s more, many students were having to walk several miles to school in less than ideal conditions. Available data and statistics confirmed what the middle schoolers were hearing in the video calls with their pen pals. Over 70% of Nicaraguan children do not finish high school. 

SDS middle schoolers decided they wanted to do something about this. Over the next several months, students in Mrs. Frías’ Spanish class began bringing in loose change from home. Soon they had enough to sponsor school uniforms and supplies for 15 children for a whole year of school! The students agreed that this project must continue and “Change-for-Change” was born. Today, this program continues to be a thriving Service Learning project at Spartanburg Day School.

In 2025, the Spartanburg Day School multicultural affinity group, Raíces, as well as several other teachers from the Preschool, Lower School and Upper School, decided to help expand this Service Learning to involve all four school divisions. Change-for-Change was rolled out to the whole school at our first International Fair on the Spartanburg Day School campus. 

The initial goal was to purchase 5 bikes for children in Nicaragua, however SDS families and children raised enough to buy 15 bikes for children in need of school transportation. With the money raised from Change-for-Change, Mrs. Frías was joined by Elizabeth Flores (Upper School Spanish), Chelsea Sosa (Lower School Spanish) and Avery Beeson (Third Grade) in writing and receiving the Dorrance Grant to travel to Nicaragua, to not only meet the students that SDS has been sponsoring for over a decade, but to also personally deliver the bikes to the children of Palacagüina.