At Lakefield, learning starts with curiosity and grows through experience. You’ll step into challenges, explore real solutions, and grow in ways that shape who you are.
Our approach to education is immersive and academically challenging, designed to help you realize your full potential. Whether you're diving into a university-level Harkness discussion or AP Courses, navigating white-water, or co-leading a sustainability initiative, every experience challenges you to grow as a thinker, community member, leader, and most importantly, as a human being.
This is Authentic Learning — experiential, relational, and purposeful — preparing you not only for university, but for life.
As an Advanced Placement (AP) student, you’ll take on university-level research projects and global topics with depth and independence. You’ll learn how to ask better questions, find better answers, and present with confidence. Whether you're enrolled in AP Capstone or one of our many AP and AP-prep courses, you’ll develop the academic rigour, critical thinking, and intellectual curiosity that set you apart, at university and in the opportunities that follow.
At Lakefield, you can explore big questions through integrated courses and real-world experiences that help you understand the connections between the arts, sciences, humanities, and the world around you. It’s about preparing you for life by providing an understanding of how everything fits together.
The War Experience, a two-credit History and English course, offers Grade 10 students an opportunity to seamlessly convey knowledge across subjects, fostering deep, meaningful classroom experiences
Harkness Learning
Where Every Voice Matters
In Harkness classrooms, you’ll gather around a table to lead discussions, challenge ideas, share perspectives, and learn from one another. It’s a space where confidence grows, empathy deepens, and thinking becomes collaborative. It’s more than discussion, it’s practice for the kind of critical, flexible thinking and teamwork that today’s world demands.
“When you arrive at the Harkness table, everyone’s voice is equal. This is what I love the most about Harkness. With this sense of collaboration in mind, I prioritize respect for my peers and for their generous intellectual offerings.” – Caroline Chen
Thinking Classrooms
Ideas in motion.
In Thinking Classrooms, you'll explore ideas, test approaches, and learn alongside others. The focus isn't simply finding solutions, it's developing the confidence to collaborate, take intellectual risks, and think critically from multiple perspectives.
At Lakefield, sustainability and outdoor learning aren’t side programs, they’re core to who we are. As the only Canadian school with a four-year Outdoor Education curriculum, we offer students structured, seasonal experiences that build confidence, resilience, and leadership year after year.
From our regenerative farm to our Green Industries and Outdoor Education courses, you’ll gain real-world skills and environmental literacy by doing. Whether it's white-water rescue, improving soil health, confronting climate change, or partnering with local food access partners, you’ll learn to lead on the issues that matter most.
AI is transforming how we learn, work, and create. At Lakefield, you'll learn to engage with AI thoughtfully and responsibly—using it to explore ideas, solve problems, and bring solutions to your community while developing the judgment, creativity, and adaptability needed for a changing world.
At Lakefield, you’ll take part in co-curricular arts and athletics every year—because learning here means stretching your mind, body, and spirit. Guided by our motto, mens sana in corpore sano—a sound mind in a sound body—you’ll discover new passions, build skills and confidence, and connect with your community in meaningful ways.
Athletics: Strong in Spirit. Grounded in Play.
Movement is built into every term at Lakefield. You’ll train and play across all seasons; on one of more than 30 competitive teams, competing at CISAA or OFSAA, through recreational sports like sailing, yoga, or climbing, or in fitness programs that keep you active and energized. With inspiring coaches and facilities that include 315 acres of trails, fields, and shoreline, you’ll build the discipline, resilience, and joy that come from a sound body and a focused mind.
Each year, you’ll choose a creative program that helps you explore who you are. Whether you’re performing in Musical Theatre, dancing in the LCS Dance Company, finessing your skills in Culinary Arts, or exhibiting paintings in the academic wing, you’ll find spaces that invite imagination, collaboration, and build confidence. Here, creativity strengthens both mind and spirit and expression becomes a way of learning.
Clubs are where you’ll dive into what excites you and connect with others who share your interests. With more than 50 options—from AI Innovation and Entrepreneurship to LEAF (Environmental Action), Model UN, Aviation Club, and Creative Threads—you can test ideas, lead projects, and make a difference. You’ll discover how creativity, purpose, and belonging come together, learning as much about people as about possibilities.
Here, it means experience, connection, communication, learning to listen and listening to learn.
Developed in collaboration by alumni, Emilia Voudouris and Ryan Lee, ’12 "What Education Is to Me" highlights the impact of the learning experience at LCS through the eyes of a student and represents a wonderful example of the talents of our students and alumni.
