Carolina Prep

Carolina Preparatory Academy (Carolina Prep) leads the way in global education in the Triangle; we are proud to be the first International Baccalaureate (IB) independent school in North Carolina to offer the grades 6 - 12 IB continuum to students. Through rigorous, interdisciplinary academics—including a robust environmental studies program—and local to global community-service projects and trips, our students develop into responsible, knowledgeable, and kind citizens leading fulfilling lives in college and beyond.

Formerly the Brier Creek Campus of The Montessori School of Raleigh (MSR), in Spring 2025 the MSR Board of Trustees approved the renaming of the Middle and High School campus to Carolina Preparatory Academy (Carolina Prep). 2025-2026 will mark the first official school year for Carolina Prep. Carolina Prep continues as a subsidiary of MSR.

Carolina Prep's website is currently under construction and will be published Summer 2025. Until then, explore the Middle School and High School academic pages to learn more about our programs, and visit the Admissions page to learn more about visiting our campus.

Middle School Life

High School Life

The International Baccalaureate (IB) Program

Carolina Prep is a Middle and High School International Baccalaureate (IB) school, with grades 6 - 10 students completing the Middle Years Programme (MYP) and grades 11 - 12 students completing the Diploma Programme (DP).

The International Baccalaureate (IB) is a worldwide community of schools, educators, and students with a shared mission to empower students with the values, knowledge, and skills to create a better and more peaceful world.

The IB aims to provide an education that enables students to make sense of the complexities of the world around them, as well as equipping them with the skills and dispositions needed for taking responsible action for the future. They provide an education that crosses disciplinary, cultural, national and geographical boundaries, and that champions critical engagement, stimulating ideas and meaningful relationships.

The programmes emphasize the importance of making connections, exploring the relationships between academic disciplines, and learning about the world in ways that reach beyond the scope of individual subjects. They also focus on offering students authentic opportunities to connect their learning to the world around them through the focus of international mindedness.

Credit: "What is IB Education?" International Baccalaureate, 2024.

*The Montessori School of Raleigh is authorized as a Diploma Programme (grades 11 - 12) school. The Montessori School of Raleigh is a candidate school* for the MYP (grades 6- 10). This school is pursuing authorization as an IB World School. IB World Schools share a common philosophy- a commitment to high-quality, challenging, international education- that we believe is important for our students.

International Mindedness

The IB develops internationally minded individuals who recognize our shared humanity and responsibility for the planet. Central to this goal is "international-mindedness," a concept encompassing a broad, interconnected worldview. IB programs promote this by encouraging students to explore local and global issues, reflect on diverse perspectives, and engage with different cultures and disciplines. Multilingualism is also emphasized, as studying multiple languages fosters intercultural understanding and respect.

Additionally, IB programs focus on global engagement and meaningful community service, encouraging students to think critically about power, privilege, and sustainability. Overall, these components work together to nurture international-mindedness and drive meaningful change for a more peaceful and sustainable world.

IB Learner Profile

The IB learner profile places the student at the center of an IB education with ten attributes reflecting the holistic nature of an IB education. These attributes highlight the importance of nurturing dispositions, developing knowledge and skills, and highlight that, along with cognitive development, IB programmes are concerned with students’ social, emotional and physical well-being. This ensures that students learn to respect themselves, others and the world around them.

IIB educators help students to develop these attributes over the course of their IB education, and to demonstrate them in increasingly robust and sophisticated ways as they mature. The development of these attributes is the foundation of developing internationally minded students who can help to build a better world.

Through the development of these learner profile attributes, an IB education seeks to empower young people for a lifetime of learning, both independently and in collaboration with others.

Learner Profiles

Inquires

Knowledgeable

Thinkers

Communicators

Principled

Open-minded

Caring

Risk takers

Balanced

Reflective

Approaches to Teaching and Learning

Grounded in contemporary educational research, the IB’s six approaches to teaching and five approaches to learning guide and focus educators and students in IB World Schools. They play a crucial role in ensuring that the aspirations of an IB education become a reality in the classroom.

The approaches are centered on a cycle of inquiry, action and reflection—an interplay of asking, doing and thinking—that informs the daily activities of teachers and learners. They also place a great deal of emphasis on relationships. This reflects the IB’s belief that educational outcomes are profoundly shaped by the relationships between teachers and students, and celebrates the many ways that people work together to construct meaning and make sense of the world.

Approaches to Teaching
Approaches to Learning

Approaches to Teaching

The same six approaches underpin teaching in all IB programmes. The approaches are deliberately broad, designed to give teachers the flexibility to choose specific strategies to employ that best reflect their own particular contexts and the needs of their students.

Based on inquiry
- A strong emphasis is placed on students finding their own information and constructing their own understandings.
Focused on conceptual understanding
- Concepts are explored in order to both deepen disciplinary understandings and to help students make connections and transfer learning to new contexts.
Developed in local and global context
- Teaching uses real-life contexts and examples, and students are encouraged to process new information by connecting it to their own experiences and to the world around them.
Focused on effective teamwork and collaboration
- This includes promoting teamwork and collaboration between students, but it also refers to the collaborative relationship between teachers and students.
Designed to remove barriers to learning
- Teaching is inclusive and values diversity. It affirms students’ identities and aims to create learning opportunities that enable every student to develop and pursue appropriate personal goals.
Informed by assessment
- Assessment plays a crucial role in supporting, as well as measuring, learning. This approach also recognizes the crucial role of providing students with effective feedback.

Approaches to Learning

The five categories of interrelated skills aim to empower IB students of all ages to become self-regulated learners who know how to ask good questions, set effective goals, pursue their aspirations and have the determination to achieve them. These skills also help to support students’ sense of agency, encouraging them to see their learning as an active and dynamic process.

The development of these skills plays a crucial role in supporting the IB’s mission to develop active, compassionate and lifelong learners. Although these skills areas are presented as distinct categories, there are close links and areas of overlap between them, and the categories should be seen as interrelated.

Thinking skills
- including areas such as critical thinking, creative thinking and ethical thinking
Research skills
- Including skills such as comparing, contrasting, validating and prioritizing information
Communication skills
- including skills such as written and oral communication, effective listening, and formulating arguments
Social skills
- Including areas such as forming and maintaining positive relationships, listening skills, and conflict resolution
Self-management skills
- including both organizational skills, such as managing time and tasks, and affective skills, such as managing state of mind and motivation.

Preparing Our Students For the Future

Our students graduate from Carolina Prep knowing who they are; they are self-advocates capable of whatever challenges are ahead. The International Baccalaureate (IB) transcript is respected and accepted by colleges and universities nationally and internationally.

College Acceptances

Carolina Prep students are accepted into their first-choice schools to continue to build their futures.

American University
Appalachian State University
Auburn University
Clark University
Coastal Carolina University
Culinary Institute of America (NY)
Davidson College
DePaul University
Drexel University
East Carolina University
Elon University
Furman University
George Washington University
Georgia Institute of Technology
Hamshire College
High Point University
Lehigh University
New York University
North Carolina State University
Muhlenberg College
Oberlin College
Oxford College of Emory University
Pace University (New York City)
Queens University of Charlotte
Rhodes College
Rochester Institute of Technology
San Jose State University
Southern Methodist University
The New School - Parsons School of Design
The University of Alabama
University of Alabama at Birmingham
The University of Tennessee (Knoxville)
University of Innsbruck
University of Michigan
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
University of North Carolina Wilmington
University of Pittsburgh
University of South Carolina
Virginia Tech

My son went on to a very competitive college after MSR, and he’s doing incredibly well — not a single blip academically. Even though classes are bigger, he has that mentorship mindset from MSR, so he’s connecting with his professors and loving his classes. I think the only thing he didn’t expect was how much he would miss it here.

-Former Parent

I've had a really deep acquisition of knowledge with regard to what I'm interested in and I've been able to hone in on what I love. [Because of that] I know what I want to pursue, especially with regard to my major and career and the research I want to do in college.

-Current Senior Student

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