What does "Live and Serve" mean?

"Live and Serve" is North Shore's motto, chosen by the student body in 1923. For over 100 years, we have lived this motto, refining and redefining it in each new era. Today, "Live and Serve" means our students' volunteer work in the greater community, service projects that are developed as part of curricula, family service days on or off campus, and our innovative Live+Serve Lab. From the beginning, North Shore's students, families, and faculty have aspired to make a difference, and "Live and Serve" continues to be at the heart of our school.

Live+Serve Lab

The Live+Serve Lab is our unique mission-driven makerspace, a physical space at the heart of our campus where students in all grades practice innovation and problem-solving with the goal of making the world a better place. Learning in the Live+Serve Lab is project-based, hands-on, and student-centered; we encourage students to be creative, learn from mistakes, collaborate, and build community partnerships. Students work in the Lab as part of a class, with a club or even on their own.

Service Learning & Community Engagement

Service activities at NSCD include both service learning (as part of a class) and community engagement (extracurricular projects). Teachers include service learning projects as part of a curriculum in order to teach or practice content or skills; students might also develop or propose service learning projects on their own. Students can participate in Community Service Club in both middle school and upper school, as well as join many other student-run service projects.

Our students become self-confident, ethical citizens of the world who embody our motto, 'Live and Serve.'

Lower School

GRADES JK-5

Lower school service projects provide a way for students to bring what they are learning to life, and in STEAM classes, students use the Live+Serve Lab to develop real-world solutions. For example, kindergarteners collected socks for local children when learning about communities; in an interdisciplinary unit, 3rd graders created a prosthetic hand and learned about what it's like to live with a limb difference.

Middle School

Grades 6-8

Middle schoolers are full of idealism and energy. Middle school classes harness the innovative technology in the Live+Serve Lab to practice human centered design as they prototype ideas designed to solve problems they observe in the world around them. Outside of the classroom, Community Engagement Week asks students to dig deeper into the communities that are around us through guest speakers, field trips, and projects.

Upper School

Grades 9-12

Upper school students develop leadership skills through our service program and the Live+Serve Lab. As they deepen their knowledge of their own lived context, they are increasingly able to take action on issues that matter to them. Whether they are creating a service learning project for a class or collecting data for scientific research, students practice guided independence as they take their ideas beyond classroom walls.

BY THE NUMBERS

Paging

7,562

total service hours

23

senior service organizations

100%

students involved in live and serve projects

102

years live and serve has been our motto

7

student-led service oriented clubs

50

families supported through Northwestern Settlement House holiday gift program

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Brave, Curious and Grateful: Middle Schoolers Connect Through Service and Exploration During Annual Community Engagement Week

For the fourth year in a row, North Shore Country Day middle schoolers stepped out of their regular routines and into communities across Chicagoland for Community Engagement Week — a hands-on, experiential program that blends service, storytelling and deep learning across lines of difference.

Engineering the Future: Charlize Guillen ’22 and Northwestern Team Win NASA’s Artemis Award

North Shore Country Day alumna Charlize Guillen ’22 and her team at Northwestern University have earned top honors in NASA’s prestigious BIG (Breakthrough, Innovative, and Game-changing) Idea Challenge. Competing against elite teams from universities across the nation, Charlize and her Northwestern teammates secured the coveted Artemis Award for their Metal Expandable Technology for Artemis Lunar Structures (METALS) project. The award is given to the team whose concept best demonstrates potential for integration into NASA’s Artemis mission, which focuses on establishing sustainable exploration of the Moon.

Three NSCD Seniors Achieve Scouting’s Highest Honor

Achieving the rank of Eagle Scout is a remarkable milestone that speaks to the dedication, leadership and community-minded spirit of our students. We are proud to celebrate three seniors who have recently completed or are about to complete their Eagle Scout projects — an honor that less than 5% of Scouts achieve. These projects not only reflect the Scouts’ personal growth and commitment to service but also make a lasting impact on the local community. Their achievements embody the values we strive to instill at North Shore Country Day, where the motto “Live and Serve” runs deeply through the lives of our students, both in and outside of school.