While many schools provide opportunities for students to participate in service, QUEST represents our unique brand of service learning, rooted in the Quaker tradition of inquiry, reflection, and continuing revelation.
Beginning in the earliest grades, students are exposed to major needs and themes, locally and globally. From lower school classrooms with service projects that link to the curriculum (e.g. sup- porting a wildlife protection agency during a study of Asia), to middle school advisories that build long-term community partnerships, to the upper school boys lacrosse team that recently coached a group of young players from Wilmington's Hilltop Neighborhood -- WFS is, and always has been, fully committed to the ideals of service learning, and provides opportunities, time, and funding for those ideals to become actionable.
QUEST service learning programs teach students to develop a global understanding of problems and questions they encounter; gives them the skills, motivation and sense of responsibility to engage those questions in thought and in action; and teaches them, in the words of George Fox, to “let your lives preach, let your light shine, that your works may be seen...”
Additional examples of signature QUEST programs include:
QUEST Service/Leadership Trips
These trips engage students in an experiential learning model to increase their understanding of global issues as well as strategies to mitigate the impact of these challenges.
The QUEST Scholars Program
This provides students with significant service learning opportunities that combine academic studies with experiential learning. All upper school students are eligible for participation in the QUEST Scholars program and receive recognition for their achievement during Final Assembly.
During recess, 1st-grade students worked together on our Natural Playground to design and build their very own see-saw using fallen branches and logs. With teamwork, problem-solving, and plenty of creativity, they transformed natural materials into a working structure—all through hands-on learning and exploratory play.
It was another excellent fall for WFS athletics. Our student-athletes competed with purpose, resilience, and school pride across every field, course, and court. We’re incredibly proud of their hard work and grateful to the fans who cheered them on.
The Quaker Cares Club brought energy and encouragement to campus with a Wellness Smoothie Bike for our Middle and Upper School students! By hopping on the bike and pedaling fast, students blended their own healthy, delicious smoothies—a fun reminder that taking care of yourself matters, especially during high-stress times.
A huge thank you to all of our alumni who came out on November 29 for wrestling, basketball, and volleyball! It was wonderful to see teammates reconnect, compete, and cheer each other on across all three games. Go Blue!
Shoutout to our amazing third graders, whose hard work on the Basket Brigade food drive helped bring the Lower School’s total to 624 pounds of food donated to the Food Bank of Delaware! Their compassion and commitment to assisting others embody the very best of our WFS community.
A beloved holiday tradition at WFS is our sixth grade pie bake for Wilmington's Sunday Breakfast Mission. Students lovingly peel, slice, prepare, box, and finally deliver 40 apple pies for those in our greater community.
Ten representatives from the Wilmington Friends School Middle School Youth in Government Club traveled to Dover, Delaware to participate in the State Junior Youth in Government Model Legislature.
Students gathered today for the Pouring of Libations, a long-standing tradition that, while not Quaker in origin, beautifully reflects our community’s values.
Storytelling is a central theme of the lower school Visual Arts curriculum, and fourth graders are exploring that theme by experimenting with ways to communicate without using words, applying visual choices alone to convey meaning.
Ninth-grade English students are wrapping up their short story unit with a collaborative Hexagonal Thinking exercise that challenges them to see literature through a more analytical lens.
Right now, in International Baccalaureate (IB) English: Power and Performance, 11th- and 12th-graders are studying Anton Chekhov’s short stories and experimenting with his craft techniques in their own writing.
Statement of Nondiscrimination as to Student Enrollment
Wilmington Friends School admits students of any race, color, gender, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students of these schools. Wilmington Friends School does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, national and ethnic origin in administration of their educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school administered programs.