ESP's Philosophy

Because ESP is predicated on volunteers teaching their interests to students, we hope that students will learn about what they are interested in from our teachers. We are strong believers in “learning for the sake of learning”—gaining knowledge, finding new areas to explore, and learning about parts of academia and the world they might not have otherwise encountered, for the sheer pleasure of it. Most of our teachers share this view; a teacher will usually develop a Splash or HSSP class simply because they find it interesting.

By the same token, we expect students to find our classes fun, interesting, and rewarding, and we hope that they go in for the right reasons. While some of our classes are good preparation for material they might learn in high school, few are specifically tailored to a high school or college curriculum (the exceptions are Delve and SATPrep). We hope that, for the most part, students take classes because they are interesting, not because of academic pressure or a vague notion of “college preparation.”