Who We Are & What We Believe

We are

• a student-centered learning service for college-bound in grades 8-12
• state-certified, professional educators with extensive content-area expertise

We believe

• Students learn better when they see the immediate application and relevance of the work they are being asked to do (and care about)
• All students benefit from rigorous and challenging coursework designed around socially relevant media and resources
• Coupled with strong, relevant instructional design, true learning is social, and the teacher-to-student learning relationships and communication is a major opportunity for learner engagement
• The standards-based movement in teaching, while important to the profession as a whole, can “encourage” the overworked classroom teacher to “teach to the middle,” which basically means that they design instruction for the most common ability level in mind, often leaving struggling or high-ability gifted learners with a mediocre education, with very little authentic differentiation of instruction. This leaves opportunity for significant gaps in student learning, and the authenticity of learning experiences
• Transfer of knowledge is the heart of learning. Critical-thinking skills should be “transferable” to truly be useful to a student, taking existing knowledge and applying it in unfamiliar situations to create new knowledge. Students should be able to naturally transfer skills from the classroom to the world they process information in on a daily basis
• Traditional “old-school” English-Language Arts skills were often narrowly useful. Of the myriad state and national standards, prioritizing what is most important that a student understands is one of the first steps in a well-designed instructional sequence. Teaching the most important of these skills and concepts through a modern lens helps students consistently make active and authentic connections
• Teaching students to use information is crucial. This includes: evaluating, generating, transferring, analyzing, restructuring, comparing, re-purposing, and synthesizing information in new, creative ways
• The world in which students use information is drastically different than it was even one generation ago–yet, in spite of some movement in curriculum and instructional practices, the classroom has changed comparatively little. This is unacceptable.