OUR APPROACH

How do we think about our work?

We approach the work of educating the 21st century student from three perspectives that we believe are interrelated and continuously in dialogue. To learn more about each of these areas of our approach, click on the appropriate item in the menu to the right.

Goals and Skills: Where are we going?
The goals we have for our students form the road map for our approach to reaching all students in the digital age. A significant number of these goals may be usefully expressed in terms of the skills we want to see our students demonstrating in their approach to their own learning.

Courses and Strategies: How will we get there?
Our goals describe the behavior and understanding of our students; our strategies describe the actions we take as adults to achieve these goals. The digital age brings a complement of new affordances in information technology, accompanied by an equal number of new and intriguing challenges. In an era of high tech, our "blended" approach to learning balances the strengths of Internet-based digital communication tools with the need for "high touch" (Pink, 2005) in interpersonal relationships and human understanding.

Assessments: How will we know we are getting any closer?
As in any iterative creative process like learning, ongoing feedback in performance feeds the re-examination of goals and the reformulation of strategies. Our approach integrates performance-based evaluations alongside traditional standardized assessments.

At the heart of this three-way interchange is the work of our students. We encourage you to visit the Student Work Portal to browse through examples of what 21st century learners are doing today.