It is a difficult time to be a teacher, and it’s just as hard to be a kid doing “school.” We deeply understand the need to support both the curricular preparation and mental health of the staff, as well as to provide true integration into the deeper school culture. To that end, the schedule is designed to offer both full interdisciplinary management in scope and sequence of standards-driven units of study that will occur schoolwide, as well as to offer the human support to effectively differentiate within classroom settings. Co-teaching in a flexible block schedule allows us so many opportunities to shape units and curriculum around student interests, pacing, and abilities.

Our school day mirrors a professional work day. The day is designed to start later based on the neuroscience of teenaged brains, as well as to better align with a traditional work day so that families can more easily manage transportation to and from school around work schedules. Extracurriculars are effectively built into the school day as personalized areas of interest are engaged in team passion projects. On Fridays, the schedule looks a bit different in engaging the community as a whole. Students needing more intensive acceleration would be able to access those opportunities given the mirrored schedule.

We also support the focus of the gifted mind on full immersion in a project or idea that typically does not align well with 50-minute traditional class periods. This model allows for depth versus breadth.