Personal Effort in a Chosen Discipline
We make sure that each teenager puts in the effort to attain a level of excellence in some part of life. Everyone has different talents, and it should be the role of the high school to help students identify these areas of interest and then provide the support to develop these talents. In this way, each teen can establish a meaningful basis for self-confidence and respect, tools that are essential in contending with the strong currents of peer pressure they face. The possibilities are as varied as the students and have included everything from cooking, to mathematics, to caring for animals, to philosophy.
Standardized Testing
Before we switched to an international, online format in 2019, we had 20 years of very high test scores on the SAT and IOWA tests (see data). Both of these tests are closely aligned with our approach to academics in that they focus on the development of overall math and language skills rather than the memorization of specific pieces of information. Since both tests are normed primarily with students whose native language is English, our influx of international students made school-wide comparisons relatively meaningless. We continue to use these tests, however, since they help us measure year-to-year improvement in our students. Our average gain over these past few years is about 7 percentile points per student per year (i.e. a student who tests at the 55th percentile one year will improve to 62 the next year).
A Personalized Schedule, Suitable for All Time Zones
Every student, in partnership with their advisor, designs a personalized, balanced program with experiences in self-discovery, academic excellence, creativity, connections with others, and service-learning adventures. The result is a unique learning plan based on each student’s interests, long-term goals, educational aspirations, and abilities.
Service & Adventure
Along with the teenager’s growing awareness of larger realities, comes the realization that our planet is filled with problems such as wars, lack of food and water, and homelessness. Left unaddressed, this realization can easily lead to cynicism and a rejection of the adult society that allows these conditions to exist. A key element of our high school curriculum is to provide opportunities for students to get involved in solving these problems. On a local level our students have helped at places like animal shelters, homes for the elderly, and preschools that serve special needs children. Farther afield, our students have helped at orphanages in Mexico, protected endangered Sea Turtles, and attended an international conference on Climate Change and Consciousness. Read Shanti’s Story