the mosaic collective

[castle rock, co]

Castle View High School – planning to unleash 150 ish freshman to more student-centered models of instruction..

launch fall 2014..

It’s time to take bold action. It’s time to reveal our fantastically creative DNA and reinvent our profession. If not for our sake, but for the sake of our students, many of which have reached a startlingly blunt conclusion: school stinks. The time is ripe for bold leadership. Leadership that creates actions and responses that pushes through defensive posturing and behavior. It’s time to focus our energy, all of it, on student-centered models of instruction. 

On the practical side, this program will initially launch within the physical learning space of one of Castle View’s four academies, which are already designed around cross-curricular collaboration and sharing. Put simply, this program will be a highly focused and motivated branch of the Castle View academy system of learning. 

So what does such an environment look like in this proposed design? Students arrive in the morning and meet with their mentor/advisement teachers. They will be provided weekly schedules communicating the availability and location of services, then build their own schedules based on the learning goals they have committed to achieve. Bells are simply not necessary to advance a student’s schedule in this form of real and authentic learning. During this time they “go do” by working with a dedicated team of experienced learners grouped not randomly but purposefully to work to guide, assess, provide feedback, and point them in the right direction. What this team doesn’t do is simply tell the students what to do and how to do it.

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june 2014:

http://castlerocknewspress.net/stories/Program-expands-definition-of-education,160861