Care to Share?

Hey Everyone,

There is a contest going on right now for some of the best schools around. We think IA is wonderful and we know others do too:

http://www.care2.com/schoolcontest/6247/90/supporters

"We are deeply happy with I.A.This is our 1st year with IA, after years of just trying to cope with the public school system, we never had a weeknight evening that wasn't full of stress from 2 hours of homework, it would leave us no family time. We are BLESSED to have found IA and their project based learning. I also appreciate that you believe in fostering a positive home life with minimal to NO homework! Our daughter is in 5th grade, and next year, our son will be joining the kinder class. Thanks Danielle and Christine and Bill for the great communication with your students! I couldn't thank you enough." - Finnegan Family

"I am absolutely in love with Innovations Academy. My daughter, Cloe, is in the second grade, and I have watched her confidence and excitement about school grow with every day that passes. The project-based learning has expanded Cloe's concept of learning so even though she doesn't have specific homework, she talks about what she has learned in class and applies it at home and outside the classroom. We are actually engaged in the learning process more constructively and more thoroughly than when she had specific homework assignments." - Maland Family

Guest Performer at IA

Pablo Sainz Villegas visited IA on Tuesday. He was a fantastic performer and teacher. Our children learned about classical guitar music mixed in with some history and geography. Thank you Pablo!

Entrepreneurial Kids

Awesome videos on how we would do our kids a service by teaching them to be entrepreneurs instead of worker bees.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCar_sFfEf4

~Danielle

Voice of SD Article

The article:

Setting the rules is part of schoolwork at Innovations Academy, an unconventional K-8 charter school with roughly 200 students that practices what it calls "positive discipline." Children handle disputes together instead of running to the principal. They create rules adults might not agree with. The idea is children will become more independent, cooperative and thoughtful instead of merely compliant, learning the how and why of following the rules.

A parent write up is here as well.

Enjoy,

Danielle

What makes a great teacher?

At IA we're constantly inquiring into our practice. What's working for our students and families? What's working for our teachers? How can we make this more engaging? What are we missing?

It appears that this type of inquiry is one trait of a great teacher as reported in "The Atlantic." Over the last month, myself and Christine have read some great articles espousing the greatness of what our teachers are already doing: building relationships with students, reflecting on their work, endless planning and reworking, etc.

What's humorous to us is that even some district officials are coming out and talking about relationship based classrooms and more positive discipline...so where's the implementation? We know that it has to come from top down and it's going to be very difficult to implement reflection and personal freedom when a system is built on a dominating hierarchy.

They'll have to come visit IA and start training with us.

The excerpt below from The Atlantic is a slice of how our teachers and staff operate:

[G]reat teachers tended to set big goals for their students. They were also perpetually looking for ways to improve their effectiveness. For example, when Farr called up teachers who were making remarkable gains and asked to visit their classrooms, he noticed he’d get a similar response from all of them: “They’d say, ‘You’re welcome to come, but I have to warn you—I am in the middle of just blowing up my classroom structure and changing my reading workshop because I think it’s not working as well as it could.’ When you hear that over and over, and you don’t hear that from other teachers, you start to form a hypothesis.” Great teachers, he concluded, constantly reevaluate what they are doing.

Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.

We'd love to hear from you in the comment section. What do you think makes a great teacher?

Raffle this Thursday!

Hello IA Families,

Thursday is Family Night and we're having a big raffle. Buy tickets this week with Donna or Karrlie and possibly win one of the prizes below on Thursday:

















































And more!

Another Great Video: Capable Kids

http://www.ted.com/talks/kiran_bir_sethi_teaches_kids_to_take_charge.html