8th Grade Yearbook Letter

H1N1 Info

Jill A. Eckel
Principal

Principal’s Message

To stand out in the community the Charter School strives to provide a unique educational experience for students. The following are three main initiatives we believe makes this school different from others in the county:

Differentiation of instruction is a major priority at the Charter School. Changing the pace, level, or kind of instruction provided to students in response to individual learners’ needs, styles, or interests is a major avenue of educational change today. This instruction is both rigorous and challenging to motivate students to push themselves forward academically. Learning at the school is relevant, in that it focuses on essential learning. Instruction is both flexible and varied, allowing students, where appropriate, to make choices about how they will learn, and how they will demonstrate learning. Finally, differentiated instruction at the school focuses on depth rather than breadth of knowledge, thus providing a higher quality of learning to the students.

Our educational program operates on a reflective, school-wide portfolio culture, based on eight key learning objectives essential academic growth. This school-wide reflective portfolio system allows us to more fully integrate academic subjects, as well as more fully link these academic subjects with the technology emphasis of the Charter School. Not only does this portfolio culture help more fully integrate curricula, it facilitates ensuring curricula addresses the life skills students need. Through the portfolio process, students come to understand that learning does not take place in isolated “academic segments,” but rather, true learning is integrated across all disciplines and throughout a lifetime.

Caring Community, an integrated character education initiative of the Charter School, supports both the emotional development of young adolescents as well as the development of leadership abilities. As a result, student commitment to being kind, helpful, responsible and respectful of others deepens. Students learn to accept both the rights and responsibilities of citizenship in a democratic society and develop the skills necessary to live safe, humane, and productive lives in a democratic society.