Design features
Click to view a slideshow overview of the New School rationale and design.
Our Pedagogy
There’s a tension in education between “knowing stuff” — that is, broad content knowledge — and “doing stuff” — that is, practical skill. We believe that these two aims are complementary: content knowledge is essential to “do stuff” with efficacy and excellence; and “doing stuff” is the best context for purposefully, meaningfully learning content knowledge.
At the heart of our beliefs about teaching and learning is the idea that real learning is knowledge in action. If knowledge is “knowing stuff,” understanding is being able to “do stuff” with that knowledge; and, beyond that, wisdom is being able to do good, important, beautiful stuff with that knowledge — stuff that furthers the purposes of God’s kingdom.
Learning Lived
This “wisdom-based learning” asks students to use new knowledge in ways that employ and develop their skills, gifts, and passions (introspection) in order to meet needs in the community around them (empathy). Out of that intersection between new learning, the learner herself, and the needs of the larger community, emerges a student’s calling, as she asks, in what ways does this new learning equip me to better serve the Lord’s purpose in my world?
An Emerging Calling
This emerging sense of “calling” is not merely about a student’s career path or ultimate life goals. Rather, it is active in a student’s life right now. It’s a calling first to the One who made her and seeks to walk with her, and, second, to participate in His work, at this time, in this place.
While this process is intensely personal, it’s not solitary. It unfolds in the context of a supportive community of peers and adult mentors walking this journey together.
So, this is our mission: students finding and living their callings together.
How it Works
Students undertake interdisciplinary work in mixed-age divisions. Supported by educational research, mixed-age learning fosters collaboration, peer mentorship, and social-emotional growth, while better modelling for students the diverse environments they will encounter beyond high school.
Students remain in a division for an average of two years. Depending upon their rate of growth relative to learning goals, though, they may emerge from a division more quickly or more slowly.
What a Year Looks Like
Each year is divided into two learning cycles, each of which includes periods of collaborative inquiry, action, and reflection. Along the way, students work with an adult mentor to consider the ways that their learning process is informing their own sense of calling. That grappling results in some kind of project that expresses or encapsulates the student’s journey so far. These take diverse forms and are shared at an annual exhibition. Typically, a student’s first exhibition in a particular division is a formative process; the second is summative and marks his emergence from one division to the next.
A Glimpse Inside a Learning Cycle
Each cycle begins with a period of thematic inquiry during which students examine a generative topic or question from various angles. These investigations give rise to general questions or theories that the students will pursue through some kind of action that contributes in some way to the larger community. Then, students reflect on what they have learned and accomplished, and what might come next.
The “inquiry” phase includes both adult and student-initiated investigations. As the group moves toward action and reflection, students take the lead, with adult support.
Learning Goals and Assessment
The New Christian School establishes a set of content and skills goals for each division, and students must demonstrate competency in each of those goals before emerging into the next division. The order in which these goals are accomplished, however, is fluid. Students and adults, together, identify the content goals accomplished over the course of an inquiry phase, as well as the skills goals developed in an action phase. A student’s individual “strand” project will also connect with learning goals. Periodically students will report on their accomplishments relative to the learning goals, including a graphic representation of goals accomplished and goals remaining.