Locust Grove Middle School designs a capstone project for soon-to-graduate 8th graders modeled around ‘Genius Hour.’ Students select a topic to research and build expertise in, working towards a final presentation and using a predefined rubric to guide their efforts.
Locust Grove Middle School creates houses and related projects that align with the high school’s career pathways. Students in the middle school explore passions related to possible college and career opportunities through their house projects. Sample projects include: writing a novel, constructing a water tower, building a 3D model of an atom, and writing music.
The Learner Positioning Systems initiative brings together the current learning science research and research-based strategies to help educators and product developers support the full diversity of learners.
This toolkit is designed to help charter school leaders and their stakeholders design and implement intentionally diverse charter schools. It presents decisions and actions, along with specific examples from three diverse charter schools, for school leaders’ consideration. Using this toolkit, leaders will learn more about how to measure student diversity, how to intentionally recruit and retain students, how to ensure that diversity is supported and experienced meaningfully at the individual, classroom, and schoolwide levels, and how to create and run schools that help all children thrive.
The National Charter School Resource Center conducted a case study on Valor’s intentionally diverse model.
The enrichment schedule at Valor is built to allow for social-emotional learning and an elective.
The master schedule at Valor is built to allow for various structures, such as Circle and Content Focus classes.
Pride Leaders provide one-on-one academic and SEL coaching to their students.
Students at Valor spend time in a single-gendered small group meant to foster community and individual non-academic support.
Valor educators participate in similar social-emotional learning activities as students.
