Here’s a few highlights that distinguish The Studio School as an authentic learning environment—a place where students maintain a love of learning and develop deep understandings…

Aesthetics Are Always Important
By design, education at The Studio School happens in a learning environment that edifies students’ aesthetical intelligence. The physical space of our learning environment reflects sincere appreciation for the influence on children’s growth and learning offered by open and flexible spaces, high-quality materials, and thoughtfully designed furniture and equipment. Our goal is to see to it that school becomes a compelling and pleasing part of daily life for our students, offering them freedom of movement at all times, multimedia portfolios and meaningful experiences throughout the school day.

Mixed-Age & Small Class Groups
Our class groupings will be 15-20 students with 2 teachers who will facilitate how students apply structures for individual discovery and collaboration across all boundaries of differences throughout the school. Class groups will include a two- or three-year age range for students, but these groups will have opportunities to interact with other individuals and class groups throughout the school, especially when taking on projects that support the care of our community and school. For example, lunch might include a family style meal prepared by one of the class groups, or a subset of one, with the support and guidance of teachers.

Knowledgeable and Passionate Teachers
Our teachers are knowledgeable about the coupling of education and human devel- opment, the principles of distributed leadership, constructivist learning theory, the Reggio Approach and other relevant research. They are true collaborators with students and honor the role of the learner as the key maker of meaning throughout the learning process. They progressively offer tools of empowerment for students—noticing, wondering, advising, supporting, and scaffolding experiences toward deeper understandings. One of the greatest things our teachers do is model curiosity for it is the beginning of all understanding. Our educational leader for our first class group of 5s/6s is Seyon Verdtzabella who holds a M.S. degree in Education.

In the Spirit of the Studio
Our entire system as a school is designed to identify and be responsive to the individual educational goals for each student. This leads to an innovative curriculum design that places great value on students’ self-awareness and self-assessment throughout the learning process. Students pursue knowledge, practice skills, and apply wisdom through project-driven activities that integrate several domains of learning (such as art, history, science, math, and language.) in a way that champions the need to connect education to meaningful experiences. In the spirit of the studio, students are encouraged to revisit, recreate, hypothesize, test, expand, focus, and so much more as they drive their projects across large spans of time (from hours to months). In this way, learning is never finished; rather it leads us to know something deeply and it invigorates curiosity for what we do not know yet.

Connecting to the Community
Helping students to become aware of the layers of community is one of the key ways to making learning experiences meaningful. We will actively seek opportunities for our students to learn about and engage various members of the community in which the school resides. We also want the community to witness firsthand the power of our approach to education by interacting with our students—young citizens that know how to apply their capacities for critical thinking and creativity to real issues in the community.