Academic Program at One Schoolhouse: Our Commitment to Excellence and Equity in Every Course

​When you register a student for the Academic Program at One Schoolhouse, you expect them to have an experience that challenges them intellectually, develops their academic maturity, and gives them new insights on their world. So do we. That’s why we build learner-driven school year and summer courses that help students build academic maturity and global competency. Our courses deliver on that promise–last year, 97% of our students told us they were challenged by our courses, 90% reported they developed their academic maturity, and 90% said their Academic Program course expanded their worldview.

The Academic Program earns those scores because we’re intentional about our pedagogy, our courses, and our teaching. All our work is grounded in research about how students learn, which forms the basis of The Pedagogy of One Schoolhouse. From there, we set clear standards that each of our courses and teachers need to meet. We work with our teachers through coaching and feedback to ensure that everything we do for your students is up to your–and our–standards. Here’s how we do it:

We dig deep into the research on how students learn best online, and how to nurture student-teacher connection in the online space. We’re learners, and we start by doing our homework. Informed by research, we’ve defined what good teaching looks like, and we make that our standard. The Pedagogy of the Academic Program at One Schoolhouse lays out our core tenets of teaching and learning: “At the Academic Program, we believe schooling should be organized around how students – each with their own unique identity – grow.  This belief positions learning, rather than teaching, as the design driver of our courses and all their components.” The Pedagogy paper traces the ways this belief manifests in our course design: “Our teachers create scaffolded learning experiences that support and guide the student journey towards mastery  and the acquisition of competencies, but it is students who drive learning forward through goal setting, planning, and meaningful reflection.” We do all this because intentionality is core to successful online teaching and learning. 

We articulate what we value most, and what we believe every student needs to succeed–and we ensure it’s built into every course we offer. Our Course Development Standards and Cycle are explicit about the practices that need to be standardized across all courses. If a practice is important enough to be a part of the Pedagogy paper, it’s important enough to be present in all our courses. Our standards aren’t optional–they are required for every teacher and every course. For example, we believe that reflection is essential to student-driven learning, so our standards explain how and when it should be used:

• STANDARD III: GROWTH AND REFLECTION
  • Each unit includes closure activity and opportunity for structured reflection
  • Students have choice in reflection modality and prompts are varied to ensure thoughtful reflection
  • Reflections are valued; completion is required and student voice is used in quarterly reports
  • Reflections and feedback on reflections are used to fuel learner-driven practices for the student and deepen the student-teacher relationship

Our Course Development Standards also ensure that our values are present in and integral to every course we offer. We believe that learning should be inclusive, identity-affirming, and equity-centered. These, too, are part of our baseline expectations. We expect each Academic Program course to present “multiple foundations and perspectives from people of color when explaining historical origins, frameworks for analysis, and contemporary events and includes diverse authorship,” and we expect teachers to be able to provide evidence the standard has been met. 

We’re explicit about our baseline expectations for teachers, and we make professional growth part of those expectations. The Academic Program developed our own rubric for teacher competencies because we wanted to be clear about our expectations, equitable in our evaluations, and explicit about professional growth. We have high standards for our teachers, so we provide a high level of support, coaching, and feedback to support our teachers in meeting those standards. Our rubric describes two levels of performance: Baseline Effectiveness and Exemplary Implementation, which provides growth opportunities for both new and experienced teachers.For example, our first teacher competency is “Teacher is self-aware and builds an authentic relationship that empowers each student as a cornerstone of the learning experience.” A baseline expectation here is that the teacher “knows students’ goals and learner profiles and actively works to support growth through regular contact with and feedback to students.” For teachers who strive for Exemplary Implementation, we offer a goal: to “anticipate learner challenges and proactively engage students to strategize and trouble-shoot.”

At the Academic Program, we’re committed to continuous improvement–for ourselves as well as our teachers. We’re confident that by staying at the forefront of educational research and best practices, we'll continue to empower our students to achieve academic excellence, develop global competencies, and become lifelong learners who are prepared to thrive in a changing world.