Supporting Schools

Brad Rathgeber

At One Schoolhouse, we meet our mission to empower learners and transform education by partnering with you and your schools to meet your needs.  Increasingly, we’ve heard from you that you need: additional semester elective opportunities for your students; full course strands in languages and computer science to replace low enrolled offerings on campus; and more resources to help your school transform and thrive in the contemporary education environment.  Here are three ways we’re meeting these needs in 2020.

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• Additional Semester Electives: We’re continuing to grow and transform our elective opportunities for students for the 2020-2021 school year. New courses include: Climate Change, Criminal Justice Reform, and Happiness! The Psychology of What Makes Life Worth Living.  When students take electives in high school, they are looking to pursue a passion or try out a topic before heading to college. Offering students electives are one way we increase their agency. But, we believe electives should go even further in offering freedom to pursue individual goals and outcomes. When a student takes a One Schoolhouse elective, they can choose to further their study from the fall course with a springtime activism, design, or research seminar.  These guided seminars offer students the structure they need to find success, while allowing them to create meaningful work.
• Full Course Strands: Increasingly, schools find that they are offering low enrollment course strands that become unsustainable in the long-term. That’s why we offer full sequences of Latin, French, Chinese, and Computer Science--and it’s why we continue to add to those strands.  In 2020-2021, we’ll be adding an additional level of Intermediate Latin in order to make sure students are fully prepared for AP or Advanced offerings.  In French, we’re adding a new Advanced French course with a focus on global business.  In Computer Science, we’re adding a new course in Data Science. And, we’re starting a new language next year, offering American Sign Language - Beginning.
• New Resources for Educators: In 2019, we merged our efforts with the Independent Curriculum Group (ICG). ICG, and their incredible Executive Director, Peter Gow, created world-class resources and thought-pieces for schools which lived on the ICG website. This year, those resources will be moved to the One Schoolhouse website and added to substantially.  Resources will be organized by theme, with a new theme announced each month…  Here’s a bonus for those of you who have made it this far… Check out the first month release a week early here, on Curriculum & Program Review.

We look forward to our continued partnership in 2020.  As always, if there is anything that we can do to help you or your school inspire learning please let me know.

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