Reimagining Rigor
At Bosque School, "rigor,” as it relates to academic excellence, is defined by factors far beyond the amount of time a student passively sits at a desk listening to a lecture or enduring monotonous hours of homework. Our students acquire core academic skills in the classroom through meaningful fieldwork and opportunities to learn from community partners and industry leaders. Our curriculum promotes deep and applied learning, bringing new meaning to the concept of academic "rigor."
Relevant & Relational:
Relevant: Learning sticks best when students can relate it to the world around them. Our curriculum connects the dots between the lessons of the past and the current events shaping our students’ futures.
Relational: Students learn best from those they know and trust. Building meaningful relationships between students and teachers deepens learning and helps our students feel safe taking healthy risks as learners, allowing them opportunities for true growth.
Inquiry Based:
Core academic knowledge and skills deepen through inquiry, in which teachers share a thoughtful and developmentally appropriate curriculum, focused on essential content and skills, and then support students with rich opportunities to showcase their understanding and application of knowledge through inquiry questions and projects. Bosque School’s commitment to inquiry-based learning deepens retention and application of information, unlocks intrinsic motivation, and helps students identify passions.
Great Teaching and Learning:
Learning is designed and led by Bosque School's talented and expert faculty. A majority of our teachers have advanced degrees, and 100% of them are passionate, student-centered educators. Our faculty develop and deliver a dynamic, engaging, and advanced curriculum that surpasses the rigor of standardized curriculum (such as advanced placement classes).
Ownership:
Ownership leads to engagement, and engagement leads to learning retention. At Bosque School, students are provided ongoing opportunities for autonomy, agency, and ownership of their learning as they move beyond just learning core content and skills and actively apply that learning daily. This is fostered through our inquiry model (see above), which provides pathways for students to engage in their education with curiosity and commitment. Fostering student ownership results in intrinsic motivation, ignites passions, and accelerates and deepens retention and learning.
Research Based:
Our curricular decisions at Bosque School are guided by the most current research on teaching, learning, neuroscience, adolescent development, and social-emotional health.
"We need to think in more integrated and creative ways. We need to recognize interconnections, be able to handle tensions and dilemmas, feel at ease with ambiguity, persist even in difficult times. We need an optimistic outlook that there are answers to our differences. These are the qualities—the skills—that help us live and work together resiliently and productively. And school is where we can learn and sharpen these skills."
The Social-Emotional Foundations of Learning
