Academics

Immersives

Immersives Overview

Preparing students to productively and meaningfully contribute to the 21st century requires educators to rethink the traditional curriculum and schedule models that have shaped U.S. schools since the Industrial Revolution. Bosque School’s philosophy of Challenging Education does just that. Today’s global, interconnected, ever-changing, and highly digital world demands students to think critically, engage deeply with and apply their learning across disciplines, communicate and collaborate within diverse communities, and creatively and boldly approach the challenges and opportunities of the future.

We commit to Challenging Education through both our regular rotation classes—where students acquire and build upon critical skills and content knowledge—and through our three-week immersive courses—a dedicated space and time for students to apply their learning and skills in relevant, real-life situations that extend the learning environment beyond the four walls of a classroom, launching in May of 2022. Relevance unlocks doors of imagination, excitement, and intrinsic motivation to learn. Experiences that extend beyond the physical campus boundaries additionally offer powerful opportunities for the exploration of real-world ideas and problems, engagement in pre-professional learning, and even deeper community engagement and partnerships. Research shows, and our students affirm, that they learn best when they are actively engaged with teachers and facilitators who can help unlock their curiosity and help identify and explore their passions.

The goal of immersives is to maintain and enhance the kinds of learning experiences our students and alumni find most transformative, while refining and redesigning ways to integrate disciplines and further deepen learning. As a manifestation of our commitment to our mission and core value of Inspiring Academic Excellence, a new schedule will launch in the 2021-22 academic year. This new schedule will have all students taking up to seven courses in the regular rotation (August-April) and then shifting into one additional course—an immersive—that they have chosen from a catalog of options and is entirely dedicated to “immersing” themselves in that subject area, without distraction, over three full weeks in May.

Students and teachers will be asked to “explore challenging concepts and ideas and to be daring in their pursuit of deep understanding.” As we build out the course catalog, we are committing to the following overarching goals that will underpin the immersives:

List of 8 items.

  • Academic Mission-Aligned Immersive Courses

    Immersives provide time and space for compelling, integrated, interdisciplinary deep learning in which students can engage in educational experiences free from the usual parameters of time restrictions that exist in the regular schedule rotation.
    • Immersives will look and feel very different from our regular rotation classes. They are an opportunity to focus on relevant, meaningful, and core content that deepens student learning, not to condense a semester’s worth of content into three weeks.
    • In addition to interdisciplinary learning, all immersive courses will center on critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration, cultural competency, and community engagement.
    • Immersive courses allow students and teachers to engage in academically challenging inquirybased learning experiences—active learning that starts by posing questions, problems or scenarios—that balance abstract and concrete learning.
    • Students are graded in immersive courses. Upper school students will receive academic credit counted towards their graduation requirements upon successful completion and immersives will be noted on transcripts (providing a significant college admissions distinguisher).
    • Assessment tools will focus on authentic audiences and showcase learning in the most dynamic and experiential way. For example, students will give professional standard presentations and participate in demonstrations of learning at the conclusion of their immersive. Their audience will be a range of peers, Bosque School staffulty, parents and guardians, community partners, and city-wide professionals and leaders.

  • Student Engagement

    Immersive courses are relevant and dynamic and should provide new opportunities for students to pursue passions and interests. Immersives provide elements of student choice and the interdisciplinary nature of immersive courses gives students opportunities to demonstrate multiple academic, artistic, and personal strengths.

  • Staffulty Engagement

    Immersives provide staffulty the opportunity to share academic and professional passions.
    • Immersives are team-taught, often bringing together interdisciplinary colleagues in design and delivery.
    • Community experts and professionals will partner with Bosque School staffulty to deepen and enrich students’ learning opportunities.

  • Experiential Learning & Fieldwork

    Immersives connect students to the world beyond Bosque School through on-site research, engagement with community experts and professionals, and, in some rare cases, travel.
    • Students use the social and natural environments in the local and global community as sites for meaningful fieldwork and learning.
    • During fieldwork, students are active learners, not passive spectators.
    • Fieldwork allows students to utilize quantitative and qualitative research tools and inquiry techniques such as monitoring data, taking oral histories and/or interviews.

  • Community Engagement & Service Learning

    Immersives allow students to collaborate with professional experts and community partners, ensuring students have accuracy and integrity in their work.
    • Bosque School’s Service Learning philosophy continues to shift the concept of service beyond acts of charity. Service Learning pedagogy provides the potential for rigorous academic products that serve the community’s needs.
    • There is a focus on cultural competence: awareness of others, awareness of self, the skills and knowledge to understand cultures beyond one’s own. This work is framed by Bosque School’s commitment to our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Principles and Best Practices and antioppression teaching and learning.

  • Sample Immersive Courses

    Students will review immersive course offerings and register for their May immersive course in mid-to-late fall. Here are some of the kinds of immersives we may offer (note: our immersives course catalog is yet to be created and all of these may not be represented): Sports Psychology, Marine Biology, Spanish Immersion through Intercultural Exchange, Public Health, Homelessness, Graffiti and Street Art, Mountain Medicine, Film Making, Architecture, Public Relations & Marketing, Criminal Justice, Immigration, Entrepreneurial Studies, Environmental Ethics, Sustainable Source Engineering, Behind the Broadway Scenes, etc, etc.
    • We will collect student, staffulty, and parent/guardian feedback on immersives each year and continually refine the list.

  • Costs

    Immersives will generally not incur any additional costs for students as they will be built into the academic budget of the school. Immersives that include travel will have affiliated costs, clearly noted in the immersive catalog, and families will have the ability to apply for financial support to offset these costs at a percentage aligned with their financial aid award.

  • Relevant Research

4000 Bosque School Road NW
Albuquerque, NM 87120
505-898-6388