This year St. Regis School is experiencing a whole new way of learning. They have adopted the Summit Basecamp learning program, which is project-based and more hands-on than traditional modes of learning. Rather than standing in front of a class, teachers work with students individually or in small groups.

“Teachers become mentors for students and facilitators of their education to help them reach their goals rather than the distributor of information,” said the school’s superintendent, Joe Steele.

The platform comes with a curriculum which includes projects, playlists of content and assessments. This has given students more control over their education. They have the responsibility of determining how quickly they work through material, they also determine the focus of their education and projects of interest they want to work on.

Students can collaborate and work together, in addition to working on their own at their own pace. In a recent school newsletter, Steele wrote, “Listening to our students visit with educators from other districts who come see what we are doing has been intriguing. Jasmine Jones tells visitors that before we switched to the platform, she would take notes, study the material, take the test, then forget it and move on with the class. Now, she has to retry until she really learns the content and skills.”

Steele said the bottom line is that students are learning more and being asked to study, take a stand on an issue, and defend it with research from a variety of resources. They are not spitting out content from a single textbook. Students are looking for flaws in arguments, looking at perspectives from other cultures, debating and discussing at a deeper level issues that confront our society. In short, they are thinking for themselves and making a connection between ideas that they never would have before the platform.

How students are graded has been a recent issue regarding the program. It is not set up for quarterly grades. Though the platform provides a true reflection of how well the students know the content, merely transferring the grade does not work. It measures the student against where they should be at the end of the school year, not against where they are currently. This caused the grade point averages to plummet.

At a recent parent meeting at the school, a sliding scale system was adopted which will track the growth students should be making over the course of the school year. However, Steele warns, parents and students need to understand that this system will be phased out over the next couple of years.

In the future the grading system will be in terms of being On Track which is Proficient/Advanced or an “A”, Developing which is a “B”, Emerging which is a “C” and Incomplete. Anything less than an “A” indicates the student has not mastered all of the content and skills required.

As the district continues to learn how to personalize instruction, develop its own content, and help students learn at their own readiness level, the staff will start to work through these early growing pains and begin creating content and working with students in ways that push the beyond what students think they are capable of achieving. In fact, some teachers are there now. This effort takes time, but is expected to benefit students in the long run. They will be better prepared for their future endeavors, better able to face challenges, and better able to contribute to society in meaningful ways, Steele said.