OUR CORE VALUES AND PROGRAMS

Flexible Learning

Students will progress at their own pace, progressing only after demonstrated mastery of each core standard. Learning for each student will be tailored to that student’s skills, interests and unique learning styles. Each student will collaborate with teachers and advisors to design learning applications as they enjoy the freedom to focus on cultivating their talents, while meeting and exceeding core standards. 

Mastery Blended Model

Children learn and engage when they are provided with appropriate learning tools and conditions. The mastery model utilizes technology and allows for advancement only when the student demonstrates mastery of skills and objectives and is ready for new concepts. The teacher will direct a variety of group-based instructional techniques with frequent, specific, real-time feedback by using diagnostic, formative tests that guide a variety of personalized correctives (i.e. individualized direct instruction). Assessments are used only to guide future and supplementary instruction. Students are evaluated via criterion-referenced tests, which measure performance against clear learning objectives. Students, therefore, are competing only against themselves to achieve their personal best. 

Project-Based Learning

PBL is an interactive approach based in collaboration between teachers and community experts working to inspire students to achieve a deeper knowledge of the subjects they are studying through direct experience. Students are engaged in applying and developing skills through appreciative inquiry and critical thinking in order to connect real-world problems with environmentally sustainable solutions. 

Advisement and Personal Learning Plan

Each student will be assigned an advisor who follows the student vertically, throughout their academic career. In collaboration with students, teachers, and other professionals, advisors create and maintain a Personal Learning Plan (PLP) for each student to track his/her individualized educational path. The PLP ensures student success by developing plans and accommodations for meeting academic goals and project-based requirements. Advisors will also co-facilitate and develop curriculum for elective courses in collaboration with community experts and partnering organizations. 

Character Education

The CCS cultivates identity, empowerment and integrity. It promotes compassion, inspires collaborative leadership, celebrates perseverance, builds a resilient community and fosters a passion for lifelong learning. Character education emphasizes socio-economic, racial, gender and gender identity, ethnic, religious, and national diversity, by building a community of allies in service to social and environmental justice. 

Service-Learning 

Through exploration of community needs and exposure to a broad range of social and environmental justice issues, students will learn strategies that integrate meaningful service with instruction and self-reflection. By applying experience from the classroom to the community, students practice civic responsibility and sustainability, while building strong values of teamwork and cooperation. 

Restorative Justice

Restorative justice empowers students to resolve conflicts on their own by bringing the parties together in peer-mediated small groups to talk, ask questions, air grievances, and work things out. Restorative practices strengthen communities, prevent bullying and reduce community conflicts by giving voice to the each person through collaborative problem solving. 

Sustainability

From building design to curriculum implementation to clear project-learning parameters, all aspects of CCS culture and implementation are rooted in the permaculture-based ethics of sustainability, equanimity and respect for all people and the environment. Permaculture principles will guide the design of sustainable systems, with natural patterns to inspire people of diverse backgrounds and demographics to practice collaboration and conscientious leadership. 

Inclusivity and Diversity

A truly diverse and inclusive school must have a wide range of economic, racial, national, linguistic, cultural representation, not just of the student body, but of the staff as well. Students should see diversity among their peers as well as their educators. However, diversity alone does not necessarily foster inclusivity. As such, CCS will place a strong emphasis on the acceptance of a variety of backgrounds by integrating them into the mainstream culture of the school, rather than promoting assimilation to one over-arching, potentially marginalizing school culture. This gives students the unique opportunity to become culturally responsive and aware in a diverse environment while simultaneously ensuring that each student is represented and included in that school culture. Our students will enter college and the work force with the mentality that diversity is not divisive, but the key to innovation and positive change.