Student Agency
All students need to be successful if they are to build the confidence and capacity to take risks and meet increasingly difficult challenges. But it is also important for students to learn from their failures, to persevere when things are hard, and to learn to turn challenges into opportunities.
At Avante this is seen in many different ways: CREW, Student Led Conferences, Celebrations of Learning , to name a few.
Crew:
Learning is fostered best in communities where students’ and teachers’ ideas are respected and where there is mutual trust. Learning groups are small at Avante, with a caring adult looking after the progress and acting as an advocate for each child. Older students mentor younger ones, and students feel physically and emotionally safe.
Student Led Conferences:
Receiving support and guidance from their teachers, students actively participate in their own learning through a collaborative conversation with their parents during conferences. Students can articulate what they have learned and speak to their own strengths, struggles, goals, processes of learning, and preparation for college and career success.
Celebrations of Learning:
Celebrations of learning are more than a display of student work and more than a party at the end of the year. The events compel students to reflect on and articulate what they have learned, how they learned, questions they answered, research they conducted, and areas of strength and struggles. They are powerful opportunities to make learning public.