With the start of the new year, and the closing of his Prisma chapter, we made the choice that Chestnut Ridge Academy has truly been the most successful learning environment for him over the years and is our natural choice to serve as a detox from the more structured experience that Prisma was. But, he's changed a lot since the old days of CRA and I wanted to ensure that CRA would honor who he is now.

If one thing is for sure about CRA, it is that he has always had a voice in making it the school that suits him. So, of course I let him decide how involved he wanted to be in all the planning. He chose to be part of it all so we spent our first week doing just that... planning.

We reviewed the CRA mission statement, which we both still feel accurately reflect what CRA offers:

"A customized learning experience for gifted and exceptional minds"

The same for our philosophies:

At Chestnut Ridge Academy, we believe in learning creatively. We learn in our home, in our city, and in destinations around the world. We embrace intensity and use it to pursue our passions. We take pride in unique strengths while we recognize opportunities to leverage the strengths of others. We surround ourselves with mentors that believe in our approach. We treasure days spent in flow, creatively solving authentic problems. We learn different.

We live out those philosophies with 7 key strategies:

• Safety: We provide a psychologically safe environment in which learners are free to be themselves, feel respected for their unique strengths, and are appreciated as equal members of the community.
• Creativity: We believe in creativity in thought, expression, and implementation. We solve problems from unique angles and find ways to make our visions a reality. We encourage a creative mindset.
• Intensity: We embrace intensity as passion. Intensities that surface as sensations of the body are supported with movement and access to the natural environment. Intense pursuits of the mind become passion projects and days spent in flow.
• Freedom: We break free of expectations and timelines, charting our own path towards knowledge. We are not afraid to fall in love with a topic, pursue it intensely, and become experts in niche areas. We believe in the freedom of choice in how and what we learn.
• Mentorship: We feel that deep social connection with those we admire build confidence in who we are and the future we aspire for ourselves. We foster deep bonds with resident experts and those with lived experiences similar to our own.
• Interdependence: We are acutely aware of our connection to others, the environment, and our world. We study human behavior, philosophy, mindfulness, and we practice collaboration to have a greater impact together than we might have individually.
• Talent Development: We prioritize talent development and seek to identify and foster areas of talent throughout the educational experience. Students are key contributors to their own talent development plans which are then leveraged to encourage deliberate practice and discovery experiences.

Next, it was time to get down to defining what our learning goals would be for the remainder of 5th grade.

• Math: Pre-Algebra + Grade Level
  • Math U See
  • Zearn - but move more rapidly as he does not require the repetition is defaults to
• ELA: Brave Writer
  • Novel Study: Wonder
    • Write a fiction story
  • Biography: TBD
    • Interview & Write a Biography
  • Poetry: TBD
    • Write a Haiku
• History: US History through History in a Box & Moving Beyond the Page
  • Lewis & Clark
  • Gold Rush
  • American Revolution
• Science: Well ahead with science goals so we will focus on simple science
  • Dr. Jeff Science Experiment Boxes
  • Study of the Eclipse
• Social Emotional
  • Join Learners Lab
  • Join Flex Friday Sessions
  • Plan a fundraiser / service project

And, equally important at CRA to the curriculum is the pursuit of passion. He helped to define the Pursuit of Passion Program. All passion projects must begin with a purpose, a description of the end deliverable goal, an idea for mentorship to support the project, and a plan for how one will be held accountable. To maintain progress on the Pursuit of Passion, a weekly journal is to be submitted on Fridays.

Along with all of this work, we spent days exploring the areas where he currently feels comfortable with learning and the challenges that are hindering him at the moment. One of his concerns is feeling prepared and able to take on more responsibility for his learning projects. We'll build these executive functioning skills this year deliberately. When he has tasks to do for the week, he chose to write them on a physical planner and keep that planner in his bathroom so that he sees it first thing each morning. We'll also have a daily checkin when CRA begins to see how he is progressing which also serves as a reminder (without nagging). And, he would like to submit his tasks digitally when they are complete.

To enable all of these systems, behind the scenes we created a digital platform from CRA that is accessible only to him. It shows his weekly plan, his Pursuit of Passion projects, and allow for submission of all work directly from the dashboard. I am SO excited to have this digitally ready to go for the new year!!