5 Expectations Archives - Eagle Rock Blog

Highlighting 4 More Classes Offered in the Second Half of ER-82

This week, we’d like to give you a glimpse at some of the class offerings available to students during this, the second half of the 82nd trimester. You might notice references in these class descriptions below that talk about Individual Learning Plans (ILP), Power Standards, Distribution Requirements, and Required Experiences.

If you’re new to Eagle Rock, we feel compelled to fill you in on these terms and what exactly is required from each member of our student body before graduation. First off, a student’s Individual Learning Plan (ILP) is just that — individual and personal. It is made up of three sections, including Power Standards, Distribution Requirements, and Required Experiences.

When we talk about Power Standards, these are proficiency requirements in each of our Five Expectations — Healthy Life Choices, Effective Communication, Engaged Global Citizen, Leadership for Justice, and Expanding Knowledge Base. These standardized graduation “musts” can be attained via successfully completing a select class offering, or independent study projects.

For Distribution Requirements, students must meet proficiency standards for at least 24 credits. Those include two credits for each of the Five Expectations, with the remaining 14 earned in other classes. Work performed outside the classroom can garner another two credits. All Eagle Rock classes offer distribution credits, so students have the opportunity to participate in many such experiences.

For more details about Power Standards, please consider reading The Role of Power Standards in this Trimester’s Class Offerings. And for Distribution Requirements, check out Distribution Requirements Play a Big Role in This Trimester’s Latest Class Offerings.

Here then are the four classes we’d like to tell you about: Continue reading…

Four More Classes Round Out our 79th Trimester

What makes a school’s curriculum unique? Here at Eagle Rock, it’s the totality of student experiences that occur within the content of our educational process.

Predicated on the belief that every student has the ability to become fully engaged in their own education, our curriculum focuses on competencies that we refer to as our 5 Expectations:

Learning to communicate effectively: The primary purpose of an Eagle Rock class is to help students understand how to get a message across. That’s why poetry, art, and music often figure prominently into our class offerings.
Expanding one’s knowledge base: Helping students understand and providing them with the tools to learn how to learn, as well as how to apply that learning to other situations, is also part of the Eagle Rock experience. As a result, many of our classes include elements of problem solving.
Becoming an engaged citizen: At Eagle Rock, we’re intentional about helping our students learn something that naturally enables them to interact better with various people and cultures. Sometimes that’s accomplished by learning a second language or taking a class that focuses on worker’s rights.
Acquiring leadership skills in order to achieve justice: Helping students understand what it takes to make a place — our school for example, or the local community in which we are based — more fair and equitable, is another aspect of our educational process.
Creating healthy life choices: Finally, helping students understand that the decisions they make can increase or decrease positive outcomes regarding health of self, society, others, or the environment, is another unique aspect of our curriculum.

With our 5 Expectations in mind, we’re able to conceptualize and offer classes worthy of the student engagement we believe every student is capable of achieving. We also require that all Eagle Rock School students have Individual Learning Plans (ILPs) that guide them on their journey here. And each of those ILPs include distribution requirements. (For more information on distribution requirements, please see Distribution Requirements Play a Big Role in This Trimester’s Latest Class Offerings.)

This trimester, which is our 79th since our founding in the early 1990s, we’re offering five 10-week classes that we’ve previously blogged about and are still occurring (Research, Neuroscience, Jewelry Around the World, Facing History, and Facilitating Educational Change, along with the four new classes highlighted below: Continue reading…

The Role of Power Standards in this Trimester’s Class Offerings

It’s the beginning of our 77th trimester here at Eagle Rock School and Professional Development Center and our students are already well entrenched in furthering their education with meaningful classes — many promoting strong leadership and good citizenry in the world they will soon inherit. A rundown of those classes is offered below, but first, we’d like to give you some insight into how we plan for and assess educational progress here at Eagle Rock School.

At Eagle Rock, we’ve long maintained an “Individual Learning Plan” for our students, as well as “Power Standards” that assess student progress within this plan. All of this is organized around what we call our “5 Expectations,” which include:

Creating Healthy Life Choices
Effective Communication
Leadership for Justice
Engaged Global Citizen
Expanding Knowledge Base

The Individual Learning Plan (ILP for short) is a means of assessing each student’s progress in completing their graduation requirements. The plan is divvied up among three sections, which include: Continue reading…

Eagle Rock’s ‘School Improvement Project’ Focuses on Common Assessment

Editor’s Note: “Vision 2020” is the name of the strategic planning process adopted five years ago by Eagle Rock’s board of directors. It helps ensure that our long-term goals coincide with what we do on campus on a day-to-day basis. The vision focuses on seven distinct areas — known as domains — that guide our board, administrators, instructors, staff members and students. One of these domains centers on our academic curriculum, focusing on creating a framework for normed common assessments.

In today’s post, Eagle Rock staffers Jen Frickey, director of curriculum, and Jon Anderson, outdoor education instructional specialist and this year’s instructional coach, address and update the work our staff is doing in the domain of academic curriculum.

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Eagle Rock’s ‘School Improvement Project’ Focuses on Common Assessment
By Jen Frickey (Director of Curriculum) & John Anderson (Human Performance & Outdoor Education Instructional Specialist / 2018 Instructional Coach)

This year, the theme for professional development within Eagle Rock School’s instructional realm, is a close scrutiny of our academic curriculum — specifically pinpointing our power standards. At Eagle Rock School, all students must successfully pass power standard classes on each of our 5 Expectations. These include:

Leadership for Justice
Expanding Knowledge Base
Effective Communication
Healthy Life Choices
Engaged Global Citizen

Top of mind for our educators this year are the school’s Enduring Understanding and long-term learning targets for their own professional development. Enduring Understanding — also known as our 10-Year Takeaway — asks teachers to consider what it is that students will remember about their particular class and what they retained a decade from now.

By creating and implementing schoolwide common assessments, instructors can improve teacher capacity, thus enhancing Continue reading…

Engaged Global Citizen As Part Of Eagle Rock’s 5 Expectations

A quick glance at the curriculum here at Eagle Rock School illustrates how we insist our students take charge — and take possession — of their own learning experiences and responsibilities. As a value-driven school, we encourage our students to concentrate heavily on mastering certain competencies.

Among these competencies is a fundamental philosophy that we call “8 + 5 = 10.” That’s eight themes, five expectations and 10 commitments that are a roadmap of sorts, intended to shape daily experiences both on campus and off.

Specifically, among the five expectations are:

Learning to communicate effectively
Expanding one’s knowledge base
Become an engaged global citizen
Acquiring leadership skills in order to achieve justice
Creating healthy life choices

A few weeks ago we told you about Expanding Knowledge Base as Part of Eagle Rock’s 5 Expectations. In today’s post, we’re going to tackle the intricacies of the third expectation: evolving into engaged global citizens. And what is it that we expect from these newly emerging global citizens?

This expectation is based on a worldwide plan of action, where we encourage our students to develop skills and knowledge in order to concentrate on peaceful, productive interactions with global issues within the context of cultural and ecosystem diversity.

What are some of these issues? According to the non-profit Peace Jam — a Denver-based nonprofit that we align with very closely, especially as it relates to helping our students become engaged global citizens — these issues include: Continue reading…

Expanding Knowledge Base as Part of Eagle Rock’s 5 Expectations

We expect a lot from students here at Eagle Rock School, and we make no bones about ensuring these expectations are understood and accepted. In fact, we even call them the “5 Expectations” so that every student leaves here as a productive, engaged citizen, ready and willing to make a difference in the world.

Among these five expectations are:

Learning to communicate effectively
Expanding one’s knowledge base
Become an engaged citizen
Acquiring leadership skills in order to achieve justice
Creating healthy life choices

Today we’re going to focus on No. 2 of these expectations: Expanding Knowledge Base.

One of our expectations for all Eagle Rock students is that they will acquire the skills necessary to become independent learners and problem solvers. Traditional math and English courses often fall within this expectation.

In our math classes, this expectation is usually tied to a specific content area such as algebra, geometry, probability, statistics or calculus. Within these areas, many math courses at Eagle Rock revolve around specific real-world situations. For example, exploring gambling games and how probability factors into that casino floor equation. Others include how to research and interpret (data analysis), how to predict outcomes (statistics), and how to hide things (cryptography).

Within many of Becky Poore’s math classes, final projects are assigned for the purpose of assessing what’s been learned and offering students the opportunity to demonstrate and showcase the skills they’ve acquired. For the gambling example above, from a math class on probability, students are expected to expand their knowledge base by creating their own game of chance.

In other math classes, students are tasked with Continue reading…