April 15, 2017
Mounds Park Academy fosters innovative teaching that fuels creative thinking and sparks a passion for learning. Every day MPA teachers are creating active and engaging learning opportunities with real-world implications, emphasizing critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and deep understanding over rote memorization. Every opportunity is maximized to allow students to explore, create, and express their ideas in ways that build on their inherent motivation and self-direction.
Examples of student-directed learning abound at MPA in small and large ways, from allowing students to choose a topic to demonstrate what they’ve learned to engaging them in designing an entire unit. Our teachers love uncovering new and innovative ways to include students in the learning process, guiding them to take ownership for their academic and intellectual development.
Student-Designed Unit a Resounding Success
After teaching in a large urban school district, Middle School history teacher George Dalbo appreciates the comparative flexibility that MPA offers him; he feels that state standards and testing can limit the flexibility of public school teachers.
Earlier this year Dalbo offered an entirely student-driven unit on South Asia. When he initially considered having the students involved in structuring the unit, Dalbo thought that he would simply host a focus group and those students would present ideas to the class. But every student wanted to be involved.
