Our Method

The Whole Life Charter School is targeting a particular student population and offering a program that must at once answer the needs of that population and the requirements of the State of Pennsylvania. Many of our kids will be managing a learning style not often optimally supported by traditional schools. To that end, we have chosen to combine the proven methods of two successful school models: the real-world internship approach developed by the Big Picture Company and the project-based method utilized by the Minnesota New Country School that takes state standards into account when defining learning plans with its students.

WLCS students will learn through everything. – If a student comes to us and says, “I want to play basketball!” the student’s advisor will encourage that child not only to play but also to build a team, manage its practice schedule, enter it into a league, learn plays, teach plays, and discover the physics of the dribble. For WLCS advisors, any interest, from auto mechanics to zoo cakes is an opportunity to relate the student to the rest of the world.

The WLCS will be a small school. – A maximum student population of 112 students will be divided into small advisor-led groups (advisories) of nine students each. Students at our school will know they are missed if they are absent. Studies have shown that small school size increases learner achievement while school violence substantially subsides as students feel a genuine connection with all the members of the community.

The WLCS will grow strong relationships among all members of the learning team. – A student will remain with one advisor throughout his or her enrollment allowing time for the development of strong interpersonal bonds between and among the student, the advisor, the student’s parents, the student’s mentors and other advisory members. Your child will be known by your child’s advisor. Students will work with their advisor almost every day. Should you need information on your child’s progress, please visit the school or speak with your child’s advisor by phone.

Students will plan their own learning. – After adjusting to our unique environment and methodologies, a student’s personal interests become the focal point around which academic inquiry ensues. Students will have the opportunity to create projects that have meaning to them and their interests and passions. The educational program at WLCS will require that students learn how to learn through focused study and hands-on experience in a truly customized curriculum they create with the guidance of their advisors.

We will evaluate rather than grade. – As learners create, develop and present their projects, we will be able to assess students on their progress in the school’s main learning domains: communication, social reasoning, empirical reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and verbal reasoning, so that they may understand their strengths and strengthen their vulnerabilities.

We will work to build a learner’s self esteem. – We believe all learners have different strengths and weaknesses. Traditional schools place children in academic tracks, the “honors” students attend “more advanced” academic classes than the “vocational” students. Research has shown that this method isn’t transparent to kids and that those that are underachieving because of a mismatch between the educational model and their personal learning style lose the esteem to achieve. Our approach has learners competing with no one other than themselves. Students only need to perform better than their last personal best. With each success comes confidence and the interest in doing even more.

Cooperative learning will be a core teaching method. – Students will be encouraged to learn together in project teams, learn through real-world internships that are tied to their interests with adult mentors outside the school walls, and share their academic mastery, nonacademic skills and talents as Peer Mentors so that they may become confident teachers as well as expert learners.

Design a new school day. – Research has shown that children need more sleep during a twenty four hour period than adults. Our daily routine will have learning begin later in the morning and permit students to engage in more structured academic pursuits at a time when research suggests they are most receptive. While parents will be able to drop their children of at an earlier time, our day will begin at 9:00 am and will end at 4:00 pm. We will also build flexible time into a school day and allow learners time to practice with concepts they feel they need to fortify and apply them to areas of personal investigation.

Constant professional growth for our teachers. – We believe that providing a continual learning environment for our faculty and administration is the best way to model learning to our students. Our faculty will engage in on-going professional development regarding our learners, our learning environment, and the best methods of teaching our uniquely individual students. To that end we have arranged for support from the Education Departments of Chestnut Hill College and DeSales University, and the Psychology Department of Bryn Mawr College. We have also budgeted for coaching from both the Big Picture Company and the Minnesota New Country School. These schools have agreed to send us their trainers, graduate and undergraduate students to act in the capacity of tutors and researchers. With the constant influx of fresh blood and new ideas, our advisors and our administration will constantly improve in their work.

We will teach the whole student. – Traditional public schooling puts its greatest emphasis on verbal, mathematical and analytical skills. These skills are relatively easy to test for in a numerically graded examination. But what good are these skills if their owner doesn’t possess organizational, interpersonal, or presentation skills, among others, as well. Considerable social instruction will be staged within advisories and at internship sites allowing students to develop the special skills needed to acquire and maintain constructive relationships with anyone they engage.