A Living Curriculum
At the heart of Tremont School is an inter-disciplinary project-based model we call, Living Curriculum. The Living Curriculum takes a highly personalized approach to education that focuses on our students’ strengths, interests, and individual learning styles. The primary goal of the curriculum is to promote personal understanding of the material through a guided discovery process. Collaborative and individual work are woven together into a learning environment, encouraging exploration, engaged participation, and problem solving.
The Living Curriculum is organized through a weekly contract, an agenda for each student’s individual and collaborative work. The contract is a menu offering a healthy diet of academic and social tasks. Students decide when to do their math, reading, or project based work. Giving students choice in how and when to approach the many types of learning builds a powerful sense of autonomy and responsibility for their learning. While each student takes her own path to the full integration of her autonomy and responsibility, she understands immediately the power of the message of trust. Though the contract is teacher-made, it is student- centered. Instead of teachers saying: ”Everyone, take your math test,” students come to teachers saying: ”Can I please have my math test?” Shifting the initiative to the student, puts the conversation of confronting what is hard or not as fun on the table, rather than hiding it beneath a veneer of uniformity.
The goal of the Living Curriculum is to breathe new life into the process of learning for each individual student. This fresh air rekindles the flame of natural curiosity that is the hallmark of early childhood. This natural curiosity drives engagement through the Middle School and High School experiences.
