{"id":4663,"date":"2017-10-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/cw_post\/flight-academy-magic-happens-when-kids-come-together\/"},"modified":"2020-02-05T13:03:32","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T18:03:32","slug":"flight-academy-magic-happens-when-kids-come-together","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/flight-academy-magic-happens-when-kids-come-together\/","title":{"rendered":"FLIGHT Academy: Magic Happens When Kids Come Together"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"This is the second post in a series on my visit to Wisconsin. Start with this look<\/a> at what’s happening state-wide.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The School District of Waukesha in Wisconsin sits about twenty-five miles west of Milwaukee. The district has created innovation space for schools to move toward personalized, proficiency-based learning. A district administrator explained this spirit of innovation as, \u201cIf you can say yes, then say yes.\u201d The result is that there are at least three schools that are transforming themselves: Waukesha STEM Academy was the first to make the transition; then a school-within-a-school programmatic approach called Flight Academy at Horning Middle School took the plunge; and now Blair Elementary School has started the process.<\/p>\n

Waukesha has not created a system-wide transition strategy, and it\u2019s unlikely they will do so in the near future. They share a belief that the transition has to come from educators in the school. However, there are elements of their policies and operations that support personalized, proficiency-based education. For example, Gallup\u2019s Hope survey is used to get a read on engagement and school climate. They are also working with the Institute for Personalized Learning<\/a> (director Ryan Krohn<\/a> was an assistant superintendent before he went to IPL) on developing a better understanding of agency, empathy, and perseverance. What do they look like? How do they develop? And what can schools do to support their development?<\/p>\n

FLIGHT Academy<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

FLIGHT is actually an acronym: facilitating learning through integration, guidance, high expectations, and technology. They\u2019ve made a video (found on this page<\/a>) to explain the vision.<\/p>\n

Developed by two teachers, Krista Krauter (a teacher at Horning for eighteen years) and Jeffrey Taege, FLIGHT is a program within Horning Middle School designed as a multi-age, personalized learning pathway that focuses on collaboration, technology integration, and 21st century skills. A student’s core classes (science, math, and humanities) take place within the academy as interdisciplinary seminars. All elective classes (music, art, technology education, business, foreign language, REAL, and phy.ed.) take place in the general Horning classes, with students in their age-based grade. Krauter explained, \u201cWhen I had my own kids, I realized that we had to do something very different in schools. I didn\u2019t want my kids sitting through school day after day just listening to a teacher. There had to be a better way of designing learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

FLIGHT Academy is now in its fifth year, with seven teachers and 160 learners. This is a similar student to teacher ratio as the rest of Horning. Below is a high level description of their program.<\/p>\n

Focus<\/em><\/p>\n

Flight Academy organizes the learning cycle around three questions:<\/p>\n