Shaping the future through integrated STEAM curriculum
At Compass Academy, our mission is to empower students to find their success path, equipped with the skills and leadership necessary to thrive in the 21st century and make a positive impact on others around them.
The acronym C.O.M.P.A.S.S. describes the design behind our students’ daily learning experiences.
Career Prep
We believe in preparing students for a global economy and equipping them with skills to successfully navigate a world of constant change and choice.
Our curriculum and instruction engages students with content, experiences, and activities carefully designed to encourage age-appropriate self discovery, career awareness and skills development.
- Encourages Self-Discovery: Students craft the story of who they are and what makes them unique, setting the groundwork for ongoing self-reflection.
- Creates Career Awareness: Students discover a variety of careers and their associated skills and pathways to better understand the working world.
- Build Future-Readiness Skills: Student learn vital concepts for real-world readiness, helping to make the move from elementary to middle school a smooth one.
Hands-on & Holistic
We take an approach to teaching that activates the learner’s intellect, emotions, imagination, and body for more effective and comprehensive learning. We place an emphasis on developing a positive school environment and providing whole-child supports (services that support academic and nonacademic needs) to students.
Students are taught to reflect on their actions and how they impact the global and local community, as well as how to learn from the community around them. Our educators engage students in projects that apply critical-thinking skills toward solving real-world problems.
Leader in Me
We recognize each child as a leader with unique gifts and talents to share.
Our curriculum and instruction is grounded in the Leader in Me framework which enables students to find their voice in the classroom and through leadership roles.
The Student Leadership Portrait™ outlines the specific skills and competencies student leaders are developing at Compass Academy in order to thrive in the 21st century. The model has four broad categories, with three competencies per category, all of which help students learn to lead themselves and others.
Personalized Learning
We believe that each student has unique skills, abilities, preferences, background, and experiences and are committed to being responsive and customizing learning experiences to meet students’ needs.
We also believe that learning happens when educators tap into students’ interests and passions, giving them individualized opportunities to ask questions, explore, and take risks.
To this end, we employ several digital technologies to personalize learning.
Arts
We believe every student deserves art. At Compass Academy, students will get a chance to explore visual art, media art, and music.
- Visual Arts: Our curriculum is a high-quality visual art curriculum. The multifaceted lessons develop students’ critical-thinking skills, creative confidence, hands-on skills, visual literacy, self-esteem, and an appreciation of other cultures.
- Media Arts
- Music
STEM
We believe that in order to prepare students for the careers of today and tomorrow, we need to help students think and do like scientists and engineers. We want students to see themselves as scientists and engineers. Our science and engineering based curriculum provides students with hands-on investigations, literacy-rich activities, and interactive digital tools to empower students to think, read, write, and argue like real scientists and engineers.
In each trimester, students will be engaged in a relevant, real-world problem where they investigate scientific phenomena, engage in collaboration and discussion, and develop models or explanations in order to arrive at solutions.
The curriculum is rooted in the Lawrence Hall of Science’s Do, Talk, Read, Write, Visualize model of learning. Gold standard research shows that this pedagogical approach works.
Service Learning
Service Learning is an important part of students’ learning experiences at Compass Academy. We engage students in experiential learning whereby students apply content knowledge, critical thinking and good judgment to address genuine community needs.
Through service learning, students can make a difference in their communities—and by making a difference they grow and learn. Real-world application of knowledge gained in the classroom makes both the classroom learning and the service experience more valuable and interesting.
