Our Approach
Our democracy depends upon our ability to grow empathic, passionate and informed students. That's why at The Learning Community, we teach into how to have a conversation, give the speaker your attention, agree and disagree, respectfully, be passionate but also have an informed opinion that's backed by evidence. In middle grades, we teach our kids to develop community action projects and take their conversation skills to a new level where they then learn how to engage people in positions of power.
The Learning Community features a distinctive academic program based on:
family engagement
a reflective teaching team
a robust instructional coach team
Currently, we are using the following curricula:
Wit & Wisdom - ELA
FOSS kits, Open Sci Ed - Science
The Choices Program (Brown University) - 6-8 Social Studies, which was actually crafted at Brown University with a former Learning Community teacher!
In its early years The Learning Community has designed innovative systems in several core areas that have lead to our success as a school:
Assessing and Supporting Student Achievement
Family Engagement and Leadership
Social/Emotional/Physical and Academic Safety Net Systems
Assessing and Supporting Teacher Achievement
Distributed Leadership
As a teaching and learning laboratory, we welcome the local and national community into our work. The Learning Community team is deeply committed to teaching and to supporting students and their families.
More about our teams…
Language & Literacy
At The Learning Community, we have a robust Language and Literacy team (L&L team) that supports students and teachers throughout the building. The L&L team is made up of culturally responsive Reading Teachers and Multilingual Learner Teachers who are passionate about helping students grow and develop their reading and language skills. At The Learning Community, we believe that speaking more than one language is an asset and the L&L team celebrates and uses students' home language to help the students learn. They provide targeted language support to our students learning English and help them develop their reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills. The L&L team also supports classroom teachers as they assess and instruct their students in reading and language in the classroom. The most exciting L&L team project is Summer Book Shopping! They select and organize a Summer Book shopping event so students can choose high-interest, engaging books to read all summer long!
Social Emotional Team
Our Social Emotional Team (SET) consists of professionals throughout the building who respond to the physical, social, behavioral and emotional needs of our students and families. This team consists of social workers, behavioral specialists, a nurse and certified nurse assistant, a case manager, and 1:1 behavioral support professionals. All members of SET work within their individual capacities to partner with families, students, and teachers through a comprehensive system of supports.
Special Education
At The Learning Community we believe that all students have a right to inclusive practices and to be educated alongside their peers to the greatest extent possible. Each student who is enrolled in special education programming has a yearly team meeting where our team works to create their individualized education program. We then weave the student’s individualized educational program into the general education placement to the greatest extent possible. All teachers have a deep commitment to educating and supporting all of our students.