Dec. 2022 | Vol. 8 Iss. 12
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STUDENT-LED LEARNING:
ASCENT ACADEMY HAS NAILED IT! By Jet Burnham | j.burnham@mycityjournals.com
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tudents at Ascent Academy, a charter school in West Jordan, get to make a lot of choices. They get to choose how they will show what they’ve learned. They get to choose a subject they want to study in depth. And they get to choose the design for Principal Crystal Thomas’s fingernails. “I'll do whatever they design,” Thomas said. Students draw their nail designs on paper and Thomas randomly selects one from what has grown to more than 150 options. Her nail technician matches every color and every detail from the students’ design, no matter how far out of Thomas’ comfort zone their colorful designs are. “I think they need to know that they're important, that their design, their little polka dots, were important to me, that we put them all in the right place, because they put them there for a reason,” Thomas said. “It shows them that their art is important and of value to me. They need to know at a young age that what they do is important.” This philosophy of student-led, personalized choice is in harmony with Ascent Academy’s charter philosophy, based on a school-wide enrichment model which encourages students to decide which methods they use to learn and to express themselves. “We really believe that students should have ownership in their education, and they should have involvement,” Thomas said. Each quarter, students choose one of the 10 SEM expression styles to create a project which demonstrates what they’ve learned. For example, to show their understanding of fractions, one fifth-grade student used her violin to illustrate music note values, which are fractions of a beat, and a group of fifth-grade boys made a video showing how a zombie had Continued page 6
Principal Crystal Thomas lets her students choose her nail designs. (Photo courtesy of Crystal Thomas.)
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