Mission
To cultivate a dynamic learning community based on innovation, social justice, and environmental stewardship. The Resilience Charter School engages students through authentic relationships and project-based learning, empowering them to think critically, persevere with grit, design creative solutions, and act with mindfulness and compassion.
Vision
Resiliency is an inherent human trait that empowers us with the capacity to overcome challenges, gain new insights, and build skills. Supportive relationships cultivate deep resilience, and this is why we emphasize building authentic relationships with our students. Inspired by the global mythology of the rising phoenix, we support one another in rising strong. Resilience Charter School creates a supportive yet challenging learning environment which inspires academic excellence and active citizenship, developing a hub of empowerment for Alachua County youth. Students apply their burgeoning knowledge and skills to pro-actively contribute to the enrichment of the world, thereby becoming lifelong learners. Resilience Charter School aims to propagate a model of excellence.
Core Elements
Seven core program elements drive our school’s challenging learning environment:
(1) Interdisciplinary Project-Based Learning: A dynamic approach to teaching and learning that allows students to actively and authentically explore complex real world problems, while integrating the core content areas into the development of student-driven research and solutions.
(2) Blended Learning and Immersive Technologies: Integration of cutting edge technologies that will best prepare students to achieve success in the 21st century workplace.
(3) Participatory Action Research: Collaborations and partnerships between the people most affected by important issues and students to conduct research and analysis together and devise strategies to resolve the issues.
(4) Democratic Process: A learning community that values participation, equality, justice, mutual respect, and trust.
(5) Mentorship and Apprenticeship: Student participation in communities of practice in which experts in a specific field of interest guide them to gain deeper understanding and skills.
(6) Mindfulness Education: Creative introspection and reflection that harnesses the energy and power of non-judgmental awareness and focused attention.
(7) Multicultural and Global Education: Cultural competence that embraces diversity, ecological stewardship, and preparation for professionalism in an increasingly global economy.
(1) Interdisciplinary Project-Based Learning: A dynamic approach to teaching and learning that allows students to actively and authentically explore complex real world problems, while integrating the core content areas into the development of student-driven research and solutions.
(2) Blended Learning and Immersive Technologies: Integration of cutting edge technologies that will best prepare students to achieve success in the 21st century workplace.
(3) Participatory Action Research: Collaborations and partnerships between the people most affected by important issues and students to conduct research and analysis together and devise strategies to resolve the issues.
(4) Democratic Process: A learning community that values participation, equality, justice, mutual respect, and trust.
(5) Mentorship and Apprenticeship: Student participation in communities of practice in which experts in a specific field of interest guide them to gain deeper understanding and skills.
(6) Mindfulness Education: Creative introspection and reflection that harnesses the energy and power of non-judgmental awareness and focused attention.
(7) Multicultural and Global Education: Cultural competence that embraces diversity, ecological stewardship, and preparation for professionalism in an increasingly global economy.
Guiding Principles
(1) Authentic Relationships: Teachers will be required to reflect on the depth of their connections with their students, and teacher-student connection will be a valued criteria in teacher evaluation. Community building activities will create opportunities throughout the year to build connection and trusting relationships with mentors, based on common interests both locally and through an online network of mentor experts.
(2) Vulnerability: Taking educational risks entails allowing ourselves to be vulnerable in our learning, in order to open the doors to true innovation. The fear of failure often holds students back from success. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.” Teachers and administrators will model vulnerable self-reflecting with healthy boundaries. Personal sharing of obstacles and failures will create a reflective culture that values a growth mindset over a myth of perfectionism.
(3) Grit: Grit entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over the years despite failures, adversity, and plateaus in progress. Cultivating a culture that encourages grit requires a foundation of connected teachers and students. At Resilience Charter School, we will share with students that a key to their success is perseverance and passion, or grit.
(4) Metacognition: Metacognition is the process of observing our thinking and feeling, and it has been shown to create deep understandings, and enhance academic success. Metacognition refers to the self-awareness of individuals about their knowledge and self-understanding, self-control and self-manipulation of the process of their own cognition. Reflecting on weaknesses is a process that often involves uncomfortable vulnerability, but has the potential to deeply enhance teacher and student learning.
(5) Inquiry: Inquiry is natural process that inspires learning, seeking answers to our questions to build a growing body of knowledge. Inquiry requires more than simply answering questions or getting a right answer. It utilizes investigation, exploration, search, quest, research, pursuit, and study. Inquiry is enhanced by involvement with a community of learners, each student learning from the other in social interaction. Students at Resilience Charter School will question the beliefs and projections that create barriers to academic growth. Teachers and students will question the solutions we have applied to academic problems, and go back to the drawing board to make revisions.
(6) Flow: Inquiry awakens a joyful flow of discovery. This playful flow builds brain architecture. Students will have the daily opportunity to playfully solve the problems they are presented with in a project-based learning environment. When play happens within a medium for learning - much like a culture in a Petri dish - it creates a context in which information, ideas, and passions grow. In order to awaken intrinsic motivation, our teachers and staff will value students’ curiosities and insights; they will use these to create engaging curricula. Resilience Charter School’s core program element of project-based learning will include ample opportunities for students to follow their intellectual, playful flow. Students will creatively and collaboratively imagine, design, and build innovative solutions to real world problems.
(7) Multiple Intelligences: Recent advances in neurological research have provided scientific support that human intelligence is composed of several intelligences. Therefore, when we do not diversify and differentiate our teaching, we are excluding the majority of our students from engagement. Resilience Charter School plans to honor each student’s unique intelligence through personalized education plans, which provide students with clear objectives for meeting standards, as well as providing opportunities for student inspired inquiry and flow. Learning in the 21st century is increasingly dynamic, not only will Resilience Charter School continually tune into the specific intellectual needs of our students, but we plan to keep abreast of the rapidly growing and changing insights into education. Globalization, the digital revolution, and neurological research and their influence on learning and education will inform how we meet the multiple intelligence of our student body.
(2) Vulnerability: Taking educational risks entails allowing ourselves to be vulnerable in our learning, in order to open the doors to true innovation. The fear of failure often holds students back from success. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.” Teachers and administrators will model vulnerable self-reflecting with healthy boundaries. Personal sharing of obstacles and failures will create a reflective culture that values a growth mindset over a myth of perfectionism.
(3) Grit: Grit entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over the years despite failures, adversity, and plateaus in progress. Cultivating a culture that encourages grit requires a foundation of connected teachers and students. At Resilience Charter School, we will share with students that a key to their success is perseverance and passion, or grit.
(4) Metacognition: Metacognition is the process of observing our thinking and feeling, and it has been shown to create deep understandings, and enhance academic success. Metacognition refers to the self-awareness of individuals about their knowledge and self-understanding, self-control and self-manipulation of the process of their own cognition. Reflecting on weaknesses is a process that often involves uncomfortable vulnerability, but has the potential to deeply enhance teacher and student learning.
(5) Inquiry: Inquiry is natural process that inspires learning, seeking answers to our questions to build a growing body of knowledge. Inquiry requires more than simply answering questions or getting a right answer. It utilizes investigation, exploration, search, quest, research, pursuit, and study. Inquiry is enhanced by involvement with a community of learners, each student learning from the other in social interaction. Students at Resilience Charter School will question the beliefs and projections that create barriers to academic growth. Teachers and students will question the solutions we have applied to academic problems, and go back to the drawing board to make revisions.
(6) Flow: Inquiry awakens a joyful flow of discovery. This playful flow builds brain architecture. Students will have the daily opportunity to playfully solve the problems they are presented with in a project-based learning environment. When play happens within a medium for learning - much like a culture in a Petri dish - it creates a context in which information, ideas, and passions grow. In order to awaken intrinsic motivation, our teachers and staff will value students’ curiosities and insights; they will use these to create engaging curricula. Resilience Charter School’s core program element of project-based learning will include ample opportunities for students to follow their intellectual, playful flow. Students will creatively and collaboratively imagine, design, and build innovative solutions to real world problems.
(7) Multiple Intelligences: Recent advances in neurological research have provided scientific support that human intelligence is composed of several intelligences. Therefore, when we do not diversify and differentiate our teaching, we are excluding the majority of our students from engagement. Resilience Charter School plans to honor each student’s unique intelligence through personalized education plans, which provide students with clear objectives for meeting standards, as well as providing opportunities for student inspired inquiry and flow. Learning in the 21st century is increasingly dynamic, not only will Resilience Charter School continually tune into the specific intellectual needs of our students, but we plan to keep abreast of the rapidly growing and changing insights into education. Globalization, the digital revolution, and neurological research and their influence on learning and education will inform how we meet the multiple intelligence of our student body.
School Grade & Assessment Results
For the 2017-2018 school year, Resilience Charter received a school grade of C.
For access to FSA state testing scores, please go to the Florida Dept. of Education.
For access to FSA state testing scores, please go to the Florida Dept. of Education.
"It's been a couple of years (at least) since I have seen my son excited about learning....Thanks to all the teachers and staff for bringing his *spark* back. I can't express enough gratitude!" ~Mandy, son in 7th Grade
Resilience Charter School 352-226-8675 1717-A NE 9th Street Gainesville, FL 32609 [email protected]