Why Should You Attend The Jeffco Open School?
There are many reasons why a family would choose the Jefferson County Open School for their student and at least as many reasons why they might not. The question of why you should attend is one only you and your family can answer after careful consideration of what the Open School has to offer and how our learning environment is unique. Exploring this website is a great place to start in the pursuit of the answer for you. Another important step is to attend an Information Night and, if you are a secondary student, a Visitation Day, where you can shadow a student and begin to shape your understanding of what it might be like to be part of our community of learners.
What is it like to be an Open School student?
The Open School is a proudly unconventional option in Jefferson County’s portfolio of schools. Following are some of the elements that are hallmarks of the Open School student experience:
We strive to foster a Sense of Belonging through participation in a Vibrant Community
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We believe strongly that we are all teachers and learners, with students having at least as much to teach staff as we might them. This is the reason that we are on a first name basis with one another, whether community members are 3 or 53.
- The key to this robust community is our Advising system. Every Open Schooler has an Advisor, who serves as their advocate, mentor, and coach in a multi-year Advising relationship. For example, our 9th graders learn who their high school Advisor is as they enter 9th grade and this is their person until they graduate.
- Advising groups see one another every day, travel together, and support each other through projects and rites of passage. Simply put, the Advising group becomes one’s family at school. Our Advising system is a means to the end that no student can be anonymous.
- An Open Schooler’s experience is punctuated throughout by meaningful ceremonies and rites of passage, from the Preschooler’s continuation to the 3rd grader’s Portfolio share or the 8th grader’s Presentation of Learning, and culminating with a Final Support meeting, where a circle of staff, students, and family members celebrate the student and their experience and award the student’s high school diploma.
Elementary School Secondary School
There is a focus on Self-Direction and Ownership of One’s Education
- We hope to support our students in learning how to set meaningful personal, social, and intellectual (PSI) goals and honestly self-assess as they progress towards achieving these goals.
- We want to inspire our students toward ownership of their own learning by asking them every day, in preschool through 12th grade, what they care about, are interested in, and what they might even be passionate about.
- Through projects and activities students are invited to develop their interests and passions. Beginning with 4th grade Journeys and coming to fruition in the six self-directed projects called Passages that students complete in the Walkabout program, these projects call students to express themselves and think deeply.
There is an emphasis on Learning Through Experience
- We strive for our students to think deeply through exploration, research and creativity.
- We know that some of the most valuable learning experiences our students will have, will occur outside the walls of our building.
- As a testament to this belief, Open School students experience about 300 day trips and 40 extended trips in Colorado, across the nation, and internationally. Our travelers learn to understand themselves as individuals and as members of a group. They have the opportunity to try new things, take healthy risks, and develop their own authentic ways of being.
- Beginning at the end of third grade and culminating in the extended educational excursions in the secondary school, travel is a means to explore and make meaning of the world.
- As part of our commitment to experiential learning as a means to more clearly understand oneself, we support students to honestly self evaluate their performance and experiences through narrative self-evaluation, portfolios that represent a body of evidence of their learning, and authentic experiences. In our pursuit of more authentic forms of assessment, at Open, we do not assign letter grades at any level, including high school.