We believe that a quality education acknowledges the innate curiosity of children and their desire to understand and master their environment – and builds around those qualities. Because children have different interests and learning styles, and because they progress at different rates, we take considerable care to consider the talents and needs of each cohort while still providing a quality education that leaves our students with as many doors open as possible.
Prairie Paideia believes in a competency-based education. In addition to teaching basic skills and content areas, we promote development in art, music, social issues, personal finance and physical education. We differentiate to strengthen and then stretch each student’s growth from where they begin. We incorporate executive function skills strongly at the middle school level with the goal of fostering independence with these skills by high school. Growth mindset and social-emotional learning is reinforced by every human of our organization and thus students are surrounded by these principles. Many of the skills needed to be successful in college are the same skills necessary to enter the workforce or military with opportunities for advancement. We want them to be able to follow whatever path they pursue
Effective teaching requires continual evaluation to determine student progress. In addition to the more holistic evaluation by the teacher, the school also uses standardized tests (especially in reading, language, and math) to ensure we are meeting the challenge and not leaving significant gaps.