When coming to a place where everything looks different than you have known your whole life it is hard to navigate where and how you will fit - how you will mold. Over time,  that fear continues to grow as your world expands and you have little tiny humans to care and love as your heart now lives outside your body.  The idea of sending them to a place for hours a day multiple days a week seems daunting. This was my mindset as the start of our school search began. I was nervous and scared because I knew what I had envisioned our family and yet I was not sure if that would be possible. Then I found The Innovation School and it almost felt too good to be true!! I analyzed the website, read the blog posts and all of the social media and sent the school’s website to friends back home.  Some were experts in education and some were just moms looking for something special too, and they could not believe this type of school, really community, existed in our small town. 

While students in other schools are sitting at desks doing worksheets and coming home with so much paper in their backpacks, our son comes home with stories and experiences and projects from the collaborative work and PLAY he has been doing all day.  The photos sent at the end of each day show how our son and all the children can learn anything and everything by just being allowed to explore their environment in ways that as adults we do not take the time to see anymore, and it is truly MAGICAL!! 
 
Unexpectedly, we had two snow days at home in late March/April and while some children had iPads in front of them, I got to experience first-hand the learning our son has in his classroom right before my eyes, as we researched animal extinction and created a real video game - this is true learning and his expression of the information synthesized.​

As a society, we have seen what has happens when we spend so much time on teaching to the test and worksheets instead of practicing socialization/social interaction/collaboration.  Our school has the “secret sauce” to teach our children while not feeling like they are being taught, instead the students are on the journey of learning with their peers through the support of our teachers. 
 
As a parent of a Yellow Band student (our Pre-K/Kindergarten classroom) I watch the older students and see how accomplished and well-spoken and intelligent they are and I cannot wait to see our son grow and follow his path with these core beliefs as his foundation.​

Does our school look different than most? YES! Does our school provide more than what you get at other, more "traditional" schools? YES! 
 
I’m so grateful to Maggie and the entire staff for working tirelessly to make our school so special. ​

One of the primary benefits of mixed-age learning is that it helps students and teachers recognize that age does not determine a student's ability, experience, or knowledge. In a mixed-age classroom, students have the opportunity to learn from and teach one another, regardless of age. This creates a more inclusive learning environment that values ability at all levels and promotes a growth mindset. Our students are grouped in three bands this school year. Our two TIS Sr. "bands" (groups) have students ranging from 1st-8th grade. This provides many opportunities for interaction, idea-sharing, teaching, and learning from others of many ages. Our students at TIS love time when their peers lead projects, workshops, learning adventures, and day-to-day learning. Many of our projects include collaboration across different ages. Often TIS students will take a survey of their ideas around the school to all the students to gain insight and input. When students lead, teachers facilitate feedback sessions with everyone to gauge how both the leader and learners felt.There is no fear to share an idea or ponder a question because different viewpoints are respected amongst peers with the goal of growth and learning. This mindset of age as a number creates opportunities in reading and math content by having students lead their peers in areas they may have more skill or experience. In this regard, teaching and learning become a shared experience across all members of our school community. ​

From a teacher perspective, the opportunity to teach a child at their skill level rather than solely by age relieves the students and teachers of rushing students through skills and lessons to meet some arbitrary deadline of when they are "supposed to know”. This allows teachers to delve into topics of high interest for students, then interweave content that may be initially less appealing to a student, and incorporate different subjects into a meaningful, relevant learning experience. It allows for mastery of a skill, rather than brief memorization of facts. This approach allows students’ strengths to emerge and be fostered without stressing over where they “should” be academically, simply because of age. It also really allows us, as teachers, to look at the long-term growth of our students as individuals. It affords us the opportunity to meet them where they are within their current capacities and develop them as a whole-person to include their social, emotional, physical, and intellectual development. ​

Another advantage of mixed-age learning is that it can help students maintain their child-like innocence for a longer period of time. Older students can engage within play scenarios that may be considered “childish or naive” in settings of all same-age peers. At TIS, this is the norm and has come to be expected across all ages. Our youngest students are often the leaders of pretend or make-believe play in purest forms and the older students are eager to play along. Our older students regularly teach our younger students games or recreational kinds of play. Play is one of our core values at TIS and our students embody this across the range of ages. This is most often seen during unstructured play of recess and lunch time, but also within our learning adventures, STEM, math, reading, mentor meetings, mindfulness - really it is embedded throughout each school day. ​