The primary methods that underlie Curriculum and Instruction at Dixon School of Arts and Sciences include:
Core Values Infusion
Commitment to Dixon School of Arts and Sciences core values guides instructional planning, organization, implementation, learning, and evaluation. Every part of the Dixon School of Arts and Sciences team (including scholars, teachers, volunteers, families, and community) strives to do its best to live Dixon School of Arts and Sciences values.
Curriculum Integration
Core instruction in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math (STEAM) are coordinated with creative self-expression to enhance learners’ competence and confidence. Individual and group learning plans, project-based learning, and authentic assessment together support content-area knowledge acquisition and skills mastery opportunities. Isolated skills practice and content remediation are individualized and self-paced. Acceleration is always an option.
Experiential Learning
Courses, classroom activities, lessons, and workshops are experienced sequentially and in coordination with projects, exhibitions, and performances designed to inspire and demonstrate each scholar’s unique gifts and talents. Class time plus time in the living laboratories of life are combined, and those experiences are framed by both Dixon School of Arts and Sciences staff and by visiting artists and scientists. Dixon School of Arts and Sciences experiential learning occurs on multiple levels when it is community-connected. Performances and exhibitions are regular instructional media for Dixon School of Arts and Sciences scholars.
Village Mindedness
Dixon School of Arts and Sciences is the proverbial Village. Dixon School of Arts and Sciences frames components of each scholars life including her/his inner self, classmates, schools, staff and volunteers, scholars’ families and community, in such a way as to inspire through personal and group achievement. All Dixon School of Arts and Sciences members interact within a loving and caring, trauma-sensitive culture where all support each other with mutual, clear expectations while honoring the challenges scholars, their families, and their community have faced.