Educational Philosophy

Whom is the School attempting to educate?

The School is targeting any student residing in Sacramento and Placer County who has an interest in attending a small school with a commitment to academic excellence provided by combining site-based instruction with home based independent study in a personalized learning program.

Antelope View Charter School staff believes that all students can achieve high standards even though they may come to the learning environment with different strengths, needs, and life experiences and that all students should be given the opportunity to engage in a rigorous curriculum. Therefore, the School is especially targeting those families who are eligible for the federal free and reduced lunch program and in which neither parent/guardian graduated from a four-year college or university.

How does learning best occur?

The School believes the following tenets are the basis of a strong educational program:

• Learning should reflect respect for the past but should also be of help to them in their future lives.
• Learning must respond to current and future personal needs, future career needs and the challenges of participating meaningfully in the varied societies and cultural groups in which students are likely to play a part.
• Learning occurs best when it is active in the sense that students must engage through metacognition. This means that learning which is relevant to the future must be placed in a context that is meaningful in the present and that students take responsibility for their own learning; thoughtfully organizing learning activities and developing goals for learning that reflect a backward map derived from a vision of their own future.
• Students need to share responsibility for their learning with teachers, parents and peers. The proportion of responsibility each student bears will depend on the age and characteristics of the student. Nevertheless, learning must be constructed in such a way that, by the end of the middle school years, students begin to see and experience the potential for taking responsibility for their own learning.
• Parents/Guardians must understand the mission of the school and the standards that their students are expected to achieve under the model of the Academic Triangle (Exhibit C). They must actively assist their student in learning the standards and be engaged in the learning environment and activities of the school.