Curriculum

Knoxville Innovation School’s secular curriculum is based in age-appropriate progressive educational principles. Our students engage in learning processes that value critical thinking and problem-solving in a mixed-age classroom. Collaborative teamwork, creative problem solving, and independent work form the nexus of the student experience.

KiS uses the following curriculum:

• All About Reading
• All About Spelling
• Words Their Way
• Math-U-See
• Beast Academy

Mixed age learning has many benefits. Students develop stronger social and emotional understanding, and they are able to more easily work both collaboratively and independently. Navigating the social/emotional landscape of mixed-age peers hones our students’ empathy, leadership skills, and sense of self.

Foundational Questions

Oddly the pandemic has been clarifying. Parents have been faced with a deeper understanding of how the American education system needs revision. An overriding focus on assessment for assessment’s sake, systemic inequalities that leave children of color behind, and a top-down management style that stifles classroom innovation have hollowed out our compulsory education system. This led our founding parents to ask the following questions:

• What if we could unchain teachers from the bonds of standardized testing and let their creativity run wild?
• What if we could give them the support that they need to develop innovative classroom activities?
• What if we could combine the rigor of a classical education with the excitement of an inquiry-based approach to learning to create the best progressive education possible?
• What if we could make private school education affordable for most families?