Our model is designed to prepare every student for success in high school, college, and life.
Resurgence Hall’s model emphasizes design thinking, computer science, blended learning, literacy, an extended school day, and our RISE values: reflection, integrity, service, and endurance.
Design Thinking
Resurgence Hall is deeply committed to answering one central question: “How can we create a high quality 21st century learning experience for all?”
Our answer is in building a school where our underlying school-wide processes and systems are rooted in Design Thinking. Design Thinking is a mindset. It is the firm belief that each of us can make a difference – creating relevant, innovative solutions through a process of critical thinking and creative problem-solving.
At Resurgence Hall, our Innovation in Action program provides students with multiple opportunities to develop their listening and speaking skills under each strand of Common Core. Our teamwork model is a highly social interaction that teaches purposeful listening and language precision. Most importantly, Design Thinking gives permission for students to learn from mistakes in a continual process of refinement that requires risk and permission to learn by doing.
Computer Science
No other subject will open as many doors in the 21st century as computer science, regardless of a student’s ultimate field of study or occupation.
In Georgia, 9 in 10 parents want their student to learn computer science, yet only 1 in 4 schools teach it, with none starting in elementary school. In 2015, only 1658 students in the entire state sat for the Advanced Placement Computer Science exam, with 17% of these being women, 10% black, and 5% Latino. At Resurgence Hall, our overall framework guides student learning of logical reasoning, algorithmic thinking, design and structured problem-solving – skills and concepts that build deeper understanding in other core academic areas, thus growing students into educated technology consumers and innovative creators capable of designing computing systems and applications to improve their immediate, local, and global communities. Our comprehensive computer science program will prepare students to enroll and excel in Advanced Placement Computer Science courses when they matriculate to high school.
Blended Learning
Blended learning allows us to personalize education in a way that a more traditional classroom setup simply cannot.
Blended learning allows students to use adaptive technologies to work on course content at their own pace and skill level. Students will receive one-to-one individualized support to help each child reach his or her highest potential. At Resurgence Hall, students participate in 85 minutes daily of Blended Learning for literacy and mathematics, rotating between different computer stations on a fixed schedule – either working online or spending face-to-face time with the teacher.
With our integration of the most current software programs, we are able to collect student data to determine where an individual student is excelling and where he or she may need more guidance and plan accordingly.
2-Teacher Literacy Model
Two high capacity, dedicated literacy teachers in each classroom means that the majority of literacy instruction takes place in small groups.
We value the learning needs and differences of every student at Resurgence Hall. To fulfill our mission of high school, college, and life success for all students, we tailor our instruction to meet the individual needs of every learner with our model of two literacy teachers in our primary classrooms.
Our youngest learners are learning to decode words, analyze text, and become authors in small groups with individualized support from each teacher.
Extended School Day
More time matters to ensure that every student is being academically challenged and growing into their best and brightest self.
At Resurgence Hall we extend our school day and school year, which means every child receives the individualized attention they need to fulfill our mission of success in high school, college, and beyond. With our extended day, students eagerly engage in our robust, well-rounded K-8 programming where they construct suspension bridges during Engineering, code math applications for their peers to refine their math fluency, delve into chapter books during Book Clubs, and author their own narratives during Writers’ Workshop. With an extended day and year, after nine years at Resurgence Hall, students will have received a full 11 years of education before the start of high school.
RISE Values
At Resurgence Hall, our students learn and come to embody and demonstrate our RISE values of reflection, integrity, service, and endurance.
As Paul Tough explains in How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, “What matters most in a child’s development…is not how much information we can stuff into her brain in the first few years. What matters, instead, is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence. Economists refer to these as non-cognitive skills, psychologists call them personality traits, and the rest of us sometimes think of them as character.”
We teach and model the core values through our daily Morning Motivations, daily character education, daily behavioral communication with families, weekly community celebrations, and a school-wide focus on character and leadership development at every grade level.