Our Story
Our story begins back in 2013 with the Innovation Academy at The American School in Lima, Peru. We were inspired by the service projects students were leading through clubs on campus, and we saw the deep level of engagement that happened when students did meaningful work.
So we began asking ourselves how we could design learning experiences for our students that allowed them to contribute to their communities and gave them more ownership of their learning.
In 2012, our questioning gradually led to a clear design challenge: to create a project-based, interdisciplinary program for high school students at the American School in Lima, Peru. Months of collaboration helped refine the initial idea for the Innovation Academy, and the program was officially launched with 15 courageous students and families in August 2013.
That initial cohort has helped set the stage for the hundreds of students who have joined the IA family and they also paved the way for the more than two hundred students around the world who have now taken part in the IA Online!
Roosevelt Innovation Academy
Innovation Academy Online
In July of 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we continued asking even more questions. Which projects from the IA would work the best online? How could we connect with other forward-thinking schools and innovate together? What’s the most meaningful thing we could be learning and doing at a time of so much uncertainty?
So we took another risk. We piloted one of our most popular projects as an online course and connected students from more than 20 international schools. Their feedback was so powerful, that we turned the pilot program into a semester-long course.
Now, after the first two years, more than 220 students from 36 schools have enrolled in our IA Online courses, and next year we’ll be launching our first IA Online Host Schools.
Designing Meaningful Learning
Learning is meaningful when it contributes to something beyond ourselves, when we feel a genuine connection with other learners, when we gain insight into our own stories and the stories of others, and when we are so engaged and inspired that the learning experience leaves us in awe. If we want our students to lead meaningful lives once they leave our schools, then we must design more meaningful learning experiences for them at our schools.
PURPOSE
We believe students learn best when their learning contributes to something beyond themselves. In the IA Online, all of our courses give students an opportunity to serve others through authentic projects and assessments. In the process, students gain a better understanding of what their own long-term purposes might be.
BELONGING
Relationships are at the heart of meaningful learning experiences. We keep class sizes small, put students in teams to build belonging and trust, and make space for candid conversations. This creates a sense of psychological safety and it also frees students up to take thoughtful risks as they learn new concepts and valuable skills.
AWE
If storytelling puts us in touch with our narrative selves, moments of awe connect us with our experiential selves. This is why hands-on learning is vital. We must try to design occasional opportunities for learners to be inspired by nature, by human ingenuity, and by the mysteries that force us to ask big questions and marvel at the world around us.
STORYTELLING
We give students agency in IA Online courses. This empowers them to take control of their own learning and their own stories. Through narrative writing and speaking, presentations of learning, and a range of leadership opportunities, students learn that their story is always being written and they can continue to edit and reframe the stories they tell themselves about themselves.