Evidence-Based Education
Using scientific research to allow diverse students to succeed in their education.
Every child loves to learn.
The goal of The Linder Academy is to expand upon a child’s natural curiosity about the world. Children should be partners in their education, using their creativity to problem-solve and learning from successes and failures.
Education should be an exchange of ideas, a complex interaction, not a presentation of materials to be memorized.
The core skills in elementary are reasoning, writing, and reading. We approach these skills in the best ways we know how: using methods backed by evidence. We believe in science over tradition and look forward to educating young learners to engage in a complex world.
Depth over Breadth.
Research shows that modern education has sacrificed mastery and reasoning for factual memorization. The Linder Academy chooses to focus not only on the core skills a student needs to advance through elementary but also the core skills needed to become a good learner.
We follow the educational research of the hundreds of specialists at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. And we choose depth of knowledge over breadth of subjects to create strong learners.
Developmental Priorities
Led by developmental science, we understand that all knowledge is not created equal when it comes to age and a child’s development. K-3 are key windows for the foundations of literacy, and our instruction prioritizes the development of reading and writing skills.
A child’s mind is more than a young brain for facts. We see each child through the broader lens of his or her development: academics, social skills, fine and gross motor skills, language abilities, and numerical reasoning.
We design our curriculum milestones to align with developmental milestones in these areas, and never prioritize facts over developmentally-linked foundational skills.
Learning as a Process.
Learning requires engagement. True engagement means that a student not only listens to a teacher’s expertise, but also challenges assumptions, questions systems, and feels comfortable sharing ideas that are outside the bounds of “the lesson plan.”
The Linder Academy focuses on problem-based learning, and is the first K-8 school in the nation to do so despite large evidence that it is the best way to create flexible knowledge and resilient learners.
We encourage inquiry and use it to fuel a child’s engagement. We don’t expect our students to sit still and be quiet. We much prefer them to ask questions—hard ones—and to be prepared to help find answers.
We don’t fear failure.
We hate that failure has a negative connotation and becomes the thing children fear in their education. We LOVE failure. Failure means you tried. Failure means we know one thing that doesn’t work. Failure means we can analyze new approaches to try. And failure means we’re engaged in finding solutions.
Modern research shows that it’s more important to discuss the wrong ways we often approach a problem in math or science, than to teach the “right way” on repeat.
Children need to be trusted with information and to understand that learning and growth require failure.
We look for it, we embrace it, and we learn from it.
