Your child is ready for more than they're being asked.
An intentionally small independent K-8 school in Berkeley, California
Why The Academy School?
Since 1969, The Academy has stayed small on purpose. Academics matter here, and so does the kind of person a student is becoming. These are the values we practice with them every day.
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We ask a lot of our students, in their work and in how they treat each other. Then we stay right next to them while they learn to meet it.
A high bar on its own is just pressure. Ours comes with a second try, a teacher who knows exactly where a child got stuck, and the steady assumption that they can get there. Kids tend to rise to what the adults around them believe about them.
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Academy teachers are learners themselves. Eighty-one percent of the faculty hold advanced degrees, and most are still studying something, whether a language, a period of history, or a new way to teach fractions. That habit shows up in the classroom: when a student asks why, the teacher is glad they did, and the lesson follows the question.
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We care that a child can build a case and then change their mind. At the Academy, it's not about teaching them what to think, it's about teaching them how to think. A kid who can hold an idea, test it, and let it go when the evidence says so is a kid who's going to be okay out there.
Which is why our teachers ask a lot more than they tell. What a child comes to believe belongs to them. Our part is making sure they got there by thinking it through.
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At The Academy, classes are small so teachers can know each student as an individual learner. In practice that means 10 to 12 students in kindergarten through 2nd grade, 12 to 14 in 3rd through 5th, and 16 in the middle school.
If you want it tighter for the web:
Our classes are small so teachers can know each student as a learner: 10 to 12 in kindergarten through 2nd grade, 12 to 14 in 3rd through 5th, and 16 in middle school.
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Technology here has to earn its place. In the youngest grades that means you won't see much of it. A six-year-old learns to read, to share, and to sit with a hard problem through paper, people, and each other.
As they get older we open it up, and we're excited to. There's a lot worth exploring with them, and they should learn to use these tools well. The question before a screen comes out is always the same: what is this for?
Come see a classroom in motion.
Tours run on weekday mornings by appointment. The fastest way to understand The Academy is to stand in it.
