Innovation Academy
Innovation Academy at Maple High School
At the Innovation Academy at Maple High School, our mission is to transform education by empowering student autonomy, meaningful connections, and self-directed learning. Students engage by exploring their passions, develop essential life and communication skills, and explore career paths through personalized, real-world experiences. Students culminate their learning by doing exhibitions to peers, staff and community members to demonstrate their learning.
We are breaking the mold of traditional education to create a more meaningful and relevant learning journey that will yield more tangible results. We take a hands-on, partnership-driven approach, to bridge the gap between education and industry—creating real-world opportunities that prepare students for success beyond the classroom.
We focus on four pillars that define everything we do:
- Explore
- Engage
- Empower
- Exhibit
Four Pillars
Explore
Our work doesn’t happen in silos. We bring together students, industry leaders and community members to help students explore their unique interests and align their natural interests/abilities to career pathways that are practical, purposeful, and rooted in real opportunity.
We invite the community/industry leaders into the classrooms to share about their work and share their thoughts on the future world of work. We take students out into the community for Leave to Learn (LTL) experiences where small groups of students can experience a day in an industry sector.
We encourage students to participate in internship experiences and afford them time during their school day to get that real world experience.
Engage
We have shifted from a lecture based model of instruction to a full project-based learning model. Students spend their school days engaged with their advisor (teacher). Advisors have approximately 15 students. They have the same 15 students all day!
Advisors engage with students on a very personal level and are able to provide core subject support through projects of interest to each unique student. They are also able to focus on human relation skills development, which is also personalized to each unique learner.
Empower
With their interests clearly defined, goals are set and students are empowered to engage in hands-on learning through internships and attend industry-led training. We’re constantly evolving our approach to meet the needs of both students and employers. We are not just preparing students for jobs—we are preparing them for careers that matter.
Most importantly, we empower them to get out of the classroom to get hands-on experience. We empower our young people with the tools, experiences, and network building skills they need to rise—whether that’s in college, a career, entrepreneurship, or service.
Our goal is to remove barriers, unlock potential, and empower the next generation of talent to lead with confidence.
Exhibit
Students demonstrate their mastery of 5 competency based learning targets through an end of year exhibition. At their exhibition they present their year of learning to peers, family, and the community that has supported them through their journey. The method of presentation can be selected by the student, but the areas of competency on which they are assessed is the same for all:
- Empirical Reasoning - Thinking like a scientist.
- Quantitative Reasoning - Use of math and data.
- Communication - Writing, speaking, presenting.
- Social Reasoning - Thinking like a historian or sociologist - understanding people, culture and content.
- Personal Qualities - Responsibility, resilience, growth mind-set, reflection, self-improvement and empowerment.