"You are always a student, never a master. You have to keep moving forward."
~ Conrad Hall

Since inception, Brighten has valued developing students who not only demonstrate competency in basic skills, but more importantly, think critically and apply skills purposefully to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize complex ideas and real-world problems. EL Core Practice 1 pushes our school to practice academic courage and aspire to develop students who do not just chip away at an already identified problem, but who can identify an issue, analyze research and multiple perspectives, plan for a viable solution, execute the solution, and artfully communicate to others. Through a culture of continuous improvement and refinement, a Brighten Academy student builds academic courage and embraces knowledge and skills that they can leverage to do important work in our world and in their future professional lives.
Integrating Learning
Our partnership with EL has enhanced our curriculum with multi-disciplinary learning, the use of protocols to access and apply knowledge and skills, and projects that are student driven and provide impact to the smaller and larger community. Our school culture and learning processes enable students of all abilities and backgrounds to:
  • Engage in meaningful research acting as mathematicians, historians, scientists, and writers;
  • Interact with experts in a variety of fields that grow content area knowledge and skills;
  • Execute projects, service, and products that require them to apply deep understanding of knowledge and skills in authentic contexts;
  • Leverage technology as both a tool for learning and a medium for communicating their learning and ideas in meaningful ways;
  • Produce high quality work products demonstrating understanding of multiple perspectives, authentic purpose, and application of skills;
  • Communicate articulately what they know and understand and utilize communication skills to inform, persuade, and entertain in a variety of meaningful contexts;
  • Collaborate with others to improve understanding and to generate higher quality work;
  • Honestly self-assess and reflect on progress and give and receive feedback in order to continue to progress.​
Assessing by Standards
Brighten believes that discerning a child's true mastery of knowledge and skills is a multi-faceted process. As part of this critical process, we utilize our assessment system to communicate progress and provide feedback to students to increase their understanding and deepen their learning. Our two systems of assessment, academic and habits of scholarship, fit seamlessly together to inform students of where they are in meeting rigorous standards.
We have, since inception of the school, supported standards-based grading. Interwoven in our grading scale is our commitment to ensuring that knowledge and skills are assessed for depth of understanding and independent, practical application. Through the years, we have refined our definition of mastery, and the EL Core Practices have helped us to zero in on what true mastery is: independent, consistent application of both simple and complex concepts for a given standard. Similarly, our Habits of Scholarship and Work Habits identify consistency in application.
Expecting Mastery
Return of graded work each Monday is not the end for students in demonstrating mastery of knowledge and skills. In truth, it is only the beginning of a cyclical process.  With attention to EL's Core Practice 30, students are given the opportunity to make corrections to current work based on peer and teacher feedback, and to revisit material, and later, they have further opportunities to demonstrate mastery through mastery retakes. We find that allowing both corrections and retakes not only allows students to demonstrate mastery, but also deepens their understanding of topics and helps students make more interdisciplinary connections, which is where the real growth in learning occurs.

Each of the three claims demonstrates how Brighten continues to achieve our school’s mission of ensuring “measured growth in every student every year,” not only quantitatively, but qualitatively as well.