At Cascade Mountain School we believe students should be given a real-world context for their learning and be pushed to analyze and synthesize information to understand the world around them. Too often, traditional academic environments can seem irrelevant, boring, and meaningless to students. At Cascade Mountain School, we offer a dynamic learning environment, one in which senses are enlivened and academics become relevant to daily life. Since information is at our fingertips, Cascade Mountain School believes we must give our students not only the content, but the context for their learning. Students must learn to work collaboratively and thoughtfully together, looking at an issue from a variety of perspectives to make informed decisions.
At Cascade Mountain School we use technology to augment our natural abilities, but not to replace our capacity for intuition and a full experience of the natural world. We apply our learning and delve into practical and relevant issues impacting our lives and the community around us. We prepare students for a changing world, a world in which we must be able to act nimbly, think creatively, and synthesize information. We provide an academically rigorous learning environment that is kinesthetic, healthy, and holistic.
Cascade Mountain School believes in teaching students to approach a situation holistically and employ “systems thinking” instead of a reductionist approach. Students learn to understand the parts of a whole and their interrelationships to understand and solve problems.
Furthermore, Cascade Mountain School is committed to scientific literacy of the next generation. Scientific literacy, as defined by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), incorporates the following elements:
- being familiar with the natural world
- understanding the key concepts and principles of science,
- employing scientific ways of thinking,
- recognizing that science is a human enterprise, and
- using scientific knowledge and ways of thinking to make informed decisions.