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Five short years ago, Riverview Elementary in the Lakeside School District set out reinvent their school. With declining enrollment, school Principal Olympia Kyriakidis worked with stakeholders to rethink / reinvent the learning environment to best meet the needs of today’s student and tomorrows worker. After touring this school last week, two words came immediately to mind when I observed students: engaged and empowered. One word when I observed teachers and staff: passionate. 5 years after reshaping the vision, the results are remarkable. Some takeaways:

School and Student values centric around “Covey’s 7 Habits” and “Leader In Me”

Covey 7 Habits for Students

Leader in Me

Other key takeaways:

• Riverview is School is tri immersion (English, Mandarin, and Spanish).  See Riverview World Language Program
• Project based learning overlay on standards based curriculum infused with technology as enabler. Incredible student engagement in all classrooms.
• Student enrollment has grown from 450 students to 900 in last 5 years – with a waiting list of over 100. 72% of students from outside district.
• Over 12 highly qualified teacher aides support teachers and students, including the Confucias Institute at SDSU
• Embedded a charter school in the middle of campus which (Mandarin Language Academy) which seamlessly serves students to and attracted over $1MM of grant funding. One principal of both schools – in fact, you would not even know it is a charter school, as students are dually enrolled. It really just serves as way to offer programs to students.
• No layoff notices in Lakeside. Fiscally sound management – which is true of several of the 42 districts in San Diego.

Visit: Riverview Elementary

From 2Revolutions: “Because America’s future depends on our ability to make smarter, better integrated investments in kids as they travel the birth-to-26 Human Capital Continuum™, 2Revolutions pursues bold innovations with the potential for transformative impact at the key leverage points where today’s current systems fail”.  Watch this great video!

The National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) hosted an event with Thomas Friedman (New York Times columnist and co-author of the new book, That Used To Be Us: How America Fell Behind In the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back) and Marc Tucker (President and CEO of NCEE and author of Surpassing Shanghai: An Agenda for American Education Built on the World’s Leading Systems) on the need to redesign the U.S. education system to meet the demands of today’s workforce and global economy. The conversation was moderated by NBC Correspondent Luke Russert.

Sydney Centre for Innovation in Learning (SCIL) is the research and innovation unit of Northern Beaches Christian School (NBCS) in Sydney, Australia. NBCS, through SCIL, is seeking to create models for 21st century education that change the focus from teacher-directed paradigms to self-directed engaged learning.  video captures a number of the ‘spaces for learning’ created – using the campfire, watering hole and cave architectural motifs.  Learn more about Principal Stephen Harris.

SCIL: Spaces to learn from SCIL on Vimeo.