School Levels

The Delta School's Primary Program welcomes three and four year olds into a full day, five day a week program in a customized, experienced-based learning environment. Students will discover new social skills, grow in empathy and perspective, and become immersed in our Makers and Garden Spaces. With small, intimate class sizes, teachers will meet students where they are, recognizing that every learning process is unique. 

The Elementary Program operates on two levels, lower elementary and upper elementary, where students are not content to simply ask “what,” but curious about the “how” and “why” of problems. This environment is the launching point for interactive, interdisciplinary group work. With an emphasis on social responsibility and courtesy, project work is a natural outgrowth of the classroom. These years offer increasingly complex projects that solve problems and come up with inventions in the areas of language development, mathematics/geometry, history, world geography, botany, zoology and the arts.

The Intermediate Program serves 11-13 year olds utilizing human centered design projects executed with online resources, the community, our facilities and our world, access to network of artists, entrepreneurs, social justice/equity leaders, politicians, designers, academics, investors, etc. In Intermediate the students start to feel courageous to learn and become their most authentic selves, not one put on due to peer pressure. The Intermediate program takes the school learning targets and uses them to make hands-on learning projects incorporating Human Centered Design. Students tackle real world problems with critical thinking and creativity.

The High School accepts motivated students to a lab school where teachers learn alongside the students. Students conduct in-depth, real-world project work in two cohorts; 9/10th grade and 11th/12th grade. Our program results in an interactive transcript that reflects the student's unique strengths, abilities, interests, and histories so they can be fostered, understood, and celebrated. Not only do we prepare our students for college success, we ensure they will be sought after by colleges and employers as prepared, responsible, curious and excited to learn.

The school is organized around a culture of inquiry rather than constrained by traditional schedules, lockers, bells and busy work. Students learn from experts in the real fields that their projects address. Projects solve real-world problems using the Stanford Design Process. Students do not simply sit for a certain number of years and hopefully grasp content-based material but instead demonstrate specific behaviors that showcase their mastery of specific skills. The projects provide the launching point to skills, and the competency-based assessment leads to a rich development of personalized traits that students can employ for a meaningful future in an ever-changing world. 

As students transition into our High School model, we are preparing them for challenging educational experiences that connect them with a variety of professional exposures. Our High School program does not include traditional courses but instead offers a variety of project-based experiences:

• Design Topics
• Experiential Humanities
• Immersive STEM
• Tinkering Studio
• Test Kitchen
• Passion Projects (Turnrows)
• Capstone Contributions: 3rd Year Self-Directed Study, 4th Year External Partnership, and Resident Expert

Our learners balance their time between teacher-driven and student-driven projects. As they progress through our High School model they develop more agency in how they guide their learning. With the help of their project-based educators, they embed various disciplines into their project designs. This leads to interdisciplinary experiences that are co-created with the help of the learner and the educator. The goal of this project-based learning is to remove the silos of traditional content and assist students in their development of honing skills that are transferable to a wide array of experiences. We believe the removal of traditional classes and the incorporation of student voice in shaping their learning is incredibly valuable to the Delta School High School, delivering on the mission of the school: 

The mission of The Delta School is to nourish every child's strengths so each child is able to form healthy relationships, discover meaningful work, and make unique contributions to the world. 

Our students receive in-depth, personalized college counseling that begins the first year of the high school and advances until the right match happens or students decide to find success outside of the academic environment. For more information or to work as a partner in our development contact info@thedeltaschool.org.