All Saints students are engaged in
real-world learning that has tangible outcomes and community impact. From first-graders nurturing and nourishing
chickens on the Learning Farm for their egg business to upper school students running their own
entrepreneur E-Café, All Saints students are engaged with deep dives in learning. As in
real life - these initiatives take an enormous amount of time, dedication, collaboration, adaptability, research and communication. With
authentic learning the emphasis is on the quality of the process and innovation. The key is fostering
student agency by allowing students to pursue individual learning opportunities that are unique to their interests through the real life processes. The emphasis isn't about rehearsing and repeating content for a quiz, it's about developing a set of skills sets, working with timelines, tapping into self-motivation, and developing inquiry approaches that result in a final creation that has a
positive community impact. You can recognize student agency occurring when students are setting their own goals and time table for the work they have to accomplish. It is a regular occurrence for our E-Café students to show up an hour and a half early to open the café. Not for bonus points or extra credit, rather because they know it is impactful for their business and will make a difference in what they want to achieve. What we see is a learning journey that is life changing as students are connected to the multi-sensory processes rather than the short term memory skills of a rote memory curriculum. The content is important but when using an authentic learning approach content is recognized as a tool to do something - a portfolio of records, research, plans, lists, notes, reading, contacts, drafts and support information to curate the authentic journey.