This site will connect you to the core ideas and planning that informed the launch of Sky Islands high school in 2008. At that time we believed that by integrating the arts and humanities and sciences together across the curriculum, students would be guided to make stronger connections to the world and to each other. They would become more confident and better prepared to step forward from high school into the world. This path follows a strong tradition of combining rigorous academic study with real life, hands-on practice.
That design will be laid out in the pages that follow. It will be presented as an answer to the larger question of how to develop and sustain an education that faces up to the economic, political, environmental and public health challenges that confront us.
Photo by Peter L. Kresan 2006
I have identified four interlocking principles that frame the design of the educational program:
- We intentionally design the courses–content and instruction are well-thought out, planned, and highly goal-oriented, leading to greater student understanding and success;
- We make patterns intelligible–teachers move beyond discrete data within the fields of sciences, humanities, arts, and math to help students see and create coherence;
- We develop an ecological sensibility–students learn to appreciate connections with the natural and built worlds and with each other;
- We invest in health–by paying more attention to how we achieve good health and why it matters, students gain confidence and habits that improve their individual well-being.
Why Blue Adobe?
Photography: Peter L. Kresan, Joyce Clements, Ann Markewitz, Fernando Londoño, Alicia Coughlin
Adobe is a building material that returns to its natural state in the earth. As a symbol of this project, adobe is a reminder that we are part of the natural world and share its fate.
Blue is both a color and an image. It is an un-natural color for adobe, and therefore reminds us that the built environment is designed by our hands—that we are its artists and responsible for its beauty.
