How ASU Prep Digital Allows Students to Learn Dynamically
Everyone has heard of students who have transcended the boundaries of age: the high schooler who starts her own business, the middle schooler who enrolls in online high school courses, the retiree who gets her high school diploma. These paradigm-breakers resist the traditional age expectations assigned by the year they were born. They do the work at their own pace of intelligence and go where their life calls them. Can you imagine what we could achieve as a culture if all people viewed lifelong learning this way?
Those who have reached beyond their age are often labeled prodigies or phenoms. No doubt when you hear these stories, you remember back to your own experience in school. How many of us have felt held back when we had an intellectual leap that our peers did not? Or, maybe we watched as our peers moved ahead while we needed a little more time.
Some learning models naturally accommodate these leaps and pauses in the spectrum of learning and living. Multi-age classrooms or one-room schoolhouses follow the child through their learning, encouraging individualized paths. But the larger and more regulated educational systems became, the more out-of-focus the student appeared. This isn’t blame-placing; traditional educational systems operating at capacity often struggle to resist mission drift.
In my world, age matters a little less than it does in other places. At ASU Prep Digital, students progress at their own pace through online high school and concurrent enrollment in college courses. It’s the expectation, not the exception. By getting what society perceives as a head-start, ASU Prep Digital students benefit from being seen apart from the norm — giving them a distinct, concrete advantage when they apply to college. And perhaps most importantly, by eliminating age as a construct in learning, students are empowered to shape their worlds and contribute to the global community.
To break the paradigm of age as a barrier – and as a construct – on a systemic level is an absolute game changer.
There is no more effective way to change the world, at both the community and global levels, than to liberate our students of all ages to learn faster, better, and smarter. More and more, the workforce of today is dynamic. The career you start will likely not be the career from which you retire. Or maybe, you don’t retire at all but instead, continue to work well into retirement age.
This concept of moving forward—beyond age, to allow each student to work toward their goals at a pace that matches their needs and ambitions isn’t new, but there are very few places in the world where this is the standard instead of a deviation. ASU Prep Digital is growing exponentially to meet the needs of the students and families who see this opportunity for what it truly is—the ideal way to educate students for a dynamic workforce.
To learn more about ASU Prep Digital and their teaching model, read this blog post.
