EAGLEi, the CVCHS independent learning program, is now running with roughly sixty students after its announcement earlier this year.
The program is geared towards students who struggle learning in the standard classroom environment and benefit from its alternative scheduling. With a few exceptions, EAGLEi students do a majority of their classes online, and one on-campus class is an optional addition.
“We’d talked about having an independent study program since COVID happened,” explained Margie DiGiorgio, the director of independent study and interventions. “For all the core classes, teachers have built an EAGLEi version of the course on Schoology and they are the ones grading it. They host EAGLEi-only office hours.”
The goal of EAGLEi is to provide a rigorous “educational model for the students who might otherwise have to drop out of our program or suffer tremendous amounts of absences.” The 230 credit graduation standard, aligned with A-G collegiate expectations, mirrors on-campus students—just digitized.
“Classes through EAGLEi are independent, kind of like asynchronous learning,” said Jenna Ebert, an EAGLEi yoga teacher. “Students can access the full semester’s worth of curriculum and they can complete it at their own rate. Students will reach out if they have questions.”
DiGiorgio agreed, championing the self-advocacy required by the program. “You get stronger skills because you don’t have a teacher walking by, saying, ‘Hey, that looks wrong,’ you have to reach out to the teacher and say, ‘Hey, I think I’m not understanding this.’”
Similarly, the school is quite proud of the flexibility afforded by EAGLEi. “There are some students who are competitive athletes or they have jobs that are necessary for their families,” DiGigorgio noted, and independent study is permissive to self-paced learning and campus engagement when possible. “Those students are allowed to participate in all the same school activities. It’s still providing them a cross section of experiences. And hopefully for some of them, eventually it will open up opportunities for things like more community outreach because their schedules will be more flexible.”
Comments