At A Glance:
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Renaissance Real World High School Academy (RRWA) is a small school where everyone is connected. This feeling of community creates a safe learning environment where academic rigor is evident and students can pursue their interests and passions. The school is founded on respect for individuality and diversity. Students, parents, and staff support and learn from one another. This innovative partnership is giving Real World Academy students the tools they need as they advance through high school to college and to the world of work.
Mission
The mission of Renaissance Real World High School Academy is to prepare students for college and the workforce through active learning, academic rigor, and community involvement. Relationships, relevance, and rigor provide a unique opportunity for students to excel in a nurturing yet challenging academic environment which is closing the achievement gap for our students.
Vision
Renaissance Real World High School aims to empower students to take charge of their learning, to gain the skills and knowledge necessary to achieve success beyond high school and to become lifelong learners. We are dedicated to educating one student at a time. Renaissance Real World Academy enrolls families, not just students. Our diverse student body is all encouraged to apply to college, whether they choose to enter after high school graduation or after gaining work experience.
Personalized Learning
How do we personalize learning for each student?
Our Personalized Learning model embodies flexibility, inclusion, collaboration, and innovation. RRWA recognizes the value of parent involvement and participation in their student’s eduparents and learning process. We support a collaborative relationship between parent, student, teacher, and school in creating an optimal learning process. RRWA recognizes a variety of learning choices and opportunities, both within and beyond the classroom, to address each student’s individual learning needs and optimize each student’s learning potential. Using the Personalized Options Program or POP, students have more choices within subject content to increase their interest and ownership of their learning.
Why personalize learning
At Magnolia Academy, our Personalized Learning model embodies flexibility, inclusion, collaboration, and innovation. Magnolia Astudent’scognizes the value of parent involvement and participation in their students’ education and learning process. We require and support a collaborative relationship between parent, student, teacher, and school in creating an optimal learning process. Magnolia Academy provides students with a variety of learning choices and opportunities, both within and beyond the classroom, to address each student’s individual learning needs and optimize each student’s learning potential.
Personalized Learning provides:
- True accountability for students through personalized learning goals; I can do this!
- A focus on student growth and habits of work and learning; I made this happen for myself!
- Partnership with students, parents, and teachers to facilitate successful learning for each student; I am an
- important part of a team that cares about my growth.
- Communicates to students that positive values are critical to leading productive lives; What I believe I can
- achieve.
- A culture based around rigor and personalized high expectations; I am a hard worker who takes pride in my work.
Goal setting
Students, Parents, and Teachers create personalized learning plans (PLPs) with goals for each semester.
This plan articulates individualized goals built on the student’s passions, interests, goals, skills, needs, and is created in collaboration with the student, teacher/advisor, parents, and workplace mentor. An example of a Learning Plan may encompass the following:
- Internships
- Community Service Learning Opportunities
- Advisory-based activities to introduce and strengthen academic skills
- College classes
- Community and school-based workshops
- Individual research projects
Community as the Classroom
At RRWA, we place a strong emphasis on the concept of community, whether it be the community of learners within the school or the larger community of families, friends, and neighbors beyond the school walls. Students are encouraged to see themselves as part of the community and to be responsible contributors to discovering their talents and passions.
Over the years River Springs has partnered with community organizations and entities in a variety of ways, providing students with community service opportunities, internships, field trips, and annual fundraising events. Some community-focused activities are organized by the individual campus while others are school-wide.
The quality, range and depth of activities at RRWA are remarkable and the size and scope of the school allow all students to find their niche as well as other kindred spirits from amongst their peers.
Career Technical Education (CTE)
CTE classes provide students with a comprehensive overview of the various industry sectors and career pathways available and standardized by the California Department of Education.
Students participate in personal interest, skill assessment, and aptitude evaluations that are used to determine viable professions aligned to the student’s success. Students are introduced to the soft skills (resume writing, interpersonal relations, etc.) necessary to obtain and retain employment in today’s workforce.
CTE classes offer exploration and preparation for high-demand jobs and career paths that are both satisfying and financially rewarding. CTE provides grades seven through twelve college career preparation programs covering a combination of applied and technical arts and sciences, including Business, Engineering, Visual/Media Arts, and Performing Arts.
Our CTE classes are designed to help students identify interests, traits, and skills and connect them to effective education and career planning; all of this done at an appropriate developmental level. The students will be active learners as they sample various career tasks, utilize technology, and meet high standards of achievement. Experiences in these courses ultimately help students value education and career planning and maximize individual opportunities.
Program Elements
You have probably been thinking about what the best high school in Riverside would look like for your student. Here are 5 reasons why so many Riverside families have selected our Renaissance Real World Academy – and why RRWA might just be the right choice for you.
Our Advisor/Mentor teachers follow students for 4 years of high school.
Advisor/Mentor Teachers work with only one class of students for all four years of these students’ high school career, providing personalization, support, encouragement and coordination to ensure that all our graduates meet their goals.. Advisories meet daily and serve as the core learning community and center of accountability for its member students. The Advisor/Mentor Teachers serve as a teaching generalist, finding educational resources for the students, ensuring that students’ individual learning plans target key academic learning goals, working with business mentors to guarantee rigor during their internships, and actively involving parents in their child’s education.
The advisory is the nucleus of our school. It is the heart and soul of Renaissance Real World High School and could be described as the “home” and “second family” to the students. An essential component of the success of our students is parent engagement. Parents/guardians have many opportunities to be involved at RRWA including college presentations, special events, parent organizations, learning plan meetings, exhibitions, and in classrooms. Parents, staff and students view themselves as a collaborative team that work together for the success of RRWA students.
Personalized Options Program (POPs)
We believe that students learn best when they are invested. Offering students choice in their learning is one of the most powerful ways to increase intrinsic motivation and affect student learning. We know that when students have energy and passion for their work, they can accomplish great things. When learning doesn’t have personal relevance or connect with a student’s strengths or interests, it becomes a meaningless struggle. Student choice builds ownership in learning.
Our mission is to empower students by fostering their innate curiosity, engaging their parents, and promoting optimum learning by collaboratively developing a personalized learning program for each student. Through the POP curriculum, no two students will have to have the same schedule. Our students will create their own personalized educational paths, but all paths will point toward success.
Traditional schools let schedules dictate, but we let choice and personalization lead the way. High School students will choose from OPTs (options) per sprint. Students will concentrate on three courses at a time during each sprint. Fewer courses and longer time blocks encourage hands-on group learning and allow students and teachers to delve more deeply into their subjects. Research on the teenage brain has found that students learn better when they get to dive deep and focus on fewer courses at a time. Our new POP schedule is a more brain-friendly approach than the traditional 6 classes per semester schedule.
Students, Parents and Teachers create learning plans with goals for each semester.
The Learning Plan articulates individualized goals built on the student’s passions, interests, goals, skills, needs, and is created in collaboration with the student, teacher/advisor, parents and workplace mentor. An example of a Learning Plan may encompass the following:
- Internships
- Community as the Classroom Learning Opportunities
- Advisory-based activities to introduce and strengthen academic skills
- College classes
- Community and school-based workshops
- Individual research projects
Students create an electronic portfolio of learning each year.
ePortfolios, or Electronic Portfolios allow the student to present and reflect on their best work in every class. This reflection piece builds critical thinking, self-reflection and pride in their work efforts. The ePortfolio builds upon the students’ growth every year and learning. This project is an excellent way to share with colleges, parents and peers.
We require students to do an internship in 11th & 12th grade for the real-world connection.
RRWA offers an innovative curriculum that utilizes each student’s interests and passions to inspire a love of learning. Internships are the center of the Renaissance Real World Academy curriculum. We send all 11th & 12th-grade students out on internships at businesses and organizations all over Riverside County.
Universally, we are aware that people are most likely to learn—and remember—information when it resonates on a personal level and relates to personal experience. Based on this understanding, each Mentor teacher at RRWA along with our Internship Coordinator helps students investigate their interests and find real-world Internships in the community in order to pursue these passions.
We have rigorous standards for our students’ Internship experiences. In addition to performing daily tasks essential to any Internship site, each student must propose and complete a challenging project to meet specific standards-aligned academic requirements, while also serving a real-world purpose for the Mentor and the Internship site.
That means our students are learning in high school to produce work worthy of professional workplace standards. It means tangible accomplishments allow our students to build essential life skills and increase self-confidence. And it means our Internship sites gain meaningful outcomes, in addition to contributing to the growth and learning of Magnolia Student Center youth.
While our Internship sites serve as the backbone of our academic program and provide incredible learning opportunities for our students, we find that our Mentors often learn and grow as much as our students through these experiences.
Renaissance Real World Academy at Magnolia Student Center FAQs.
