The other day I was standing in the hallway with a group of parents, waiting for 4th Grade Intensives to begin, and they started asking me about Intensives and Academies -- what was the purpose, the rationale, behind them? Were they just to blow off time on Friday afternoons and those odd weeks between Thanksgiving and Winter breaks? Was there something more to them?

And it occurred to me that, when these programs were created years ago, we did a pretty good job of communicating about them to parents: but since then we have more or less assumed that everybody understood them, even though most of the parents at Nueva today weren’t even here when they first began. What follows is at least some of the history and rationale behind two related parts of our program -- Academies and their little sibling, Intensives.	Another essential element in the development of the Nueva program is the recognition, sadly missing in so many schools these days, that the basics are necessary, but not sufficient, parts of a true education -- that is, there is more to life and to careers than the standard school program. We hope to introduce children to a wide variety of subjects for learning and skill building, in the hope that some of them may become interests, passions, vocations, avocations, while an awareness and understanding of others will enrich their lives.
One of the hallmarks of the Nueva program throughout the grades, that any expert on gifted education will tell you is essential to gifted children, is the element of choice. This begins in the preK with the idea of emergent curricula -- studies that grow from the interests of the children. As the children move up through the grades, while their interests and passions continue to guide and shape the program, they also encounter something called Choice Time, in different forms in different grades -- periods when the children choose what they are interested in learning.	Lastly, these types of experiences help children with two of the most important parts of the Nueva Mission -- “to enable gifted children to learn how to make choices that will benefit the world,” and to inspire “passion for lifelong learning.” They begin to understand that learning is not just something that happens in the regular curriculum, and it’s not just something that teachers do to them: it happens throughout their lives, in school and out, and is something they can pursue on their own, and for its own sake.
In their last year in Lower School they have CRISPs -- Curriculum Related Independent Study Projects. In fifth grade they have Invent Your Own math projects, and in Middle School there are electives and, in eighth grade, the Recital Projects. And these are just a few of the ways the children exercise choice in their own educations.	In both Academies and Intensives, we choose units that fall outside of the regular curriculum but are meaningful and exciting for the children, things that we've been wanting to offer to the children but just haven't found time. Choices range across the subject areas – math, science, technology, art, writing, music, and humanities, and also range outside the normal subjects, into crafts, games, etc. There is such a wealth of skills, activities, interests, and passions -- that can lead to exciting careers or life-enriching pastimes -- and in our ever more frenetic world there are fewer and fewer opportunities for children to discover and explore them.