Adda Clevenger School

Founded in 1980, the Adda Clevenger School is an independent elementary and middle school providing an accelerated academic and arts curriculum to San Francisco Bay Area students grades TK-8. The integrated program of arts and academic subjects is informed by five key entailments of John Dewey’s experientialist educational philosophy: modeling, reflection, experimentation, adaptation, and autonomy. Also known as Constructivism, Project-Based and Inquiry-Based Learning are popular implementations of this educational approach. The Deweyan program believes that children are full and autonomous members of the community, whose educational needs continually change along with their world. Established learning standards provide a helpful starting point, but only a starting point, for teachers to develop lessons that respond to the evolving interests of their students. Young students are most motivated to learn what they readily perceive as relevant and useful to themselves and to others. Teachers must know their students, know themselves, and create dynamic lessons that never leave students questioning the relevance and utility of their learning. Assessment of academic progress is based on students’ actual learning experience, not on external and detached metrics.