To cultivate a dynamic learning community based on innovation, social justice, and environmental stewardship. The Resilience Charter School engages students through authentic relationships and project-based learning, empowering them to think critically, persevere with grit, design creative solutions, and act with mindfulness and compassion.
“My daughter had in her words, ‘A life-changing experience today!’ Thank you, Resilience Charter School for Challenge Day. The principal assured me my daughter would be exposed to a challenging curriculum, but it would ‘look different’ from her previous school's curriculum, and she was correct. My daughter is constantly amazing me, in such a passive manner, with the new ideas and concepts she has been exposed to at Resilience.”
Resiliency is an inherent human trait that empowers us with the capacity to overcome challenges, gain new insights, and build skills. Supportive relationships cultivate deep resilience, and this is why we emphasize building authentic relationships with our students. Inspired by the global mythology of the rising phoenix, we support one another in rising strong. Resilience Charter School creates a supportive yet challenging learning environment which inspires academic excellence and active citizenship, developing a hub of empowerment for Alachua County youth. Students apply their burgeoning knowledge and skills to pro-actively contribute to the enrichment of the world, thereby becoming lifelong learners. Resilience Charter School aims to propagate a model of excellence.
“My son was excited but anxious about coming back to school. He came home yesterday all smiles, happy to report that he had a good day and felt comfortable with everyone. He thanked me more than once for signing him up at this school. Today he reported "another great day". I am all smiles here. Thank you so much!”
We know that traditional learning isn’t always the best approach for every child, and real-world problems don’t fit neatly into one academic subject. Instead, we focus on Project Based Learning (PBL), which is a dynamic approach to learning about different subjects simultaneously while your child actively explores and solves real-world problems. Projects combine arts, language skills, historical research, scientific analysis, and mathematical knowledge.
Students are empowered to work together as they apply and develop their multiple intelligences and creative problem-solving skills. Children experience flexibility, freedom of expression, and opportunities for both teamwork and individual work. As students collaborate, they will also develop genuine relationships with each other, teachers, parents, community members, and the environment.
Students will help develop their own learning objectives, outcomes, and rubrics to determine outcome success, encouraging deeper learning. They will give and receive peer feedback on the quality of their work, leading them to make revisions, conduct further study, and more readily identify quality efforts. They will assume full ownership and responsibility for their projects, within classroom parameters, as they present their completed work in the final evaluation stages.
“What I like at Resilience: Out of the box approach to teaching/learning — hands on projects (the way kids learn best!) Bringing additional, non-traditional, interactive curriculum to the school, like the Girls Unlimited program, they help kids recognize & challenge normalized negative personal & peer interactions (bullying, relational aggression, negative self-talk) and refocus energy on empathy & self worth. Creating a culture of inclusion, equality, and peace at the school.”
Resilience Charter School goes beyond academic learning to emphasize the importance of social emotional learning (SEL) in establishing a strong foundation for students’ success in life. Through social emotional learning, your child learns how to be self-aware, manage emotions, develop healthy relationship skills, and make responsible decisions.
Through Mindfulness and Restorative Justice, staff and students work on developing emotional intelligence and learning how to effectively collaborate with others. Restorative Justice creates a structure for empowering students to resolve conflicts through a process of repairing harm with the support of community.
Students also learn how to recognize and respect each other’s differences through non- judgmental awareness. SEL provides a rich environment for personal growth, academic thriving, and responsible citizenship.
Resilience partners with the River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding to provide staff training in using Restorative Justice Community Circles as a way to address conflict and incidents of harm within our school. As opposed to traditional punitive responses to behavior, Restorative Justice (RJ) allows all parties affected by an incident to have a voice and to participate in making agreements towards repairing the harm. The Center for Peacebuilding explains RJ further here: http://www.centerforpeacebuilding.org/restorative-justice. Resilience also uses PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports) to clarify schoolwide behavior expectations and reinforce students’ positive choices.
“Outstanding environment for personal growth. My grandson was able to gain the confidence to participate in activities. He was nurtured and encouraged to be different in his own way. The name resilience is fitting for the life lessons for all at this school.”
Seven core program elements drive our public charter school’s challenging learning environment:
Interdisciplinary Project-Based Learning: We use a dynamic approach where children learn about different subjects simultaneously while actively exploring, researching, and solving complex, real-world problems.
Blended Learning and Immersive Technologies: We integrate cutting edge technologies that will best prepare your child to succeed in the 21st century workplace. Participatory Action Research: Your child will collaborate with the people most affected by important issues and then conduct research, analyze information, and devise strategies to resolve the issues.
Democratic Process: Your child will become part of a learning community that values participation, equality, justice, mutual respect, and trust.
Mentorship and Apprenticeship: Your child will learn directly from experts in a specific field of interest. These mentors will guide them in gaining deeper understanding and skills.
Mindfulness Education: Children will participate in creative introspection and reflection to harness the energy and power of non-judgmental awareness and focused attention.
Anti-Colonialism, Culturally Capable, and Global Education: Your child will learn about other cultures in a way that embraces diversity, ecological stewardship, and preparation for professionalism in a global economy.
“My son is excited about being at Resilience. He enjoyed the discussion in the Life Skills class. The students had an opportunity to open up and express their feelings about past experiences in the classroom and feeling as if they were never heard or had an opportunity to be heard. When you think you're all alone, there is someone else who is dealing with the same issue(s). Michael was able to relate or bond with his classmates yesterday. He doesn't look like the weight of the world is on his shoulders”
Authentic Relationships: Since we highly value authentic relationships between teachers and students, we require our teachers to reflect on the depth of their connections with students. Also, the teacher-student connection is one of the criteria in teacher evaluation. Community building activities will create opportunities throughout the year to build connection and trusting relationships with experts in students’ areas of interest.
Vulnerability: Your child will learn that taking educational risks entails allowing ourselves to be vulnerable in our learning. Fear of failure often holds students back from success. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.” Teachers will model healthy vulnerability by sharing personal stories of obstacles and failures to create a reflective culture that values a growth mindset.
Grit: Grit entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest despite failures, adversity, and plateaus in progress. We cultivate a culture that encourages grit by developing a foundation of connected teachers and students. At Resilience Charter School, we will share with students that a key to their success is perseverance and passion, or grit.
Metacognition: Metacognition is the process of observing our thinking and feeling, and it has been shown to create deep understandings, and enhance academic success. Metacognition refers to being self-aware, self-understanding, and exercising self-control.
Inquiry: Inquiry is a natural process that inspires learning, seeking answers to our questions to build our knowledge. Students will investigate, explore, research, and study in a community of learners with each student learning from others in social interactions. Students at Resilience Charter School will question the beliefs and projections that create barriers to academic growth, instead looking at problems from a new perspective.
Flow: Resilience Charter School’s project-based learning will include ample opportunities for students to follow their intellectual, playful flow. Students will creatively and collaboratively imagine, design, and build innovative solutions to real world problems.
Multiple Intelligences: We will honor your child’s unique intelligence through personalized education plans, which provide them with clear objectives for meeting standards, as well as providing opportunities to inspire inquiry and flow.
Resilience Charter School offers an academic program which prohibits discrimination in access to educational programs and activities, and prohibits bullying and harassment of any individual or group on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability, marital status, sexual orientation or genetic information (and other protected classes included in the school’s nondiscrimination policies).
Lack of English language skills will not be a barrier to admission and participation. The school may assess each student’s ability to benefit from specific programs through placement tests and counseling, and, if necessary, will provide services or referrals to better prepare students for successful participation.
This policy includes off-campus and social media.
For the 2023-2024 school year, Resilience Charter received a school grade of D. School Academic Performance Accountability Reports can be found FLDOE website: https://www.fldoe.org/accountability/accountability-reporting/school-grades/
“My granddaughter had a phenomenal 8th grade year at Resilience. She loved her teachers and was inspired to learn. The open house and student performances were the best. It is a truly welcoming environment and the students come first. I wish she had gone there sooner.”
Cognia offers accreditation and certification, assessment, professional learning, and improvement solutions to institutions and other education providers. As a global nonprofit working in over 80 countries, Cognia serves 36,000 institutions, nearly 25 million students, and five million educators every day.
© Copyright Resilience Charter School
