Throughout my 20 years at Cascades Academy, I’ve always known that our “special sauce” is an unwavering commitment to our unique mission and culture. Our teachers are the chefs who make it all happen. Like combining ingredients with care, they bring together challenging, meaningful academics and hands-on learning experiences that ensure each student thrives in an engaged, vibrant, and inclusive community.
And like any great chef, our faculty and staff alike continue to innovate, learn, and lead to deliver the best possible experiences and outcomes. We continue to break the mold of conventional education and keep pace with the world around us — this has a powerful impact on our students.
For example, research shows that competency-based learning drives higher student engagement, achievement, and outcomes. In partnership with national educational thought leaders like Mastery Transcript Consortium and Getting SMART, Cascades Academy recently shifted to competency-based learning to better impart the skills, knowledge, and abilities that truly matter in today’s world.
While other educational institutions may resist innovation, we seek it. We seek new research and learning methods that empower us to act in the best interest of our students.
In this edition of "Headwaters," we invite you to connect with some of what we’re reading and leaning into this year.
What We’re Reading
The school’s leadership team read “Hidden Potential, The Science of Achieving Greater Things” by #1 New York Times Best Selling Author Adam Grant. This proved a captivating read that affirmed several of our school’s practices, including:
- Measuring success based on one’s growth journey rather than one’s starting abilities
- Emphasizing the importance of character development as a key to achieving greater things
- Providing the appropriate scaffolding from multiple educators and educational systems to optimize growth and achievement
- Learning from failures
“The true measure of your potential is not the height of the peak you’ve reached, but how far you’ve climbed to get there.” - Adam Grant
Upper School teachers read “In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School” by Jal Mehta, which reinforces Cascades Academy’s transformative approach to education. The book highlights “mastery, identity, and creativity” as key to meaningful learning. Our classrooms reflect this philosophy, where students build deep knowledge, connect learning to their identities, and engage in hands-on projects. This approach fosters purpose, accountability, and community.
This work has also inspired deeper conversations among our faculty about rigorous and relevant learning, connecting John Dewey’s educational philosophies with today’s needs. Our teachers are energized by these ideas, and parents can be confident that we are creating a dynamic environment where students grow intellectually and personally.
“In the spaces that teachers, students, and our own observations identified as the most compelling, students had opportunities to develop knowledge and skill (mastery), they came to see their core selves as vitally connected to what they were learning and doing (identity), and they had opportunities to enact their learning by producing something rather than simply receiving knowledge (creativity).” - Jal Mehta
Middle School teachers engaged with material focused on competency-based learning, including “Getting Smart on Mastery Learning,” “Show What You Know: A Landscape Analysis of Competency-Based Education,” and “Individualizing Student Learning with Competency-Based Education.” In part, these readings deepened our teachers’ understanding of how competency-based learning is part of a larger national movement to equip students with essential, durable skills for the future.
By aligning with competency-based principles, our teachers focus on how students can master critical skills and demonstrate their learning in meaningful ways. This commitment also helps them integrate competency with our experiential and applied learning models.
“Competency-based education brings a meaningful, inquiry-based, and growth-minded approach to education that promotes problem-solving skills and abilities in an individualized, differentiated, and connected way.” - Dr. Caroline Kill
Lower School teachers selected from a number of books, including “Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom” and “Shifting the Balance, 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Upper Elementary Classroom.”
Researchers’ understanding of the Science of Reading has evolved in recent decades. These two books present the latest best practices, focusing on six simple, scientifically sound shifts that strengthen early reading instruction. These shifts target areas like reading comprehension, phonemic awareness, phonics, high-frequency words, cueing systems, and text selection. This year, our Lower School teachers are integrating these strategies into their classrooms.
“The brain is a natural puzzle solver and releases endorphins when we solve a problem. It loves to find patterns and figures things out, and it is wired to reward us for our efforts. So, as children use the secrets we’ve taught them for cracking bits of the code—noticing, comparing, and applying phonics patterns—their brain can reward them for their efforts.” - Jan Burkins & Kari Yates
Our teachers know that instilling a love of learning is paramount to helping our students navigate a changing world, solve complex problems, and lead lives of meaning. It’s no wonder they, too, embody what it means to be a lifelong learner.
Thanks for reading,
Julie