Academics

Individualized Learning

Personalized learning has been a hallmark of an Indian Springs education since the school was founded. More than two dozen advanced courses available through the prestigious Malone Schools Online Network and endless possibilities for independent studies with our dedicated faculty allow our students to hone skills, explore interests, and pursue passions.

Learning Opportunities

List of 3 items.

Independent Studies

In the 1950s and ‘60s, Founding Director Doc Armstrong pulled students out of class and gave them a stack of books to read if he thought they needed a more individualized program. Today, upper-level students are encouraged to work with Indian Springs faculty members on meaningful independent study topics that support their distinctive interests, personality, and preferences. Each year, Springs’ Dean of Academics approves more than 20 independent studies, from topics such as American political philosophy of the early founding period, to the applied mathematics of winning at tennis, to social, economic, and political forces impacting women's health issues.
Makerspace

Springs’ Makerspace is a flexible and personalized learning environment designed to foster creative problem solving, curiosity, collaboration, and iterative learning. This in turn leads to better thinking through more effective questioning.

Teachers blend core disciplines in a project-based approach, allowing students to explore their interests and harness their innovative potential. Projects are not done at the end of a unit of learning; they are the vehicle and purpose of the learning. Focus is on projects in engineering, robotics, electronics, 3-D graphic design and printing, programming, woodworking, metalworking, gardening, culinary arts, or a combination of these areas.

Springs’ Makerspace opportunities exist because we believe learning through doing is an integral part of Learning through Living—learning can be self-organized, social, and student-owned; and it can be the product of play, experimentation, and authentic inquiry, where each student exploits the ideal of experiential education.
Malone Schools Online Network
In 2015, Indian Springs joined the new Malone Schools Online Network to expand course offerings available to all of Springs’ upper-level students. Taught by faculty from participating Malone Scholars Schools and the Stanford Online High School, MSON virtual courses give Springs students the chance to take intensive classes in an interactive, virtual discussion setting. Courses meet twice weekly for an hour and use a blended learning approach, combining real-time video conferencing seminars with recorded lectures and activities to be completed outside of class. Small in size, courses may last one semester or the full school year.
Requirements:
- All enrollments for MSON courses require approval from Indian Springs’ Dean of Academics.
- MSON courses cannot be used to meet departmental/academic curriculum requirements.
- Courses and grades earned are listed on Indian Springs School transcripts.
Click here to learn more about the Malone Schools Online Network.

Mastery Transcript Consortium

Indian Springs is a Founding School in the Mastery Transcript Consortium, along with 17 other strong, forward-thinking independent schools around the country. The Mastery Transcript Consortium is a collective of high schools organized to rethink models of student assessment and transcript reporting. MTC’s goal is to implement a system that assesses each individual student’s mastery of skills and prioritizes flexibility in the type of feedback students receive. This kind of personalized feedback for students has always been at the center of Indian Springs’ belief in individualized learning and supports our enhancement of differentiated learning opportunities.

As our newest graduates prepare to attend selective colleges and universities across the country and around the world, hear what six of them have to say about their specific interests and distinctive paths at Springs.