What is ARA?
An ARA school embraces how children, and by extension people, naturally learn through Acquisition, Reasoning and Application – what ARA stands for. A learner begins by encountering something never seen or experienced before and acquiring knowledge and understanding. Reasoning is making sense of this newly acquired information, interpreting it through previous experiences and prior knowledge. Through reasoning, primarily an internal process, the learner often makes connections between previous learning and new learning. Once the learner has reasoned through the acquired knowledge and understanding, he then tests what he has gleaned by applying it to the world around him. This is not the end of the learning process, however, as the learner will then transition fluidly back through acquisition and reasoning in an ongoing quest for greater understanding.
By following this very process ourselves, we have taken the knowledge and information acquired from our many experiences, have spent time working both inside and outside of the classroom reasoning through what we have learned and now seek to apply this knowledge by developing an educational framework that honors ARA.
What sets ARA apart from other educational programs?
First and foremost, an ARA school will be a place that affords the individual an opportunity to approach learning by drawing on natural strengths and tendencies.
Teachers will be guides, not instructors. We want the teachers to plant the seeds, develop an interest and let the learning happen through the work of the child. Many schools, including Montessori, do this well to a certain extent, but the nature of the lessons are that the teachers present the information and then the children independently repeat what the teacher has presented. In this way, the majority of the learning is taking place during the lesson, not through the work of the child.
As many other educational programs boast of individualized learning, ARA schools will be providing personalized learning. In individualized learning, all learners are presented the same material in the same format, but the progression toward mastery is at the pace of the learner. In personalized learning, how a learner approaches learning is what guides how a lesson is presented and how mastery is demonstrated.