Quest to Learn

Mission
Serious in its mission to create a school relevant to the lives of 21st century learners that is focused on student futures (college and career), Quest to Learn (Q2L) students are immersed in a carefully designed, media-rich curriculum spanning the 6-12th grades. Q2L’s standards-based approach supports a conscious, differentiated integration of math and literacy practices across classes, providing students with the tools to read, write, and do quantitative thinking daily. Our model is not only interested in enabling students to compute, access scientific content, or solve problems well. Instead, Q2L’s curriculum is designed to allow all students access to the concepts underlying the core systems shaping our world—natural and biological systems like weather, the human body, and living environments; social systems like government, religion, and family; and technological systems like writing, computation (math), and communication. By 8th grade, students have been supported in developing a way of thinking about global dynamics, for example: how world economic, political, technological, environmental and social systems work and are interdependent across nations and regions. Our school model--made up of three core components--is carefully and explicitly designed to enable all students in a nurturing and supportive environment, regardless of any academic challenges they bring to contribute to the design and innovation necessary to meet the needs and demands of a global society.

The project will also serve as a demonstration site, integrating gaming research developed through the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative into the development of Regents-based curricular pilots, toolkits to be used by students and teachers to design activities and experiences, and interactive spatial prototypes. The development and planning process will provide a context for synthesizing a body of work around the ways students are learning, making decisions, participating, and creating knowledge. Products created throughout the process will be made available to the larger education reform community for sampling, testing and refinement.

Core Beliefs
“Everything I do in school connects to my life outside of school through a game design and systems perspective."

“School is a practice space where life systems I inhabit (technological, socio-cultural, nature) are modeled, taken apart, re-engineered, and gamed as a way to build understandings for action.”

"Being Me: I am a writer, designer, reader, producer, teacher, student, gamer.”

Pedagogical stance

• Prototyping and iteration
• Managing and reflecting on one’s identities
• Building feedback loops connection school and life systems
• Engaging games and their design