Getting to know you…

Innocademy Las Huellas Spanish Immersion

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            Welcome to our new web page section entitled, “Getting to know you…” 

 

Since WMAIE includes 19 school Districts, and many more schools, we understand that it’s difficult to know everyone, so we’re here to help introduce you to each other.  We will be highlighting a different school twice a year. Our first school is Innocademy.  For the longest time I thought this was a Native American school (just the sound of the name), but I soon came to find out that it is a charter school, hosted by the company, Innovation Tech. Innocademy has a traditional English school, an online school, and a Spanish Immersion school, Las Huellas. My visit to Innocademy was focused primarily on the Spanish Immersion school.

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Spanish 80-100% of the time:

I spoke with Rachel Walendzik, one of the teacher/leaders, about what makes Innocademy, and specifically Las Huellas so special. One of the areas they are very proud of is the amount of Spanish that their students use. Their plan is to have K-2 use 100% Spanish; Grades 3-5 use 90% Spanish; and 6-8 use 80% Spanish.  Another point of pride is the amount of staff that are native Spanish speakers—9 out of 11 staff members are native Spanish speakers! At present they are a Young 5’s-6 grade program, and are developing the plan to continue Middle School through 8th grade. As I visited several of the classrooms, I was able to hear mostly Spanish being used throughout, by both teachers and students.

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Just Right Grouping:

Innocademy assigns students to “Just Right Grouping” classrooms, rather than grade level classrooms. Teachers are known to have “grade level standards” classrooms, rather than just the grade level. Their schedules are synchronized so that individual students may move to different classrooms to study Math, Grammar/Literacy at their level, rather than staying in a specific grade classroom all day.  In addition they have RTI small groups to help the struggling learners.

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Teacher-led school:

What I saw as the most unique part about Innocademy is that it is a “Teacher-led school”. There is no principal, vice principal, headmaster, etc. All teachers work together to make decisions with regard to the curriculum, finances, school improvement, & marketing. A tiered system of support is used to mentor teachers and para professionals, based on experience and expertise. When speaking about the school to outsiders, like when I visited, one of the teachers will take the lead to interact with the visitor. There is 1 classroom per grade level standards, and all decisions are made by consensus. While this requires an extra 3 meetings per week, Cati Vila says, “The teachers are content with the extra time because they have so much to say about what is done.“

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Sheryl Dalman, President of the Board of Directors, WMAIE

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