This program description is subject to some revision. The team of professional staff is working to develop the learning experience design for the program. This design is derived from the following information.

• The learning and social characteristics for students of this age and the resulting implications of this information.
• The Academy's Standards of Significant Learning are the explicit habits of mind that we wish to emphasize during the program.
  1. evaluate the soundness and relevance of information and reasoning.
  2. identify, understand, and accept the rights and responsibilities of belonging to a diverse community.
  3. construct questions which further understanding, forge connections, and deepen meaning.
  4. use appropriate technologies as extensions of the mind.
  5. make reasoned decisions which reflect ethical standards, and act in accordance with those decisions.
• The outcomes for the students within the program that are derived from the Standards above.
  1. exhibit a greater disposition to take appropriate intellectual and social risks.
  2. demonstrate the power of forging connections between and among areas of knowledge.
  3. seek out information from diverse, credible sources.
  4. use natural curiosity to direct learning.
  5. recognize and begin to address the personal and social barriers to learning.
  6. exhibit greater comfort and tolerance with being a member of a group.
• The program should offer a fundamentally different experience from that which students have in their home schools.

Students in the program will be placed into an ill-structured problem representative of a real-world scenario. Such scenarios are usually messy, much like problems faced in everyday life, and will require students to do the following:

• work collaboratively in small groups;
• gather real data from multiple diverse sources, primarily the internet;
• analyze and synthesize these data, working to generate possible solutions;
• communicate both the work and solutions through a multimedia presentation that incorporates textual, graphical, and quantitative data.

The scenario for this program will involve a proposed megatheme park to be constructed somewhere in Illinois. Students will be members of an advisory group charged with the task of deciding whether such a park at a particular location is feasible. They will be asked to consider the viewpoints of multiple constituency groups in their deliberations. The investors in the park want a detailed and accurate assessment of the natural hazards that such a park faces.

A fundamental premise of the program design is that not all students have to do the same thing at the same time. The situations will provide multiple pathways, allowing students to explore individual interests as they relate to the problem. The time to work on the problem will be distributed throughout the day and evening, and the adults in the program will model the learning process. The student will be the person in charge of the learning. The staff will be there to facilitate the process, not direct it. Some of the recreational facilities of the host institution will be available for student use during off-time, which will be distributed throughout the day. At each site there will be one or two off-campus outings.