Our daily schedule, small classes, and supportive faculty all contribute to a learning environment that encourages success and are what make Fenster a school where change happens every day.
Key Components of Our Program
Positive and Healthy School Culture
Our entire program, including behavioral expectations, is based on the five essential core values of integrity, respect, responsibility, compassion, and health and safety. These values are integrated into every aspect of our school culture and are reinforced each day beginning with morning meeting, a community gathering.
Daily Schedule
Our daily schedule is intentionally designed and deliberately structured to meet the needs of a diversity of learning styles, while also attending to the social and emotional, as well as the physical, growth of our students as they prepare for college and life. It includes:
- three extended class periods per day: which allow for greater student and teacher focus; permit our highly trained faculty to utilize several different activities in order to meet the learning needs of each student; and further deeper and more lasting learning results and a subsequent growth in self-confidence.
- seminar series: which affords each grade level a weekly seminar focused on life skills and health and human development. Much of the seminar curriculum is based on recommendations from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL.org).
- clubs and student activities: which offer students the opportunity to discover new interests, to expand on their passions, and to develop leadership skills.
- sports/physical activities: which ensure the physical health and well-being of every student. Our physical activities take advantage of our unique location and include outdoor pursuits such as hiking, mountain biking, and a high ropes course.
- academic tables: which give students needing more structure and assistance a study hall monitored by faculty.
Communication
Parents/guardians and their designates, such as consultants, receive weekly progress reports via a password-protected portal on our web site.
Professional Development
Our faculty and other professional staff members receive continuous professional development regarding brain research, learning styles and differentiated classrooms, and adolescent social and emotional involvement. In addition to an intensive summer in-service, there are three professional development days each year.
Setting
Our Southwest desert location offers an oasis where we pursue our mission in a naturally beautiful, peaceful, and secluded environment.
Our Logo
The academic logo transforms a familiar southwestern motif into an open book – inspired in part by the Hohokam tribe that once lived on the School’s grounds nearly a thousand years ago. The School’s mascot is the Thunderbird, a traditional Native American symbol of protection, which also appears in the academic logo as a simplified southwestern symbol hovering above the book. All together, the symbol is reminiscent of a protective shield for learning which is representative of the School’s mission and core values, especially health and safety.