Thank you for your interest in our Infinity School program. We are honoured you are here to learn more about us.

This post will walk you through our learning design, school culture, space, and give you an opportunity to meet our team. We’ll also be asking questions at the end to get a better understanding of who you and your child are.

We are an Acton Academy

First, we invite you to watch this virtual tour video created by the founders of Acton Academy, Laura and Jeff Sandefer. Our question of the year is, What is a Hero’s Journey?

Please learn more about the Sandefers by visiting this website to read Laura’s bio and seeing Jeff in action by watching his TEDx video. You might be interested to listen to this podcast that Jeff did with Jesse McCarthy of MontessoriEducation.com.

Have you heard of Seth Godin? Here are his comments about Acton Academy.

Laura wrote this informative and helpful book about Acton Academy: Courage to Grow, which you can download to your kindle for only $1.10. We have a limited number of paper copies at the school to give away — please let us know if you would like one of those.

21st Century Learning is happening here

After going through the information above, you have likely realized something special is happening here and we are quite different from programs using traditional education.

If you aren’t sure what 21st Century Learning is, we invite you to read this Forbes article explaining that. There are quite a few differences between “modern” learning and traditional learning, with the key one being that the focus is on skill development rather than information regurgitation: process over content.

The content is viewed as the vehicle on the road to developing mastery in important skills like: critical thinking, resolving conflict, problem solving, and project management to name a few. Thankfully we are not relying on “curriculum development” as it happens in traditional schools where a committee of government-appointed people discuss how to change the curriculum. It is not surprising that this method means that curriculum only changes over decades but we are in a fast-paced technologically driven society where things change much, much faster than that. We are able to keep up to those changes!

We have “Studios” and “Guides!”

This is a good time to look at how modern learning happens here. Visit each of the Studio pages: Ignite Studio, Discover Studio, and Explore Studio. Our high school, the Ascend Studio, is planned for the future.

Our Learning Design in Action

You won’t find grades or report cards at our school. Our Eagles (that’s what we call our learners) and Guides (that’s what we call our adults) use a software program unique to Acton Academy to track progress and see what the daily, weekly, and “session” plans are in real time. A session is a period of time used for the duration of a project. On that note, our calendar is different and it is important you have a look at that here to make sure it works with your family. You can see the start and end dates of each of the sessions there, too.

Here is a copy of our general schedule template:

You can see that the morning is focused on academics: math, reading, writing, spelling, and foreign language (French). As mentioned in the Acton Academy video at the very top of this post, we use a variety of tools for the academics including game-based software, group problem-solving challenges, and hands-on materials.

The afternoons are when we work on the art of writing and the project-based learning (“Quest”). Those projects hit all the major areas of learning like: art, music, history, the sciences — chemistry, physics, biology, life, environment, and specific technology like coding, robotics, software development, or graphic design.

We invite you to watch a video of these Quest projects. The older Eagles made Rube Goldberg Machines! And our younger Eagles put together this day-in-the-life video, which is really wonderful and obviously has a high cuteness factor.

An example of a writing challenge is when our Eagles did a speech presentation explaining their Hero Origin Story. These were so powerful to watch!

Student-led Learning Environment

Everyone in our program has a significant role to play here. Each Eagle and Guide has a responsibility to be a contributing member, committing to the process of supporting each other in their learning goals.

Our Eagles “audit” each other’s work, dive into deep learning and also deep conversations that sometimes might be tough. We value the messiness that comes with making mistakes or not getting something quite right — we view mistakes more like experiments that lead us to necessary corrections and improvements.

Our Eagles, through the democratic process, suggest changes to the system if they feel those are warranted, work in groups to dig into tricky problems, and learn how to support each other even when that feels hard. Over time we see growth in their character, grit, and ability to persevere.

The learners here enjoy independent learning, are self-autonomous, show a willingness to collaborate and problem solve, and want to take on responsibility.

See Us in Action

For a great “day-in-the-life” glimpse of our school, we invite you to visit our Instagram page at @InfinitySchoolCA. Pull up a chair, there are years of posts to look through!

Complete the Questionnaire

If you can answer “yes” to all of the questions below, we invite you to complete our enrolment questionnaire to better understand your and your child’s learning goals and why you’d like to join Infinity School.

1. Have you watched all the videos linked in this post?
2. Have you looked at the tuition page and understand that due to our small size, we do not provide scholarships?
3. Are all of your child’s vaccinations up to date? This is necessary to protect some medically-vulnerable Eagles learning here.
4. Are you keen to engage in a learning process that hands the responsibility of learning to the child and his/ her/ their family?
5. Are you open to being on a hero’s journey with us?
6. After reading through everything above carefully, do you believe your child would thrive in this kind of learning environment?

If yes to all, please click here to complete the questionnaire.