Bay City Academy creates a loving environment where kids feel safe so they can learn at a higher level.

Common sense dictates that a safe, happy child is more productive than a student who is distressed. For this reason, the Bay City Academy model is to first create an environment that is nurturing and supportive, and based on relationships rather than coercion. Bay City Academy is a school for all types of students. Our program is designed to offer a safe, nurturing place where students learn to love learning. By combining proven knowledge of human development, best practices in education and strong character education, we will help each child to discover his or her inherent gifts.

 

At Bay City Academy, we teach students to do the right thing, because it is the right thing to do.

We believe that proper behavior leads to good character, which leads to arts and academic excellence. It's as simple as that. Good character is an important part of every student's success, both in school and beyond. That's why the character traits of respect, kindness, responsibility, optimism, getting along and work ethic are continually modeled, taught, assessed and reported to parents at all grade levels.

The science behind our model of teaching kids how to learn is based on natural human development and how the brain learns best.

Our academic program is based on proven best practices in education, melding together brain science, character education and effective instruction.

Meeting the basic human, growth and development needs of each child will increase achievement and prepare the child for adult life. Thus, delivering instruction by developmental level, as opposed to chronological age, encourages continuity of relationships.

We use three primary underpinnings:

• Integrated Visual Learning: Each student enjoys a customized learning program, ensuring success. Students are asked to do developmentally appropriate tasks and given the tools to do them well.
• Choice Theory: The school culture is defined by positive relationships and placing the needs of the children before the school curriculum. In other words, we teach children, not a subject matter.
• Character Education: It does us no good to produce highly educated, gifted learners if they have no moral compass. We teach our students to "do the right thing, because it is the right thing to do."

Brain Science

The frontal lobe of the human brain is the last and most complex area to mature. As this region matures, children acquire motor, sensory, attention and thinking skills. Physical, emotional and cognitive behavior is a reflection of the state of brain maturation. Our developmental teaching model is aligned with the natural maturation of a child's brain.

The model of teaching we use understands that Development starts with movement, progresses to auditory/verbal and finally matures with visual/oculomotor, the most complex motor system in the body. Acquisition of competent eye movement skills is crucial to attention and cognitive development in that eye movement errors may result in learning difficulties.

Why Vision is So Important

Child development is a progression to visual dominance. To be clear, Vision and Sight are not synonymous terms. Sight refers to how well the eyes can see. Vision refers to the picture a student gets in his head while listening or thinking. Vision is primarily a frontal lobe function and serves as the basis of human executive function. Skillful, sophisticated Vision is crucial to social, behavioral, academic and character success.

Creating Character

Proper behavior leads to good choices, which lead to academic and arts excellence. Our curriculum emphasizes six traditional positive character traits. These traits are kindness, work ethic, responsibility, respect, optimism and cooperation. Students receive and grade themselves in each of these traits along with their academic grades. The traits are woven throughout our school protocols, lessons and culture.

Effective Instruction

Traditional education experiences teach part-to-whole and in a linear fashion. Here are the facts, and they happened in this order. Research has proven that the brain does not naturally think this way. At BCA, we give our students the whole picture so that when they get the detailed facts, they have an understanding of why they are important, or whole-to-part. We also explore connections naturally made during the learning process to have a deeper understanding of relationship as opposed to learning linearly.

Bay City Academy uses a competency-based grading system to ensure quality work. Students earn an A, B or N ("not yet").

Students are expected to do quality work, demonstrating they have fully learned a concept before progressing to the next level. This works to the advantage of all students. Those who need a bit more support to master a topic will get it. On the flip side, once a concept is mastered, the student will be allowed to move on, eliminating the requirement of simple seat time. The students who seek the opportunity to advance will be given the chance.

At Bay City Academy, we set the stage for teachers, students and parents to form real relationships that serve as the basis for students' success.

We keep classes as small as possible and allow teachers to keep the same students for several years — not by necessity, but by design. This means teachers and students don't have to spend several weeks or even months learning about each other and forming friendships on a yearly basis, allowing us to get to the business of teaching and with much more efficiency. Our multi-age grouping allows differential instruction by development, as opposed to age, and encourages continuity of relationships. Students stay with the same teacher and many of the same classmates for several years. Students progress seamlessly through the curriculum by mastery as opposed to arbitrary annual deadlines.

Bay City Academy students learn Spanish and Sign Language the same way they learned their primary language, through experience and immersion.

BCA students learn Spanish and American Sign Language from kindergarten on. Teachers use American Sign Language to introduce new vocabulary sight words. This provides students with a more concrete learning experience, as well as the richness of learning elements of a new language. This allows even non-reading students the opportunity to develop vocabulary and make a more permanent imprint of the new language skill.

We also begin teaching Spanish in kindergarten. Spanish is a required class at every grade level and is incorporated into many areas of our students' education — even on the playground! Spanish instruction is delivered throughout our curriculum to all ages using an instructional method known as Total Physical Response. TPR is consistent with our emphasis on useful, relevant and visual learning. Students first learn to speak and to listen in Spanish and later are asked to write and read it.

P.E. is no longer traditional gym class. The neurosciences have revealed the crucial role of movement and the cerebellum in learning. Bay City Academy students receive physical education from a specialist. This ensures that children have developmentally appropriate activities that help them mature both physically and intellectually. Our physical education program encourages lifelong fitness skills as well as sportsmanship and cooperation.

Bay City Academy students earn salaries, have jobs to do, pay bills and develop their own businesses. The younger children rely more heavily on teacher support, but all kids experience the responsibility, creativity and satisfaction of building a business. Students learn to become productive members of society by participating in these businesses and job clubs, where real-life issues such as supply and demand, profitability and customer service are experienced firsthand.

We expect mastery from all our students, not just the top percentage. We work with our students to learn each topic well and earn at least a grade of B. If the quality is lower than that, we continue to help the student until mastery occurs. In our competency-based grading system, students earn an A, B or N ("not yet'). We believe that lessons important enough to be stressed in our curriculum need to be mastered to at least 80% competency to receive credit.

Bay City Academy students eat family-style lunches with their teachers, allowing for deeper relationships and a more healthful eating environment. Students are expected to use good manners and eat healthful lunches. This setup also helps to avoid many of the conflicts that often occur during the institutional environment of a cafeteria, fostering a safer, more nurturing place of learning.

It's simple — by having more time available, we are able to create a more relaxed environment and still teach to a greater depth.