Thea Bowman Leadership Academy believes that educated citizens emerge as the true leaders of a community.

The school has a college preparatory curriculum, which is both rigorous and exciting.  The basic curriculum is based on the "Core Knowledge Sequence", which is used in over 600 schools throughout the United States.  It allows us to go beyond the Indiana Standards so as to allow for even higher levels of achievement.  Emphasis is placed on active student participatory learning through a variety of innovative teaching strategies.

Core Knowledge Sequence

Core Knowledge Sequence, is aligned with the Indiana State Standards, which are specific for each grade level in the areas of Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Science, Physical Development and Health, Fine Arts and Foreign Language. The Core Knowledge Sequence goes beyond the State standards by allowing students to be challenged by a rigorous, sequentially structured curriculum, which simultaneously enhances skill development and critical thinking, as well as content mastery. Core Knowledge serves as the foundation for college preparatory work.

Paideia Method

The Paideia (pronounced pie-day-uh) represents a philosophy and strategy for structuring the school organization and utilizing various teaching strategies and methodologies:

Didactic Mode

Acquiring organized knowledge through means such as textbooks, lectures and videos.

 

Coaching Aspect:

At the core of the Paideia program, coaching requires practice, mastery, and learning by doing. This aspect can be utilized in the forms of labs, cooperative learning techniques, and project-centered/product-oriented learning.

 

Seminar Component:

This is a way for students to deepen their understanding of the ideas they have been studying, and apply them to their own lives and values. Teachers fulfill this component through facilitating open exploration of the ideas in a subject matter text, creating a bond of mutual respect (between teacher and student), allowing conflict resolution, listening, articulation, and applying knowledge and skills to new situations.

 

Junior Great Books Program

The Junior Great Books Program allows our students to be exposed to the best children’s literature in the world. The works are carefully selected from around the world to give children a global and multicultural perspective. In many ways, this program ties the Core Knowledge Sequence and Paideia methodology together.

Character Education

Today’s children face a complex and troubling world sometimes filled with uncertainties.  The traits that we hope to instill are neither readily apparent nor easy to grasp and put into practice.  Therefore, our challenge is to provide young people with the self-esteem, energy, and knowledge necessary to survive, be successful and develop into strong, competent, caring, and responsible citizens.