Our Vision, Mission & Values

Bright Scholars University Promise

Students must learn at their own pace on their academic level.

Students come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences.  They come to school with influences from their cultures, home environment, neighborhoods, and religious organizations.  In addition, each student is unique and have different skill sets that are not always equal to one another. Students must have the opportunity to learn at their own pace and show mastery in multiple ways and not just through standardized testing.  Students should not move on to new content until the previous content is mastered. Having had the opportunity to work with students who are homeschooled has proven success for students working at their own pace.  Some of those students have finished high school early and others finished on time.  The difference is that these students enjoyed their educational journey without the pressure to learn content at the same pace as students who are chronologically the same age as they are.  In addition, they were able to explore other areas of study and participate in extracurricular activities while maintaining a minimum “B” average although the goal is always to maintain an “A” average.

Students must have the opportunity to participate in hands-on learning.

It is understood that teaching new concepts must first be introduced before students can master.  What is not clear is how the new concepts should be introduced.  Teaching in the past was through lecturing and rote memorization which is still a great introduction to new concepts.  However, students must also have learning experiences through hands-on projects and experiments.  In order to learn something new one must have experience.  Through previous knowledge and experience coupled with the new knowledge, students will gain mastery and have a better understanding of this new knowledge.  While working with bilingual first graders for reading instruction, students read better and understood what they were reading when they had experience with the objects in the book.  A book about kites to a student who has never seen or experienced one before is just another story but to a child who has had hands-on experience opens their eyes to the world.  

Learning must be fun and engaging to evoke intrinsic motivation.

Students in grades K-12 go to school by force not by choice even though a great majority loves learning and loves the school experience.  Teachers face many behavior challenges and daily disruptions from students who would rather be at home playing or hanging out with friends.  In order to motivate students to learn and teach them to appreciate their education, teachers must make learning fun and engaging.  Students who only receive instruction through lecture sometimes have less engagement and retain less content than students who receive instruction in a variety of fun and exciting ways.

The Bright Scholars Way

With that being said, Bright Scholars University was birthed through my educational experience as a K-12th student and my experience as both a college student and teacher in a variety of settings. I have taken my knowledge, education, and experience and created what I feel is a learning platform for students like me. I have always had a passion for learning and experiencing new things. I have been both a fast learner and a slow learner, especially when the information wasn’t delivered where I could understand and apply what I was being taught. I had to overcome boredom in many school settings and figure out how to take difficult concepts and dissect them into easier to learn, retain, understand, and master. Now I have taken those same tools and skills I used for my own learning and use them for my students. My program is not a one size fits all and not everyone scholar will begin, learn, or end on the same educational level but they will all be given the best learning experience through both group instruction and individual instruction through their goals on their learning path.

Bright Scholars University Commitment to Our Scholars

By the end of the 2020-2021 school year, scholars in the Foundations class should be able to complete most if not all and our early learners (preschool, Jr. Kindergarten, Kindergarten) should be able to do some of the following:

1. Count by ones, twos, fives, and tens up to 100. A stretch goal would be counting by 3’s.
2. Understand the use of one-to-one correspondence in counting.
3. Recall simple addition and subtraction facts with answers up to 10. A stretch goal would be up to 20.
4. Understand that clocks are used to measure the passing of time and be able to tell time and write time a quarter past the hour, a half past the hour, a quarter until the hour, and on the hour.
5. Identify and write uppercase and lowercase letters from A to Z.
6. Know all the alphabet consonant sounds, short and long vowel sounds and understand that letters can be combined to make different sounds called blending.
7. Read CVC and CCVC words from learning blends, consonant diagraphs, and families. Using the combination of Hooked on Phonics and Reading Eggs programs, and Dr. Seuss and Step into Reading leveled books, they will be reading sentences, paragraphs, and books.
8. Summarize and retell a story that has been read to them.
9. Write their first and last name, birthdate, address, and phone number.
10. Name, recognize, and write the days of the week and months of the year.
11. Follow online classroom rules and take turns by learning to navigate the virtual learning platform.
12. Become independent learners and thinkers with minimal help from the teacher and parents.
13. Learn to type on the computer in a word document.
14. Correctly hold a pencil or crayon.
15. Cut with scissors along a straight line.
16. Recognize, name, and spell the following colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, black, white, gray, gold, silver, and pink.
17. Recognize, name, draw, and spell the following shapes: square, triangle, circle, rectangle, oval, hexagon, pentagon, octagon, trapezoid, rhombus, star, heart, cylinder, sphere, cube, rectangular prism, and triangular prism.
18. Understand the use of ordinal numbers.
19. Understand general time concepts (e.g., yesterday, today, tomorrow, last week).
20. Follow simple two-step directions.
21. Identify rhymes.
22. Know the difference between synonyms and antonyms.
23. Know what nouns, pronouns, verbs, and adjectives are.
24. Use like objects to measure and compare lengths.
25. Identify patterns.
26. Categorize objects into groups.
27. Compare and order objects in relation to size or length.
28. Ask and answer questions about stories.
29. Perform two-digit addition and subtraction problems without regrouping. A stretch goal would be two-digit addition and subtraction problems with regrouping. Those scholars showing mastery of two-digit will move to three-digit.
30. Identify pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters and their values and be able to add them together.
31. Understand the concept of greater than, less than, and equal to.
32. Recall events that happen at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of a story.
33. Write complete sentences with correct punctuation and capitalization from sight words, CVC and CCVC words, spelling words, and vocabulary words that are learned throughout the school year. A stretch goal would be to write a complete paragraph and/or simple one-page story.
34. Identify the five senses and the body parts associated with each.
35. Understand the basic concept of multiplication using repeated addition, picture arrays, and memorization of the rules for 0’s, 1’s, 2’s, 5’s, 9’s, 10’s, and 11’s.
36. Understand basic word problems for addition and subtraction and solve them using correct mathematical calculations.
37. Read and comprehend paragraphs, short stories, and simple chapter books that they read or that is read to them.
38. Read aloud with 80% fluency and expression as they are learning to read. A stretch goal would be reading with 100% fluency all decodable readings.
39. Identify high-frequency words with unusual spellings.
40. Work cooperatively with a partner or in a group.
41. Understand the concept of place value. (ones, tens, hundreds).
42. Understand basic fractions (1/4, 1/3, ½, 3/4_) by drawing, identifying, and knowing numerator, denominator, and fraction bar and the purpose of each.
43. Learn about a topic in order to gain more information and be able to share that information with others.
44. Use reference materials to look up information (dictionary, encyclopedia, thesaurus).