Personalized Learning Plans
The vision of Personalized Learning Plans is to deepen and strengthen the IMSA learning experience for all students. A personalized learning plan is consistent with the IMSA philosophy to treat each individual as if each one is capable of significantly influencing life on the planet and with the IMSA vision of liberating the goodness and genius of all children. The development of a three-year learning plan is an effort to personalize the IMSA experience to the students’ interest and goals.
The plan gives structure for the three-year IMSA experience and the future. It is an adaptable blueprint based upon the student's interest and values and creates a three-year conversation about students as learners. The student, with adult guidance, including staff and parents, proposes the personalization process. Personalization is not “doing your own thing” or altering the core; it is the core experience with a variety of options based on student interest and competence.
Each student develops an adaptable learning plan to provide increased responsibility and ownership in learning opportunity choices. Students and parents receive guidance in decision making about courses, co-curricular activities, and research, service and leadership opportunities. Students have opportunities to suggest options to their plan of study at IMSA.
The Personalized Learning Plan (PLP) initiative at IMSA has three major aims: to foster significant advising relationships between IMSA students and adult members of the community, to assist students in developing habits of personal introspection, and to encourage students to seriously consider their intellectual, academic, and professional goals. Orientation and initial development of the learning plan occurs through Sophomore Navigation during the first semester of sophomore year. Orientation activities introduce the individual student to introspective thinking and to the formal planning of the student's program at IMSA. PLP orientation emphasizes the role of the individual student's curiosity and intellectual energy; it encourages students to identify areas of interest while keeping their options open. This is the beginning of a process in which students will become clearer about their identity as learners. Our goal is for students to leave IMSA with a clear understanding of themselves as learners who are capable of learning whatever they need and want to learn.