The kids might be out of school this week for Thanksgiving break, but some students are coming back to a different classroom on Monday---a virtual one.
Sora Schools, an alternative online, project-based high school where students explore their interests, is nearing the end of its first semester. Founded by three Georgia Tech graduates and backed by John Danner, the former founder of Rocketship Education, the school began in September with eight students based on the idea that high school should be an innovative and influential experience.
"High school has evolved to regurgitation of tests, rather than learning," Indra Sofian, co-founder of Sora Schools, said. "We wanted to make high school more meaningful and fun."
The idea began when Sofian and his co-founders were chatting about their high school experiences and realized a majority of their complaints were the same, such as curriculums that prioritize memorization over actual learning. The founders began talking to parents, students and mentors to discover what school should be like and how it can best serve the students.
"One of the big ones is we just went through high school and didn’t feel like the things we learned were connected to anything in the real world," he said. "I feel like we didn’t know anything ... We felt like we were playing a game, not actually caring about what we learned, at least in my personal school experience."
Sofian said changing the current administration system would be difficult.
"It would take such a long time to change these systems," he said. "(We thought) why don't we just start our own?"
Thus Sora Schools was born and is on its way to getting accredited. Sofian said he and his co-founders wanted to put an emphasis on the students driving the education and deciding what and how to learn.
"One of our students is super interested in STEM," he said. "One of her projects is learning how to build a rocket."
Every morning, students meet virtually for their morning standup, where they discuss the latest industry and technology trends and talk about their project goals. They meet with their counselors throughout the week and learning experts who teach them, but they don't attend classes since the school is project-based. Every Friday, students have a showcase with a short presentation where they share what they've accomplished with their project.
Sofian wants students to be more intentional with their learning so that they can find careers they'll enjoy and excel at. Each student meets with a counselor once a week to discuss potential careers they might be interested in.
"We don’t expect every student to know what they want to do (but) when they leave Sora, we want them to have the time to explore the things they wanted to do, go to this college or this field, the time to explore, intentionally," he said.
In the future, Sofian hopes to grow enrollment at Sora Schools, partner with local businesses and provide internships so that students can start building portfolios of work.
"We do a lot of things differently than other schools," he said.
