The RASA approach starts with a strong culturally sustaining, community responsive foundation that respects ALL learners. Our aim is to develop a lifelong love of learning for the whole child through creative/critical thinking and project based learning, facilitating the discovery of our students’ talents. At RASA, we assume the brilliance of every student. As such, we create learning environments we wish we had as students.
The RASA model puts emphasis on the Arts, not just as extra or enrichment but as essential to the learning, weaving together content across subjects to promote higher order thinking. Historically, students in Far Northeast Denver have been excluded from accessing a rigorous and robust arts education. Most of us would agree that the arts have an uncanny ability to express emotions in ways nothing else can. Just as math, reading, and writing teach us logic and reasoning, the arts teach emotion. Since feelings/emotions connect the mind to the body, when an education of emotion is valued in the same way as reasoning or logic, we as a society can become more holistically human than ever before.
Our mission is to facilitate high-quality Arts Based Learning (ABL) in support of whole child development from a community responsive, culturally sustainable lens that promotes concrete pathways for students to learn through the arts. Our students will grow towards self-actualization to develop a lifelong love of learning.
This school will create learning environments our school leaders wish they had as students. We serve those who have an immense wealth of talent but have been historically excluded from truly transformative educational practices, especially in the arts, by providing the necessary education needed by our future professionals, artists, and innovators. In that pursuit, this school will be a place to get one’s soul filled; a place where identities and passions are our guides.