With the assistance of personal coaches, the grade leaders facilitate learners to participate in school-level activities and organize grade activities to enhance the unity of the grade.
The grade group also undertakes the task of information exchange. We will ensure that the relevant policies in the school can be transmitted to every learner at the grade meeting effectively. At the end of each semester, parents' meetings will also be organized, in order to communicate with parents about important matters happening in the grade.
Based on the collective development needs of learners, each grade group will also carry out different types of discussions or lectures at the grade meeting:
Grade 9: school rules, study habits, campus safety knowledge, games, etc.
Grade 10: Community topic discussion, professional interest exploration, defense support, games, etc.
Grade 11: stress and emotion management, social service, games, mental health, etc.
Grade 12: stress and emotion management, college academic preparation, college life preparation, etc.
In the past four years, more than half of the Moonshot family have carried out very substantial co-building work in teaching activities, admissions, social impact, operation, and logistics support, and family-school relations. Parents also spontaneously established the "Stars Club", a family-school co-building organization guided by clear regulations, aiming to gather parents to jointly build a family-school community with love, openness, inclusiveness, and trust. It is believed that the new family will soon play important roles in the "Stars Club".
Through in-depth participation in various major activities and parent courses, all parents, co-building and learning together with the Academy, have effectively promoted the relationship with their children and the activity of the Moonshot community. One of the most popular parent courses is the "adolescent class". In the past three years, many families in Moonshot have bravely explored new modes of parent-child communication, diligently expanded the psychological distance with their children, and created many lovely family stories of improving parent-child relations. In addition, a variety of family classes, such as "college counseling family story meeting", "philosophical journey", "family self-awareness class" and "Moonshot family history program", help parents narrow the ideological distance with their children, deeply sort out their life stories and the relationship with their children, parents and the world, so as to complete in-depth self-identity.
During the mid-term of each semester, the school will arrange a formal meeting between parents and teachers. Parents and teachers can discuss learners' academic progress and physical and mental state. We encourage parents to invite learners to participate in communication which will discuss learning experiences and agree on action plans. At the end of the semester, the parents' meeting is mainly in the form of grade meeting. We strongly recommend that parents and learners maintain sincere interaction and communication during the semester to understand learners' learning interests and physical and mental state, which is very important for individual growth in adolescence.
If parents have any concerns or questions besides the meeting time arranged by the school, please contact the learner's personal coach. If the discussion with the personal coach cannot solve the problem, we suggest that parents seek help from the learner's grade leader.
Moonshot Academy is committed to competency based education with competency development at its core and aims to support our graduates to succeed in college, future careers, and life. As such, all Moonshot Academy graduates are required to have a complete learner graduation portfolio, which consists of a series of pieces of work produced by the learner during their learning experience at Moonshot. This portfolio includes textual analysis, argumentative writing, exploration report, creative expression, and summaries of the learners' exploration of their learning and development at each stage of their academic courses and projects based on performance-based assessment.
Each spring semester, Moonshot Academy conducts a competency defense for all learners. It is a very important academic activity for both Moonshot and all learners in each academic year.
It encourages learners to accumulate their works in their portfolios at each grade level, provide a vivid representation of each learner's learning outcomes, and systematically demonstrate how much they have achieved at each grade level. At the same time, the specific format of the defense can effectively deepen learners' reflection on their learning outcomes and self-growth, and significantly help learners win others' trust through a presentation.
A quality defense also provides an opportunity for all teachers to share a common understanding of the expectations and requirements of expressive assessment and to calibrate the rubrics for evaluating learners among themselves.