Admission

Below you will find more supplemental information for Pre-School and Elementary-High School Parents. Please take the time to read through as much as possible. In many ways, being a family at WIDE requires a re-education and paradigm shift of everything we know education to be. 

We do appreciate this is a hefty amount of information to process. Being a parent at WIDE will continually require your commitment to spending the necessary amount of time and energy to create a supporting and enriching community.

We require parents to attend in-person meetings, read through several weekly communications, and maintain open and healthy communication with the teaching team and the community at WIDE. 

Lastly, we value transparency and we want families to know upfront that our educators do not have specialized training for children with learning differences and being a small school, we do not offer specialized support/therapies. Due to the nature of project based learning, our classrooms are often louder, have more distractions, and children often work in small groups without following specific directions to create a product but rather they spend considerable time collaborating and finding solutions. Students at WIDE need to be able to work independently in groups, have overall well developed communication skills and general motivation to partake in group work. If your child needs more one-on-one instruction and/or does better in quiet, well structured classrooms, we have seen that our model can be overwhelming for those students. Our goal is to help parents navigate the decision if WIDE is the model of education you want for your child and if this model will be a good fit for your family.

Ready to take the next step? 

Please take your time in reading through all the information provided above. We cannot stress this importance enough. After doing so, please email Celia, our Office Manager, regarding: enrollment and availability at: [email protected]

Next, please email me with the Parent Engagement Group, at [email protected] with your child’s age/grade level to find out when the next group tour will be offered.

For parents of Elementary through High School, we ask that you read through the links below to better understand our school and answer commonly asked questions such as: do we use any standardized testing, how do we track mastery, do students still learn Texas state standards, do students receive a transcript, etc: 

• WIDE utilizes a digital platform called “Altitude Learning” to promote learner centered experiences while tracking mastery and competency based goals. Please visit:  https://www.altitudelearning.com
• Our students do participate in taking the MAP test in the Fall and Spring. This test is purely used as one of many assessments and for the children to have exposure to standardized testing. Please read more about the MAP test at: https://www.nwea.org/the-map-suite/
• Our school has partnered with Big Picture Learning to extend our student’s Middle and High School experience. Please read more at: https://www.bigpicture.org/whoweare
• WIDE graduates will have a hybrid transcript which includes the Mastery Transcript. Please read more at: https://mastery.org/  

Warmly,

Cheryl

SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION:

Pre-School Parents – in addition to the required information, the below links will further help you understand how the learning happens in our school:

• http://www.thewideschool.com/project-based-learning 
• http://www.thewideschool.com/the-arts
• http://www.thewideschool.com/the-theory-of-loose-parts
• http://www.thewideschool.com/wide-preschool-infants-through-age-5