New Tech Academies
BENGAL TECH ACADEMY (BTA) & WARRIOR TECH ACADEMY (WTA)
Bengal Tech Academy (BTA) and Warrior Tech Academy (WTA) offer traditional courses in a project based or problem based learning environment where learning is student-driven, engaging, and meets the needs of a wide variety of academic abilities. Students work in collaborative teams to solve timely and complex problems that often encourage their success as responsible, globally-conscious citizens. All students are taught, evaluated, and assessed on five learning outcomes in every project in every class.
- Agency (10%): The ability to grow one’s own intelligence and skill through effort, practice, and challenge and the ability to learn how to learn and monitor progress to be successful on tasks, school, and life.
- Collaboration (10%): The ability to be a productive member of diverse teams through strong interpersonal communication, a commitment to shared success, leadership, and initiative.
- Knowledge & Thinking (50%): The ability to reason, problem solve, develop sound arguments or decisions, and create new ideas by using appropriate sources and applying the knowledge and skills of a discipline.
- Oral Communication (15%): The ability to communicate knowledge and thinking through effective oral presentations.
- Written Communication (15%): The ability to effectively communicate knowledge and thinking through writing by organizing and structuring ideas and using discipline appropriate language and convention.
BTA and WTA are part of a national educational network called New Tech. In New Tech classes, learning is contextual, creative, and collaborative because project based learning (PBL) is at the center of the instructional approach. Students collaborate on meaningful projects that require critical thinking, creativity, and communication in order to answer challenging questions or to solve complex problems rooted in the subject areas.
In addition, students are immersed in an environment of TRR (trust, respect, and responsibility) as part of a commitment to a school-wide culture of empowerment.
BTA and WTA are 1:1 schools, and each student uses a Macbook to complete course work. Some classes are integrated while others are single subject. ALL BTA AND WTA GENERAL COURSE DESCRIPTIONS ARE THE SAME AS TRADITIONAL CLASSES. The primary difference is in the delivery of the curriculum (project based/problem based learning) and in the assessed learning outcomes (agency, collaboration, knowledge and thinking, oral communication, and written communication).
Students in BTA and WTA are able to enroll in both Piedmont Governor’s School and ACE as juniors and seniors while remaining in the tech academy program. AP/DE courses are available at the junior and senior level.
|
Class |
Grade Level: 9 |
Grade Level: 10 |
Grade Level: 11 |
Grade Level: 12 |
Integrated* |
Single Subject |
PBL+ |
PrBL++ |
|
English 9 and World History I |
X |
X |
X |
|||||
|
Biology and Health/PE 9 |
X |
X |
X |
|||||
|
English 10 and Ecology |
X |
X |
X |
|||||
|
World History II |
X |
X |
X |
|||||
|
English 11 and US/VA History or AP/ DE English 11 and US/VA History |
X |
X |
X |
|||||
|
English 12 and US Government or AP/ DE English 12 and US Government |
X |
X |
X |
|||||
|
Algebra I |
X |
X |
X |
|||||
|
Geometry |
X |
X |
X |
X |
||||
|
Algebra II |
X |
X |
X |
X |
X |
*Integrated – Integrated courses combine two subject areas into a one year long class. One curriculum is taught in conjunction with the other.
+ PBL: Project Based Learning ++ PrBL: Problem Based Learning