Schedule A Campus Tour
We would love to have you visit our campus for a tour so you can experience how special Sky Islands really is. Please leave your email below and we will coordinate a time and date for your tour.
We welcome your interest in Sky Islands for your education, however all charter schools are not alike. Please weigh your decision carefully—we do not offer credit-recovery programs, and our curriculum is not fast-paced or strictly individualized. Students who enroll at Sky Islands join an academic community and are expected to perform at high academic levels.
All students take academic core courses in math, science, social studies and language arts. Additional classes are offered in Spanish, the Farm-to-Kitchen program, drama and visual arts, and classical guitar through the UA. Our classes are aligned with Common Core and AZ State standards, and feature arts, environmental, and community-based projects.
Classes are scheduled in blocks of 1.5 hours each twice a week–repeating Monday/Thursday and Tuesday/Friday, 3 classes per day, totaling 6 classes per week. Wednesday is the exception–with early release at 12:30.
There is also a short block after lunch and before the final period each day except Wednesdays known as Seminar. Seminar courses vary widely, but typically offer a small peer group the opportunity to investigate areas of interest. Seminar options are primarily student-driven, and may be changed each quarter. Seminars aimed at juniors and seniors also include a college and career exploration and planning component.
Sky Islands delivers core curriculum in a vastly different way. Our classes are interdisciplinary, integrated across subjects, and focus heavily on critical thinking, discussion and participation, creativity, and collaboration. Many of our classes also feature experiential learning components, such as field trips or projects. We know that there is no one single type of learner, so we make sure to feature a variety of learning and teaching styles in our courses.
We also believe that the dry, standard method of teaching subjects within a vacuum obscures the fact that everything is connected, and that the only way to become an informed local and global citizen is to make the connections between patterns across subjects, as well as how they are linked to our local community and the larger world.
Sky Islands knows that there are many different ways to express intelligence, and that developing the right brain is just as important as developing the left. We believe that developing skills in creative expression and creative thinking is just as important as developing skills in literacy, science, or math. For that reason, we feature a full arts program that spans a variety of different mediums, including 2D/ visual arts, graphic arts, performing arts, ceramics, culinary arts, and classical guitar through the UofA’s Lead Guitar program.
At Sky Islands, we aim to develop the whole person, and know that a good curriculum teaches more than just how to pass a test or find ‘the right answer’.
Ecology and the environmental sciences are a key aspect of learning at Sky Islands. Perhaps the greatest test of humanity in the 21st century will be whether we can create a sustainable world for ourselves and future generations. Tackling these massive local as well as global environmental challenges requires a strong understanding of the basic ecological and environmental scientific principles, as well as developing the ability to affect a positive change in the world around us. To that end, environmental studies are integrated across the entire curriculum, and there are special classes devoted entirely to getting out and learning how to make a difference for ourselves and our community by learning how to grow food and manage water in a sustainable way, and revitalize the ecological systems that exist within our community.
We would love to have you visit our campus for a tour so you can experience how special Sky Islands really is. Please leave your email below and we will coordinate a time and date for your tour.