Creative City Public Charter School

About

A progressive, charter elementary school in Northwest Baltimore City with small classes, hands-on learning, and arts education.

Story

Creative City Public Charter School Core Elements:

Place Based Education
Place Based Education uses the local community and environment as a vehicle for learning core skills and exploring questions that are relevant to Baltimore and to students’ lives. Place Based Education increases student motivation and performance, helps students develop stronger ties to their local environment, and allows the school to make positive change in the community. Place based education is experience-based, and in Kindergarten, Play-Based.

Arts Integration
Creative City will weave the arts throughout its curriculum. Students will observe art to stimulate discussion on pertinent themes and make art to explore problems and reflect on lessons learned. Students will use artistic and traditional written responses interchangeably as tools for reflection and communication. Arts Integration ensures a collaborative and dynamic community, helps students develop a deep understanding of complex concepts and embraces a variety of different learning styles. Art also provides a positive way to engage with the surrounding community

Diverse and Cooperative Community
Creative City will give young people the opportunity to be active thinkers and leaders through decision-making about their school culture and classroom. We will encourage structures for parents, teachers, and community members to have a role in creating and supporting the school’s climate and curriculum. We will embrace and celebrate diversity in the backgrounds of families and staff and build school unity through innovative orientation, training and ongoing discussion forums. Our Board of Directors will include teachers, parents, and community member representatives. A student advisory team will regularly provide the board with feedback and input. This will foster a cooperative rather than competitive community, where education is not only a process of gaining knowledge, but a place to practice democracy.

Mission

Creative City Public Charter School uses Baltimore City’s natural
and built environments and communities as a learning foundation. Our elementary school, where teachers, students and parents share
governance and cooperate on curriculum and community decisions, builds on the inquisitive nature of children to drive the project-based
arts-integrated curriculum, developing self-directed critical thinkers.