A new way of teaching
American Canyon High School will open its doors in August, and everything about the state-of-the-art school will be brand new, including its educational method. In some of its classrooms, the district’s latest high school will use project-based learning, an instructional model also used at American Canyon Middle School and New Technology High School in Napa. Known among educational officials as “Student-centered Learning for the 21st Century,” or SC21, the system emphasizes multi-disciplinary problem solving — combining sociology and English, for example, by addressing a social question in an essay — along with the use of cutting-edge technology. The goal is to provide the student with skills needed in today’s workplace: communication, collaboration, self-motivation and critical thinking, along with knowledge of computers and their applications.