All children love to learn. It’s in their nature. So why do some children struggle so much with their studies? The answer, sadly, is a simple one: adults place expectations on children without giving them the support they need to meet those expectations. Here at KAIS, we consider each child’s current level of ability and learning style, and work hard to provide the right kind of support to each child so that he or she can fall in love with learning again. At KAIS, our classes are small by design, helping us to best support the children in our care while making sure nobody flies under the radar, falls through the cracks, or gets left behind. Our educators are mentors, coaches, friends, and guides that help the students achieve their goals in ways that best suit their learning capabilities. 

Children love challenges and naturally strive to achieve the expectations set for them. They love to make progress and know that they are appreciated for it. This is why at KAIS we keep our students on their toes, lifting the bar higher and higher so they can achieve their greatest heights. Under no circumstances will we maintain low expectations for your child. Make no mistake: though we are a small school, we do not have small dreams for our students. Though we have alternative teaching methods, we do not have alternative goals. We want to empower our students with the competencies, skills, mindsets, earned self-confidence, and appetite for learning necessary to achieve their best in school and beyond. 

How many students come to associate the learning process with boredom, or have been rendered callous to new ideas through a litany of monotonous drills? Our approach at KAIS tries to alleviate this through tailoring creative and engaging lessons and projects that stimulate the interests of the students. Rather than simply read about science concepts and facts, students in our Science Lab, for example, come up with engaging and relevant questions, problems, or experiments, and work together to discover the answers using their own agency and research skills. In our lessons, we roll out a variety of gold-standard projects to scaffold learning, and target a variety of skills, including art, debate, critical opinion writing, poetry, music, presentation, and more. In all classes, not just our project-based ones, our educators help groups navigate difficult obstacles and achieve their goals. Using this approach, we ensure that students remain intrinsically motivated and enthusiastic about the tasks at hand. This makes education fun for all, teachers included!

A large part of our success is due to our ability to establish positive relationships with our students. Rather than overload our school with a complicated system of rules, we confront the vast spectrum of behaviors and situations with a Love and Logic® approach — a system which allows our students to learn from the results of their own decisions or mistakes. Rather than engage in a power struggle by reacting with anger and lengthy lecturing, we apply consequences with empathy and understanding in order to intelligently manage behavior. Through the Love and Logic® approach, we (1) build positive relationships with our students, (2) set enforceable limits through enforceable statements, (3) share control, (4) implement disciplinary interventions that stop undesirable behaviors in their infancy, and (5) delay consequences to get the students to reflect meaningfully on their decisions. Through these practical and effective techniques, stress levels are kept low for everyone and classroom management is easier and more enjoyable.