Ehab Jaleel, Amana Academy's Executive Director, writes:

Mr. Kevin Durkin, Amana's Director of Student Services, and I had the privilege of attending the Expeditionary Learning National Conference in Kansas City last Wednesday through Saturday. Along with 800 other participants from over 150 EL schools from as far as Taiwan, we visited local EL schools and participated in Master Courses on a range of school leadership and instructional best practices. We came away inspired by the student work we saw and the power of the Expeditionary Learning model. Howard Gardner, Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and author of the famous work Multiple Intelligences, stated "American policy makers and educators have defined excellence in a narrow manner, i.e. test scores. What is missing in the discourse is the role of student engagement in the learning process and ethics and character. Expeditionary Learning is a shaft of light in an otherwise dark cave." Kevin and I will be sharing what we learned with Amana's entire staff in the coming days.