Meet Principal Kacey Gorman

My name is Kacey Goreman and I am the principal at Peak Charter Academy. I always like to say not only do we want scholars who can perform academically when they graduate 8th grade from us, we also want to have good people graduating from 8th grade. So, it's really that whole approach, and our workshop approach is also a huge pull for our parents and our families.

The workshop model that we utilize here at Peak is a mini lesson that is approximately 20 to 30 minutes to start each subject area or class period. And then after that time frame, the students break out into stations that they'll work their way through. During that workshop time, our teachers are pulling small groups. And those small groups are determined based off of recent data.

The biggest piece of it is just getting to know where they are. We don't want to just focus on meeting the grade level threshold and proficiency be the end goal. We want them to continue to grow. The workshop model allows our teachers to get to know them better, but also how to continue that growth for them and learning their learning styles.

A lot of our academics is also presenting an overall idea or a problem to them and seeing how they interact with a problem first, and then stepping in and using guidance to help them get to an answer. So they are a part of their own learning and start to also take ownership for that even at an early age.

Academically we are above a lot of our local schools and we want to continue that, and a lot of that is attributed to the individualized care that we provide our scholars.

Our Moral Focus curriculum focuses on character traits that we want our scholars to have. So there's a monthly trait and we are very intentional at Peak in building in a 20 minute time frame that's within their homeroom time to allow for that instruction to happen, and it happens on a daily basis.

It's really important in the world that we live in. They've got to learn how to utilize these traits and work together. I think all of our Moral Focus virtues essentially help them to do so. And all of those virtues are what we're hoping to send out into the world to be the next great generation.