The Top 10 Ways We’re Innovative
10. Limiting behaviors are reduced using the all-staff, all-student “PRIDE” initiative, focusing on peer-to-peer role modeling.
9. The school is a community-funded, donor-supported school, where donors fund only innovative programs.
8. Students receive paid internships and job shadowing through close alignment with industry and a full-time Director of Partnership Development.
7. Entrepreneurship education begins with a dedicated class then spans across the entire curriculum, so students leave thinking analytically, creatively, and boldly.
6. Successful professionals are entrenched in student life. Students begin to think of themselves as professionals, and speak and collaborate accordingly.
5. One-to-one mentors from Chicago’s most innovative companies set high expectations, so even though students graduate ready for jobs, they’re motivated for college and careers.
4. At ChiTech Labs, students pilot and contribute to skill-building industry projects that impact participating companies’ bottom lines.
3. Each student takes not just one tech class in four years, but two classes each year; every student is totally immersed in developing technology aptitude.
2. Teachers are considered entrepreneurs and leaders of their own classrooms, and they’re compensated for creativity.
1. The school is a disruptive technology, changing the relationship between a school and low-income communities and challenging traditional notions of who leads and innovates. The ultimate disruption will be when students from each graduating class start businesses that change our economy and society.
