At Rainier Scholars, we’re building scholarly habits meant to last a lifetime. That means looking beyond test scores and focusing on what it takes to be a good student, colleague, and community member.

We call these active learning skills, known in the education world as executive functioning skills: the practical, teachable tools that let a student manage their own learning. Rainier Scholars teaches seven of them explicitly throughout the Academic Enrichment Phase: time management, organization, risk-taking, accountability, self-advocacy, collaborative learning, and effort.

While most schools assume students will adopt these habits along the way, Rainier Scholars builds active learning skills directly into our Academic Enrichment Phase. The skills are reinforced by the structure of every class, through every assignment, and in every conversation with families. Scholars always know what’s expected of them.

Talk to any Rainier Scholars alum and they will likely speak to the importance of active learning skills. They carry these skills forward into middle and high school, college, career, and beyond. In follow-up conversations, scholars consistently cite these lessons in impacting future skills like managing their time and taking ownership of their work as a key factor in their success. These skills are showing up today in how scholars advocate for themselves in college, in the workplace, and in everyday life.

Our goal is to empower scholars who know how to learn, adapt, and keep going, whatever the classroom of the future looks like.

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