I had the opportunity to visit Fusion Academy’s New York City campus recently. It was an excellent experience seeing their personalized learning approach in action. Fusion provides a self-paced, flexible timeline for students to engage in their school responsibilities. This model can support those that have large amounts of time engaged in passions outside of school curriculum. It also supports students who’s mental, physical or emotional health are not best served by a traditional school model. Instructors work with students one-on-one to guide the learning process based on what the students need.
To ensure students are working in complete isolation, there are common areas for students to work within and connect with other students at Fusion. They also have Friday experiences that engage groups of students through activities that are focused on experiences around New York City or social development between peers. While not a large facility they were very purpose built. There was a great audio recording studio, small spaces for teachers and students to work, larger spaces for students to work, relax, and connect.
I truly enjoyed my time visiting this school. I was guided by the Director of Outreach from the school who was equally as interested in geeking out about the potential of how we shift our approach to education. He was able to recognize that as a small private school offering the high cost of one-on-one mentoring, Fusion was not a model that would be possible as a big picture solution for education reform. It makes me consider the importance of understanding the context of the students we are approaching with learning. These students at Fusion have a specific need for this approach to learning and thrive in this model, but as history shows, our biggest misstep could be making the assumption that every child needs the same learning experience.
Fusion Academy only has a few branches open at this time. It will be interesting to see how they grow their approach and if they continue with the same model or if they will continue to evolve or develop different approaches.
