A Nova is a group of 3 to 6 students that work together as a team to complete the individual goals for each students IEP. We design goals at the individual level AND at the Nova level. Hence, students are not just preoccupied with their own learning, but are also concerned with their teammate’s advancement.

Every Nova has a coach (AKA teacher) called a Ignitor.  The Ignitor's role is to identify and eliminate learning barriers the Nova faces, and to foster teamwork and collaboration amongst the group. The Nova meets regularly with their Ignitor to perform a meaningful communication around key questions: What have I accomplished?  What is to be accomplished?  What obstacles are impeding my progress?

Nova’s are independent and autonomous i.e. they decide how to plan the work, how to organize themselves, and how to track progress. For communication channels, some Nova’s use Slack, others WhatsApp/Zalo and others simply use email or other online tools. With regard to organization, sometimes teams decide to divide the work in pieces and each student (or pair of students) leads a piece. Other times, they all decide to do all the work and compare results. It really depends on the Nova, the task at hand and the goals. We’ve found that having independent and autonomous Nova’s working towards an end-goal (tied to a learning milestone) is a great way to put students in control of their own learning process. At the same time, it’s proven to be, by far, the best way to teach collaboration and communication skills.

One final catch about the Nova’s: at the end of each milestone, new Nova’s are formed. We do this to build adaptability skills. With this, students learn to be comfortable with building new working relationships every 2 or 3 weeks. It’s also a great way of keeping the team spirit at a group level — not just at the Nova level.

Our middle school curriculum is based on US standards and the identical to the curriculum being employed by the large IB schools and private schools in the United States.  Further, we are able to offer students fully transferable transcripts that can be utilized anywhere in the world and accepted in the USA.  It is our proven methodology and our certified and tested approach to teaching that makes our environment wholly unique.