School Management Plus, a leading platform in the United Kingdom for commentary, news, and features about independent, international and UK state education, has published a profile on New Summit Academy Costa Rica this month in their Spotlight on a School feature!

New Summit Academy partnered with the American Health and Safety Institute (ASHI) in facilitating this professional-level certification for students and staff as an opportunity to truly challenge themselves in an experiential, hands-on curriculum, as well as to help with our risk management during weeklong national park adventure trips in Costa Rica and international culture travel.

Throughout the week-long course, our dedicated ASHI instructors taught students and staff how to recognize and respond to a variety of situations that include:
​

• Risk management and assessment
• Patient assessment techniques
• Injury management
• Common wilderness medical problems

Whenever students engaged with classroom material, everyone jumped into action. Half of the students and staff scattered across campus simulating medical emergencies, while the other half served as first-aid responders, all guided by our ASHI instructors.

​Our Spanish Language program serves to enrich our students’ experiences in Costa Rica, combining classroom study and academic rigor with hands-on application of learning, fostering both language proficiency and cultural understanding.

​New Summit Academy's approach to Spanish language education is rooted in practical application rather than rote memorization.  Students carry their classroom study of Spanish into the real world as they explore local markets, engage in community service projects, cook traditional meals, and share daily experiences with their homestay families.

One incredible aspect of New Summit Academy is its location in and connection with Costa Rica, its natural beauty, and its cultural diversity as a living classroom. Students practice their Spanish hiking in the rainforest, practicing salsa in dance lessons, surfing on beach excursions, ordering at local restaurants, and even living on campus where the majority of our staff are bilingual. These experiences reinforce vocabulary and grammar development, but also deepen students' connection to Costa Rican culture and its rich biodiversity.

New Summit Academy's experiential Spanish language program exemplifies the ​Supportive Immersion approach to growth and learning, where students are provided the scaffolding needed to step outside of their comfort zones and develop skills, competencies, and insights in the real world.

New Summit Academy’s dedicated teachers work closely with students and advising teams to develop a sense of curiosity alongside academic skills for success in order to instill in our students a passion for lifelong learning.  Teachers don’t simply teach these skills, however, but also act as mentors and models in their own lifelong learning pursuits.

Peter Gottovi, NSA’s Social Studies teacher and coordinator of our Music Studio and Music classes continuously strives to bring his classes to life by incorporating technologies and perspectives necessary to succeed as civic-minded citizens in our ever-evolving world.  Recently, Peter has attended the GEMS Conference, focusing on gender equality, as well as participated in a number of humanities workshops offered by PBS, iCivics, The Representation Project, The Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab, Facing History & Ourselves, Climate Interactive and the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative, and Ad Fontes Media Literacy.

While teaching Spanish and helping to coordinate NSA’s Cultural Immersion program, Vianney Medina - who already holds a bachelor’s degree in Teaching Spanish as a Second Language - has now earned her associate’s degree in English, and is working toward a second bachelor’s degree in English, which proves very beneficial to Vianney in order to communicate and connect better with her students.

Yannick Pilgrim, New Summit Academy’s English Literature and Composition teacher, recently participated in a four-month professional development workshop called The Teacher as a Mentor, where teachers were encouraged to embrace their role as mentors for their students. This year, Yannick also completed a Neuroeducation Certification, guiding teachers to combine their knowledge of neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, and the principles of education to create more impactful lessons.  Yannick is currently earning a certificate in Agile Project Management by Google.

At New Summit Academy, we emphasize student agency by integrating personal choice and self-discovery into every aspect of student life. One clear example of this agency is in our students’ daily schedules.

Whether they aim to improve the ways they incorporate regular exercise into their lives, try out new activities, or explore more deeply the cultural richness of Costa Rica, students have a wide array of options and support for creating their weekly schedules.

Each week students can choose from fitness options like surfing, mountain biking, running, soccer, yoga, basketball, or personal training sessions in the gym and, by working alongside their advising team to evaluate what times work best for them - whether in the morning, after school, or in the evening - they can use trial and error to tailor their healthy lifestyle routine to reach the best version of themselves.

Our student-led clubs, cultural immersion experiences and weekend activities, led by our talented Experiential Education staff, further enrich student life at NSA, offering opportunities to dive into both physical and cultural pursuits.

From exploring Costa Rica’s breathtaking natural beauty to immersing in its vibrant culture, students engage in activities that foster personal growth and community involvement. This hands-on approach allows them to experiment, reflect, and ultimately take ownership of their choices, leading to a more fulfilling and self-directed educational journey.

One way we empower students to practice their own agency at New Summit Academy is through a dynamic advising process, and our quarterly PROPS Day features as a key moment for students to create actionable steps to develop strategies to reach their academic, healthy lifestyle and personal growth goals.

Meeting on the first day of each new academic term, PROPS Day is a dedicated time for students to sit down with their advising teams and plan for the weeks ahead.

Each student’s advising team - or PROPS Team - is composed of a therapist, a therapist assistant, an academic advisor and two experiential education mentors. Together, they use a “Green, Yellow, and Red” system to help students outline actionable steps toward their goals for the term.

​As the academic term progresses, PROPS team members will meet weekly with students to help students review and reflect on their progress, shift gears to new strategies when needed, and celebrate the incremental steps taken towards internalizing habits and skills.

The PROPS Team also helps each student manage their time productively at New Summit Academy by guiding them through an array of healthy lifestyle activities offered - from surfing after class to evening basketball, morning gym with a personal trainer to afternoon mountain biking - in order to build a balanced and appealing weekly schedule of constructive engagement.

​This approach extends to academic advising as well. Students are empowered to try new strategies for executive functioning, organization of school work, study plans and more in order to remain engaged in their classes and work toward their academic goals.

In all of these processes, students have agency in choosing what they want to try out and, through trial and error, students can live the things that they want to try so that they can figure out through the experience what works best for them.

​New Summit Academy’s process-based scaffolding approach not only allows the advising team to provide support and structure for each student’s strengths and needs, it also puts students in the driver’s seat to first co-create the strategies needed to reach their goals and gradually take over the navigation process themselves.

​The more actively involved the students are in the advising process, the more ownership they feel about their personal growth at New Summit Academy, equipping them for success both during their time in Costa Rica and beyond.

​New Summit Academy is excited to welcome Yannick Pilgrim as our new teacher of English Literature, Composition, and Creative Writing. Before landing at NSA, Yannick’s journey as a student-athlete took him from his homeland of Trinidad and Tobago to the US where he attended The Hotchkiss School in Connecticut prior to completing his undergraduate degree at Davidson College.

An impactful study abroad experience brought Yannick to Costa Rica in 2010. After graduating from Davidson College, he returned to Costa Rica to teach English and pursue his MA in Teaching English as a Foreign Language at the University of Costa Rica.

New Summit Academy graduates leave Costa Rica not only with the impressive RESUME one builds while studying abroad, but with a unique set of skills, a clearer understanding of their values, increased autonomy and self-governance, the capacity to see things from different viewpoints, flexibility and adaptability, and a renewed drive to pursue their path. We were fortunate to sit down recently with a few of our graduates and their parents who shared perspectives on student life, growth at NSA and the impact our school had on themselves and their families.

Each quarter, New Summit Academy teachers and students collaborate in developing rigorous, dynamic classes which challenge students to develop academic skills along with strengthening skills in executive functioning, time management, interpersonal relationships, and more.

​English Literature and Composition classes studied the art of Creative Nonfiction, vocabulary development, literary devices, interviewing skills, and increasingly-sophisticated writing techniques. 

​Students then conducted interviews with a family member about a universal human experience that occurred before students were born, and then applied their learning by crafting compelling creative nonfiction "Family Legends" about their subjects.

Beginning through Advanced Spanish students are learning more complex grammar this quarter and have been learning about the different provinces of Costa Rica in Spanish class.

​Students researched the geography, flora, fauna, culture, and traditions of each province, and presented to the community what they learned.

In Algebra II classes students learned about statistics and representations, dispersion measures, and how to use them to analyze different data sets. While in Precalculus, they studied the exponential and logarithmic functions, the relationship between them as inverse functions, and the properties and graphs of each, and concluded with the solution of exponential equations.

In Geometry, classes focused on 3 types of conics - parabolas, ellipses, and hyperbolas - learning the definitions, characteristics, formulas, and the elements that compose them. Algebra I students learned ways to write a quadratic equation, including the properties, domain, range, and vertex, along with factoring techniques to solve quadratic equations and find the roots of functions.

Photography classes took on advanced techniques of using the camera in manual mode and the relationship between f-stops, shutter speeds and ISO.

​With this knowledge, students were able to take images with intention, employing lens selection, depth of field control, creating or capturing motion, and understanding soft, hard, and reflective light.

NSA’s Documentary Filmmaking class studied the elements that compose a documentary, along with off axis, direct to camera, and “man on the street” interview techniques.

​Using this knowledge, each student created a personal journal that traced their life up to the point of entering NSA. Using direct to camera self interviews, interviews with parents, archival videos, and still pictures of their lives at home and of current events during their stay in NSA, the students examined their lives in a very personal and profound way.

World History students concluded their semester-long study of Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus, exploring Humanist ideologies and their role in conflicts like WWII and the Cold War. They examined how modern science views humans and all life as biochemical algorithms and how new technologies challenge limits on mortality, happiness, and abilities. Students then researched and wrote papers on the future implications of these advancements.

U.S. History and Government students studied history, current events and predictions for the future through a geopolitical lens, focusing on how geography influences interactions. The course was divided into three parts: The Past (ancient history to 1944); The Recent Past (the past 80 years); and Some Predictions (future opportunities and challenges). For their projects, students researched and presented arguments on why specific countries might join or leave U.S. alliances or competing systems.

Meanwhile, the other U.S. History and Government class explored U.S. foreign policy from 1800 to the present, focusing on smaller diplomatic and military engagements between major wars, from the Barbary Wars to the Boxer Uprising. Students began research projects on how geopolitical factors, technological advances, and political will contributed to the U.S. becoming a global superpower, with this work continuing next quarter.

In Humanities class, the quarter theme was “The Complexities of Gender.” The class studied the potential mental health, developmental, and self-image impacts of culture, mass media, and social media on teen and young adults caused by the inundation of concepts, images, and representation of gender, masculinity, and femininity. In their projects, students conducted, recorded, presented, and reflected on in-depth, focused interviews on these topics with members of our community.

In Music Studio Technology and Live Performance Combo, students either enhanced their traditional instruments, worked on software-based music production, or focused on lyric writing and recording projects.

By the end of the quarter, they presented their progress and demonstrated significant skill development.