What if there was a middle school where students were asked to care about how their mind works? Where students were asked to wonder out loud. Imagine a place where kids are excited to learn. What if this place allowed students to struggle and helped them view perseverance through struggle as an opportunity for growth?
IVA has attracted individuals who desire to grow in their own intellectual character. Whether that be the students and parents of IVA or our Board of Directors, Faculty, Staff, and Support Staff. Learn more about the individuals who bring their whole selves to IVA's innovative educational model.
From Ron Ritchhart, Senior Research Associate, Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education, and author of Intellectual Character: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Get It, Making Thinking Visible (with Mark Church and Karin Morrison, 2011), and Creating Cultures of Thinking (2015):
“As an educational researcher, I have to say that I am very impressed with what the school, its teachers, and leadership have been able to accomplish in just two short years. There is a deep level of commitment among all stakeholders to combine high standards, intellectual rigor, disciplinary understanding, and development of students’ dispositions of thinking. Such a commitment is rare in education today. Often schools settle for just one of these lofty goals while perhaps giving lip service to the others. Not IVA. At IVA, the teachers view these goals as not competing but complementary. They view their students as learners capable of deep thinking and understanding and eagerly apply the tools I have provided to support their students in a comprehensive fashion. This means that each student is known by all of his or her teachers, classes operate as a community of learners supporting each other, and teachers provide the level of intellectual challenge and support needed by each child.”
“In my work with schools around the world, I visit hundreds of schools each year. Most of these schools desire but struggle to create a true culture of thinking for their students. Too often there is not a strong understanding and commitment to this goal or teachers and leaders at the school lack a vision of how a school might be other than what they have known. I would love for these teachers and leaders to visit IVA to see how school might be construed differently. Such a visit would allow them to see how a public school can both prepare students academically, engage them intellectually, and foster the development of habits of mind for a lifetime.”
From Philip Dow, Superintendent of Rossyln Academy, Nairobi, Kenya, and author of Virtuous Minds (2013):
“As I have spoken on intellectual virtue education around the world (most recently in Germany, Portugal, the US and Kenya – with a conference in Thailand next month), I am consistently asked for examples of where intellectual virtue education is being done well. Despite the fact that it has only been in existence for a few years, at the very top of my list is IVA in Long Beach. There are many schools that are beginning to integrate the ideas and practices of intellectual virtue education, but no school (including my own) has done so with the thoroughness, thoughtfulness, and effectiveness of IVA … [I]n my opinion, there is no school that is better poised to be the model for schools in the US and around the world who are beginning to implement an intellectual virtue approach in their classrooms.”
From Karen Bohlin, Head of School at the Montrose School in Medford, MA, senior scholar at Boston University’s Center for Character and Social Responsibility, and author or editor of several books on character education:
“The teachers, the academic program, the opportunities for reflection, the evaluation rubrics at IVA all conspire to keep students in the driver’s seat of their own learning. It helps, too, that the intellectual virtues are visible, attractively worked into the motif of every classroom. You get the distinct impression that everyone in the school community, from Principal Jacquie Bryant and her teachers, to every student, knows that he or she is part of something larger than themselves—and this ‘something’ is quite exciting.”
From Richard Lerner, Bergstrom Chair in Applied Developmental Science, Director of the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development at Tufts University, and winner of three lifetime achievement awards from the American Psychological Association:
“Both my own research, and developmental science more generally, have discovered that the healthy and positive development of America’s youth depends fundamentally on their possessing the life skills to succeed not only in regard to academic tasks but, more importantly, in the endeavors required to have a life marked by personal and social well-being and by commitment and positive contributions to civil society and democracy. As summarized in several books I have authored or edited, researchers and educators have learned as well that such academic, personal, family, and community successes rest on a foundation of character virtues. Of course, the translation of this knowledge into educational programs providing this foundation is a significant challenge. However, the IVA continues to be an exemplar for our nation of how to productively meet this challenge!”
Our mission is "to foster meaningful growth in intellectual character virtues in a thoughtful, challenging, and supportive academic environment." We gauge our success at this mission by many indicators, one of which is feedback we receive from students and parents.
See here for a sampling of student feedback collected in an annual school-wide (anonymous) survey.
See here for a sampling of parent feedback.
See here for feedback from other educators and education researchers.
For additional indicators of IVA's success, see here for comparative survey data and here for test scores on the Smarter Balanced assessment.
IVA is a free, non-sectarian, independent public charter middle school in Long Beach, Calif., and the first to offer an education based on an "intellectual virtues" model. The school opened its doors in the fall of 2013 to a founding class of 6th graders. IVA added a class of students each year and is currently at its full capacity of 234 students with 78 students in each grade level 6th through 8th.
IVA has been opened since 2013 having served over 600 families in Long Beach and promoting five classes 8th graders into high school and beyond. IVA is a small middle school with a particular educational philosophy chartered by Long Beach Unified School District and proud to serve the students of Long Beach.
The goal of an intellectual virtues educational model is to foster meaningful growth in the personal qualities or character attributes of a good thinker or learner: curiosity, wonder, attentiveness, open-mindedness, creativity, intellectual tenacity, and related traits. Intellectual virtues are sometimes referred to as “habits of mind,” “thinking dispositions,” or “non-cognitive skills,” and include grit and persistence.
Teaching for intellectual virtues is not an alternative to teaching rigorous academic content. Rather, rigorous content provides an opportunity for teachers to foster intellectual character growth. IVA's curriculum is closely aligned with the recently adopted Common Core State Standards. Our teachers approach the curriculum thoughtfully and reflectively so that students may develop a deep understanding of the material and practice good thinking, while mastering the standards.
IVA’s focus on intellectual character transforms the typical teacher-student interaction, student-student interaction, and even teacher-teacher interaction. Our model encourages active learning through agency and inquiry in discussion, argument, deep conceptual understanding, and metacognition -- the ability to decide when and how to use a particular problem-solving strategy. Our intellectual virtues model also determines our instructional practices and how we consider homework, make-up work, and grading policies.
IVA is closely connected to cutting-edge educational research on intellectual character education. Co-founder Dr. Jason Baehr is director of the Intellectual Virtues and Education Project at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles. IVA's curriculum and teaching model make significant use of Harvard's Project Zero research, especially the work of Ron Ritchhart and his colleagues. Since its opening, IVA has received much attention both nationally and internationally as a school implementing an intellectual character program with fidelity and buy in, see below for some of our current research partners. 
IVA was founded by a group of parents, educators, and community members who love Long Beach and are passionate about public education. Founders and board members include public school teachers, a charter school administrator and social worker, four university professors, a scientist, a university administrator, a marketing and advertising expert, a graphic designer, a human resources expert, a corporate VP, a finance and real estate expert, and an attorney. IVA's Founding Class of 2016 Alumni includes 56 Long Beach families who are passionate for education and dedicated to their children's intellectual character formation. The opening of IVA was made possible in part by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
You can view current demographic information from California School Dashboard here.
You can view the public hearing of IVA’s charter petition to the Long Beach Unified School District here.
