Amana Academy's Physical Education (PE) program places a strong emphasis on personal fitness, nutrition and character development, and reinforces the EL Education school culture of respect, responsibility, and achievement. Physical education teachers explicitly plan opportunities for students to challenge their perseverance, personal fitness, and collaboration skills.
A clear expression of EL Education's roots in Outward Bound, the spirit and experience of adventure permeates Amana Academy. It helps to create the student engagement and focus on character that distinguishes the EL Education experience. Adventure can be any physical, artistic, or intellectual experience that involves risk, challenge, and discovery. We promote the kind of adventures that create opportunities for leadership and collaboration as groups of students and teachers face challenges together.
Every student (K-8) takes part in Adventure PE as a Specials class. A large part of Adventure PE is going outside, and engaging with the natural world.
Amana Academy leaders and teachers recognize that we must prepare students for global citizenship in an increasingly complicated and interconnected world. Such preparation is cross-disciplinary and includes developing knowledge of diverse cultures, languages, and political systems, as well as knowledge of the physical terrains, ecosystems, and natural forces of the planet.
Fully integrating global skills and knowledge into the curriculum is tied closely to environmental stewardship and social justice as students are challenged to grapple with the most complex problems facing the world such as climate change, structures of economic inequities, and international terrorism and conflict. They are asked to probe how the peoples of the world are connected and what young people can do to make a difference.
One of the unique core practices of Expeditionary Learning is a focus on global awareness and world language learning. At Amana Academy, this is evidenced in our Arabic world language program, which is taught in all grades. A firm command of Arabic will enhance cognitive skills; broaden students’ perspectives and cultural understanding. Arabic is one of the United Nations’ six official languages and is spoken by 400 million people around the world. Like Chinese and Russian, Arabic is considered by educators and policymakers to be a language of economic and cultural significance. Fluency in Arabic will give Amana students an important edge in getting into top colleges, and in the job market of the 21st century, as a firm command of Arabic will enhance cognitive skills, and broaden students’ perspectives and cultural understanding.
Per the Georgia Department of Education Foreign Language Program’s recommendation, the model chosen by Amana Academy is the Georgia Elementary School Foreign Languages (ESFL) Model Program. The ESFL Program was developed in 1992 after years of research on the best format for teaching children a second language, in accordance with the National Standards for Language Learning in the 21st Century, which incorporates the Performance Guidelines for K-12 Learners of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language (ACTFL).
Among Fulton County schools, Amana Academy is unique in offering world language instruction at the elementary level, and the only one of its kind among Georgia schools offering Arabic at the elementary and middle school levels.