The Fusion Story

The idea of Fusion Academy was born in 2013 after watching Sir Kenneth Robinson’s examination of the education system and the purpose of school in his TED Talk “Changing Education Paradigms,”, Malcolm Gladwell’s TED Talk “Choice, happiness and spaghetti sauce” in which he discusses that there is not only one perfect way to do something, only perfect ways. At the same time, reading Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us, revealed autonomy, mastery and purpose as being essential elements for motivation. The magic was in connecting ideas from the two sources. Until that point there was only one available way to do “school.” The creation of the academy was recognition that traditional school structure was too limiting for many students, especially those who had found the most success in school. In the Fusion Academy, students have more choice in how they learn, and have the autonomy to show how they learned it.

The Fusion Academy was known as the “Arete Academy” for its first eight years of existence. Arete is a Greek word that expresses “striving for excellence.” The name change came as a result of our students identifying that the key uniting element in their learning was connection. Especially, connecting with each other as students and people, with their teachers and with the community. They also recognized the value of the connections they made between ideas in each of our classes as well as the other classes they take.

The Fusion Academy combines the curriculums of English, mathematics, social studies and science along with skills required for success in the world today such as leadership, communication, creativity, critical thinking and problem solving to answer an important question or to solve a real world problem.

While our name has changed, we still believe in striving for excellence while connecting people and ideas.