Students explore driving questions, challenges, problems, and scenarios; engage in sustained inquiry; and learn through their own agency and investigation.

Teachers design experiences in which students discover by doing, rather than being told. Teachers organize learning through driving questions, plan for the kinds of questions to ask students to drive learning, and serve as a neutral facilitator when students answer questions (use questions to drive class thinking and discussion, rather than answer student questions or acknowledge questions as right or wrong). Teachers utilize the city as a classroom. Teachers seek to apprentice students to their fields: Students cannot simply learn about a discipline, they must learn the structure of how that discipline organizes its knowledge, and be apprenticed cognitively and literally into the discipline itself. “Through the process of observation, modeling, and emulation, one is gradually apprenticed into understanding and skills in the domain...moving from a peripheral participant to a more central one.” (p. 5, “The Why, What, Where and How of Deeper Learning in American Secondary Schools”)

Questions not answers guide the collective learning of the class. Students engage together in the authentic complexities of the field of study.

Site leaders design experiential learning opportunities for staff, to model best practices and engage staff in learning by doing. Professional learning is inquiry-based, launched through authentic driving questions and committed to ongoing experimentation within and examination of classroom practice. Site leaders support educators to design, logistically organize, and implement inquiry-based and experiential experiences and learning arcs for students.

Central leaders design experiential learning opportunities for site staff, to model best practices and engage site staff in learning by doing. Professional learning is inquiry-based, launched through authentic driving questions and committed to ongoing experimentation within and examination of site practice. Central leaders support site educators to design, logistically organize, and implement inquiry-based and experiential experiences and learning arcs for students - by highlighting successful models, supporting with strategic resources and tools, and enabling the structures and conditions necessary for sites to succeed.