 ECO Charter School’s academic program incorporates a standards-driven program with the research-based, proven-effective, Using the Environment as an Integrating Context for Improving Students Learning (EIC) Framework. ECO’s focus on New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards along with the use of EIC will facilitate developmentally-appropriate academic and social learning opportunities that promote students’ active participation by leading them to apply learned basic skills and content knowledge throughout interdisciplinary projects that immerse students in the richness of their native urban surroundings. The methodology will provide a vehicle to develop students’ cognitive skills by encouraging them to delve deeply into subject matter and to make connections to their own learning. The ECO program will validate students’ experiences and empower, motivate and encourage students to work cooperatively and to mobilize in order to achieve shared goals. This course of study will in part, give students “something to live for”, an antidote to the anomie, latent and realized, extant in their lives.
The EIC Model™ uses:
- integrated-interdisciplinary instruction that breaks down traditional boundaries between disciplines;
- community-based investigations as learning experiences that offer both minds-on and hands-on experiences through service-learning opportunities;
- collaborative instruction so teachers, parents, students and community members can connect together instruction and learning;
- learner-centered, constructivist approaches adapted to the needs and unique abilities of individual students;
- combinations of independent and cooperative learning; and,
- local natural and community surroundings, as the "venue" for connecting together these proven pedagogies, to improve teaching and learning.
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About ECO 
