VAIL, Colo. — A Vail teacher is starting up a new kind of school he says will give students less time sitting in a classroom and more time to pursue their passions, whether that be athletics, music, entrepreneurship or other aspirations.
Watch Denver7's story on how Vail Performance Academy aims to help these students in the player below.
Samuel Bennett has spent more than a decade as a teacher at the high school and college level in the Vail area.
“I saw the trade-offs that students had to make,” he told Denver7. “They need additional time… [The pressure] was crushing at some times… I personally experienced it with my kids. I thought, you know, ‘These kids need a different way of learning.’”
Bennett said the Vail Performance Academy rejects the idea that those trade-offs are necessary because technology can optimize students’ time in school. He said that can allow them to be truly elite inside and outside the classroom.
“We use AI to leverage the exact right lesson for each kid,” Bennett explained. “Teachers are there for critical thinking and for life skills and entrepreneurial skills and public speaking skills and seminars and elements like that. But the core skills, those are self-paced, adapted, personalized by AI for the student.”
The school — designed for 5th-graders through high school seniors — is partnering with Arizona State University Prep, Khan World School and The Levitt Lab, which provide the non-traditional education models.
John Slevin, who is about to graduate from Battle Mountain High School in Eagle County, has been working with Bennett to provide a student perspective on what the school could look like.
“I think the model is great: meeting kids where they're at, instead of kids having to meet the system where it's at," he explained.
Slevin said he is attempting to start two companies, and that this model would have afforded him more time for his entrepreneurial goals.
“I think that that would be something that I definitely would have chosen to enroll in,” he said.
"ASU Prep is excited to partner with Vail Performance Academy to help create a school model that combines rigorous academics with the flexibility students need to pursue excellence in athletics, the arts, entrepreneurship, or other high-performance pathways. By drawing on ASU Prep’s Khan World School and Levitt Lab models, we are supporting a learning experience that is personalized, mastery-based, and grounded in high expectations."
- Amy McGrath, CEO of ASU Prep Academies & ASU Prep Global
Bennett said tuition is $32,000 per year, adding that 10 students have committed to the school’s fall launch so far with a goal of 30 students for the school’s inaugural class.
The school’s building is on Westhaven Drive in Vail, near Vail Ski Resort.
