Leadership & Entrepreneurship
How you lead your life matters.
Aspen Academy students are resilient leaders, curious scholars, strategic thinkers, innovative creators, and avid communicators.
LiFE (Leadership, Finance and Entrepreneurship) equips Aspen Academy students with the skills, habits, attitudes and knowledge to lead themselves, others, ideas, and organizations well. The program fosters confidence, curiosity, and innovation in our lifelong learners.
Leaders Always and Everywhere
Our on-campus Leadership classes are daily 30-minute classes fueled by our Future Holders curriculum and revolve around 10 monthly practices to engage and inspire our students in their leadership of self, others, and as global citizens:
- LEAD YOURSELF: You matter. Live with purpose. You can do big things.
- YOUR MIND IS YOUR SUPERPOWER: You can’t change things outside of yourself, but you can change what’s inside.
- TIME IS YOUR MOST PRECIOUS RESOURCE: How will you spend it?
- CHOOSE JOY: Be genuinely grateful in your interactions; happiness comes from within.
- BETTER TOGETHER: Extraordinary things happen with the cooperation of many minds.
- BE CURIOUS: Always ask what’s possible.
- THOUGHTS ARE THINGS: Everything starts with an idea, you give it life.
- BE THE DIFFERENCE: Serve a cause greater than yourself.
- LEAVE YOUR MARK: Always leave it better than you found it.
- HAVE AN ADVENTURE: Play and rest are just as important as working hard.
Annual Curriculum Guide with Future Holders
Character and Leadership Development
Every single person must, at the very least, learn how to lead themselves. Our aim is to center our instruction around growing self sufficiency, self management, self discipline, and self efficacy. Upon achievement of a higher sense of self mastery, we can then focus outward, contributing our leadership in a way that creates capacity for others. Students begin each day with a 30-minute leadership class devoted entirely to concepts in social emotional learning, leadership, and cultural competency, ensuring they are accountable for all they think, say, and do, and can make the world a better place. Powered by Future Holders.
Curriculum Snapshot:
- 1,296 total lessons
- 144 lessons per grade (K-8)
- Aligned to standards of K-12 Standards of Social Emotional Learning, K-12 Service Learning Standards for Quality Practice, and State Standards for Civic Instruction in Schools.
Finance and Entrepreneurship
Our Future Holders curricula in finance and entrepreneurship are divided into units on economics, money management, innovation and entrepreneurship, and business management. Students are given the opportunity to learn basic economic and financial practices that they later use to create an entrepreneurial business with their classmates and individually as an 8th grader. A favorite event in the Aspen Academy the Entrepreneurs Expo is where each grade shows off the class business they created for the year. Problem solving and collaboration are key skills that are established leading up-to and showcased at the expo. Powered by Future Holders.
Curriculum: Snapshot:
- 648 total lessons
- 72 lessons per grade (K-8)
- Aligned to National Standards for K-12 for Personal Financial Literacy
Integrated Leadership Programs
Bear's Student Enterprises (BSE)
What if your child could own the title of CEO at the age of twelve? When students are given the opportunity to have full ownership and full accountability of something, they start to move a different way in the world. They quickly learn that no one is coming; every success and every failure is entirely up to them. The experience is one that teases out passions, exposes challenges, and sharpens strengths - and the results are remarkable. At Aspen Academy, students run a cafe, store, media division, and vending services as part of our entrepreneurial program. The program is real world learning at its finest, as students learn all aspects of running a business, finance, marketing, operations, human resources, product selection, customer service, alongside critical life skills like collaboration, communication, and critical thinking.
Student Civic Organization (SCO)
Student Civic Organization: Promotes skills in civic leadership, engaging students to make changes in our community towards the common good. The organization strives to impact and influence communities, both great and small, by thinking critically, solving problems, and identifying solutions under the framework of an effective democratic structure.
An intentional relationship building program for authentic leadership. Students in grades 4th-8th are paired thoughtfully with students in grades PK-3rd to teach, model, and practice leadership skills in a guided mentorship setting.
Through intentional community partnerships and the identification of a community need; service learning is the application of academic standards in the context of community service. Scaffolded lessons in planning, collaboration, decision making, and recognition of diversity in our community, students learn that there is the “common good”, that service matters, and each person can and should make a difference.
Aspen Morning Program (AMP'd)
Celebrating the unique talents and gifts of our students, AMP’d is an entirely student written, produced, and performed variety show showcasing academic and leadership content in a performance based setting. The result is both celebratory and moving, a culmination of the classroom extended on stage.
