Help Bring PEAK Mastery to Cache Valley: Building a School with Our Community

What do you wish school could look like for your child?

Maybe you want your child to have time to really understand what they are learning. Maybe you want more opportunities for them to explore questions, build things, work on meaningful projects, and discover where their interests might lead. Maybe you want to understand what your child is learning and have a meaningful role in the conversation.

Those are exactly the kinds of conversations helping shape PEAK Mastery.

PEAK Mastery Charter School is currently working through Utah's charter approval process. Our goal is to create another tuition-free public school option for Cache Valley families, built around strong academics, meaningful learning, close relationships, and flexibility in how students learn.

And right now, while PEAK Mastery is still being developed, we want families to be part of that process.

What Does PEAK Stand For?

PEAK is more than our school name. It describes four values that help guide what we are building:

P: Personalized

Children bring different strengths, interests, needs, and experiences to school. PEAK Mastery's model is designed to help educators understand where students are in their learning and respond with appropriate support or challenge.

E: Expeditionary

Learning can extend into projects, fieldwork, community partnerships, service, exploration, and real-world questions. PEAK's Expeditionary Learning model creates opportunities for students to use what they are learning in meaningful contexts.

A: Agency

Students can gradually learn to understand their own progress, set goals, reflect, make choices, ask for help, and take greater responsibility for their learning. Research on motivation and self-regulated learning supports the importance of autonomy, competence, goal setting, reflection, and related skills in students' development as learners.¹ ²

K: Kinship

Relationships and belonging matter. Research has linked positive teacher-student relationships with greater student engagement and academic achievement, while research on belonging has found connections with students' participation, attitudes, and engagement at school.³ ⁴ PEAK's coaching model, family partnerships, and mixed-age communities are designed to give those relationships room to develop.

Together, these values help describe the kind of learning community PEAK Mastery is working to create.

How Those Values Show Up in Learning

PEAK Mastery's proposed educational model is organized around three instructional pillars: Mastery-Based Learning, Expeditionary Learning, and Coaching Relationships.

These pillars give the PEAK values a practical place in the school day.

Mastery-Based Learning

How do you know when your child really understands something?

It can be surprisingly difficult to answer.

PEAK Mastery students would work toward clearly defined competencies aligned with the Utah Core Standards. Teachers would use assessments, student work, observation, and other evidence to understand what students know, where they need support, and where they may be ready for greater challenge.

Research on mastery learning and formative assessment supports giving students clear learning goals, useful feedback, and opportunities to respond to evidence of what they understand.⁵ ⁶

For families, the goal is a clearer picture of what their child is learning and how that learning is developing over time.

Expeditionary Learning

Children ask some wonderfully inconvenient questions.

"Why do I need to know this?"

We think that question can lead somewhere interesting.

PEAK Mastery's Expeditionary Learning model is designed to give students opportunities to apply their learning through Wonder Workshops, interdisciplinary projects, fieldwork, community partnerships, service learning, and other real-world experiences.

Research on learning and transfer suggests that students need opportunities to apply knowledge in different situations and make connections across contexts.⁷

A science concept might become an investigation. Writing might have a real audience. Math might become useful in figuring out how to approach a problem.

Those experiences give students opportunities to see where academic skills can take them.

Coaching Relationships

Every PEAK Mastery student would have a licensed educator serving as their coach and teacher of record.

Coaches would monitor progress, assess competencies, help develop personalized learning plans, coordinate support, communicate with families, and help students gradually take greater ownership of their learning.

Our current model is designed so that, when possible, coaches can remain with students for up to three years.

That gives an educator time to build context around a child's learning.

They may remember what helped when a student encountered a similar challenge six months ago. They can see interests develop, notice patterns, recognize growth, and have an ongoing conversation with the family.

Research gives us good reason to take those relationships seriously. Positive teacher-student relationships have been linked with engagement and academic achievement across students of different ages.³

Two Pathways for Cache Valley Families

Being involved in your child's education can look different from one family to another.

PEAK Mastery is proposing two learning pathways that provide different levels of on-site and off-site learning.

The 4-Day On-Site Pathway is designed around four days of scheduled on-site instruction and one day of Extended Learning Experiences.

The 2-Day On-Site Pathway includes two days of scheduled on-site instruction and three days of off-site Extended Learning Experiences. Families choosing this pathway would have a larger role in facilitating foundational learning during off-site days, with PEAK educators retaining responsibility for assessment, progress monitoring, intervention, and mastery verification.

Both pathways are part of the same PEAK Mastery educational model. Students would work toward the same Utah Core-aligned competencies and participate in PEAK's systems of coaching, assessment, progress monitoring, and support.

The pathways give families the opportunity to consider which structure may fit their circumstances and the way they want to participate in their child's education.

Why Your Voice Matters Right Now

PEAK Mastery is still being built.

That makes this an important time for us to listen.

What are you looking for in a school?

Maybe personalized learning matters to you. Maybe you are interested in project-based or real-world learning. Maybe you want a closer relationship with the educators working with your child. Maybe flexibility is important to your family.

You may also have questions or concerns we have not considered yet.

We want to hear those, too.

Community feedback helps us understand the families PEAK Mastery hopes to serve. Interest survey responses also help demonstrate community demand as we move through Utah's charter approval process.

Filling out the survey does not commit your family to enrolling at PEAK Mastery.

It simply gives you a chance to tell us what interests you and what you would like to see from another public school option in Cache Valley.

How You Can Be Part of PEAK Mastery

Take the family interest survey. Tell us what interests you about PEAK Mastery, what questions you have, and what matters to your family.

Share PEAK Mastery with another family. If you know someone exploring public school options in Cache Valley, invite them to learn about the proposed model and share their perspective, too.

Ask us questions. If something about PEAK Mastery is unclear, tell us. Questions from families help us understand where we need to explain the model more clearly.

Stay involved as the school develops. Follow our progress, participate in community conversations, and continue sharing your perspective as plans become more concrete.

Could PEAK Mastery Be a Good Fit for Your Family?

There are many good ways to educate a child, and families have different priorities when choosing a school.

PEAK Mastery is being developed as another tuition-free public school option for Cache Valley families. Our proposed model brings together mastery-based learning, real-world experiences, coaching relationships, family partnership, and opportunities for students to develop greater ownership of their learning.

If those ideas interest your family, we would love to hear from you.

Take the PEAK Mastery Interest Survey Here

Research Cited

1. Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The "What" and "Why" of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268.

2. Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Becoming a Self-Regulated Learner: An Overview. Theory Into Practice, 41(2), 64–70.

3. Roorda, D. L., Koomen, H. M. Y., Spilt, J. L., & Oort, F. J. (2011). The Influence of Affective Teacher-Student Relationships on Students' School Engagement and Achievement: A Meta-Analytic Approach. Review of Educational Research, 81(4), 493–529.

4. Osterman, K. F. (2000). Students' Need for Belonging in the School Community. Review of Educational Research, 70(3), 323–367.

5. Guskey, T. R. (2010). Lessons of Mastery Learning. Educational Leadership, 68(2), 52–57.

6. Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 80(2), 139–148.

7. Pellegrino, J. W., & Hilton, M. L. (Eds.). (2012). Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century. National Academies Press.