2021 Private Education Awards

www.lux-review.com Page 11 LUX 2021 Private Education Awards The Tree Top Academy is an outstanding institute cultivating early life education and learning, making a name for itself with innovative, bold new ideas. With brilliant staff, collaborative and inquisitive students, and a familial attitude that permeates the halls of this Florida based school, it prizes itself on the development, sharing, and encouragement of ideas from teacher training to student development. May21656 Working hard to provide a kindergarten and preschool experience with a difference for its pupils, The Tree Top Academy is based in Palm Beach Country, Florida. Above all, it seeks to give children an early childhood love for learning. Its programs are influenced by several thought leaders in early education, namely, the world-renowned pre-schools of Reggio Emilia Italy, the research of the Harvard University Graduate School of Education and the social and emotional regulation programs implemented and developed by the University of Central Florida. The school combines all of this work into an excellent teaching methodology that prizes, inquiry and emotional and social wellbeing amongst young people, making for an innovative pre- school program. In essence, it uses its program to feed the curiosity of its learners. Fundamentally, it knows that children have a hankering to ask questions and find the answers, wishing to foster this into an appetite for learning that will allow them to excel in further education as they progress into higher levels of schooling. Its inspiration is found in the mission that informs every element of its operation, from its curriculum design to its classrooms; namely, honouring children by cultivating emotional and academic wellbeing, providing the inspiration that will spark lifelong passion, thinking, and wonderment. Moreover, when a parent walks into one of its classrooms, it is proud to say they can walk in to the sight of pupils engaging and with each other and with the ideas being presented to them. The teachers are experts not just in their individual fields, but in getting students to be excited and passionate about the material in question, facilitating their curiosity by providing them a safe space to ask questions about what they don’t understand, pursue what they do understand, and broaden their minds even further. This creates individuals who have the confidence to chase their ambitions later in their school careers. Therefore, its innovation is not just in the development of early education and working in new developments to keep itself top of the class, but its ingenuity is truly found in combining pastoral care, academia, and encouragement into an education experience. This became the saving grace of The Tree Top Academy during the course of lockdown, as the familial style community allowed its pupils to continue supporting each other from afar, and the teachers worked hard to ensure that no one was left behind. Initially – like many other schools – the pivot to purely online scholastic work was a challenge for all, but The Tree Top Academy managed to pivot elegantly and with sophistication thanks to the hard work of its tutors, eventually able to carry on teaching fully online. With an established The Tree Top Academy YouTube channel, by the time the school reopened, the teachers had recorded and uploaded more than 400 educational videos across a range of topics. Between them, the videos now have over 35,000 views to date, helping not just its own students, but the wider community of lockdown learners and their families who may be struggling to adapt. That being said, it is very excited to be able to get back to in-person learning. Additionally, its attitude to teaching, as always, is one of training, time, and understanding, believing that in order to invest in its students it must invest in its staff; and so it offers top notch professional development in courses and conferences all over the world, as well as idea sharing and showing their student’s ideas to the wider teaching community. As it moves forward into the rest of 2021, it will evaluate and implement more ways to share ideas in early childhood education, including online courses and a campus expansion, inviting students and families to ‘stay tuned’. Company: TreeTop Academy Contact: Jeff Turner Website: treetopacademy.com TreeTop Academy Most Innovative Early Years School - Florida