Springboard Network Inc. is newly-founded; its mission is not.  

2,500 years ago, Aristotle made plain that education is in the interest of all citizens for a somewhat-similar underlying reason we hold today — in ancient Greece, they elected their leaders.  Luckily, today however, not only the “elite” get to lead. The future is indeed in the hands of every youth. Their readiness and their well-being cannot be overlooked, not by any adult. Why? Just naturally beings of the polis, humans are interdependent, form groups, and only thrive in community. Community forms first by “the adults” in charge while teens are poised to either inherent and stagnate or learn and innovate.
     Yet, we today still have not realized the power of these observations in the realm of education. We have a public school system for which we are truly grateful, but such statewide systems may not fit everyone’s learning pace or needs. We also have unaffordable (for most) private institutions, parochial schools that interject metaphysical dictates, and charter schools that bring new hope but are not always accessible or a right fit. Finally, we have the homeschoolers — and the new generation of this community includes: teens independent enough to meet requirements but who want and can achieve more at their own pace; teens who cannot learn in large groups or online; teens who are young experts and need to travel or keep a schedule that simply cannot work with conventional school scheduling; and, even teens whose well-being has been placed at true risk, whether they’ve been bullied or otherwise have faced other challenges in the generic environ so that conventional schooling a non-option. 
     The adults in this realm, then, face challenging societal perception–those negative views (many defensible)– toward decentralized education–because “homeschooling” indubitably conjures presumption of under-educated, or ‘oddball’ or ‘parochial’ or this or that which belie what it can be. We can’t fix it all, but Springboard Network Inc. has arrived to play its part. We do teach the what, but emphasize the why. We take academics seriously, and put learned professors at the helm, but we do not neglect the whole form and the whole person. We seek a different balance. We do not do so perfectly (perfection being the ultimate delusion in our book), but we try, every day, to keep our focus where it necessarily belongs — on the teens. What “works” is not “by any means necessary” nor by rigidity nor by whimsy. We work together to figure out, adjust, correct, redo, without ever losing our focus. Not being a school, we do not have a ‘curriculum’, but I hold we have something better–a pedagogy. We are mission-driven to never forget the truer goal of secondary learning years to take the cues toward our mission:  our teens are humankind’s immediate next leaders, artists, engineers, voters, change-makers and shapers of the community for themselves and all of us. We take the ancient wisdom and understand, above all, the important role of teenagers and try to ease their anxieties, raise their skills, and provide small pathways that can lead to independence and readiness. Learning never has to be a stressor.

We bring back a love of learning as a multi-disciplinary exploration of the whole form of being. We describe this as a humanistic balance: between fostering their own critical view while from a basis of expansive, serious scholarship. Score-achievement can limit and stilt; freedom can become chaos. No extremes here. No shame here. No rote or pedantic or weaponized views. We hold there is something in the middle “the adults” are obliged to offer, in fact, and we strive for that every day — as co-pilots to the parent(s). We might be ‘just a service’ but we take our end clients–the teens–as treasures, young adults poised at the gateway to their and our lives. Gingerly, mindfully, rationally, and with respect and love in the foreground of mind we try to deliver our ‘services’ as a steady, sturdy, and responsive journey.  The power of and, not versus, is a humanist conceit we uphold, and thus SOME offers something akin to a Greek-style buffet– academics as intellectual virtues with life skills, artistry, sciences, philosophy, social sciences, and history as real-time empowerment. We’re not for everyone, but we are here for some who might find our mission in line with theirs. We hope you will give us a chance to instill or re-instill that love of learning, something inherent in our own pedagogical passion, and be a springboard to those who will inevitably trailblaze the future.