Marissa Martinez, a Pueblo of Pojoaque Boys and Girls Club member, was recently selected as the New Mexico State Youth of the Year for 2011. She received two $1,000 scholarships.
The Santa Fe Concorso donates a portion of its proceeds to benefit the youth of Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico. Highlighted below is one of our beneficiaries, the Desert Academy Scholarship Program. Others include Santa Fe Children's Museum, Pueblo of Pojoaque Boys and Girls Club, and Pueblo of Pojoaque Early Childhood Centers Scholarship Program.
At Desert Academy, we understand that students learn best in an environment that actively promotes academic and personal excellence, with teachers who are passionate about learning, small classes, and a unique, student-centered approach.
As an International Baccalaureate World School, Desert Academy provides a supportive, yet challenging, stage for excellence. We ask our students to evaluate information, consider varying perspectives, and seek obvious and hidden connections prior to formulating conclusions. Our teachers facilitate this discovery through hands-on activities, projects that emphasize relevance and critical thinking, and stimulating discussion.
Involvement in the learning process is just the beginning. The connections that students discover in the science labs and the history courses translate to authentic engagement with the world around them; our students are involved with community organizations, national initiatives, and international affairs. Our Creativity-Action-Service (CAS) Program is a hallmark of this philosophy. Students celebrate their individual creativity through sports, the arts, and other activities that allow them to practice skills that will spiral into eventual mastery. Our students continue Desert Academy's proud tradition of service to the greater community; this includes the attitude that service is not a duty, but an integral part of fulfilling their own humanness.
A critical component of the engaging, challenging environment that defines Desert is our mission of hiring teachers who are passionate, not only about their subject matter, but about the idea that students have an innate desire to learn, develop and grow. To that end, Desert Academy teachers fully embrace the radical but ancient philosophy that learning, as Socrates said, "is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel."
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