Dr. Aileen Hawkins, President, Laurel Springs School

Could you give us an overview of Laurel Springs School as it stands today?

Laurel Springs was founded in 1991 in Ojai, California, and we are the first and continue to be the premier online private K-12 school in America. Our mission is to engage global learners in an education that values them as individuals, integrating their passions and pursuits into academic and career pathways and fostering inquiry, growth, mastery, purpose, and independence. We’ve been doing that for the last 33 years because we believe every student has unique interests, goals, talents, and learning preferences. Students really benefit the most from an educational process that recognizes them as individuals and provides a maximally flexible approach to learning that will enable them to pursue their goals.

We do that through a very flexible and highly personalized mastery-based approach that includes asynchronous, synchronous, and in-person offerings. That model allows us to serve a really diverse population of nearly 4,000 students globally. What I mean by a diverse global community is that it includes intellectually curious and accelerated learners. It includes athletes. In fact, nearly 30% of our students identify as college-bound student-athletes in sports like tennis, golf, equestrian, gymnastics, etc. We work with artists and actors who need the flexibility of our program in order to work on their craft. We work with student entrepreneurs. We work with a lot of home-schooled students and neuro-divergent learners for whom a brick-and-mortar experience may just have too many constraints for them to really be optimally successful. We also work with a lot of families and students traveling everywhere and need the flexibility of our program to be able to access their academic work from wherever whenever they are.

So, our whole methodology, our whole approach, and our goal is to deliver a holistic private school experience that marries challenging academics guided by incredible teachers who build great relationships with our students. This is with personalized support from an incredible team of more than 20 counselors and advisors and then all of the co-curricular, virtual, and in-person opportunities that really exceed what a brick-and-mortar school can offer. Since we’ve been around for 33 years, we actually can. We’re also grateful to have more than 5,500 alumni in our community.

Our outcomes are really solid in an age when many online schools have cropped up since the pandemic. When colleges and universities see our students’ transcripts or applications come across their desks, they know they’re working with students who are incredibly prepared for college. As such, more than three-quarters of our students are admitted to their first-choice college. Our students attend more than 600 unique colleges and universities worldwide. We’re able to deliver incredible educational outcomes precisely because of our flexible model and our mission.

What would you say are the keys to the success of the organization?

We are an organization that genuinely loves building close relationships with each and every student and family. When families enroll at Laurel Springs, they know that they’re being cared for by a team of incredible teachers, counselors, and staff who take great care of each and every student.

The other is the challenging nature of our curriculum and how well we have curated an experience that really prepares students for whatever their next steps may be, be it college, career, etc. We’ve honed that over time, so we’re able to create a personalized journey for each student based on what they need and want. We’re an incredibly collaborative team that works closely to make sure that we are supporting each and every student and family in our care.

The other key to our success is our longevity. We were the first to do this, and we keep iterating and developing our program to ensure that we are meeting the needs of an ever-evolving student population.

As you mentioned, you have programs for elementary, middle, and high school. Could you tell us a little bit more about the different programs?

Absolutely. When I look at Laurel Springs, we sort of have five pathways that students can choose when they enroll with us. I would say more like six if I think of the lower school and our upper school. So, our lower school students in kindergarten through fifth grade enjoy an asynchronous program that allows them to fit school around all of the many things that kids love to do. Our lower school program is led by incredibly highly trained teachers who are keenly adept at building great relationships with every student and family. The key to our lower school program is the partnership that we develop between the school and the family. A 7-year-old who’s learning to read needs a learning coach right there with them to help them navigate our program. So, we work really hard to develop those relationships in the lower school with families and with learning coaches to make sure that every student is set up for success.

We have our upper school program for grades 6 through 12, which gives students access to more than 300 college prep honors and AP courses across all subject areas. That is also an asynchronous program, which means that students log into their learning management system and see all of their assignments. They work through their coursework at their own pace with the support of the incredibly personal feedback of the teachers who are monitoring their pacing, making sure that they’re mastering the material. They’re delivering really high-quality video, audio, and written feedback. So, they’re really building that one-to-one relationship with each student and working with each student where they are in their academics.

We have the Academy at Laurel Springs, which is a program within our upper school for students who want the most flexibility to enjoy both the benefits of an asynchronous program and live and synchronous learning opportunities through what we call weekly workshops. So, Academy students tend to be those who are really looking for a more connected upper school experience. So, they have access to weekly workshops in every subject area that supplement our asynchronous program. For example, a student who takes geometry with a workshop would take the asynchronous program so that they can work through the course at their own pace. But once a week, they gather with other students, taking the course with their teacher, who will review a concept, extend the learning with enrichment, offer some additional sample problems, and help prepare for an assessment. 

Collaboration is a great additional component of the Academy experience. Our Academy students also build relationships with their college counselors. As soon as sixth grade in our upper school, students are matched with their college counselor in ninth grade. But in the Academy, students meet their college counselors in sixth grade, who will work with them through middle and high school. 

Additionally, our Academy students have access to some learning opportunities that are unique to the Academy, including partnerships with Harvard student academies and earlier access to dual enrollment opportunities through our partnerships with Syracuse and Baylor, etc. 

We also offer a postgraduate and gap year program for students who have finished high school and are either taking a gap year before going on to college or just figuring out their next steps. And that gap year and post-graduate program consist of academic courses, electives, and some virtual internship opportunities. And we’re looking to build travel into that. 

We also have a really robust summer program. We have students joining us from May through August to take academic courses and join in live synchronous camps for our youngest learners to prepare for college applications through our 4-week college admissions boot camp. So, we have a huge summer program where a student can complete a year of coursework in 8 weeks or a semester in 4 weeks. So, we offer a lot. 

To return to your question about the keys to our success, we’re able to offer a lot because we’re unconstrained by time and space in ways that other schools are. And because we’ve been doing this for a while, we really know how to build customized personal programs and journeys for every student.

What would you say have been some of the latest innovations that you are proud of?

Well, I would say the first and one that I’m especially proud of is that after being an exclusively asynchronous program for years, we introduced and continue to grow our synchronous offerings. This is through the Academy, our summer program, our clubs, and our co-curricular opportunities because we saw the need, particularly during the pandemic, for students to have the flexibility of an asynchronous program that really wanted connectedness. That is so critical to students’ success and their social and emotional growth. So, we’ve really ramped up our synchronous offerings and live and in-person offerings to augment our really strong asynchronous program.

In addition to some other recent innovations, we became one of the first online schools to offer the AP Capstone Program, which gives students access to more research opportunities and college-level work.

We’re really proud of all of our in-person offerings. As I mentioned, we serve a global community, and families told us loudly and clearly that they really want to meet each other—not just on Zoom, but really hang out together. So, in the last year, we have added monthly field trips to cities across the US. So every month, we’re in a different city. Families, through planes, trains, and automobiles, all descend on that city to enjoy a learning experience together with other Laurel Springs families and just have fun together. So, we’ve dramatically ramped up our in-person offerings because even though we’re an online school, we’re truly a global community. And we want to honor that by creating spaces for students and families to connect.

This may not necessarily be an innovation, but I think when we think of what an online school can be, we recognize that there are certain milestone moments and experiences that brick-and-mortar schools provide that no students should have to go without at Laurel Springs. So, we’ve added so many more opportunities, like model United Nations and Academic Honor Societies, in just about every subject area, so that a student, when they come to Laurel Springs, doesn’t need to make a trade-off or sacrifice anything that they might experience in a brick-and-mortar school. 

We continue to evolve and look at the program and curriculum that we offer to make sure that it is challenging and meets and prepares kids well for college and beyond. We continue to evolve our social opportunities and innovate there to really capitalize on the fact that we’re a global community. We’re always looking at how we can refine and evolve our processes and the ways in which we interact with our families so that we’re making it as easy as possible for families to join and stay at Laurel Springs and as easy as possible for them to find their people in our community.

What would be your key message for potential students and parents considering joining you?

I would say that at Laurel Springs, our goal is to provide the best premier education experience that you just can’t get anywhere else because we are both asynchronous and synchronous and have so many live and in-person opportunities. What makes Laurel Springs really special is that we are this community of learners, all anchored around this mission of helping students find their path and be successful when they get there and along the way.

The other message I would really love to really get across is that our program is robust and flexible, and that allows us to serve so many different types of students. We welcome so many different kinds of children into our program, and I love that. That’s something that  I personally really love about working at Laurel Springs, that we get to work with so many different kinds of students, artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, and kids who just really love to learn and students who just found the brick-and-mortar experience just challenging or unsustainable. We get to help a lot of different families, and we get to really provide an experience that we believe far exceeds what a brick-and-mortar can provide and even what other online schools can provide.

What is the vision that you have for Lawrence Springs in the next 3 to 5 years?

Our vision is to continue to grow the number of students that we serve and continue to deepen the relationships we build with each and every one of those students. Our goal is to provide, design, and deliver the best possible holistic education experience. That’s not just academic coursework but mentorship and support from teachers and counselors. That’s preparation for college and career. That’s creating social opportunities for students to build strong relationships with peers and other families as well as with us. And so, our goal is to continue to push thinking about how we can harness this global community that we get to serve with this incredibly robust program, unconstrained by time and space, to deliver a truly premier and exceptional education for our students.

Is there anything I haven’t asked you about that you would like to mention?

I was thinking about leaning into our robust social community and making sure that we really highlight the myth of online schools. The idea that students miss out on that social aspect is something that we work hard every day to debunk. Our students feel really connected to the community that they’re a part of. In fact, they get a lot of opportunities that don’t exist in brick-and-mortar schools because we offer them the ability to travel to participate in many of our activities. 

The one last thing I would emphasize is that one of the myths about online school is that it is impersonal. You log on, and it’s all on Zoom or on a screen. We think a lot about the fact that we’re working with children and families, and so we really cherish the relationships that we build. We know our students, we know our families. When they come to Laurel Springs, they know that we are this community of care that is deeply invested in each and every student’s success. I get to work with a team of people who love the students. I think what sets us apart from some of the other options out there is that we really believe in those relationships, and we nurture and cherish them.