Navigator Schools employ innovative teaching techniques

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Navigator Schools, a network including Gilroy Prep, Hollister Prep, Watsonville Prep and Hayward Collegiate, use a student-led model of education as opposed to the typical teacher-led system. 

At Hollister Prep, which was founded in 2013, a classroom is very active, and unlike classrooms in which 30 voices are silent while one individual does the talking. 

Gabriela Roldan, Navigator Schools communications manager,  said that transitional kindergarten through fifth grade use a small-group instructional model, and sixth through eighth grade use something known as the Navi Squads Model. The goal of that model is to help students become “academic scholars, creative problem solvers, courageous change makers and collaborative teammates,” Roldan said.

Squads first started at Gilroy Prep in 2016 and was incorporated in 2017 at Hollister Prep, she said. 

Catalina Anaya Diaz, an eighth-grader at Hollister Prep, said the Squads have helped her a lot throughout the years. “I used to be a very antisocial kid, but with the squads, I was able to communicate more with my peers,” she said.

Norma Knox, principal of Hollister Prep and a founding teacher of the Navi Squads Model, said it took almost an entire year of tweaking and experimenting to develop the model, in which middle schoolers work in groups of three. 

Sixth-grader Alex Espinoza Luna said she thinks Navigator “helps a lot if you’re not very talkative [because] you can have a voice.”

Knox said Navigator Schools started with a kindergarten through fifth-grade school and has since added a middle school.

In the Squads model, student leaders move between the groups making sure that their fellow students are staying on track and learning.

Eighth grader Jeremiah Orozco said, “I do enjoy that everybody has a job, everybody knows to stay maintained and focus on everything. And it also helps because I’m now able to communicate more with other people.”

“Our ultimate vision is to transform communities through education,” said Gabriela Roldan.

At Hollister Prep the students in elementary grades break into groups of about 10, called centers, with one adult providing small-group instruction. 

Roldan said that according to the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP),  the Navigator outperforms their neighborhood schools in math by 32% and in  English Language Arts by 37%.

To improve their teaching style, Navigator Schools looked at surveys and information from employers in search of teachers with “soft skills” such as creativity and collaboration.

Roldan said, “One of the challenges in and of itself is how to make learning fun, exciting and engaging for an age where it’s not the most interesting thing in a kid’s life.” 

The BenitoLink Internship Program is a paid, skill-building program that prepares local youth for a professional career. This program is supported by Monterey Peninsula Foundation AT&T Golf Tour, United Way, Taylor Farms and the Emma Bowen Foundation.

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