Ashoka
Cunningham Elementary School is built on three pillars: sustainability, social and emotional learning, dual Spanish/English language. These three pillars are brought together through Cunningham’s unique implementation of the MicroSociety framework: an approach, in which students create their own campus society, including businesses, government, and other public services. This has been a great avenue for students to develop agency and voice. For example, one student was struggling in math class, but when she became the entrepreneur behind the school snack store, she had to use math to make her venture successful. She organized other students to conduct market surveys of what treats her schoolmates would want to eat on Fridays, and she had to know how much to pay her employees so they would continue to work with her. Becoming the school store manager coincided with her math grades drastically improving.