Liftoff
Purpose or Promise
LiftOff School exists to fundamentally reboot secondary learning by centering it in joy, community, agency, and authentic contribution. Its promise is to replace traditional schooling—with compliance-driven, isolated experiences—with a distributed learning community where curiosity is honored, relationships matter, and learning is grounded in real-world impact. Learners are empowered to pursue meaningful work that deepens understanding, strengthens agency, and connects them to community beyond the school walls.
- Mission: Nurture joyful, authentic learning through agency, strong relationships, and deep connectedness
- Vision: Thriving communities centered on the humanity of all learners, sparking change in the world.
- Why it exists: Education systems today often leave learners disconnected, passive, and burned out. LiftOff exists to counteract disconnected learning, passive conformity, systemic burnout, and misaligned outcomes by designing learning around human flourishing and communal contribution
Key Measurable Outcomes
LiftOff defines success holistically—moving beyond traditional proxies like grades or test scores to include measures that reflect learner thriving and community contribution. Outcomes are evidenced through learner-created work, sustained engagement, and social impact rather than seat time.
Desired outcomes for learners include evidence of:
- Joy and engagement in learning: consistent curiosity, intrinsic motivation, and emotional engagement.
- Agency and self-direction: learners make purposeful choices, set intentions, and navigate their own pathways.
- Belonging and relationships: learners are demonstrably connected to peers, mentors, and community partners.
- Authentic skill application: learners solve real problems and produce work valued by community stakeholders.
- Community contribution: measurable impact on local partners, initiatives, or civic challenges.
- Readiness for future: alignment between learning experiences and postsecondary, professional, or civic pursuits.
- Adaptive capacity: readiness to navigate complexity, uncertainty, and changing pathways.
In addition to learner outcomes, LiftOff School also emphasizes community-based accountability through the co-development of a school constitution and a transparent look at progress, achievement, and areas of growth through a real-time “State of the School” dashboard as well as an internal “Learning Community” website with key metrics and current results.
Check out an example learner transcript.
Day in the Life
Learning Environment
LiftOff’s learning environment is intentionally distributed, relational, and community-rooted. Learning is not confined to classrooms or rigid schedules; it happens wherever there is meaningful connection, challenge, and impact.
Core features:
- Distributed authority and expertise: Leadership and influence are shared among learners, educators, families, and community partners rather than centralized in adults alone.
- Joy-centered learning: The environment intentionally nurtures curiosity and intrinsic motivation as drivers of meaningful learning.
- Context and community matter: Learning contexts and community assets shape experiences, ensuring relevance and connection to real-world needs.
- Belonging-rich structures: Strong, caring relationships anchor the school experience, with intentional rituals and practices that reinforce connection.
- Learner agency: Students co-design pathways, set goals, and select experiences aligned to interests and aspirations.
- Authentic experiences: Opportunities extend into community organizations, workplaces, and civic settings where learning produces real value.
Rather than traditional classrooms, LiftOff uses learning community spaces, partnerships, and real-world project contexts to cultivate learning that is both personally meaningful and socially consequential. LiftOff has transitioned away from grade levels into a competency-based learner’s journey that emphasizes self-assessment and personalized progress. In addition, LiftOff has eliminated subject-area departments and courses and replaced them with core structures of collaborative project planning, maker time, direct instruction, reflect & iterate, community building, and 1-1 time with a trusted adult.
Young Person role(s):
Co-designer of learning pathways and projects.
Active contributor in community-connected experiences.
Reflective learner who documents and showcases growth.
Collaborator with peer.
Adult role(s):
Mentors and guides who support inquiry, reflection, and connection rather than dictate content.
Community liaisons who help source real-world opportunities and project challenges.
Relationship-builders who cultivate trust, belonging, and psychological safety.
Young Person Day in the Life:
A learner might begin with a reflective circle that calibrates intentions for the day, then engage in a community-designed project addressing a local need. Rather than “classes,” learning periods blend skill development workshops with collaborative project sprints, mentorship check-ins, and community meetings. Afternoons could involve working with partner organizations on authentic challenges with real stakeholders. The day concludes with reflection and planning for the next steps in the learner’s pathway.
Adult Day in the Life:
Adults facilitate design conversations, support learner reflection, coordinate community partnerships, and coach learners on projects. They intentionally check in on emotional wellbeing and help learners connect experiences across settings. Rather than delivering discrete lessons, adult work focuses on scaffolding inquiry and validating learner-generated work in real contexts.
Time, Space, and Resources
Key artifacts and systems that express the model:
- Vision, mission, and design principles: articulated clearly on the school site, highlighting joy, agency, relationships, and authentic experience.
- Constitution & Community Rituals: documented practices that encode the shared commitments and social norms of the learning community.
- State of School reports: periodic reflections that surface learning outcomes, community contributions, and growth trajectories.
- Learner-centered transcripts: records focused on demonstrated competencies, artifacts, and impact rather than age or seat time.
- Learning community spaces: both physical and virtual spaces designed for collaboration, reflection, and authentic engagement with partners.