In the fall of 2018, White Mountain was proudly accepted as a member of Global Online Academy (GOA), a consortium of leading independent schools from around the world. GOA aims to help high school students, teachers, and leaders from some of the best independent schools worldwide to thrive in a globally networked society. Why did we join? For two reasons.
First, we wanted to provide our students with the opportunity to engage in a different type of educational experience, allowing them to learn to navigate cultural differences, work across time zones, and collaborate both asynchronously and virtually. These are critical skills for 21st-century leaders.
Second, we recognized that one of our strengths in being a small school—where each student is known, seen, and cared for—does impact our ability to offer the same diversity of courses that a larger school might. Given our belief in student-driven inquiry and student agency, we wanted to be able to provide students with additional learning opportunities that truly inspire them. GOA allows us to be both unapologetically small and ambitiously global at the same time. Our partnership with GOA allows us to maintain our commitment to community and to being a small school while offering our students an additional set of courses that offer breadth and depth.
Taking a GOA course replaces one of the five (or six) in-person courses that White Mountain students take each semester. GOA courses taken by White Mountain students have included:
- Bioethics
- CSII: Analyzing Data with Python
- Climate Change and Global Inequality
- Entrepreneurship in a Global Context
- Gender Studies
- Linear Algebra
- Neuropsychology
Visit the GOA website to learn more about the program and current course offerings and contact a member of our academic leadership team if you have questions or to register for a course.