Great Expectations teachers look forward throughout the school year to a week of exposure to mind-stretching methods aimed at learning new ways to help young people learn. The core curriculum centers around courses in methodology, the basis of the Great Expectations program. This methodology is offered to elementary, middle school, and high school teachers. The curriculum also includes liberal doses of fables, the classics, and phonics. Methodology courses with children give teachers the chance to observe students being taught in a demonstration classroom.
Students sell the program.
Teachers have the opportunity to see a change occur within a student right before their eyes. Courses change and continually improve. The courses are kept interesting and challenging for those who have been in the program since it began. Courses include Principles for Effective Living, Music in the Classroom, Living History and Storytelling, and Hands-On Math and Science, Social Studies, and instruction in the teaching of foreign language. Instruction in the teaching of foreign language was recently added, and teachers were guided in the teaching of Russian, Spanish, German, French, and also Cherokee.