But Holliday also wants to give them a frame of reference for what that math is going to be used for. A lot of times you try new things and you don't know if they'll work. We realize our kids are going to graduate and they're going to apply to U-M, Michigan State, Harvard, Penn State, wherever, and they're going to need a transcript, and it's going to have to look like transcripts that come from all over the place. That is a fact. And it's easy to see, on a tour of the academy, why they would get excited about coming to school, with a world-class museum on the other side of their classrooms.
Students work in groups to learn team-building and problem solving.
On a recent weekday, Holliday and Christmas stopped by the ninth-grade science class. They don't seem to mind when museum visitors watch. Somehow they look like they're in a fishbowl, but they understand people are going to look in. Christmas is delighted by the progress her school has made in such a short time, and with so many students who cut across all socioeconomic backgrounds. They truly embrace diversity, both the educators say with a smile.