Liberty Public School District 53

EPiC provides a learning environment where students discover, embrace, and integrate authentic learning experiences to create and design real-world applications of their knowledge. Trained by the Buck Institute for Education, we use project-based learning to integrate core competencies and Partnership for 21st Century Learning to give students the opportunity to learn content standards through the lens of real work, real audience, and relevance. Coupled with dynamic teacher instruction, EPiC students explore real challenges and create solutions and share in front of authentic audiences, such as partnerships in community and community exhibit nights.  

Kindergarten has explored objects in the sky through stop motion, second graders have designed a butterfly garden, and fourth graders have designed and written proposals for an empty building in downtown Liberty. With all our work, we have a public audience. By partnering with community experts, students have designed real-world solutions to problems in our community such as hunger awareness events, healthy living research, and eco-friendly practices within our school, all of which have provided our students an opportunity to engage with real-world learning. Collaboration, critical thinking, communication, and creativity are embedded in all our learning processes as students design, create, and produce.