Project-Based Intensives
One week. One real problem. A running start.
Five days, fully immersive, built around one authentic task
Tailored to a student's primary credit-area need
Dual credit available
Runs over Spring Break, Summer School, or right before the school year starts
Designed to build momentum, not just close a gap
A semester's worth of missed credit doesn't usually get fixed by a semester's worth of makeup work. It gets fixed — or it doesn't — in the moment a student decides whether they're capable of catching up at all.
Project-Based Intensives are built around that moment. Instead of stretching recovery across disconnected sessions, students spend one immersive week on a single authentic task in the credit area they need most — a real product, investigation, or performance, not a packet or a module to click through alone. Five days is enough to lose momentum in. It's also enough to get it back.
How it works
One week, one topic, matched to the credit area a student needs most
Structured around an authentic task — the kind of real product, investigation, or performance we build into every Field Academy expedition — not passive coursework
Can be designed for dual credit where a partner wants it
Builds the same core competencies as our expeditions, so students leave with more than a closed gap
When it happens
Project-Based Intensives are built to fit the moments where a student most needs a reset:
Spring Break — recover a semester's worth of momentum without losing an instructional week
Summer School (end of year) — close a gap before it follows a student into next year
Right before the school year starts — a running start, so a student walks into fall with a win, a community, and some confidence already behind them, instead of walking in already behind
Why intensives
Falling behind isn't just an academic problem. It's a story a student starts telling themselves — that they're the kind of kid this doesn't work for.
A worksheet packet doesn't interrupt that story. It confirms it. An authentic task does the opposite: it hands a student something real to solve, on a timeline short enough to see the finish line, and asks them to actually finish it. That's not a softer version of the work they missed. It's a different relationship to work itself — one built on purpose and experience instead of another packet to get through.
We're not trying to make five days feel like a whole semester. We're trying to break the cycle a full semester couldn't.
What it produces
We're not just measuring whether a credit gets closed. We're watching for what a student believes about themselves the next time something is hard.
A Project-Based Intensive doesn't end with a transcript update. It ends with a student who has real, recent proof — not a pep talk, actual evidence — that they can take on something hard, stay with it for five days, and come out the other side having finished it. That's what makes it possible to walk back into a traditional classroom and expect a different outcome this time.
