Welcome to the Vermilion Bend Academy High School Program!

We have already come to the beginning of our next school year and our collective journeys into higher-level learning and advanced education. Welcome to this year; into a wonderful opportunity to grow, learn, and develop to your highest potential. I am honored to be steering the course of so many amazingly bright and brilliant students. There have been many updates, upgrades, and new structures and modifications set into place. This program has been curated by Bethany Sanchez for over fifteen years, it has become the culmination of 22 years of global learning, teaching, researching and growing, and it is the absolute joy and pride of my life to work so intimately and successfully and progressively with these amazing humans, and to offer a diploma with six regional and national accreditations and specializations.

The high school academic program at Vermilion Bend Academy has been developed specifically to both leverage and foster the excellent habits of the creative learner’s mind—careful observation, critical thinking, and a desire for deep and enduring understanding. Our students enjoy a unique advantage: they can pursue their academic and artistic studies taught by faculty who respect and accommodate the demands placed on each student as a whole person. The members of the academic faculty at VBA have chosen specifically to teach talented young creative thinkers, and prioritize hands-on, project-based learning. Artistic and interactive learning through interest based research, technology, and the arts as well as our ever expanding garden and farm are the focus and the core of the high school program we have created. It is progressive, modern, and entirely researched based. Our unique curricula blend allows for students to excel the common core benchmarks and nurtures all aspects of their unique intelligence. As always, all learning is individualized and specialized, and calibrated to the abilities and needs of each learner, with a steady eye to the future and life decisions post graduation. Our most important role is readying our students to be productive learners after they complete their time with us, however long that may be.

We have a dedicated program called Continuing Life Education and are collaborating with local universities and certification programs to ease this transition, as well as weaving ACT and SAT prep (or similar) into the program on many levels. Confidence building, nurturing emotional support, and prescriptive education are always front and center and require mutual communication with staff and families.

All students commit to a full-time, real life (college, vocational-technical, etc) preparatory curriculum in addition to studies in our elective concentrations and service oriented Internships and Externships, and immersive group experiences.

Academic requirements are as follows:

• 4 credits of English

• 3 credits of Mathematics

• 2 credits of History, one of which must be United States History

• 2 credits of a Laboratory Science

• 2 credits of consecutive courses of the same Modern World Language

• 4 additional academic credits in any of the departments

Every academic course confers one credit; PE/Health & Wellness are also considered academic courses and confer one credit each. Theater + Improv Debate are also offered and required. Students are also required to successfully complete 8 Elective hours. Work study eligible students can add an internship for college or vo tech prep.