Vail Valley Unbound

guiding curious minds

Welcome to Vail Valley Unbound, a progressive K-5 elementary school located in the heart of Eagle County.

 

At Unbound, we recognize the infinite potential of young minds. By providing guidance and empowering one another in an open environment, curiosity flourishes and learning occurs naturally. The rigidity of traditional education is ideal for test taking, yet it falls short of fostering wisdom. When children are given the tools to explore, they grow to create the lives they love.

Explore

Empowerment Through Autonomy & Collaboration

At Unbound, we believe that autonomy builds confidence and a sense of responsibility. By empowering young learners in a collaborative space, listening and leadership skills emerge and prosper.

The school structure includes three studios that interact daily: Y.E.S. Studio (transitional kindergarten/kindergarten), Lower Studio (first/second/third grade), and Upper Studio (third/fourth/fifth grade; coming 2024). You’ll notice intentional overlap in our studios as learners don’t always follow a single path.

Each studio is a one room, learner-driven community where students take an active role in deciding, planning, and creating course content. This high degree of autonomy increases learner motivation, action, and inquiry. Children at Unbound are deeply engaged with their education and develop a profound passion for learning.

Mission

Vail Valley Unbound Mission & Vision

We are a learner-driven community that aims to inspire, facilitate, and guide our young learners to find their calling and maintain a lifelong love of learning.

We envision a community of young learners with a passion for learning, a growth-mindset that allows them to view failure as one step in a process, and a confidence to know they can impact the world with authenticity and compassion.

Cultivating an Extraordinary Environment

Creativity and positive energy flows through the Unbound campus. Studios are bright and modern with open floor plans to accommodate collaborative learning. Children of varying ages are encouraged to interact with and learn from one another, moving freely between spaces when appropriate. 

From building blocks to laptops, the Montessori-inspired spaces balance opportunities for physical, interactive, and technical skill development. Much as the world we live in is perpetually changing, so may the purpose of our environment. Children can tuck away to a cozy nook when independent exploration is needed, yet they may just as easily convene for discussions with their peers.

Fostering Wisdom

What sets Unbound apart from other schools is the prevalence of socratic discussion in our daily rhythm. These group discussions are exercises in collaborative problem solving. They reinforce a growth mindset, one where failure is part of progress, where achievements come down to effort, and where challenges are embraced. 

Parents find comfort in knowing that ample time is reserved for core and creative skill development (reading, writing, math, art, music). By blending introspective discussion with creativity and curriculum, Unbound children develop a well-rounded mind with a global perspective.

We believe that children learn best when working with children younger and older than themselves rather than split up into groups based solely on age. In addition to individualized curriculum, all ages of students work together in groups.

A Word

From Our Co-Founder

“Hi, I’m Cassie Boca, co-founder of Vail Valley Unbound.

In 2019, a very wise and curious little boy entered this world. He had a curiosity like I’d never seen before. He was afraid to close his eyes out of fear of missing life. He asked questions, all day he asked big questions. Questions that I didn’t have the answers to. I quickly grew a new passion and love of learning. This little boy’s curiosity and love for learning was contagious. I found myself looking forward to his big questions and the journey ahead in each day. He would ask things like, “Why does my bike go faster down hill than up?” Or “why have I never met anyone from Mars?” Or “What are the white lines behind airplanes?” or “How do trains that get derailed get back onto the tracks?”… to which we would spend the rest of the day/week or sometimes longer exploring.

As this little boy got closer to school-age, I was faced with some big decisions. As a mom, I feared that he might get left behind because he had such big questions and a traditional school room wouldn’t have the time to explore them. I knew that something as small as “today we are going to talk about the history of the state of Colorado” would have him stuck at “what is a state?” And not because he didn’t understand country/state/city organization but because he would want to understand what actually makes a “state” a “state”? A question that most of us likely couldn’t answer. He wasn’t going to hear anything because he would be stuck on a question that he never got to explore.

I had to do a bit of soul-searching on what mattered most to me for my own children. If I can do one thing well to prepare my children for the world, I feel it’s to foster a love for learning. That’s why we are opening Vail Valley Unbound.

We are a home for the curious, for the question-askers, for the learners who take risks, who aren’t afraid to fail trying. We believe if we can arm kids with a lifelong love of learning, a curiosity, the ability to ask hard questions and engage in meaningful conversations, an openness to receive opinions that differ from their own, a resiliency to have a different opinion while accepting others, the confidence to view failure as a step in the process of learning, the knowledge that they aren’t experts in everything but they can lean on peers for knowledge… all of those things we believe will set them up to change the world.”

– Cassie Boca

Support Vail Valley Unbound

Designing extraordinary learning experiences requires resources beyond what tuition income can cover. We aim to keep our tuition as affordable as possible to ensure that any learner that is a fit for Vail Valley Unbound has the opportunity to attend. Vail Valley Unbound’s donors tend to share in our lifelong love of learning and be just as passionate as our learners. These young learners are the future of our community and world.

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