Case Study: Fusion Academy Excels with Teacher Retention and Empowers Personalized Instruction

Fusion Academy is a nationally accredited 1-to-1 private school that focuses on developing each student’s confidence and independence to ensure every child is college and career-ready. Fusion Academy uses MindPrint Learning at 60+ campuses nationwide. The Huntington Beach campus adopted MindPrint Learning in 2018 to ensure they were meeting the needs of each individual student.

In 2018, Fusion Academy adopted MindPrint Learning as part of the onboarding process with every student and teacher. Fusion placed importance on every teacher first taking MindPrint themselves to become comfortable talking about their own cognition. Teachers review their own results and articulate and share their individual learning strengths and challenges with colleagues as well as students. In fact, they even state them on the doors of their classrooms. For the first two years of MindPrint implementation, every professional learning event included information about MindPrint or the science of cognition.

MindPrint has been an integral part of every student’s experience at Fusion Academy from the beginning. Every student takes the MindPrint assessment during the enrollment process. All teachers and administrators review the MindPrint data on each student and analyze the data to determine the best way to teach the student. Fusion educators and administrators also consult with parents about their child’s MindPrint data and what it means for their child’s strengths and challenges in and out of the classroom. MindPrint data reassures students and families that they are not broken or flawed; rather, their prior experiences may have overlooked their strengths and not adequately aligned strategies to support their learning needs.

Administrators and teachers at Fusion report that they see great benefits from utilizing MindPrint as a way to help them get to know their students. Most students enroll in Fusion Academy because things didn’t work in their previous educational setting. Fusion Academy’s goal is to figure out how to make Fusion “work” for each of their students, and MindPrint is a tool that facilitates that knowledge and provides a tangible strategy for teachers to know the next step for their students. With MindPrint data, educators can build their own competency and agency because they no longer need to rely on other people and their insights to help them figure out the next step for how to instruct a student. Because of this, teachers feel more capable, and ultimately stay in their role longer.

With MindPrint, teachers reported that they feel empowered. Andy Haynes, Assistant Director at Fusion Academy, shared, “In general, [MindPrint] gives us a sense of empowerment. Teachers feel more in control of students. It’s become a first place to turn - with a new class or student, a lot of teachers will ask to see the MindPrint or talk about the student through that lens. It eliminates a lot of the helpless feelings teachers may first experience when introduced with teaching a new student.” These empowered teachers are able to more effectively deliver instruction specific to the student’s strengths. When instruction is truly differentiated the teachers feel competent, which makes the students more confident, and that improves everything in a school.

One student enrolled in mid-2020 with a fully virtual model due to the pandemic. This student tested every boundary. He got frustrated quickly and would storm off from his computer when asked to do things he wasn’t competent in. We couldn’t get him to come back to learn at his computer. MindPrint helped us see that this kid’s talents were being hidden in the virtual model. His MindPrint showed very low flexible thinking. However, he was high in abstract reasoning and spatial perception. So we stopped forcing huge readings and lectures upon him, and instead started turning the class around. We would provide brief context and he would spend the rest of the period designing things on Canva or PPT around that.

Once he was in control of the screen to design and build things, it was easy to keep him engaged for 50 minutes. The work he was doing and looking up was all relevant to what we wanted him to learn. We changed from telling him everything to introducing a topic and having the student fill in the blanks with what he needed to know. This revolutionized everything for the student and the instructor. The MindPrint data gave the teacher confidence in taking this more creative approach to learning.