May 20, 2025
Intrinsic Schools: Saying Goodbye to the “Classroom” Changes the Way Students Learn
By Transcend
Intrinsic Schools built a Chicago middle school and a high school that put student needs at the center of learning.
Instead of one teacher guiding students through the same content at the same time, students experience different learning environments and can customize their learning via playlists.
Intrinsic’s design cultivates agency, critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity in its students.
The result: a 95% high school graduation rate and 70% college enrollment rate for the class of 2024, outpacing the district average.
The Opportunity
The traditional concept of a classroom just wasn’t working for Chicago high school students. Over and over again, the data showed that one talented teacher simply could not keep up with the varied learning styles and needs of 30 students.
When Intrinsic founders Melissa Zaikos and Ami Gandhi worked at Chicago Public Schools in 2014, only 14% of youth entering Chicago Public Schools earned a 4-year degree by the time they were 25. Zaikos and Gandhi were surrounded by extremely committed teachers and colleagues but many students still were not thriving.
When teaching high school math, Ami often wished she could clone herself to simultaneously run a math talk, advise a group geometry project, and support a group of students struggling to solve proportions.
They needed a way to offer multiple, personalized learning experiences at once, so that all kids were getting what they needed, when they needed it.
“I realized that school isn’t designed to change. It isn’t designed to be responsive when a child needs it most. It isn’t designed to allow a teacher to apply their expertise to unique problems. That made us wonder, ‘what if we built a school that was designed to be flexible and change and expand based on what children most needed?’”
–Ami Gandhi, Chief Learning Officer at Intrinsic Schools
–Ami Gandhi, Chief Learning Officer at Intrinsic Schools
In 2023, the Illinois State Board of Education reported that only:
The Redesign
In the early years, Intrinsic listened to an inclusive coalition of community members about what they most wanted for their children.
The community identified several learning experiences as being essential for their students:
- Customization of the focus, pace, and sequence of learning
- Relevance of the content to students’ lives, interests, and goals
- Whole-Child Focus on the complex factors that support learning and development
- Rigorous Learning promoting the range of thinking skills needed to make meaning of complex ideas across contexts
Intrinsic Schools set out to design learning environments around the needs of students and teachers. These environments would customize learning for all students, in part by letting students review their data and set their own goals. By building their agency, students would also grow the drivers to be more motivated, confident, and successful.
A reimagined use of technology and space would be necessary for both students and teachers to be successful. Such a design could meet learners at their level while optimizing teacher capacity.
Backed by a clear, locally driven vision for a new way of teaching and learning, Intrinsic leaders built their school days around three pillars:
Space
The “classrooms” aren’t classrooms at all. They are large, open-concept, modular spaces called “pods” that facilitate two to three teachers team-teaching (or working at once) to meet the needs of up to 60 kids in multiple learning modalities. Pods allow students to make choices about their learning in order to build critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and independence.
Academics
Intrinsic students engage with high quality instructional materials via Google Classroom and edtech platforms via Clever. While they are guiding their own learning, students are also focused on collaboration. Ninety-minute team-taught blocks bring students together in flexible groups, with the team-teaching approach allowing teachers to facilitate small groups or other modalities simultaneously.
Well-Being
Intrinsic’s EPIC Model facilitates systems and routines that support student-level and school-level well-being and empower students to make choices about their learning, follow their interests, build their own goals, and learn the consequences of their actions. Students are able to try, fail, and persist in the safety of a supportive school environment. Through the EPIC model, students develop the relevant knowledge and skills needed to develop, evolve, and pursue their purpose.
Space
The “classrooms” aren’t classrooms at all. They are large, open-concept, modular spaces called “pods” that facilitate two to three teachers team-teaching (or working at once) to meet the needs of up to 60 kids in multiple learning modalities. Pods allow students to make choices about their learning in order to build critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and independence.
Academics
Intrinsic students engage with high quality instructional materials via Google Classroom and edtech platforms via Clever. While they are guiding their own learning, students are also focused on collaboration. Ninety-minute team-taught blocks bring students together in flexible groups, with the team-teaching approach allowing teachers to facilitate small groups or other modalities simultaneously.
Well-Being
Intrinsic’s EPIC Model facilitates systems and routines that support student-level and school-level well-being and empower students to make choices about their learning, follow their interests, build their own goals, and learn the consequences of their actions. Students are able to try, fail, and persist in the safety of a supportive school environment. Through the EPIC model, students develop the relevant knowledge and skills needed to develop, evolve, and pursue their purpose.
“I think the pod structure is useful and helpful because there is so much support. I like to be able to learn from different teachers and support structures. It’s very different from how my other school was organized.”
–Eva, High-Schooler at Intrinsic
–Eva, High-Schooler at Intrinsic
With the right conditions in place, Melissa and Ami believed that students would thrive academically, access enriching activities that make adolescence fun, and develop the life skills needed for years to come.
“We all learn differently. Some need to hear it. Some need to see it. At Intrinsic, students are empowered to own their own education through a personalized technology approach. Students set their own goals and monitor their own progress. It means our students have a structure for academic independence and our teachers can guide and motivate them as needed.”
–Melissa Zaikos, Intrinsic Schools Co-Founder
–Melissa Zaikos, Intrinsic Schools Co-Founder
The Impact
Young people leave Intrinsic with a deep sense of purpose, and clarity—confident from years of exposure to relevant, real-world learning experiences. Intrinsic graduates, predominantly from recent immigrant backgrounds, are enrolling in college and finding career opportunities at dramatically higher rates than their peers in Chicago Public Schools. They have the will and skill to navigate a postsecondary landscape that is more complex than ever before.
Graduation Rate (2024)
Postsecondary Enrollment (Graduating Class of 2022)
Through a reimagination of what can happen within a school, Intrinsic has created a welcoming and innovative environment where students want to spend time, gain academic mastery, and become poised for real-world success. “Intrinsic brings all this together so that our kids leave confident and prepared for college or wherever life takes them,” says Intrinsic parent Lucy Weatherly.
Student Stories
Meet Isaaq
For Isaaq, who went on to graduate from University of Chicago with a degree in computer science and psychology, Intrinsic’s flexible design was key in pursuing his budding passion for math. While taking three math classes concurrently—unheard of in a traditional curriculum that stresses sequential, paced progression—Isaaq launched a club around video games and used his math skills to code a real-time rankings system he’d been told “couldn’t be done.”
Meet Davis
Davis, now a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was “so-so” in math during his 7th and 8th grade years but he began to flourish once his Intrinsic math pod was turbocharged. This allowed Davis to allocate more time to working in a small group setting with similarly-skilled peers on complex problem-solving tasks. Before graduating Davis took an independent quantum computing course and hosted morning workshops in math for undergraduate classrooms.
“We’re not only preparing our kids for success, we’re showing others how we do it. We’re all in, from our board of directors to our teachers to our families. Together, we’re gonna change the world.”
–Melissa Zaikos, Intrinsic Schools Co-Founder
–Melissa Zaikos, Intrinsic Schools Co-Founder
Author
Transcend supports communities to create and spread extraordinary learning for all.
