Creating a school from scratch

Colina Learning Center, Romania

Colina’s purpose is to support everyone to learn how to thrive in life, and their vision is to build a learning culture throughout every home. We helped them devise a dual curriculum for their school – for children and adults.

With a Masters in Education, a background in business and previous experience of building from the ground up to establish one of the finest schools in Bucharest, Colina’s Founder, Andreia Mitrea, has every credential for success. Inspired (but dismayed) by the statistic that only 6% of what we learn through formal and traditional education remains with us long-term, Andreia’s vision was for a school where learners received an education that would prepare them for the life they want to lead – and where parents and other significant adult role models would be part of the journey. The result is the Colina Learning Center in Romania.

Involving, serving and supporting parents and other significant adults, as well as the children, was our critical first step in creating a dual curriculum that would involve the whole family in dynamic learning and support. We became learners ourselves, looking around the world to discover the best teaching and learning techniques and tools, and ditching the rest. Inspired by Andreia’s belief that it doesn’t just take a village to bring up a child, but it takes a great village to bring up a child well – in her words, ‘a community of beautify minds’ – we created a dual curriculum that supports both children and adults to learn... and to learn how to learn in a way that suits them best.

At Colina, children are encouraged not just to dream, but to define those dreams, and then develop the objectives and resilience to make them come true. Enabling and supporting children to learn for themselves, so that no matter where they go after school they thrive rather than survive, means that Colina’s model for learning is based around head, heart and hands – it’s about learning, but also about emotional, spiritual and physical wellbeing too. The result is an accredited system that is robust yet flexible, preparing young people for whatever the world throws at them in the future.

“I had an idea. And then I started working with this crew. They will not allow you to go small, to dilute, to minimise your ideas. I had a dream. It would still be a dream without this thinking. A year later, now I get to see the dream coming true.” Andreia Mitrea, Founder