CHICO — Donovan Bonea and Margaret Knappen took distinctly different routes to Inspire School of Arts and Sciences. Bonea attended another Chico charter school, Blue Oak, before deciding to apply. Knappen was home-schooled, making freshman year at Inspire her public school debut.
Both happen to be headed to UC Santa Cruz, but there’s something more they share in common: belonging to a senior class that, without hyperbole, their principal deems unique. Of the 90 graduates who strolled down the aisles of Laxson Auditorium on Thursday evening, around 75 including Bonea and Knappen spent the full four years of high school together — even if virtually at first. They started at Inspire during the height of the COVID pandemic, when all courses were online.
That was a paradigm shift at every school, but particularly so for a curriculum heavy on experiential learning through performing arts, hands-on science and “advisory” (home room for life skills). “This class is really special,” Becky Brown, principal/superintendent and a founding teacher at Inspire, reflected before commencement. “This group seems to be unlike what we think of teens — they take their learning seriously, but they don’t take themselves too seriously.
They have a sense of humor, and I think that’s really contributed to their sense of community.” Scholastic achievements yielded admissions to UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz and Cal Poly Humboldt along with Chico State and Butte College. Be.
