GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) – Education is a powerful tool, and school plays such a big role in children’s lives, so why not find the one that fits your child and family the best? Choice Schools and National School Choice Week is here to help!

“National School Choice Week is a time where we can celebrate the choices that we have in education” says Terry Larkin, Principal at New Branches Charter Academy. “Most of our charter schools are public, they’re run very similarly to a traditional school is run, with a bit different in funding, we have kind of special niches.”

Both New Branches Charter Academy and the West Michigan Academy of Environmental Science are schools based around outdoor learning. Courtney Kingma, a mother of two students at the West Michigan Academy of Environmental Science, loves that her kids are outside doing math, art, gym, and everything else! “When they get home, they’re tired, they’re ready to talk to us all about the things that they learned, and I love that the staff is just so hands on. They’re willing to do whatever it takes to meet every single kid at where they are,” she says.

Tari Macias noticed that her children needed to be outside, they needed exercise, and that they needed a hands on learning environment inside a smaller classroom. Her daughter, Aaralyn says she loves her school since “a lot of the teachers and staff are really funny, if there’s problems with kids, they help us get through it, they really help us learn, they make sure we have what we need.”

To learn more about Choice Schools and the 16 partner schools they have, visit their website. To hear more about National School Choice Week, visit here.