These values are mutual respect, open dialogue, freedom, and responsibility.
The school is designed for 60 students who understand the essence of self-development and feel themselves as active participants and co-creators of their education.
The curriculum works like a Lego constructor - assembled according to the needs of each student, offering them a variety of activities/lessons/forms of learning/knowledge areas both in distance and face-to-face formats. Some of the main teaching tools are intensive language study (Polish and English)/coaching/project-based learning/academic base/specializations.
Sapiens was created in 2018 by Olena Tkachova as an alternative to the traditional education system, which over time grew from a project into a full-fledged innovative school with a curriculum aimed at developing future competencies.
After the full-scale invasion in February 2022, for 6 months, the founder met and worked as a facilitator and teacher with almost 250 Ukrainian students aged 14-17 in Germany and Poland, to identify their current needs, fears, expectations, conditions; help find new directions.
Thus, the concept and the need to create a new school in Warsaw began to emerge.
On the one hand, the new concept had to meet the modern needs of Ukrainian teenagers who found themselves in difficult conditions: a new culture, a new language environment, the pressure of self-identification and career prospects, as well as the need to continue education. On the other hand, the school needed to rethink the essence and goals of education itself in the context of the modern world.
As a result of the work done, it was revealed that teenagers did not feel capable of influencing their choice, learning; most of them felt lost, indifferent, alienated, abandoned without any external support. They did not feel respected by teachers, only a list of what they should and should not do. This work stimulated Elena's strong desire to build a strong and healthy community of teenagers with relevant educational opportunities, help these young people feel the state of 'I can', return to them the role of the author of their own lives.
In February 2023, Elena began to search for people who had the same feelings, views, and desires to build a community of free and responsible creators. This is how she met with the best distance school "Optima", with which she opened the Sapiens UP Democratic School for Teenagers in Warsaw in partnership.
Partners formed a team, which now consists of 19 people of 8 different nationalities.
