Explore this California community that has successfully established innovative teaching and learning throughout its school district. Discover what drives innovation and excellence at Vista Unified and Mission Vista High School.
Vista Unified School District leaders create the conditions—such as distributed leadership and a culture of innovation—in which innovative teaching and learning can flourish. For example, Mission Vista High School focuses on learners’ strengths, interests, and values to support student-centered learning.
Take a virtual tour of both the district and the high school with these multimedia stories and podcast playlist!
About Vista Unified School District
The House of Learning represents the district's Blueprint for Educational Excellence and Innovation, showing how its initiatives work together to transform learning for equity, wellbeing, and postsecondary success.
The district sets the conditions for innovation through strategies like invitation and inspiration instead of mandates. Professional learning for adults reflects VUSD’s commitment to personalizing learning. As with the learners they serve, each educator and staff member is supported to grow their skills and abilities. The district also cultivates a collaborative mindset, engaging deeply with stakeholders: students, parents and families, community organizations, and industry partners.
District Stories
Excellence and Innovation: Vista Unified School District - Start here for an overview, with fast facts about Vista Unified and its strategic approach to transforming learning as well as brief introductions to the practices featured in the rest of the district stories.
- Reaching for the Personal Learning Star at Vista Unified - Find out why VUSD has embraced personalized learning as its "moonshot" and what that looks like in schools and classrooms.
- A Wide and Inclusive Network: Stakeholder Engagement at VUSD - Explore the ways that VUSD engages with diverse partners from higher education, business and industry, parents and families, and learners themselves.
- Sharing Power for a Shared Vision: Change Agent Leadership at VUSD - Learn what distributed leadership looks like in adult practices like goal-setting and decision-making.
- VIDA for Life: A Q&A with Vista Innovation & Design Academy - For an example of how the district empowers schools to transform learning in ways that align with their identities and the needs of their community, follow along as VIDA Principal Eric Chagala describes design thinking and learner engagement as the engines that power the teaching and learning at their school.
About Mission Vista High School
Grades Served: 9-12
Location: Oceanside, California
Type: District magnet school
Enrollment: 1,693
Race/Ethnicity: 49% White, 33% Hispanic, 9% Asian, 2% African American, 7% Other
Free/Reduced Lunch: 27%
ELL: 0.8%, 18% Reclassified
School Website: mvhs.vistausd.org
One of three comprehensive high schools in Vista Unified, Mission Vista High School (MVHS) is a dual-magnet public high school that focuses on two special areas of study: Arts & Communication and Science & Technology.
To prepare students for postsecondary success, MVHS provides a rich and varied curriculum designed for academic rigor as well as relevance to learners’ strengths, interests, and values. Supported by a program that is both broad and deep in its offerings, MVHS learners create personalized, four-year pathways of study. This pathways approach incorporates key capacities, mindsets, and structures to support personalized learning.
In response to the changes they see in the world and in the employment landscape, educators at MVHS also design learning aligned to a broader definition of postsecondary success, one that encompasses durable and transferable Habits of Mind, as well as academic achievement.
A key factor in the success of MVHS and its students is the culture of trust they have built, an environment that promotes creativity, growth, and innovation. School leaders and teachers are empowered to set collective and individual "Wildly Important Goals" and exercise autonomy in determining how to meet them. Mirroring VUSD’s commitment to shared leadership, educators and learners experience numerous opportunities to innovate and grow.
Mission Vista Stories
High School Spotlight: Mission Vista High School - Start here for an overview of the high school including fast facts and links to the stories and podcasts available for you to learn more about the key features of the MVHS model.
- Personal Learning at Mission Vista High School - Discover how MVHS educators are personalizing the learner experience.
- Sharing Power for a Shared Vision: Change Agent Leadership at VUSD - Learn about the mindsets and practices that promote MVHS educator agency and innovation.
- Measuring What Matters: Learner-Centered Assessment - Find out why and how MVHS is reimagining assessment to align with the district's goals of personalizing learning and promoting equity.
- Mission Vista High School's Broader Vision for Lifelong Success - Explore how MVHS educators support learners to develop Habits of Mind along with content knowledge.
Vista Unified's Personal Learning Star
Images courtesy of Vista Unified School District and Mission Vista High School.
