GEMS World Academy Chicago, Chicago | Fees, Rankings, Address, Admission, Vacancies, Reviews & More

My daughter has been at GEMS for the past 5 years, starting in Pre-School at 3 yrs to now 2nd grade, and look forward to many more years. We love the IB curriculum, small class sizes and AMAZING teachers & staff! They’ve catered to our daughter’s needs individually to help her realize her own potential and challenge her appropriately. The unit of inquiry based curriculum creates an integrated approach across subjects, so my daughter knows how to quickly apply what she learns in math or literacy to real world situations. The curriculum is still very rigorous, yet in a way that’s fun and practical. They encourage autonomy and agency along with leadership & teamwork amongst the kids with the necessary support and systems to really help them thrive as global citizens!

The community of students, teachers and parents is a truly diverse (not lip service) supportive base of love & care. The benefit of GEMS being “newer” is its ability to quickly pivot, adapt and integrate the best ideas regardless of the source. And while the management has honestly had its issues the past few years, it now has the right group of individuals in place from which to flourish. This never impacted the quality of teaching.

For those interested, below is an example of the Unit of Inquiry “Wants and Needs” that really made us proud of GEMS! Micro/macro economics in 2nd grade…

EXAMPLE: The kids created a classroom economy
– Classroom store – students were each given the same amount of money and a blank “wallet” and had to budget and use math skills to decide how much to spend on supplies to decorate their wallets
– Students read job descriptions and learned the “salary” for each classroom job, then discussed the pros and cons of each job in light of its salary.
– Job Applications – applying to the classroom jobs in writing and getting recommendations from classmates as references
– Budgeting – students receive daily wages for the jobs they earned from their applications, then decide what to spend their money on during the day (special seats, extra supplies, etc.) and what to save their money for in the future (Lunch Bunch with a teacher is pricey!)
– Work vs Play – students have the option to pick up “odd jobs” during their recess if they want to make extra money to save toward a goal.
– Supply and Demand Glow stick jewelry exercise – when there was only one glow stick necklace for sale (low supply), it was in high demand and the students outbid one another to purchase it for a very high price. Then, later, I had too many glow sticks that I needed to get rid of (high supply), and the students didn’t want them so badly anymore (low demand) so the students talked collectively and offered me a much lower price per glow stick.
– Final project – Make something for your own store to sell to classmates. Students bought from each other’s classmates and even had to convert currency like going to another country b/c each classroom decided to use different forms of currency.

We are thrilled that our child is at this GEMS. She has found a community of intelligent, driven, diverse, curious, happy, and well adjusted students. This is in large part due to the school culture set by the principals, the teachers, and the parents. High teaching standards along with personalized attention on an IB platform has resulted not only in academic success, but well informed viewpoints amongst the students. An added bonus is the parent community, comprising of warm, friendly, and welcoming individuals, it is dedicated to the school and its principles.

As a physician, I trusted their Covid related measures and opted to send my child to school over remote learning. They were very scientific and appropriate in their response. Their measures resulted in hardship for some parents such as the post holiday remote learning, but these were being driven by real time Omicron data. They have managed to keep our kids safe, educated, and happy during these very challenging times!

Our daughter has been at GEMs for 5 years now. I am so impressed by this institution. The faculty, teachers, students, peers, mentors, and just the campus itself exceeds any expectation I could have had. We started our daughter in the 3s program, and I can truly say it has built a solid foundation for her during her early development years. GEMs has this amazing ability to look at the student as an individual, and really help build on the skills they are skillful at in order to help motivate and build confidence to exceed in other areas. We are so proud to see every day how much our daughter has learned, developed new life skills, excelled in different subjects, and has built her confidence! This community is like a little village, where you feel like your child is looked after and is becoming the best version of themself. It is truly special. We will be sending our younger daughter to GEMs starting this fall, and can’t wait to see what this education system will offer her!