We believe that we all learn best when we are connected: to our teachers, our classmates, the place we live, and to our authentic selves. We learn best when we are welcomed into a community and when we have agency in our learning. We learn best when we are motivated and empowered to ask powerful questions about the world and seek truth. We learn best when we find joy in the process of learning.

Essential skills and habits of mind for our students : 

• Inquiry & Research: Question, design experiments, evaluate sources, and make connections.

• Collaboration & Responsibility: Listen, set goals, coordinate, work toward shared understandings, manage projects, and evaluate results.

• Communication & Literacy: Contextualize, interpret, make meaning, create art, and connect to an audience.

• Problem Solving & Design: Articulate problems, develop strategies, and execute plans.

• Knowledge of Self & Resilience: Look inward, develop a growth mindset, manage time, and persevere through challenges.

• Ethical Engagement & Ecological Understanding: Approach the world through an ethical lens, appreciate and work to celebrate diversity in the human and natural world

What our teachers do to foster these skills and habits:

• Build Community: Together with students, build an inclusive, engaging, and joyful classroom.

• Know our Students: Truly see each student and challenge them to learn at the growing edge of their abilities.

• Engage Interests: Provide students some choice in how they learn and how they demonstrate that learning.

• Spark Curiosity: Balance student-led inquiry and teacher-led instruction.

• Assign Powerful Work: Inspire students to do work that matters to themselves and their community.