Educational Philosophy

by Kasie Jones

I believe schools should be mansions for expanding minds and sanctuaries for searching souls.  This should hold true for students, staff, parents and community alike.  Those who teach and learn there must carefully construct school climate.  Every classroom should be its own thriving community where all members and views are valued.  Classrooms should be full of teachers as learners and learners as teachers, where engagement, ideas, thinking, and learning abound.  Climate should be built on democratic ideals, positive interactions, and mutual respect.  The climate should nurture philanthropic endeavors where concern and commitment are focused on taking action.  A healthy, service-oriented climate is what makes all people want to return.

I believe community should view the school as the heartbeat of humanity, its partner in developing capable, dependable, knowledgeable, skilled adults with the attitudes and dispositions necessary to succeed in an ever-changing world.  Community should have access to all that is brilliant about the school and promote its potential and achievements with great pride.  Community is the first experience students have to be attached to a cause greater than themselves and where they first practice their citizenry.  The community is a playground for students to apply what they learn in school so that they can safely make mistakes and celebrate their successes.

I believe curriculum, instruction, and assessment are inextricably woven together and serve as the canvass for all who touch it.  Together, curriculum, instruction and assessment should be standards-based and content-driven in order to support all students’ needs to make sense of the world.  Curriculum, instruction, and assessment should be deep, rich, and varied in content; supportive of diverse styles and learners; and compelling and authentic for even the most reluctant learners.  Methods should be student-centered and focus primarily on inquiry-based learning.  Strategies and structures designed to access the curriculum, instruction and assessment must stimulate active participation, high levels of engagement, and include multi-sensory approaches to learning.  Curriculum, instruction, and assessment should encompass a wide array of learning opportunities to address the whole child so that young artists can begin to create light and shadow from the tip of a paintbrush and budding architects can envision the form and function of future libraries, schools, and homes.

I believe stakeholders—all who breathe life into a system--are the cornerstones of schools and without them, schools would have no purpose and crumble.  Teachers should be passionate and compassionate, learning and learned, supporting and supported, creating and creative.  Educational support staff should be viewed and view themselves as essential educators of children, critical to the school’s mission, and role models in a school community.  Students should be exploring, discovering, stretching, questioning, connecting the known with the unknown, becoming critical thinkers, and excitedly returning to school each day for more of what is meaningful to them.  Parents should be fully present partners in student learning.  They should feel the school welcomes them and their many gifts and insights.  Parents should view the school as a safe place to grow themselves.  Parents are children’s first teachers and should be acknowledged as such.