Progressive by design, joyful by experience.

We consider the social and emotional development of children to be as important as their cognitive development, and we understand that the two go hand-in-hand. We strive to create an environment where each student is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. This approach helps prepare the child to become a responsible member of society and for the challenges and opportunities of today and tomorrow.

We help to raise risk takers and change-makers. With freedom to act on their curiosity, students joyfully arrive each day ready to ask bold questions, explore, build, test, test again and pursue answers. We encourage every child to embrace who they are, and walk with pride through life. When students feel seen, valued, and heard, they become confident, empathetic learners.

Building meaningful relationships between students, teachers, families, and the wider community is the foundation from which our children grow, both academically and emotionally. There are many opportunities during the school day for cooperative work, by which students help each other meet goals and complete tasks. Our students find the courage to speak, the compassion to listen, and the empathy to understand.

Our students are active, aware and engaged citizens. Even our smallest learners are taught leadership skills including standing up for what they believe in and advocating for themselves. We develop graduates who understand real world issues, care about the needs of others and recognize their role and responsibility in the democratic process and the world at large. Learning outside the classroom, students become responsible and active stewards of the urban and natural environments. They are encouraged not only to enjoy the benefits of the city and the natural world, but also to recognize that those benefits come with responsibilities.

Our students are motivated to learn because they have a lot of questions and they find joy in working toward the answers. Students play a vital role in designing the curriculum, formulating questions, seeking out answers and evaluating how successful they have been. Teachers facilitate the process by asking just the right questions along the way to progress students forward. Studies are guided as a fact-finding team, together. This environment creates lifelong learners ready, willing, and able to face challenges, approach problems with confidence, pursue meaningful questions, work alongside others, and appreciate diverse perspectives. 

Skills are not mastered just as ends but rather as tools. We learn to read in order to answer questions or for pleasure; we write, we paint, and we compose music to explore an idea or express understanding; we speak to explain feelings or ideas; we compute to solve problems. We do this until we understand every angle of the problem and our teachers and students are satisfied with the result.