Pillars

Learning Centered School Culture = A school’s culture is one of the most difficult to describe and yet one of the most important elements in its success or failure in educating its students. The culture and climate of a school can be affected by factors from disciplinary problems and classroom rowdiness to educator pessimism or student apathy. Culture and climate, however, can most nearly be described as the sum of all perceptions and emotions attached to the school, both good and bad, held by students, faculty, administrators, parents, and the community at large. Some schools are seen as better or worse than they are, some have “reputations,” some are suffocating while others nurturing. Every school is perceived as different and every school has its own atmosphere and mood.

The importance of understanding and managing this somewhat elusive element is, however, manifest. Research shows quite clearly that schools perceived as being positive, safe, and nurturing environments focused on student learning do better than schools that lack this climate, regardless of say available technology, teacher training and other more obvious factors. This is not to say that a school with no textbooks will outperform one with textbooks based solely on environment, but that the learning environment, culture, and climate produced by the school as a whole can help or hinder in dramatic ways.

Accelerated Schools = assists at-risk students to learn at a faster rate so they can perform at levels appropriate to their age. Enrichment strategies offer opportunities for reversing the present educational crisis for at-risk students. The principles of the Accelerated Schools model include unity of purpose, empowerment/responsibility, and building on student strengths.

Differentiated Instruction= is the process of  ensuring that what a student learns, how he/she learns it, and how the student demonstrates what he/she has learned is a match for that student’s readiness level, interests, and preferred mode of learning”. Differentiation stems from beliefs about differences among learners, how they learn, learning preferences and individual interests.

Differentiation in education can also include how a student shows that they have mastery of a concept. This could be through a research paper, role play, podcast, diagram, poster, etc. The key is finding how your students learn and displays their learning that meets their specific needs.

No Social Promotion= Social promotion is the practice of promoting a student (usually a general education student, rather than a special education student) to the next grade despite their low achievement in order to keep them with social peers. It is sometimes referred to as promotion based on seat time, or the amount of time the child spent sitting in school, regardless of whether the child learned the necessary material.

Advocates of social promotion argue that promotion is done so as not to harm the students' self-esteem, to keep students together by age (together with their age cohort), to facilitate student involvement in sports teams, and to allow a student who is strong in one area, but weak in another, to advance further in the strong area.

Professional Learning Community= focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively, and hold yourself accountable for results.

Traditional Discipline/Student Code of Conduct= A student code of conduct contains guidelines and rules to ensure proper order in schools. The students are obligated to follow the procedures of the student code of conduct. If any student fails to abide by the student code of conduct, the school authority has a right to issue consequences to the student

Character Education= foster ethical, responsible, and caring young people by modeling and teaching good character through an emphasis on universal values that we all share.