An encompassing education that promotes confidence, opportunity and success.

 Dedicated to ensuring success.

Intermediate Teaching Philosophy

• We believe our program must distinguish itself from elementary and middle levels in order to meet the developmental needs of our students.

• We teach children, not subjects.

• We believe there should be a strong integration of subjects.

• We believe teachers should have smaller student case loads so that they can meet the students' needs more effectively.

• We believe all activities should have student learning at its center.

Collaboration

• We believe collaboration and a focus on learning should be at the heart of our school program.

• We believe teachers who work collaboratively in a non-competitive environment will positively affect student learning.

• We believe teachers should be open to sharing workloads, ideas about their common subject areas, their lesson plans, units, materials, successes and areas of concern.

• We believe collaboration should be built into the daily schedule (common planning periods) and throughout the year during staff development opportunities.

Accountability

• We believe we are all accountable to student learning.

• We believe standards lead to good teaching.

• We believe teachers should be willing to let go of units and activities that do not directly support the standards.

• We believe teachers should have shared responsibility for data analysis of multiple assessments in order to improve teaching and learning.

• We believe teachers district wide should have shared responsibility in preparing students for standardized tests.

Extended Learning Opportunities

• We believe that when students are not learning, they should be afforded extended learning opportunities that are timely and directive to their needs.
   

Staff Development

• We believe teachers should be given release time to collaborate.

• We believe teachers can become experts in specific areas and have the capacity to train colleagues in their area of expertise.

• We believe aides should be included in any training that directly pertains to their support position.

• We believe staff development should include time for the curriculum and skill expectation to be articulated among different grade levels in the district.

Support

• We believe administration should continue to seek ways to have our students and staff better supported with appropriate staffing.

• We believe support staff should be assigned based on student need, not teacher need.

• We believe parents should be expected to support their child's curriculum through activities done with them at home.

• We believe it is our responsibility to train parents in how to work with their children at home by providing parent workshops and activities about specific topic areas.

• We believe parents should be sought out as extra hands in the classroom by developing team parent volunteer banks.

• We believe students who are struggling should be assigned to an informal adult mentor who will check in on him/her once or twice a week.

Celebration

We believe students and staff should celebrate successes and effort frequently.