OUR
VISION:
Williamsburg Prep seeks to prepare students to become strong, active
contributing members of a democratic society and citizens of the global
community, who possess the critical thinking, knowledge and skill base
in mathematics, science, and technology, and are able to use this
knowledge ethically and responsibly to assure social, economic, and
political justice in their local and global communities through their
decisions and actions as they work individually and collaboratively
with others to address the myriad opportunities and challenges
confronting citizens of the 21st century.
OUR
MISSION:
Williamsburg Prep is organized around several core values:
1. 21st
Century Skills: The escalating
linguistic, racial, socio-economic, cultural and political diversity in
our communities poses unique challenges for adults in a democratic
society in negotiating policies and practices for the common good.
Improved telecommunications, interconnectedness of economies, and
interrelated socio-cultural events pose similar challenges in the
emerging global community. Citizens of the 21st century will need to be
bilingual and have multicultural awareness, in addition to
technological literacy. The concept of democratic citizenship includes
all groups in the community and the recognition that we must take
collaborative action for the common good. Democratic citizenship
requires that each student develop a strong sense of self (e.g.,
self-directed empowered learner), a sense of place(i.e., responsibility
to family and community), a sense of direction (i.e., values and send
of life purpose), and a sense of possibilities (i.e., an understanding
of alternatives).
2. Comprehensive
Services: Maximizing a
student’s potential requires support at four levels: student,
family, school and community. To this end, we need to create
comprehensive services that address the academic and non-academic needs
of students and their families, through well designed and effective
collaboration among home, school, and community.
3. Culture
of Inquiry: Two important
understandings of learning are that knowledge is distributed and that
knowledge is socially constructed. Central to both is the notion that
21st century citizens need to have the ability to communicate and work
collaboratively with others as well as have highly developed inquiry
skills, for students as well as faculty. To this end, the faculty and
students from Williamsburg Prep and LIU will work to create a strong
culture of inquiry in their work.
4. High
Expectations: Every student
will be provided with a rigorous academic program designed around state
and national content standards, to which teacher and student
performance standards, and assessments in each content area will be
aligned. Thematic performance based project learning tasks will be used
to help students develop an understanding of the interrelatedness of
knowledge across disciplines, create venues for deep consideration of
ethical implications, provide opportunities to work and learn
collaboratively, as well as to relate learning to their lived
experiences. Given the background of our students and the importance of
communication, all teaching and learning tasks in each content area
will focus on helping students to develop their speaking, reading,
comprehension, and writing language skills.
5. Continuous
Assessment and Feedback: A
process for assuring continuous assessment of each student is required
to guide effective instruction, as well as is an on-going examination
of the quality of teaching and learning. Both the learner and the
teacher need clearly articulated outcome performance standards,
benchmarks, criteria, and exemplars to fully participate in their own
continuous self-assessment. Such an accountability system will be
implemented across the curriculum.
WP
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