GLADE PARK COMMUNITY SCHOOL

GLADE PARK COMMUNITY SCHOOL VISION STATEMENT

The mission of the proposed Glade Park Community School is to provide children on Glade Park as well as the Grand Valley with a learning environment that meets or exceeds the local and state educational standards  by connecting people to nature through education.  Glade Park Community School, which would operate within the Mesa County School District, will integrate ecology, culture and community to ensure academic excellence and personal success.  We will be an innovation elementary school that offers a nurturing, rich and challenging curriculum that cultivates life-long learning.  Our approach to education is based on experiential learning, small, multi-age classes and direct association with the natural world.

Common Instructional Characteristics

The Glade Park Community School is inspired by the work of several leading educators and a variety of methods.  These include:

•     The multiple intelligences approach of Howard Gardner
•     The Waldorf approach of Rudolph Steiner
•     The student-initiated project learning of Integrated Day
•     The skill building techniques of traditional Western education
•     The content standards as required by the state

1.   The natural world will form a central vehicle for curricular content.
2. Learning will take place outside in the natural world when appropriate, throughout the year.
3. There will be the daily use of storytelling, music, painting, handwork, poetry, puppetry, drama, or clay and sculpture.
4. A balance of whole group instruction with small group work and individual attention as deemed appropriate by the teacher.
5. Children will always be offered a variety of learning activities to address differences in learning styles.  Worksheets will be used a t a minimum as needed for practice or modeling information.
6. There will be commitment to the dignity of the child, the authority of adults, and the importance of community.
7. The teacher will be a model of artist, naturalist and passionate learner.                        

Student Outcomes

The staff will offer each child opportunities to grow to their full potential, understanding that each child is unique, with their own strengths and challenges.

Children will cultivate their musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic, mathematical, and naturalist intelligences as a result of a program that integrates these many ways of learning.

Children will develop imagination, creative thinking, and problem-solving abilities through important questions posed.

Children will develop confidence, curiosity and a thirst for knowledge through active involvement in their subjects.

Children will develop an aesthetic sensibility, and awareness of beauty in themselves as they work in an environment incorporation natural materials.

Children will develop an understanding and reverence for the natural world.

Children will cultivate a respect for themselves, their teachers, peers, community, and other cultures and the natural world, through a program that creates respect as its core value.