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Dear Parents,
Ernest L. Boyer, formerly President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, delivered an inspirational speech at Grosse Pointe Academy in Grosse Point Farms, Michigan, in April 1995. His eloquent words examined the concept of an effective school, and what process might create such an entity. After pursuing a study which involved a survey of parents, teachers and ten year olds around the world, and which was conducted over a period of several years, Boyer and his colleagues arrived at five basic components which were believed to comprise a quality education.
The first priority of an effective school was perceived to be the construction of a sense of community built around a shared vision, a common goal. Boyer is convinced that the school, to be a community, should be small enough for everyone to be known by name suggesting, perhaps, a maximum size of five hundred, since community does seem to correlate with size. Our learning community is small, intimate, purposeful, communicative, just and disciplined. It is also compassionate, tolerant and positive.
In building such a community within a school, teachers play a key role. Teaching is traditionally an isolated profession, in the sense that teachers are required to spend most of their working hours with their own students within their own room. Boyer believes that teachers need to have time to work together, to talk about common goals, to consider the curriculum, to analyse assessment strategies, as well as to share professional expertise and experiences. This year, Mulgrave's teachers will have the opportunity to team teach as well as to engage in fruitful discussions at our weekly faculty meetings.
He believes, as I do, that parents need to be involved and engaged in the education of children. In the past, a closer and more continuous interaction was maintained between the family and the school, and what the family taught at home, the school reinforced, and vice versa. At Mulgrave, I believe that teachers, parents and children live this triadic view of education: powerful connections are being forged, and bridges built between the school and the family,
Boyer's emphasises the dynamic use of language "an exquisite, mystical, wonderful capacity to communicate with one an other, using the most intricate systems of symbols" and shares my belief that one of the most vital responsibilities of the school is to help children lay strong foundations and building blocks in the understanding of the symbols of words, numbers and arts that combine to produce language. By the time children come to school, they have already mastered at least three thousand words: our task is to build upon a symbol system that is already established. At Mulgrave, we engender excitement in the symbol system ofMathematics, a vital human language as well as in the universal symbol system of the arts, and, of course, in the language of words
A third priority of an effective school is perceived to be a curriculum with 'coherence'. Children need to know about science, history, music and literature, but they also need to understand the connections between the academic disciplines. Children, like Socrates, are always asking "why?" perhaps because they naturally see relationships and patterns. 'Why' is a laudable word in education, and, indeed, throughout life. Everlasting curiosity is a quality to be valued - it certainly alleviates boredom and maintains the longevity of brain cells! I believe that students who begin at a young age to recognise the 'connectedness of things' have begun a life-long learning process. Our curriculum at Mulgrave has been created and woven so that the disciplines are perceived to be connected.
Boyer's fourth priority is the fashioning of a creative, an active not passive, learning climate, in which children learn to co-operate as well as compete and wherein teachers inspire by knowledge, by leaders~p and by giving of themselves. An important component in the formation of such a climate is small classes, in which the child's uniqueness and potential is both recognised and tended. At Mulgrave, our class size is limited to 20 in number.
The fifth priority of Boyer's quality school is the affirmation of core values: friendship, honesty, integrity, respect, responsibility, tolerance, compassion, selfdiscipline, perseverance and service. These values or virtues are written into Mulgrave's Mission Statement, and are daily enacted at school. He concludes that we do not require to search out 'dazzling innovations and experiments' to create a new educational model for a new century, for all that seems to be required is to put into practice those principles and those components that make an effective education, and then make such an experience available to every single student.
We at Mulgrave are trying to do exactly that - Boyer's route map might have been designed for, and by us.
Yours sincerely,
Linda Hamer
Headmistress