Our mission is to prepare each student for college and for life through a challenging curriculum which accommodates individual learning styles. We want to have our students discover responsibility for their own lives as well as empathy for all people and cultures. Through a deep respect for independent thinking, we strive to guide our students in their personal growth toward a genuine self-knowledge so that they can achieve their full human potential.

BELIEFS

We believe the school's responsibility in education is to bring curiosity, challenge, pleasure and a sense of accomplishment into our students' lives. We believe it is through commitment and determination that students stretch the limits of their minds in the joy and celebration of learning.

We believe education must not be a race for the accumulation of facts, but should provide the basic tools and ideas for learning so that education will be an enriching end in itself.

We believe certain skills to be essential for all of our graduates: To read well, to write clearly and coherently, to study effectively, to reason soundly, and to question thoughtfully and creatively.

METHODS

Our faculty are academic coaches, providing academic leadership as well as guidance toward learning and personal growth. We embrace the Socratic method and experiential learning as primary pedagogical tools.

Students will acquire the knowledge and skills needed to make personal decisions leading toward physical and emotional well being.

There will be a clear disciplinary code for all students.

Everything taught at our school endeavors to be a life-long skill, whether it be literary, linguistic, athletic, artistic, scientific, mathematical or historical.

CURRICULUM

Our Core Curriculum will be English, foreign language, mathematics, history and politics, natural sciences, the arts and applied technology. All courses will be taught within an integrated curriculum, demonstrating relationships among the fields of study.

Students will experience a progression of learning based not on chronological age, but on understanding.

Our students will be provided with non-language-based processes for intuitive insight and the development of meaning, in addition to rational academic processes.

Our curriculum includes involvement with the local community and concern for worldwide issues, which aid in discovering an ability and a responsibility to make a difference in the world. Our students will participate in service and extra-curricular projects within the Greater Holland communities.

CULTURE

To succeed in our mission we need the students' and parents' active partnership and agreement with the School Mission, which includes a personal commitment to serious academic challenge.

The atmosphere of the school is that of a safe place in which students feel free to develop individual ideas and styles. Our faculty stresses unanxious expectations; making errors is a necessary part of the learning process.

The culture of our school is one of mutually respectful interaction between adults and students; we recognize the need of living enlightened and humane lives.

We encourage a student population of social, economic and racial diversity.

We will be an Elementary School of grades kindergarten, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, a Middle School of grades 6, 7, and 8 and a High School of grades 9, 10, 11, and 12; the school will strive for a small population of students of approximately 950, and classes will be targeted to be an average class size of 20.