Mission of the PASS Progam:

To enable students to become lifelong learners, productive citizens, and informed, caring individuals with sensitivity to, and understand of, the diverse multicultural society in which we live.

Educational Philosphy:

We view all students as individuals, naturally curious and motivated learners, who are capable of integrating experiences in order to add to their understanding of the world around them.  We believe that students are motivated by their interests, and through developmentally appropriate practices, are guided in their ability to construct conceptual understandings from meaningful experiences.  Through the use of integrated curriculum, our teachers facilitate these experiences for their students, using current research and material to guide their practice.

Our guiding principles are:

1.  Learning should be fun, interactive, and meaningful.

2.  Learning is a social process that happens best in a community.

3.  Not all learning is classroom-based.

4.  Pursuing in-depth experiences leads to meaningful and lasting learning.

5.  Students neet opportunities to explore, verbalize, think create, and discover answers to their questions.

6.  Students need the opportunity to both succeed and fail, take risks, and learn from their own mistakes.

7.  Allowing students to make meaningful choices within a curricular context creates ownership of learning.

8.  Teachers are professionals who should be allowed and encouraged to write their own curriculum, to be learners themselves, to have success and failure, and also to take risks.