At the core of all learning is our life skills framework. This is where students also learn to develop the D-PREP school values to support their character development. This promotes compassionate, resilient, and adaptable learners for today’s changing world. As young as Grade 1, students learn about how the brain works and how to manage their emotions through practicing mindfulness. This allows our students to develop both self and social understanding and management skills, one of the most important skills in life. The student’s development through our life skills framework supports their academic and personal development.
The D-PREP vision elements of Dream, Discover and Deliver, our CO-CREATORS values, and life truths support each domain.
Self Understanding
The central domain of Self-awareness and understanding sees developing healthy self-perspectives such as cultivating self-love, self-worth, and self-respect. In promoting self-awareness for younger children, we start with mindful movement and breathing exercises. Mindfulness is a guide and practice to support strong social and emotional development.
From age two we use the mood meter to cultivate emotional awareness in all our students. Teachers also lead morning discussions to check in on how students are feeling on a daily basis.
Students are also taught about the science behind the brain’s neurological processes and engage in observations and discussions regarding the connection of the brain’s physiological make-up and how it affects our ability to regulate ourselves.
Students are taught various meditation techniques of becoming aware of their thoughts and emotions. Learning how to calm your body and mind and learning to regulate your attention is one of the most critical skills in successful learning and living. Students are also taught techniques to manage challenging feelings and emotions.
Social Understanding
In the second domain of social awareness and social understanding, we implement a variety of social experiments on a variety of concepts such as compassion, courage, honesty, and patience. One example is the blind project, where students are blindfolded to experience the courage to walk around the school blindfolded. This develops empathy and compassion for others who may not be physically able as them.
We also use group discussions on critical social situations. One example is the mass shooting in Thailand in 2019. Students reflect on why some people are not able to regulate their emotions and end up hurting so many other people. This deeper understanding of society allows students to understand important social problems that affect so many people, thus, helping to prevent future social problems of the same kind to keep happening.
Livelihood
The Livelihood domain introduces life / universal truths:
- Change is normal
- Our thoughts create our reality
- Loving ourselves is the foundation to loving anyone else.
We believe that if all children were taught to understand these universal truths while still in school, they will have a much easier and more successful time in navigating life both in and outside of school. Livelihood refers to creating and securing physical, mental, emotional, and financial well-being – we refer to this as Meaning, Money and Mastery.
Understanding social structures and business markets as well as developing effective collaboration, presentation, and problem-solving skills, are important elements of livelihood. It is about turning their passions into not only an exciting but a successful and sustainable lifestyle in which our graduates can be truly self-reliant in both their personal and professional lives
Active Citizenship
The fourth domain, consists of Active Citizenship. This domain will plant the seed for a very strong foundation of all the essential life values from which all their thought, behaviors, and actions will stem from. The D-PREP Values consists of being
- courageous
- Open
- Compassionate
- Resilient
- Adaptable
- Thankful
- Respectful
- Self-Aware
When they are whole, loving, and strong human beings, they will naturally want to create positive change for themselves and their community through active citizenship. They will merge who they are and what they love to do with being of contribution to their families and communities.
The ultimate goal of life skills is to help students experience their own inner power and the realization that they are more than capable of creating their own realities and achieving successful livelihood.
