Dear Parents and Community Members:
D-PREP believes in and emphasizes the development of each student’s character, heart, and soul, as much as their academic skills, their mind.
We embed work on a character throughout everything that we do, in our Units of Inquiry, our morning circle time, and our life skills curriculum.
We do this in many ways, including our CO-CREATORS core values and the work on these values throughout all the students’ classes.
Many of these CO-CREATORS values (C= Courageous; O=Open; C=Compassionate; R=Resilient; E= Ethical; A= Adaptable; T=Truthful; O= Optimistic; R= Reflective; S=Self-aware) are directly aligned with the IB Learner Profile that you will read more about in this issue of our magazine.
For example, the IB Learner Profile of Risk-taker is very similar to courageous, Open-minded is basically the same as D-PREP’s value of open, Caring is directly related to compassion, Principled from IB is similar to our value of ethical, Balanced is related to self-awareness, and Reflective is in both the IB Learner Profile and our Core Values.
So, the only components of the IB Learner Profile which are not embedded in our D-PREP Core Values are the attributes of Inquirers, Knowledgeable, Thinkers and Communicators.
We embed work on these four IB Learner Profile areas through our process of individual goal setting with each of our students each year, and through ongoing work on the skills embedded in the IB Approaches to Learning (Thinking skills, Communication skills, Social skills, Self-management skills, and Research skills) that are built into our instruction in each and every class.
We hope you enjoy the highlights in this issue of Pegasus Stories that includes a focus on how character is essential in the school design model of Expeditionary Learning, is embedded into the definitions of the IB Learner Profile, and an example of how these Learner Profile attributes are worked on the context of a Unit of Inquiry.
This issue also provides a glimpse for our readers into the wonderful Halloween Celebration at the end of last month and highlights one of our exciting after-school clubs on vlogging and video-making. Enjoy!
Best,
Amy K. Marx
Principal
