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Our Mission

The Howard School empowers students with language-based learning differences by addressing individual needs and leveraging strengths to develop a lifelong understanding of and advocacy for their own learning process.

Our Values

Practice kindness and respect

Seek a spirit of partnership

Honor our humanity

celebrate our differences

Beliefs Guiding Our Desired Results For Students

  • Dignity, common decency and respect are the cornerstones of a rich, healthy living and learning environment.
  • Intelligence can be nurtured and developed: it is not fixed or immutable.
  • Understanding one’s process of learning is as important as the knowledge itself.
  • Students learn best when they have intimate knowledge of their own learning profile.
  • Students’ intrinsic motivation to learn is realized when they are encouraged to question, explore and take risks.
  • Children acquire knowledge and express their understanding of that knowledge in many ways.
  • Deep and enduring understanding occurs when students construct meaning in their own minds and apply knowledge in new ways and across diverse and novel contexts.
  • Learning is a collaborative endeavor built upon trust, respect and communication among student, family, school and community.

 

Hopes and Dreams for Howard School Students

  • Students will know who they are as learners and their own underlying learning processes.
  • Students will reflect on and assess the quality of their own learning, and will advocate for what they need to learn best.
  • Students will capitalize on their strengths, and will identify and use tools and strategies in such a way that barriers to learning are diminished.
  • Students will demonstrate that they are learning the curriculum content and basic skills that support the big ideas and essential questions in the curriculum.
  • Students will express themselves in a variety of ways, including through the arts and movement.
  • To understand something “is to see it in its relations to other things” (John Dewey). Students will know how to use their knowledge and skills to solve new problems and to think critically about their world.
  • Students will extend the reach of their learning with technology, using it independently to research, author, and communicate.
  • Students will understand and act upon their responsibility to the communities in which they live.