Reading progress reports (which Carol Oko and I do before each one goes out to parents) gives a window into the rich variety of activities Parker students are involved in. We see the scope of critical thinking skills as they evolve from the youngest to the oldest grades. We also see the careful guidance towards excellence that the teachers give each student.I missed many school days during the last eight weeks due to family matters, so reading progress reports caught me up on all the wonderful complexity and interconnections of our curriculum, both academic and social.
On Monday teachers and administrators had a wonderful day of professional development. A trainer from The Institute for Global Ethics worked with us for the whole day on ethical decision making. Not the right vs wrong kind of decisions that are essentially easy to make. But the right vs right ones that we agonize over.
We developed a list of five core values that make a code of ethics to help inform decision making. It doesn't make it easier, really, to make the tough decisions, but it does give us a way to simplify and analyze the issues. And to think about how to inspire our students to live up to their own core values.
Here are the core values we developed for Parker School - and they are essentially the same ones that are developed by groups all around the world!
Respect
Compassion
Responsibility
Honesty
Justice
How our students and we live up to them will determine all of our futures.
