AFS Lower School 21st Century Mission Statement

As part of an end of year faculty meeting, we came together in lower school to discuss what it meant to learn in the 21st Century.  We broke into small groups to start the discussion and then came back to brainstorm our thoughts as a group.  From this long list of ideas which included potential opportunities, challenges, moments of clarity and confusion we tried to create a meaningful statement that would guide our practice, in particular our use of technology to support our teaching, student learning and our own learning. We went back into our groups to try to fashion a statement.  Although we had originally hoped to synthesize our views into one coherent statement, the clock ticked away and instead we gathered the individual statements with the intention of having them pulled together into one mission statement to be edited and adapted by the group.  This is the first pass at this statement.  I tried to incorporate the spirit of the group through the use of the phrases and words that came from discussions.  Another lower school faculty member will edit this statement and either she or I will post the edited version here.  Please feel free to post suggestions, anything you feel was left out or not emphasized the way it should be, something you feel is not important, or even positive reviews.

 21st Century Lower School Mission Statement

We strive towards developmentally appropriate and genuine use of technology that supports the articulated curricular goals and maximizes learning. Use of technology should support our vision of nurturing students in their journey to become creative, resourceful and compassionate problem solvers and critical thinkers who are productive and literate in our diverse and interconnected world. Technology resources used to share, collaborate, communicate, access and evaluate information supporting our growing ability to understand and support diversity, how we share resources and our own impact on the environment and one another.  Our use of technology should inspire a time for quiet reflection and evaluation of our values. As teachers we strive to gain fluency with and teach multiple literacies, modeling our own learning as well as balance.