Our MISSION is to prepare skilled and reflective teachers who
Commit to fairness and justice in their classrooms and schools
Recognize patterns of inequality in access and opportunity to learn
Provide high quality, engaging curriculum for all learners
Care about their students and convey through their actions their belief that all students can learn
Inspire in their students a passion for learning and a capacity to act in the world
Guiding Principles
Teaching is a moral and political act: Teachers have a moral responsibility to understand economic, social and political factors that affect their students and the schools they attend. Their curricular and pedagogical decisions have an impact on student access to ideas, knowledge, cultural capital and other resources that shape their student sense of efficacy and entitlement to expect high quality curriculum, and the material, intellectual and technological resources that support learning.
Teaching is grounded in an ethic of care: Learning is more likely to occur in a safe and supportive environment in which people from all racial, cultural, socio-economic, gender and ability groups are treated with dignity and respect.
Learning is an active process requiring engagement: Curriculum and pedagogical practices should involve students as active participants in the learning process, as constructors of knowledge and as agents of their own lives.
All students are capable of learning: Teachers should be responsive to their students' needs, interests, cultural meaning making systems, and aspirations. Teachers who show students that they believe in their capacities as learners and hold students to meaningful, high standards make it possible for all to develop their intellectual, moral and social capacities.
Literacy is a civil right: All learners, especially those from marginalized communities, have a right to learn to read the word and the world; to master and use the tools of mathematics, science, social studies, literature and the arts to understand their lives and act as citizens of their communities and the larger society. Without this basic right, students will be unable to fully utilize their other rights as democratic citizens, thus literacy is a civil right!
