As we prepared for the start of a new school year, the Corlears faculty and staff placed our school’s mission at the center of building community life. Through guided facilitation, the community reflected upon the values embedded throughout our school.
We thought about the values that guide us in our personal lives, the values that inspire our work at Corlears, the values we emphasize in our spaces, and the values that infuse the spirit and traditions at Corlears. We considered which values would support the expectations we set for how children and adults treat one another, and which values we believe all constituents in the community should be held accountable.
A bulletin board displaying faculty and staff’s commitment to living and upholding the values at Corlears.
From 14 words, and a full morning of conversation, we thoughtfully selected six core values that we all believe will guide us through the school year:
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Belonging
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Curiosity
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Compassion
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Growth
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Responsibility
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Courage to act
These core values will be the guiding principles that shape how we communicate and collaborate as a community. By naming what we value, we are committing to what we believe is at the core of our school’s mission.
The core values are being infused throughout school spaces and unifying the school community. Our hope is that in seeing these six single words repeated throughout the school, our brains will build schemas — the mental structures that guide our behavior and influence how we think and act. We hope for these core values to become communal language across various contexts, disciplines, environments, and constituencies. We have already spent time thinking about how we will bring them to life for our children, and embody them in our everyday interactions with community members.
We invite you print a copy for your home and think about how these six words might translate into your family life as well!
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