Our school endeavors to be more than the ordinary, to provide all of its learners with a valuable and life-long education that extends far beyond the confines of the school walls, with the belief that learning occurs all the time and everywhere. We believe education can be both theoretical and practical, and that it does encompass moral, emotional, and social learning in addition to standard academics. We endeavor to establish relationships between adults and teens based on mutual respect and understanding. Following the Montessori philosophy, we set forth several goals:
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Learning:
We define learning as a life-long process and expect genuine commitment to each learning construct: intellectual, ethical, emotional, social, aesthetic, creative, wellness, and “school success.”
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Community:
We strive to build a strong school community, but also to prepare learners to be valuable citizens in the larger sense of the civic and political society beyond the school walls.
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Best Work:
We appreciate the effort it takes to be successful in both school and life, and we expect learners to do their best work, even under difficult circumstances.
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Respect:
Human beings have different lifestyles, opinions, and beliefs, and we endeavor to understand and respect these differences rather than passing judgment based on our own personal belief system.
As family members of teens who are overwhelmed by so many possibilities, you have a long, tedious, yet rewarding, road ahead. In committing to the below promises, you also commit to helping your teen in reaching their full potential.
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We will remain open-minded.
Our teen will at times return home with ideas that may challenge the values or concepts that are encouraged by the family. By being involved, we strive to remain open-minded and encourage big life questions as well as consider those questions from our teen’s perspective. Our teen will challenge values or aspects of home life that have never been challenged before and may bring to their family ideas that may never have occurred before; we will allow our teen to bring these issues to the family for discussion in a respectful way. If we are concerned or have questions, we will go directly to their studio advisor and not adhere to gossip or hearsay.
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We will encourage problem-solving.
Teens experience a variety of life situations as they grow. We will encourage our teen to try to solve those situations for themself. This is especially important in securing an Internship location. During this stage of growth in an adolescent’s life, teens also tend to share their perception of situations at school; we will encourage our teen to direct any questions or concerns directly to their studio advisor before intervening on their behalf.
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We will encourage consistent attendance and wellness.
Attendance and timeliness is crucial for each teen in fulfilling their learning objectives for the year and in being successful at school. We will assure that our teen is on time daily (by 8:20 am) and we will communicate any necessary absence due to illness by 8:00am each morning. Absence Waivers will be discussed and approved by Advisors prior to any absences. We will also assure that our teen prepares and packs a healthy lunch daily and budgets/plans the snack for their studio (adhering to the snack guidelines in the Family Handbook). Both of these activities should be completed independently.
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We will set examples.
Many times through the year our teen will be asked to include family for work@home or to complete other activities. We will strive to help our teen complete those activities and encourage further discussion of school situations at home. As a family member, we will remain supportive of our teen and their commitment to learning (ie. attendance on camping trips, supporting internships.) We will assure work is completed consistently at home and we read all communications to support that process. We will support knowing our teen’s goals and projects by reviewing these sheets at home or school every week. By committing 10+ hours of time or talent to the school and advisors, we will show an example of leadership, consistency and caring to our teen.
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We will participate in goal setting.
Teens are expected to set reasonable goals for both personal and intellectual growth. As their family, we will help to achieve these goals in any way that we can. We will support continual growth by reviewing these goals with our teen on a frequent basis. We will work toward a non-corrective interaction with our teen and try to utilize natural and logical consequences in discipline to be more consistent with the Community Montessori philosophy.
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We will attend our teen’s important events.
Teen level workshops designed for parents/guardians and teens should be attended annually as well as other valuable PIP workshops throughout the year. We will attend all four Parent Partner Conferences to collaborate and design plans and goals to assure our teen stays on track for graduation.
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We will respect prepared work.
At this level of learning it is essential to nourish creativity and confidence. Therefore, we will respectfully refrain from changing (corrections and/or criticisms) any work presented to us by our teen and instead utilize collaborative conversation. By allowing creative freedom, we foster confidence within each teen seeing how truly powerful their work is. Teens commit to doing their best work; if they have in fact done their best work, their growth will become apparent.
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We will honor Community Montessori’s regular parent commitments.
We will read and abide by all guidelines and policies of Community Montessori. We will communicate to the staff any pertinent information pertaining to the teen or family.
By affixing my signature, I attest that I understand and agree to the aforementioned promises of this contract. We will strive to be a role model of responsibility and caring about learning so our teen can reach their full potential of a successful adult.