The Gailer School Guiding Principles

CORE VALUES

Members of Gailer's community are guided by the following core values:

Respect – All members endeavor to respect themselves, the community, the learning process, and the environment. Community members demonstrate respect through language, dialogue, gesture, compassion, and action.

Challenge – Members of our community want and need to be stretched intellectually, physically and academically. Gailer inspires students to accept and to invite challenge, to be open to intellectual risk, and to set high standards for themselves. 

Creativity – We pride ourselves on our innovative responses to challenges, whether personal, local or global. Through disciplined practice and ingenuity, our students express themselves, experiment, follow their curiosities, and explore new approaches.

Service – Service fosters insightful world citizenship. To that end, with initiative and action, our students develop their own community service projects and regularly share their learning with community members.

Diversity – Our community celebrates intellectual, social, racial, and ethnic diversity. We challenge our students to examine personal identity and cultural assumptions in order to enlarge their vision and their worldviews. 

HABITS OF MIND

In addition to academic graduation requirements and in preparation for further education, these habits of mind are the outcome of a Gailer education. Each student is expected to demonstrate the following prior to graduation:

Critical Thinking – Students ask questions, reason deductively and inductively, and analyze and synthesize information. They think across academic disciplines and make connections across those boundaries.

Communication – Students express understanding and perspective through a variety of formats, including writing, speaking, artwork, music, technology and foreign language. They listen actively, debate ideas and provide feedback.

Collaboration – Students work in partnership with their peers, teachers and the larger community. They brainstorm, listen, delegate, negotiate, lead, and follow.

Inquiry – Students pursue their intellectual curiosity through inquiry-based learning and independent study. They explore their interests, experiment, invent and learn from their own experience.

Voice – Students think independently, share their perspectives, and advocate for their beliefs. Through self-reflection and dialogue, they refine goals and develop and articulate their personal worldviews.