About McGuffey · Values and Beliefs
An intentional community of learners.
Our values spring from our philosophical base for creating an intentional community of learners. Our beliefs illustrate our approach to teaching and learning.
Our mission
To educate a diverse community, emphasizing well-rounded academics in a welcoming and sustainable environment.
While engaging each learner:
To take risks
To take risks and accept challenges.
To embrace joy
To embrace the joy of learning, exploring, and growing.
To reach potential
To realize their creative and intellectual potential.
Statement of values
What we value
Kindness, integrity, and true effort
- ethical and intellectual courage
- respect for each other and ourselves
- an openness to that which is different and new
- a sense of awe and responsibility
- challenge that excites learning
- motivating and educating one’s self
- persistence
- the uniquely and delightfully human abilities to empathize and synthesize
Learning and the process of constructing meaning
- actively encouraging curiosity and fostering the desire to know more, discover for oneself, venture into uncharted territory, and seek alternative, innovative, and creative answers
- encouraging the developing ability to identify what one knows, and to identify and communicate what one doesn’t know
- applauding the courage it takes to tackle the hard stuff and the time it takes to practice and maintain hard-won skills
- believing there is honor in attempting challenging material, reason for pride in small steps toward goals, with cheers for each success
- hoping for honest humility and gratitude for serendipity, sheer luck, and unearned success
Process as well as product
- recognizing that often it is the journey, not the destination, that matters
- honoring a good attempt, regardless of outcome
- finding value and benefit in “messing about,” wondering, inventing, and idle daydreaming
- encouraging safe experimentation as a means of “finding out”
Learning as part of a community
- sharing the excitement and purpose of school
- working in a “community of scholars” of various levels and degrees of accomplishment
- learning in group settings, with consideration for others and fidelity to one’s own tasks
- developing the ability to share leadership, contribute to group effort, brainstorm, listen to others, and plan collectively
Learning as an individual endeavor
- as a personal quest for information, exploration, and mastery of uncharted territories
- with growing investment and ownership
- trusting one’s own perceptions and intuitions
- with integrity and “academic honesty”
The sharing of information and skills
- serving as a teacher, regardless of age: mentoring, partnering, and encouraging peers, older and younger
- collaboratively, as exploration, examination, dreaming, or for the joy of it, with or without a goal
- using a wide range of technology and media, both verbally and non-verbally
Listening and responding
- with honesty, kindness, and respect
- with empathy, working to understand and consider other points of view
- with respect for the privacy of the individual
Personal and group responsibility
- for one’s own learning, behavior, effect on others, share of the work, and the good of the greater whole
- toward entities larger than oneself: family, home, school, community, nation, and world
- by advocating for those less able to advocate for themselves
- for questioning, re-defining, acting
Diversity in our community
- recognizing that a school community rich in diversity provides all members with increased learning opportunities
- understanding the relationship and importance of diversity to our other values and beliefs
Our beliefs
We believe in…
Mixed age grouping
- learning in the company of those with differing levels of experience and skills, and having the opportunity to be both the “big kid” and the “little” one
- working with and benefiting from diverse viewpoints, learning styles, and approaches
Interdisciplinary learning
- searching for connections, parallels, causes, effects, ripples
- sharing viewpoints, sources, resources, factors, outcomes
- recognizing the connections among disciplines
- learning from multiple perspectives and in purposeful contexts
A strong foundation of academic skills
- employing the best educational ideas of our times
- mastery-based learning: revising, finding errors, making corrections, and mastering material before moving on
- encouraging enrichment, connections, and horizontal as well as vertical growth
- revisiting topics at successive ages in a spiral curriculum
- high expectations appropriate to individual development
Diagnostic and prescriptive teaching
- beginning where the learner is, assessing with a variety of means, and designing the next step to fit the learner
- moving in small, logical steps, watching for signs of mastery or a need for practice or re-teaching
- allowing for blinding insight and non-linear thinking and knowing
- blending multiple methods, technologies, and sources to strengthen multiple intelligences and learning styles
Differentiated, independent learning
- recognizing that the rapid acquisition and consolidation periods of learners may not coincide
- allowing for the “teachable moment”
- fostering the “light bulb” joy of discovery
Learning how one learns
- observing one’s own most and least effective strategies
- observing others, and adopting and adapting what might work
- acting on suggestions from parents and teachers and observations of how younger children learn
Learning in and beyond the classroom
- using books, computers, and multi-media
- learning from peers, teachers, media, and those who have “been there”
- participating in discussion, constructive debate, reflection, and process
- leaving the school for field trips, observations, and off-site experiences
- developing the tools to carry passion and curiosity further
Learning the skills of learning
- organizing time, materials, and assignments
- breaking tasks into manageable “chunks”
- designing a project, experiment, or course of study, and modifying a plan when necessary
- reading for information and for pleasure; taking notes and using study guides
- being technologically literate and judging the difference between noise and knowledge
Preserving and presenting one’s work
- conveying knowledge attained and evidence of learning
- writing for a variety of uses and audiences
- publishing and presenting via computer, pencil, photography, movie, movement, and drama
- reporting orally, and presenting graphically with graphs, maps, timelines, and charts
Applying learning beyond school
- recognizing universal concerns of humanity
- articulating and advocating for self and others
- growing connections outward
Teacher leadership that enriches learning
- constructing a living mosaic of the best current and classic educational ideas
- engaging in professional development to grow personally and professionally
- being involved in school-wide decision-making
Sound like the right fit?
We would love to meet your child.
A lifelong love of learning begins at McGuffey.
We would love to meet your family. Book a tour and see what makes the McGuffey learning experience unique.
McGuffey Montessori School5128 Westgate Drive, Oxford, OH 45056 · (513) 523-7742
A privately run Montessori school educating students from preschool through Grade 8 since 1983.